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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Select Poems of Sidney Lanier +[Sidney Lanier: American (Georgia) Poet, Musician, etc.; 1842-1881.] +Edited by Morgan Callaway [American (Southern U.S.) Scholar; 1862-1936.] + + +[Note on text: Italicized words are capitalised. +Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation +is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected. +The "Notes" section has been abolished, and the notes themselves +appear with the poems, instead of in a separate section.] + + + + + +Select Poems of Sidney Lanier + +Edited With an Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography +By Morgan Callaway, Jr., Ph.D. +Associate Professor of English Philology in the University of Texas, +Formerly Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University; +Author of "The Absolute Participle in Anglo-Saxon" + +[Amended to include "The Marshes of Glynn"] + + + + + + To My Father + + + + + +Preface + + + +This edition of the `Select Poems of Sidney Lanier' is issued +in the hope of making his poetry known to wider circles than hitherto, +especially among the students of our high-schools and colleges. +To these as to older people, the poems will, it is believed, +prove an inspiration from the stand-point both of literature and of life. + +The biographical section of the Introduction rests in the main +upon Dr. Ward's admirable `Memorial' prefixed to the `Poems of Sidney Lanier' +edited by his wife, though a few additional facts have been gleaned +here and there. For most* of the Bibliography down to 1888 I am indebted +to my Hopkins comrade, Dr. Richard E. Burton, now of Hartford, Conn., +who compiled one for the `Memorial of Sidney Lanier', +published by President Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins University, in 1888. +Obligations to other publications about Lanier are in every instance +acknowledged in the appropriate place. + +-- +* I say `most of the Bibliography down to 1888', because Dr. Burton's + different purpose led him to exclude items that could not be omitted + in a Bibliography that, like mine, tries to be complete. +-- + +As to the selections made, I wished to include `The Marshes of Glynn' +and yet not to exclude `Sunrise'. But both could not be put in, +and I finally gave the preference to `Sunrise', chiefly on the ground +of its being Lanier's latest complete poem.* I believe all will admit +that the poems selected fairly exemplify the genius of the poet. +The poems are arranged, not as in the complete edition, +but in their chronological order, the only proper one, I think, +for a text-book. Of course, they are all given complete. + +-- +* Later opinion generally agrees that "The Marshes of Glynn" + is Lanier's greatest poem, and as this edition has no limitations of space, + it would be inappropriate to exclude it. Therefore it has been inserted + more or less in chronological order (in accordance with Callaway's plan), + with some comments. -- Alan Light, 1998. +-- + +In the Notes I have made rather copious quotations from poems +familiar to English scholars, because I hope that this book +will go into the hands of many to whom they are not familiar, +and to whom the original texts are not easily accessible. +And yet, if they at all attain their end, the Notes must lead one +to wish to know more of English poetry, of which Lanier's is but a part. + +Among the friends that have helped me by counsel or otherwise +I gratefully name Mr. Clifford Lanier, brother of the poet; +Professor Wm. Hand Browne, of the Johns Hopkins University; +Dr. Charles H. Ross, of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute; +and my colleagues in the School of English in the University of Texas, +Mr. L. R. Hamberlin and Professor Leslie Waggener. +Chief-justice Logan E. Bleckley, of Georgia, a man of letters +as well as of law, very kindly put at my use his correspondence with the poet, +the original draft of `Corn', and his criticisms upon the same. +My chief indebtedness, however, is to Mrs. Sidney Lanier, +who has been most generous with her time and her husband's papers. + + Morgan Callaway, Jr. + + University of Texas, October 1, 1894. + + + + + +Contents + + + + Introduction +I. A Brief Sketch of Lanier's Life +II. Lanier's Prose Works +III. Lanier's Poetry: Its Themes +IV. Lanier's Poetry: Its Style +V. Lanier's Theory of Poetry +VI. Conclusion + + Poems +Life and Song +Jones's Private Argyment +Corn +My Springs +The Symphony +The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama +Rose-morals +To ----, with a Rose +Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn +The Mocking-bird +Song of the Chattahoochee +The Revenge of Hamish +The Marshes of Glynn +Remonstrance +Opposition +Marsh Song -- At Sunset +A Ballad of Trees and the Master +Sunrise + + Bibliography + + + + + + Select Poems of Sidney Lanier + + + + + + Introduction + + + + +I. A Brief Sketch of Lanier's Life + + (1842-1881) + + + +Sidney Lanier has so recently passed from us that it seems desirable +briefly to recount the chief incidents of his life. This task +is much lightened by Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward's `Memorial',* upon which, +as stated in the Preface, is based this section of my essay. +Born at Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842, Sidney Lanier came of a family +noted for their love and cultivation of the fine arts. +From the time of Queen Elizabeth to the Restoration, +several of his paternal ancestors were connected with the English court +as musical composers and as painters. The father of the poet, however, +Robert S. Lanier, was a most industrious lawyer, who, +after a lingering illness of three years, recently** answered `Adsum' +to the summons of the supreme tribunal. The poet's mother, Mary Anderson, +a Virginian of Scotch descent, likewise sprang from a family +distinguished for their love of oratory, music, and poetry. + +-- +* For the full title of works cited see `Bibliography'. +** October 20, 1893, at Macon, Ga. +-- + +With such an ancestry we are not surprised to learn that +Sidney's earliest passion was for music, and that in boyhood he could, +although untutored, play on almost every kind of instrument. He preferred +the violin, in playing which he sometimes sank into a deep trance, +but in deference to his father's view gave it up for the flute, +his power over which we shall hear of farther on. At first, +strange to say, he considered music unworthy of one's sole attention, +but later he came to rank it as his fullest expression of worship. + +At fourteen Sidney entered the Sophomore Class of Oglethorpe College, +near Macon, Ga., and, with a year's intermission, graduated with first honor +in 1860, when just eighteen. To Professor James Woodrow, of Oglethorpe, +now President of South Carolina College, Lanier declared +that he owed "the strongest and most valuable stimulus of his youth." +On graduating he was given a tutorship in his Alma Mater, +a position that he held until the outbreak of the Civil War. + +The lecture-room was now exchanged for the battle-field; +in April, 1861, Lanier entered the Confederate Army as a private +in the Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion, +an organization among the first to reach Norfolk and that still keeps up +its corporate existence. In the spring of 1862 Lanier was joined +by his young brother, Clifford; and throughout the war +each seemed to vie with the other in brotherly love; +for, while both were offered promotion, neither would accept it, +since to do so would have entailed separation from the other. +The leisure time of his first year's service Sidney spent +in the study of music and the modern languages. He was engaged +in several battles in Virginia, but afterward was transferred, +with Clifford, to the Signal Service, with head-quarters at Petersburg. +Here he had access to a small library, of which he made sedulous use. +In 1863 his company was mounted, and served in Virginia and North Carolina. +In the spring of 1864 both brothers were transferred to Wilmington, +the head-quarters of the Marine Signal Service, in which they remained +to the end of the war. Finally the two brothers were separated, +each becoming signal officer* of a blockade-runner. Sidney's vessel +was captured, and for five months he was a prisoner at Point Lookout, Md., +with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison-life, +no doubt, that first led to decline of health by developing +the seeds of consumption, a disease that was to carry off his mother +and that he was to struggle with the last fifteen years of his life. +Released from prison in February, 1865, he returned to Georgia, +for the most part afoot, and reached home March 15th. +An account of his war-life is given in his novel, `Tiger-lilies', +treated below. + +-- +* It is sometimes erroneously stated that each was put in charge + of a blockade-runner. +-- + +During the succeeding nine years (1865-73) his life was checkered indeed. +Seriously