Not all of the poets whose works have been featured in these pages have been conservatives. In fact, in the 18 short weeks that I have pursued this project, I have presented the poetry of one British Fabian, one left-leaning African-American, one "new age" former Catholic priest, and one promiscuous female free spirit from the "jazz age."

Lest there be any doubt about Donald Davidson, let me say right away that he was a conservative. He was, in fact, a Southern conservative poet, literary critic, essayist, historian, editor, political thinker, and influential "man of letters."

He was born in Campbellsville, Tennessee. He was educated at Vanderbilt University. He eventually taught there. He first entered the public arena as a member of a group of poets who gathered at Vanderbilt shortly after World War I and published a monthly journal called The Fugitive, which, I think it is accurate to say, put Nashville on the literary map.

Among those individuals who wrote for this publication, and who considered themselves fugitives from the contemporary poetry of their time and from Victorian sentimentalism, were Robert Graves, Laura Riding, Hart Crane, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. Benet's Readers Encyclopedia of American Literature says that the principal figures in the fugitive group "exerted an enormous influence on American literature" throughout their long careers in poetry, fiction and literary criticism.

The central theme of Davidson's work, throughout his life, was his love for and defense of the agrarian South. The driving force behind this cause was not sentimental regionalism, but a genuine conservative loathing for Roosevelt's New Deal, which was marked by a fantastic growth in the power and size of the federal establishment, a bullying federal encroachment on regional autonomy, creeping socialism, rapid urbanization, and the rise of a left wing intellectual establishment.

The official manifesto of this movement appeared in a well-known collection of essays published in 1930 and entitled I'll Take My Stand, which is described on the back of my paperback edition (the only first edition I ever saw in a used book store was far too pricey for me) as "one of the outstanding cultural documents in the history of the South."

Davidson's poetry appeared in three volumes: The Piper (1924); The Tall Men (1927); and Lee in the Mountains (1938). "Sanctuary" was included in the final work. It is longer than most of the poems I have featured here. And it is different. But it is a wonderful poem.
So enjoy.