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200 Years of Palmetto Poets

James M. Legare (1823 - 1859)

When James M. Legare was born in November of 1823 in Charleston, he represented the sixth generation of Legares to inhabit the Carolinas. His cousin, Hugh Swinton Legare, was already making a name for himself in literature, politics, and society, and James followed suit. James M. Legare attended the College of Charleston and finished his education at Saint Mary's College in Maryland. Besides writing poems, he wrote articles for magazines, was a painter, and an inventor. He was credited with inventing "plastic cotton," which was produced by adding a chemical agent to cotton fibers whereby they hardened and thus could be molded and shaped into furniture or sculptures. James M. Legare had a history of illness, including lung hemorrhages. He died on May 30, 1859 in Aiken, SC at the age of thirty-five.

The Reaper

How still Earth lies!-behind the pines
The summer clouds sink slowly down
The sunset gilds the higher hills
And distant steeples of the town.

Refreshed and moist the meadow spreads,
Birds sing from out the dripping leaves,
And standing in the breast-high corn
I see the farmer bind his sheaves.

It was when on the fallow fields
The heavy frosts of winter lay,
A rustic with unsparing hand
Strewed seed along the furrowed way.

And I too, walking through the waste
And wintry hours of the past,
Have in the furrows made by griefs
The seeds of future harvests cast.

Rewarded well, if when the world
Grows dimmer in the ebbing light,
And all the valley lies in shade,
But sunset glimmers on the height.

Down in the meadows of the heart
The birds sing out a last refrain,
And ready garnered for the mart
I see the ripe and golden grain.

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