ill for six weeks, he arose from his bed to see +his mother carried off by consumption and to find himself suffering +with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand +to various projects for making a living: clerking in a hotel +in Montgomery, Ala., for two years; writing* and publishing his novel, +`Tiger-lilies'; teaching at Prattville, Ala., one year, during which time** +he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga.; studying and then practising law +with his father at Macon, Ga., for five years; now, in the winter of 1872-73, +trying to recuperate at San Antonio, Texas, for hemorrhages had begun in 1868, +and a cough had set in two years later; and, finally, settling in Baltimore, +December, 1873, to devote himself to music and literature. + +-- +* April, 1867. +** December 19, 1867. +-- + +Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature +the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him +to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father +for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course +in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years, +through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, +through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college +and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life, +through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted +with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how, +in spite of all these depressing circumstances and of a thousand more +which I could enumerate, these two figures of music and poetry +have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them. +Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to have the right +to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, +after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through +so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all +that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son, +who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature. +Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated +visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, +Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute +for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled +with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work, +this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867, +and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York. +`Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia) +for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice, +and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor. +To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata', +which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure, +some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published +his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems', +which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2* +previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore, +Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which +he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class +and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879. +During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order. +On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment +as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore +for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since +his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse', +which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures +at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness, +this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools +and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts. +The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing +(`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees) +and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied +in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him +can be gathered from the following words of Mr. Ward: +"A few of the earlier lectures he penned himself; the rest he was obliged +to dictate to his wife. With the utmost care of himself, +going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture, +his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath +in the carriage on his return seemed each time to threaten the end. +Those who heard him listened in a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt +whether the hoarded breath would suffice to the end of the hour."*3* +After this a trip was made to New York to arrange for issuing some books +for boys, and four were issued, two posthumously: `Boy's Froissart' (1878), +`Boy's King Arthur' (1880), `Boy's Mabinogion' (1881), +and `Boy's Percy' (1882). Another work, an account of North Carolina +similar to that of Florida, was contracted for and was definitely planned, +but, owing to aggravating infirmities, could not be completed. + +-- +*1* Ward's `Memorial', p. xx. f. +*2* They are named in the `Bibliography'. +*3* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxviii. +-- + +For the end was near at hand. Desperate illness had made it necessary +to seek relief near Asheville, N.C., where he was joined +by Mrs. Lanier and by his father and step-mother. Growing no better, +he was moved to Lynn, Polk County, N.C. Of the rest we shall hear +in the words of his wife: "We are left alone (it is August 29, 1881) +with one another. On the last night of the summer comes a change. +His love and immortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer +yet one more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls +the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to +the will of God."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier +as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters +into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."** +The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to +the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted +by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried +in Greenmount Cemetery, in the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, +two of the dearest friends that Mr. and Mrs. Lanier had in Baltimore. + +-- +* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxx. +** Timrod's `A Vision of Poesy', stanza xliv. +-- + +Mr. Lanier left a family consisting of his wife and four sons. +Mrs. Lanier, who lives at Tryon, N.C., was the inspiration +not only of those glorious tributes, `Laus Mariae' and `My Springs', +but also of the poet's whole life. The eldest son, Mr. Charles Day Lanier, +was born at Macon, Ga., September 12, 1868, and was graduated A.B. +at the Johns Hopkins University in 1888. At one time he was +Assistant Editor of `The Cosmopolitan Magazine', a position that he gave up +only to become Business Manager of `The Review of Reviews', +with which he has been connected from its beginning. +He is the author of several graceful sketches in the magazines. +The second son, Sidney, is passionately fond of music, +and would have devoted himself thereto but for life-long ill-health. +After teaching three years in West Virginia, he has started a fruit farm +at Tryon, N.C., where he hopes to build up his health. +The third son, Henry Wysham, was prevented from entering the Johns Hopkins +by a partial failure of sight, and for three years has devoted himself +to railroad engineering in Baltimore and in Jamaica. The youngest, +Robert Sampson, only fourteen, is at Tryon, N.C., with his mother. + +That interest in Lanier's life and work did not cease with his death, +there is abundant evidence. On October 22, 1881, a memorial meeting was held +by the Faculty and students of the Johns Hopkins University, at which +addresses*1* were made by President Gilman and Professor Wm. Hand Browne, +of the University, and by the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus, of Baltimore, +and a letter*1* was read from the poet-critic, Edmund C. Stedman, +of New York. In 1883 `The English Novel' was published, +and in 1884 the `Poems', edited by his wife, with the excellent `Memorial' +by Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward, who declared that he thought Lanier +would "take his final rank with the first princes of American song."*2* +Numerous reviews of his life and works were published, notably those +by Mr. Wm. R. Thayer, Dr. Merrill E. Gates, Professor Charles W. Kent, +and by the London `Spectator'. On February 3, 1888, +the Johns Hopkins University held another memorial meeting in Baltimore, +attended by many from other cities. "A bust of the poet, in bronze +(modelled by Ephraim Keyser, sculptor, in the last period of Lanier's life, +at the suggestion of Mr. J. R. Tait), was presented to the University +by his kinsman, Charles Lanier, Esq., of New York. It was also announced that +a citizen of Baltimore had offered a pedestal, to be cut in Georgia marble +from a design by Mr. J. B. N. Wyatt. On a temporary pedestal +hung the flute of Lanier, which had so often been his solace, +and a roll of his manuscript music. The bust was crowned +with a wreath of laurel; the words of Lanier, `The Time needs Heart', +were woven into the strings of a floral lyre; and other flowers, +likewise brought by personal friends, were grouped around the pedestal. +As a memento a card, designed by Mrs. Henry Whitman, of Boston, +was given to those who were present. Upon its face was a wreath, +with Lanier's name and the date, and the motto -- `Aspiro dum Exspiro'; +upon the reverse appeared the closing lines of the Hymn of the Sun, +taken from the poet's `Hymns of the Marshes' -- and beneath, +a flute with ivy twined about it."*3* The exercises, +which were interspersed with music, were as follows: +addresses by President Gilman of the Hopkins and President Gates of Rutgers +(now of Amherst); selections from Lanier's poetry, read by +Miss Susan Hayes Ward, of Newark, N.J.; a paper on Lanier's +`Science of English Verse', by Professor A. H. Tolman, of Ripon College, Wis. +(now of the University of Chicago); poetic tributes by Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, +Miss Edith M. Thomas, and Messrs. James Cummings, Richard E. Burton, +and John B. Tabb; and letters from Messrs. Richard W. Gilder, +Edmund C. Stedman, and James Russell Lowell -- all of which may be found +in President Gilman's dainty `Memorial of Sidney Lanier'. Again, +a replica of the above-mentioned bust, the gift also of Mr. Charles Lanier, +was unveiled at the poet's birthplace, Macon, Ga., on October 17, 1890; +on which occasion tender tributes*4* were again poured forth +in prose and verse, by Messrs. W. B. Hill, Hugh V. Washington, +Charles Lanier, Clifford Lanier, Wm. Hand Browne, Charles G. D. Roberts, +John B. Tabb, H. S. Edwards, Wm. H. Hayne, Charles W. Hubner, +Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Dudley Warner, and Daniel C. Gilman. +But more significant than these demonstrations, perhaps, +is the steadily growing study devoted to Lanier's works. +Mr. Higginson*5* tells us, for instance, that, when he wrote his tribute +in 1887, Lanier's `Science of English Verse' had been put +upon the list of Harvard books to be kept only a fortnight, +and that, according to the librarian, it was out "literally all the time." +Moreover, it would not be difficult to cite various poems +that have been more or less modeled upon Lanier's; it is sufficient, perhaps, +to point out that the marsh, a theme almost unknown to poetry before Lanier +immortalized it, is not infrequently the subject of poetic treatment now, +as in the works of Charles G. D. Roberts,*6* Clinton Scollard,*7* +and Maurice Thompson.*8* It is noteworthy, too, that many of +the younger poets of the day, both in Canada and the United States, +have sung Lanier's praise. A complete list is given in the `Bibliography'. +Still further, a devoted admirer, Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, of Baltimore, +in `The Catholic Man', has in the person of Paul, the poet, +given us an imaginative study of the character of Mr. Lanier. +Finally, only a few months ago the Chautauquans of the class of 1898 +determined to call themselves "The Laniers", in honor of +the poet and his brother. + +-- +*1* See the `Bibliography'. +*2* `Memorial', p. xi. +*3* Gilman's `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier', pp. 5-6. +*4* Published in `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. +*5* See `The Chautauquan', as cited in the `Bibliography'. +*6* See recent files of `The Independent' (New York). +*7* See his `Pictures in Song' (New York, 1884), pp. 45-49. +*8* See his `Songs of Fair Weather' (Boston, 1883), pp. 27-28. +-- + + + + +II. Lanier's Prose Works + + + +With this brief sketch of his life, let us turn to Lanier's works, +and first to those in prose. At the head of the list comes `Tiger-lilies', +a novel written within three weeks and published immediately thereafter, +in 1867. Under the figure of "a strange, enormous, terrible flower," +the seed of which he hopes may perish beyond resurrection, the author pictures +the horror of war in general and of the Civil War in particular. +An entertaining love-story runs through the book, the plot of which +space does not allow me to detail. In execution the novel has grave defects: +it lacks unity; the characters talk as learnedly as Lanier afterward +wrote of music; and at times, as in the oft-quoted picture of the war,*1* +the style is grandiloquent; owing to which blemishes the author +wisely discouraged its republication. But, in spite of these defects, +the book has one very strongly put scene,*2* the interview +between Smallin and his deserter brother, and several beautiful passages*3* +that distinctly proclaim the high-souled poet. + +-- +*1* `Tiger-lilies', p. 115 ff. +*2* `Tiger-lilies', p. 149 ff. +*3* That on "love" (p. 26) is quoted later. +-- + +Lanier's next publication, `Florida: Its Scenery, Climate, and History', +was written by commission of the Atlantic Coast Line, and appeared in 1876. +To use the author's own epithet, `Florida' is "a spiritualized guide-book". + +Exclusive of the 1877 volume of `Poems', Lanier's next original work +was `The Science of English Verse', which in lecture-form +was delivered to the students of the Johns Hopkins in the winter of 1879 +and was published in 1880. According to competent critics, the book gives +as searching an investigation of the science of verse on its formal side +as is to be had in any language. Since the treatise is so evidently +an epoch-making one, I regret that the technicality of the subject forbids +my attempting in this connection even a brief exposition* of its principles. +I can say only that Lanier treats verse in the terms of music; +that, according to the promise of the preface, he gives +"an account of the true relations of music and verse"; and that in so doing +he has given us the best working theory for English verse +from Caedmon to Tennyson. This is a high estimate, but it is by no means +so high as that of the lamented poet-professor, Edmund Rowland Sill, +who said of `The Science of English Verse', "It is the only work +that has ever made any approach to a rational view of the subject. +Nor are the standard ones overlooked in making this assertion."** + +-- +* This may be found in Professor Tolman's article, + cited in the `Bibliography'. +** Quoted by Tolman. +-- + +Lanier's second course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, +delivered in the winter and spring of 1881, was published in 1883 +under the title, `The English Novel and the Principles of Its Development'.* +According to the author's statement, the purpose of the book +is "first, to inquire what is the special relation of the novel +to the modern man, by virtue of which it has become a paramount literary form; +and, secondly, to illustrate this abstract inquiry, when completed, +by some concrete readings in the greatest of modern English novelists" (p. 4). +Addressing himself to the former, Lanier attempts to prove (1) that our time, +when compared with that of Aeschylus, shows an "enormous growth +in the personality of man" (p. 5); (2) that what we moderns +call Physical Science, Music, and the Novel, all had their origin at +practically the same time, about the middle of the seventeenth century (p. 9); +and (3) "that the increase of personalities thus going on has brought about +such complexities of relation that the older forms of expression +were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity +has developed the wonderfully free and elastic form of the modern novel +out of the more rigid Greek drama, through the transition form +of the Elizabethan drama" (p. 10). In fulfilment of his second purpose, +the author gives a detailed study of several of the novels of George Eliot, +whom he takes to be the greatest modern English novelist. Even this +brief synopsis of the book must indicate its broad and stimulating character, +in which respect it is a worthy successor of `The Science of English Verse'. +Despite the limitations induced by failing life, which necessitated +the cutting down of the course of lectures from twenty to twelve,** +I know of few more life-giving books; and I venture to assert +that it cannot safely be overlooked by any careful student of the subject. + +-- +* Mrs. Lanier informs me that `The English Novel' will soon + be issued in an amended form and with a new sub-title, + `Studies in the Development of Personality', which indicates precisely + what Mr. Lanier intended to attempt, and relieves the book + of its seeming incompleteness as to scope. +** `Spann'. +-- + +Among other prose works I may mention Lanier's early extravaganza, +`Three Waterfalls'; `Bob', a happy account of a pet mocking-bird, +worthy of being placed beside Dr. Brown's `Rab and his Friends'; +his books for boys: `Froissart', `King Arthur', `Mabinogion', and `Percy', +which have had, as they deserve, a large sale; and his posthumous +`From Bacon to Beethoven', a highly instructive essay on music. + + + + +III. Lanier's Poetry: Its Themes + + + +But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier, +and I turn to the posthumous edition of his `Poems' gotten out by his wife. +At the outset let us ask, How did the poet look at the world? +what problems engaged his attention and how were they solved? +A careful investigation will show, I believe, that, +despite the brevity of his life and its consuming cares, +Lanier studied the chief questions of our age, and that in his poems +he has offered us noteworthy solutions. + +What, for instance, is more characteristic of our age than its tendency +to agnosticism? I pass by the manifestations of this spirit +in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard, +and give an illustration or two from the field of history and politics. +Picturesque Pocahontas, we are told, is no more to be believed in; +moreover, the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth Rock, +nor did Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn +there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information +but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit, +we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness +that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism, +we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency +has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza +from Lanier's `Acknowledgment': + + "O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st, + Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt, + And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st, + Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out! + Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir, + Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, + Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire + To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime. + Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, + Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell; + Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat + His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."* + +-- +* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12. +-- + +More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people, +is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century, +especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly +and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony', +his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments. +The violins begin: + + "O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! + The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."* + +Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving +the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand": + + "`We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, + We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, + And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, + To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? -- + The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; + And so do we, and the world's a sty; + Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? + "Swinehood hath no remedy" + Say many men, and hasten by, + Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. + But who said once, in the lordly tone, + "Man shall not live by bread alone + But all that cometh from the throne"? + Hath God said so? + But Trade saith "No": + And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go: + There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. + Move out, if you think you're underpaid. + The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; + Trade is Trade."' + + "Thereat this passionate protesting + Meekly changed, and softened till + It sank to sad requesting + And suggesting sadder still: + `And oh, if men might some time see + How piteous-false the poor decree + That trade no more than trade must be! + Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"? + Then "Trade is trade" but sings a lie: + 'Tis only war grown miserly. + If business is battle, name it so.'"** + +-- +* `The Symphony', ll. 1-2. +** `The Symphony', ll. 31-61. +-- + +Of even wider sweep than mercantilism is the spirit of intolerance; +for, while the diffusion of knowledge and of grace has in a measure +repressed this spirit, it lacks much of being subdued. I do not wonder +that Lanier "fled in tears from men's ungodly quarrel about God," +and that, in his poem entitled `Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance +with all the vehemence of a prophet of old. + +But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills. +To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early passion +for the violin and his substitution of the flute therefor, +we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly +the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting +when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher. +With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages +with fine tributes thereto. In `Tiger-lilies', for instance, +he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found +some nations that had no god, he knows of none that had no music, +and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony; +harmony means love; and love means -- God!"*3* Even more explicit +is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know +that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL; +poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES. +I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly, +and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music, +which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4* +We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony' +the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs +his felicitous definition, + + "Music is love in search of a word."*5* + +In `To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself: + + "I know not how, I care not why, + Thy music brings this broil at ease, + And melts my passion's mortal cry + In satisfying symphonies. + + "Yea, it forgives me all my sins, + Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, + And tunes the task each day begins + By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6* + +It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier +to write his work on `The Science of English Verse', and gave him +a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson. + +-- +*1* See Ward's `Memorial', pp. xx, xxxi. +*2* Hayne's (P. H.) `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. +*3* `Tiger-lilies', p. 32. +*4* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. After settling in Baltimore + Lanier devoted more time to poetry than to music, as we may see + from this sentence to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of March 20, 1876: + "As for me, life has resolved simply into a time during which + I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems + with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket." +*5* `The Symphony', l. 368. +*6* `To Beethoven', ll. 61-68. +-- + +Like most great poets of modern times, Lanier was a sincere lover of nature. +And it seems to me that with him this love was as all-embracing as +with Wordsworth. Lanier found beauty in the waving corn*1* and the clover;*2* +in the mocking-bird,*3* the robin,*4* and the dove;*5* +in the hickory,*6* the dogwood,*6* and the live-oak;*7* +in the murmuring leaves*8* and the chattering streams;*9* +in the old red hills*10* and the sea;*11* in the clouds,*12* +sunrise,*13* and sunset;*14* and even in the marshes,*15* +which "burst into bloom" for this worshiper. Again, Lanier's love of nature +was no less insistent than Wordsworth's. We all remember the latter's +oft-quoted lines: + + "To me the meanest flower that blows can give + Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"*16* + +and beside them one may put this line of Lanier's, + + "The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep,"*17* + +because, as the context shows, he was + + "Shaken with happiness: + The gates of sleep stood wide."*18* + +And how naive and tender was this nature-worship! He speaks of +the clover*19* and the clouds*20* as cousins, and of the leaves*21* +as sisters, and in so doing reminds us of the earliest Italian poetry, +especially of `The Canticle of the Sun', by St. Francis of Assisi, +who brothers the wind, the fire, and the sun, and sisters the water, +the stars, and the moon. Notice the tenderness in these lines of `Corn': + + "The leaves that wave against my cheek caress + Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express + A subtlety of mighty tenderness; + The copse-depths into little noises start, + That sound anon like beatings of a heart, + Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart;"*22* + +to which we find a beautiful parallel in a poem by Paul Hamilton Hayne, +himself a reverent nature-worshiper: + + "Ah! Nature seems + Through something sweeter than all dreams + To woo me; yea, she seems to speak + How closely, kindly, her fond cheek + Rested on mine, her mystic blood + Pulsing in tender neighborhood, + And soft as any mortal maid, + Half veiled in the twilight shade, + Who leans above her love to tell + Secrets almost ineffable!"*23* + +Moreover, this worship is restful: + + "Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? + Somehow my soul seems suddenly free + From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, + By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. + + . . . . . + + "By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod + I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: + Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within + The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn."*24* + +But to Lanier the ministration of nature was by no means passive; +and we find him calling upon the leaves actively to minister to his need +and even to intercede for him to their Maker: + + "Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, + Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, + Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, + Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, + Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me + Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, -- + Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet + That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat + Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath + From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, -- + Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me + The passion of patience, -- sift me, -- impeach me, -- + And there, oh there + As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, + Pray me a myriad prayer."*25* + +In this earnest ascription of spirituality to the leaves +Lanier recalls Ruskin.*26* + +-- +*1* See `The Waving of the Corn' and `Corn'. +*2* See `Clover'. +*3* See `The Mocking-Bird' and `To Our Mocking-Bird'. +*4* See `Tampa Robins'. +*5* See `The Dove'. +*6* See `From the Flats', last stanza. +*7* See `Sunrise'. +*8* See `Sunrise' and `Corn'. +*9* See `The Song of the Chattahoochee' and `Sunrise'. +*10* See `Corn'. +*11* See `Sunrise' and `At Sunset'. +*12* See `Individuality'. +*13* See `Sunrise', etc. +*14* See `At Sunset'. +*15* See `The Marshes of Glynn', and read Barbe's tribute to Lanier, + cited in the `Bibliography'. +*16* `Intimations of Immortality', ll. 202-203. +*17* `The Symphony', l. 3. +*18* `The Symphony', ll. 13-14. +*19* `Clover', l. 57. +*20* `Individuality', l. 1. +*21* `Sunrise', l. 42. +*22* `Corn', ll. 4-9. Compare `The Symphony', ll. 183-190. +*23* Hayne's `In the Gray of Evening': Autumn, ll. 37-46, + in `Poems' (Boston, 1882), p. 250. +*24* `The Marshes of Glynn', ll. 61-64, 75-78. +*25* `Sunrise', ll. 39-53. +*26* See his `Modern Painters', vol. v., part vi., chapter iv., + and Scudder's note to the same in her `Introduction to Ruskin' + (Chicago, 1892), p. 249. +-- + +To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton, +from Tacitus to the present, saw "something of the divine" in woman. +It was this feeling that led him so severely to condemn a vice that is said +to be growing, the marriage for convenience. I quote from `The Symphony', +and the "melting Clarionet" is speaking: + + "So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, + Men love not women as in olden time. + Ah, not in these cold merchantable days + Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays + The one red sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. + Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- + Says, `Here, you lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: + Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' + Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1* + +And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that, +at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's `One Way of Love', +which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love. +The Lady Clarionet is still speaking: + + "I would my lover kneeling at my feet + In humble manliness should cry, `O Sweet! + I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: + I ask not if thy love my love can meet: + Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, + I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: + I do but know I love thee, and I pray + To be thy knight until my dying day.'"*2* + +I imagine, too, that any wife that ever lived would be satisfied +with his glorious tribute to Mrs. Lanier in `My Springs', which closes thus: + + "Dear eyes, dear eyes, and rare complete -- + Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet -- + I marvel that God made you mine, + For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine."*3* + +Almost equally felicitous are these lines of `Acknowledgment': + + "Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: + Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument."*4* + +But the cleverest thing that Lanier has written of woman +occurs in his `Laus Mariae': + + "But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, + Dost bind all epochs in one dainty fact. + Oh, Sweet, my pretty sum of history, + I leapt the breadth of time in loving thee!"*5* + +-- a scrap worthy to be placed beside Steele's "To love her +is a liberal education," which has often been declared +the happiest thing on the subject in the English language. + +-- +*1* `The Symphony', ll. 232-240. +*2* `The Symphony', ll. 241-248. +*3* `My Springs', ll. 53-56. +*4* `Acknowledgment', ll. 41-42. +*5* `Laus Mariae', ll. 11-14. +-- + +To Lanier there was but one thing that made life worth living, +and that was love. Even the superficial reader must be struck +with the frequent use of the term in the poet's works, +while all must be uplifted by his conception of its purpose and power. +The ills of agnosticism, mercantilism, and intolerance +all find their solution here and here only, as is admirably set forth +in `The Symphony', of which the opening strain is, "We are all for love," +and the closing, "Love alone can do." The matter is no less happily put +in `Tiger-lilies': "For I am quite confident that love is the only rope +thrown out by Heaven to us who have fallen overboard into life. +Love for man, love for woman, love for God, -- these three chime +like bells in a steeple and call us to worship, which is to work. . . . +Inasmuch as we love, in so much do we conquer death and flesh; +by as much as we love, by so much are we gods. For God is love; +and could we love as He does, we could be as He is."*1* +To the same effect is his statement in `The English Novel': +"A republic is the government of the spirit."*2* The same thought +recurs later: "In love, and love only, can great work +that not only pulls down, but builds, be done; it is love, and love only, +that is truly constructive in art."*3* In the poem entitled +`How Love Looked for Hell', Mind and Sense at Love's request +go to seek Hell; but ever as they point it out to Love, whether in +the material or the immaterial world, it vanishes; for where Love is +there can be no Hell, since, in the words of Tolstoi's story, +"Where Love is there is God." But in one of his poems Lanier sums up +the whole matter in a line: + + "When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught."*4* + +-- +*1* `Tiger-lilies', p. 26. +*2* `The English Novel', p. 55. +*3* `The English Novel', p. 204. +*4* `In Absence', l. 42. +-- + +It is but a short way from love to its source, -- God. +And, as Lanier was continually in the atmosphere of the one, so, I believe, +he was ever in the presence of the other; for the poet's "Love means God" +is but another phrasing of the evangelist's "God is love".*1* +Of Lanier's grief over church broils and of his longing for freedom +to worship God according to one's own intuition, we have already learned +from his `Remonstrance'. What he thought of the Christ we learn +from `The Crystal', which closes with this invocation: + + "But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, + But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, + But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, + O perfect life in perfect labor writ, + O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- + What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, + What least defect or shadow of defect, + What rumor, tattled by an enemy, + Of inference loose, what lack of grace + Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's -- + Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, + Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2* + +How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen +in his `Ballad of Trees and the Master', a dramatic presentation of the scene +in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in the Christ +may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne: +"I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your `Aethra's'. Every day +when my work is done I take him in my strong arms, and lift him up, +and pore in his face. The intense repose, penetrated somehow +with a thrilling mystery of `potential activity', which dwells +in his large, open eye, teaches me new things. I say to myself, +Where are the strong arms in which I, too, might lay me and repose, +and yet be full of the fire of life? And always through the twilight +come answers from the other world, `Master! Master! there is one -- Christ -- +in His arms we rest!'"*3* Perhaps, however, Lanier's notion of God, +whom he declared*4* all his roads reached, is most clearly expressed +in a scrap quoted by Ward, apparently the outline for a poem: +"I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God. +I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth. +Then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground; +and I looked and my cheek lay close to a violet. Then my heart took courage, +and I said: `I know that thou art the word of my God, dear Violet. +And oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads. +Measure what space a violet stands above the ground. 'Tis no further climbing +that my soul and angels have to do than that.'"*5* In this high spirituality +Lanier is in line with the greatest poets of our race, from + + "Caedmon, in the morn + A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call + That late brought up the cattle,"*6* + +to him + + "Who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, + Never doubted clouds would break, + Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, + Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, + Sleep to wake."*7* + +-- +*1* 1 John 4:16. +*2* `The Crystal', ll. 100-111. +*3* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. +*4* In `A Florida Sunday', l. 85. +*5* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxxix. +*6* Lanier's `The Crystal', ll. 90-93. +*7* Browning's `Asolando': Epilogue, ll. 11-15. +-- + +Perhaps I may append here a paragraph upon Lanier's criticisms +of other writers, for they seem to me acute in the extreme. +Despite the elaborate essays in defence of Whitman's poetry +by Dowden,*1* Symonds,*2* and Whitman himself, I believe Lanier is right +in declaring that "Whitman is poetry's butcher. Huge raw collops +slashed from the rump of poetry and never mind gristle -- +is what Whitman feeds our souls with. As near as I can make it out, +Whitman's argument seems to be, that, because a prairie is wide, +therefore debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long, +therefore every American is God."*3* Notice, again, how well +the defect of `Paradise Lost' is pointed out: + + "And I forgive + Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars + Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, + Immortals smite immortals mortalwise + And fill all heaven with folly."*4* + +Few better things have been said of Langland than this, -- + + "That with but a touch + Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top + Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now + And most adorable;"*5* + +or of Emerson than this, -- + + "Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost + Thy Self, sometimes;"*6* + +or of Tennyson than this, -- + + "Largest voice + Since Milton, yet some register of wit + Wanting."*7* + +`The Crystal' abounds in such happy characterizations. + +-- +*1* See Dowden's `Studies in Literature', pp. 468-523. +*2* See Symonds's `Walt Whitman: A Study'. London, 1893. +*3* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxxviii. +*4* `The Crystal', ll. 66-70. +*5* Ibid., ll. 87-90. +*6* Ibid., ll. 93-94. +*7* Ibid., ll. 95-97. +-- + + + + +IV. Lanier's Poetry: Its Style + + + +So much for the poet's thoughts; what shall we say of their expression? +In other words, is Lanier the literary artist equal to Lanier the seer? +In order the better to answer this question, let us begin at the beginning, +with the elements of style, some of which, however, I pass by +as not calling for special comment. + +Of Lanier's felicitous choice of words we have already had +incidental illustration; but it is desirable, perhaps, to group here +a few of his happiest phrases, to show that, as Lowell*1* said, +he is "a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word." +Notice this speech about the brook: + + "And down the hollow from a ferny nook + `Lull' sings a little brook!"*2* + +and this of the well-bucket: + + "The rattling bucket plumps + Souse down the well;"*3* + +and this of the outburst of a bird: + + "Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?"*4* + +and the description of a mocking-bird as + + "Yon trim Shakspere on the tree;"*5* + +and of midnight as + + "Death's and truth's unlocking time."*6* + +Moreover, it should be observed that Lanier frequently uses +significant compounds, -- a habit acquired, no doubt, +from his study of Old English, in which, as in German, such compounds abound. + +-- +*1* See `Lowell' in `Bibliography'. +*2* `From the Flats', ll. 23-24; cited by Gates. [Line 24 was changed + (to "Bright leaps a living brook!") in later editions. -- A. L., 1998.] +*3* `Clover', ll. 29-30. +*4* `Sunrise', l. 57; cited by Gates. +*5* `The Mocking-Bird', l. 14. +*6* `The Crystal', l. 1. Other illustrations may be found in the paragraph + on figures of speech. +-- + +While in the main Lanier's sentence-construction is good, +occasionally his sentences are too long, as in `My Springs', +`To Bayard Taylor', and `Sunrise', in which we have sentences +longer than the opening one in `Paradise Lost', and, what is of more moment, +not so well balanced, and hence affording fewer breathing spaces. +That this detracts from clearness and euphony both, every reader will admit. + +To come to the figures of speech, one must be struck at once +with the delicacy and the vigor of Lanier's imagination. The poet's fancy +personifies what at first blush seems to us incapable of personification. +Thus at one time*1* he likens men to clover-leaves and the Course-of-things +to the browsing ox, which makes way with the clover-heads; +while at another he addresses an old red hill of Georgia as + + "Thou gashed and hairy Lear + Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, + E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer."*2* + +Like other Southern poets,*3* Lanier sometimes fails to check his imagination, +and in consequence leaves his readers "bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze," +as in his description of the stars in `June Dreams'*4* +and in the `Psalm of the West'.*5* While I do not like a maze, +brilliant though it be and sweet, I must say that I prefer +the embarrassment of riches to the embarrassment of poverty. On the whole, +however, Lanier's figures strike me as singularly fresh and happy. +In `Sunrise', for example, the poet speaks of the marsh as follows: + + "The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams + Glimmers a limpid labyrinth of dreams;"*6* + +and of the heavens reflected in the marsh waters: + + "Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies + A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies + Shine scant with one forked galaxy, -- + The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie."*7* + +Later, as the ebb-tide flows from marsh to sea, we are parenthetically treated +to these two lines: + + "Run home, little streams, + With your lapfuls of stars and dreams."*8* + +Finally, the heaven itself is thus pictured: + + "Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew + The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue + Big dew-drop of all heaven;"*9* + +beside which must be hung this exquisite picture: + + "The dew-drop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky."*10* + +-- +*1* In `Clover'. +*2* `Corn', ll. 185-187. +*3* See on this point the remarks of Professor Trent + in his admirable life of `Simms' (Boston, 1892), p. 149. +*4* `June Dreams', l. 21 ff. +*5* `Psalm of the West', l. 183 ff. +*6* `Sunrise', ll. 80-81. +*7* Ibid., ll. 82-85. +*8* Ibid., ll. 114-115. +*9* Ibid., ll. 134-136. +*10* `The Ship of Earth', l. 5. +-- + +As to versification, Lanier uses almost all the types of verse +-- iambic, trochaic, blank, the sonnet, etc. -- and with about equal skill. +Three features, however, specially characterize his verse: +the careful distribution of vowel-colors and the frequent use +of alliteration and of phonetic syzygy,*1* by which last is meant +a combination or succession of identical or similar consonants, +whether initially, medially, or finally, as for instance +the succession of M's in Tennyson's + + "The moan of doves in immemorial elms + And murmuring of innumerable bees." + +All of these phenomena are illustrated in Lanier's +`Song of the Chattahoochee', which has often been compared +to Tennyson's `The Brook', and which alone proves the author +a master in versification. To be sure, Lanier occasionally gives us +an improper rhyme, as `thwart: heart',*2* etc., but so does every poet. +No doubt, too, his love of music sometimes led him, +not "to strain for form effects", but to indulge too much therein, +or, in the words of Mr. Stedman, "to essay in language +feats that only the gamut can render possible."*3* But, as Professor Kent +admirably puts it, "Lanier was a poet as well as an artist, +and if at times his artistic temperament seemed to eclipse his poetic thought, +grant that to the poet mind the very manner of expression +may indicate the thought that lies beneath, while to the duller ear +the thought must come in completed form."*4* Moreover, as we shall see later, +this extraordinary musical endowment gave Lanier a unique position +among English poets. + +-- +*1* See `The Science of English Verse', p. 306 ff. +*2* `In the Foam', ll. 6, 8. See, too, Kent's `Study of Lanier's Poems', + which gives an exhaustive treatment of Lanier's versification. +*3* Stedman's `Poets of America', p. 449. +*4* `Kent', p. 60. +-- + +After what has been said the qualities of style may be briefly handled. +As we have already seen, Lanier sometimes fails in clearness, +or, more precisely, in simplicity. This comes partly +from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps, +from Lanier's extraordinary musical endowment, but chiefly, I think, +from over-luxuriance of imagination. But this occasional defect +has been unduly exaggerated. Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares +that Lanier is "never simple, never easy, never in one single lyric +natural and spontaneous for more than one stanza," -- a statement +so clearly hyperbolic as hardly to call for notice. As a matter of fact, +Lanier has written numerous poems that offer little or no difficulty +to the reader of average intelligence, as `Life and Song', `My Springs', +`The Symphony', `The Mocking-Bird', `The Song of the Chattahoochee', +`The Waving of the Corn', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', +`A Ballad of Trees and the Master', etc. More than this, +Lanier at times manifests the simplicity that is granted +only to genius of the highest order: thus an English critic,*2* +who by the way declares that Lanier's volume has more of genius than +all the poems of Poe, or Longfellow, or Lowell (the humorous poems excepted), +and who considers Lanier the most original of all American poets, +and more original than any England has produced for the last thirty years, +says that "nothing can be more perfect than -- + + `The whole sweet round + Of littles that large life compound,'"*3* + +lines in `My Springs', and that "the touch of wonder in the last two lines, + + `I marvel that God made you mine, + For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine,'*4* + +is as simple and exquisite as any touch of tenderness in our literature." +I frankly admit that several of Lanier's best poems, +as `Corn', `The Marshes of Glynn', and `Sunrise', are not simple; +but the same thing is true of Milton's `Paradise Lost' and of Browning's +`The Ring and the Book', and yet this fact does not exclude these two works +from the list of great poems. Mr. Gosse, however, declares that `Corn', +`Sunrise', and `The Marshes of Glynn' "simulate poetic expression +with extraordinary skill. But of the real thing, of the genuine +traditional article, not a trace"! What do these poems show, then? +Mr. Gosse answers: "I find a painful effort, a strain and rage, +the most prominent qualities in everything he wrote;" which strikes me +as the reverse of the facts. In one of his letters*5* to Judge Bleckley, +Lanier wrote this sentence: "My head and my heart are both so full of poems +which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time +to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache, +purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." If, then, +he committed an error (and I am far from considering him faultless), +it was not that he beat and spurred on Pegasus, but that he failed +to rein him in. Still, I repeat that I prefer the embarrassment of riches +to the embarrassment of poverty. Finally, just as Milton tells us +that the music of the spheres is not to be heard by the gross, unpurged ear, +so I believe that many intelligent ears and eyes are at first +too gross to hear and see what Lanier puts before them, +whereas a bit of patient listening and looking reveals delights +hitherto undreamed of. + +-- +*1* See `Bibliography'. +*2* `The Spectator' (London); see `Bibliography'. +*3* `My Springs', ll. 49-50. +*4* `My Springs', ll. 55-56. +*5* It is to be hoped that these letters may yet be published. + I quote from one dated November 15, 1874. +-- + +If not always simple, Lanier is often forcible in the extreme, +as in `The Symphony', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', and `Sunrise'. +Of course, it is open to any one to see in these poems the "rage" +attributed to Lanier by Mr. Gosse, but I prefer to consider it divine wrath +in all but the last, and in it wonder unutterable, which yet is so uttered +that ears become eyes. I allude to the stanzas* describing +the break of dawn and the rising of the sun. + +-- +* `Sunrise', ll. 86-152. +-- + +Of the poet's marvelous euphony, `The Song of the Chattahoochee' +speaks clearly enough. As we have seen in our treatment of versification, +it is here a question not of too little but of too much. +But, despite an occasional too great yielding to his passion for music, +his extraordinary endowment in this direction gave Lanier a unique position +among English poets. I quote again from Professor Kent:* +"But if his sense of beauty made him a peer of our great poets, +it was the heavenly gift of music that distinguished him from them. +Milton, it is true, whom he most resembles in this respect, +had a knowledge of music, but not the same passion for it. Milton's music +was more a recreation, an accompaniment of reverie; Lanier's was a fiery zeal; +a yearning love, a chosen and adequate form of expression +of his soul's deepest feeling. Combined with this passion for music +was his technical knowledge of the art, and these combined formed at once +the foundation and the framework of his poetry. He seems literally +to have sung his poems; they are essentially musical, tuneful, and melodious. +Surcharged with music, he overflows in mellifluous numbers. Here, then, +Lanier stands out differentiated in the choir of poets, and here we find +that distinctive quality which is the very flavor of his writing." + +-- +* P. 62. +-- + +While most of Lanier's poems are in a serious strain, +several disclose no mean sense of humor. I refer to his dialect poems, +such as `Jones's Private Argyment', `Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn', +and `The Power of Prayer', especially the last, written in conjunction +with his brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier. + +There are passages in the poems no less pathetic than the poet's life. +In discussing his love of nature we have seen that he was a pantheist +in the best sense of the term. So delicate was his sensibility +that we do not wonder when we hear him declaring, + + "And I am one with all the kinsmen things + That e'er my Father fathered,"* + +a saying as felicitous as the Roman's "I am a man, and, therefore, +nothing human is stranger to me." The tenderness of +the `Ballad of Trees and the Master' must touch all readers. +Few passages are more pathetic, I think, than that, in `June Dreams +in January', telling of the poet's struggle for bread and fame, +while "his worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar, within the village +whence she sent him forth, waiting all confident and proud and calm." +And, if there occurs therein a plaintive tone, let us remember +that it is the only time that he complained of his lot, +and that here really he has more in mind his dearer self, his wife, +and that calm succeeded to unrest just as it does in this passage: + + "`Why can we poets dream us beauty, so, + But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I + Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June + Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul, + Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf + Out of this same chill matter, no, not one + For Mary, though she starved upon my breast?' + And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed, + And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er + The very edge of breaking, fain to fall, + God sent him sleep."** + +-- +* `A Florida Sunday', ll. 102-103. +** `June Dreams in January', ll. 68-78. +-- + + + + +V. Lanier's Theory of Poetry + + + +It is now time to say a word about Lanier's theory of art, +especially the art of poetry. His views upon the formal side of poetry have +already been noticed in the consideration of his `Science of English Verse', +and hence receive no further comment here. + +That Lanier keenly appreciated the responsibility resting upon the artist, +appears from `Individuality', where he tells us, + + "Awful is art because 'tis free,"*1* + +and, + + "Each artist -- gift of terror! -- owns his will."*2* + +But he accepts the responsibility reverently and confidently: + + "I work in freedom wild, + But work, as plays a little child, + Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone."*3* + +-- +*1* `Individuality', l. 62. +*2* `Individuality', l. 76. +*3* `Individuality', ll. 89-91. +-- + +Again, the province of poetry is pointed out, as in `Clover': + + "The artist's market is the heart of man; + The artist's price, some little good of man;"*1* + +and in `The Bee': + + "Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?' + He beareth starry stuff about his wings + To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2* + +In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime." + +-- +*1* `Clover', ll. 126-127. +*2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42. +*3* `Corn', l. 52 ff. +-- + +But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter +most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place, +he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal, +a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking +by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers: +"You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry +unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated +with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."* +That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence +in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember +his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy, +and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last, +I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute, +and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics +in the University of Virginia thought considerable.** + +-- +* `Gates', p. 29. +** See `West', p. 23. +-- + +In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art +should be scientific. It was this that led him to write +`The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, +"But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are." +In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse +was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"* +and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, -- + + "For a good poet's made as well as born, + And such wert thou." + +But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount +of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto +above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', +which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, +and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, +no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it." + +-- +* `The English Novel', p. 33. +-- + +In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part +of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty +of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral +than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, +so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. +This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage: +"Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement +has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest +as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, +all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination +of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; +yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, +if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty +suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying +a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble +for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not +accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived +how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back +into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire +with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty -- that he, in short, +who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy +in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, +burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him; he is not yet +the great artist."* By copious quotations Lanier then shows +that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while +to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, +Wisdom, Goodness, and the like," and concludes thus: "And if this be true, +cannot one say with authority to the young artist, -- whether working +in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel: +so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere +with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction +that unless you are suffused -- soul and body, one might say -- +with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love +-- that is, the love of all things in their proper relation -- +unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; +unless you are suffused with beauty, do not meddle with love; +unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; -- +in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness, +AND love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."** + +-- +* `The English Novel', p. 272 f. +** `The English Novel', p. 280. Of the numerous discussions of this thesis, + the student should consult at least those by Matthew Arnold + (`Preface' to his edition of `Wordsworth's Poems'), + John Ruskin (`Stones of Venice', vol. iii., chap. iv.), + and Victor Hugo (`William Shakespeare', Book VI.). +-- + + + + +VI. Conclusion + + + +Milton has somewhere said that in order to be a great poet +one must himself be a true poem, a dictum none the less trustworthy +because of its inapplicability to its author along with +several other great poets. Now of all English poets, +I know of none that came nearer being a true poem than did Lanier. +He was as spotless as "the Lady of Christ's", and infinitely more lovable. +Indeed, he seems to me to have realized the ideal of his own knightly Horn, +who hopes that some day men will be "maids in purity".* +I will not recall his gentle yet heroic life amid drawbacks +almost unparalleled; for it is even sadder than it is beautiful. +It is my deliberate judgment that, while, as the poet says +in his `Life and Song', no singer has ever wholly lived +his minstrelsy, Lanier came so near it that we may fairly say, +in the closing lines of the poem, + + "His song was only living aloud, + His work, a singing with his hand." + +And, for my part, I am as grateful for his noble private life +as for his distinguished public work. + +-- +* `The Symphony', l. 302. +-- + +And yet I will not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose +is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years, +by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps, +by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind, +indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;* +in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley; +in the love of nature, to Wordsworth; and in spirituality, to Ruskin, +the gist of whose teaching is that we are souls temporarily having bodies; +to Milton, "God-gifted organ-voice of England"; and to Browning, +"subtlest assertor of the soul in song". To be sure, Lanier's genius +is not equal to that of any one of the poets mentioned, +but I venture to believe that it is of the same order, and, therefore, +deserving of lasting remembrance. + +-- +* Mr. Thayer puts it stronger: "As a master of melodious metre + only Tennyson, and he not often, has equalled Lanier." Mr. F. F. Browne, + Editor of `The Dial' (Chicago), compares the two poets in another aspect: + "`The Symphony' of Lanier may recall some parts of `Maud'; + but the younger poet's treatment is as much his own + as the elder's is his own. The comparison of Lanier with Tennyson will, + indeed, only deepen the impression of his originality, + which is his most striking quality. It may be doubted + if any English poet of our time, except Tennyson, has cast his work + in an ampler mould, or wrought with more of freedom, or stamped his product + with the impress of a stronger personality. His thought, his stand-point, + his expression, his form, his treatment, are his alone; and through them all + he justifies his right to the title of poet." +-- + + + + + + Poems + + + + + +Life and Song + + + +If life were caught by a clarionet, [1] + And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, +Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, + And utter its heart in every deed, + +Then would this breathing clarionet + Type what the poet fain would be; +For none o' the singers ever yet + Has wholly lived his minstrelsy, + +Or clearly sung his true, true thought, + Or utterly bodied forth his life, +Or out of life and song has wrought [11] + The perfect one of man and wife; + +Or lived and sung, that Life and Song + Might each express the other's all, +Careless if life or art were long + Since both were one, to stand or fall: + +So that the wonder struck the crowd, + Who shouted it about the land: +`His song was only living aloud, + His work, a singing with his hand!' + +____ +1868. + + + +Notes: Life and Song + + +`Life and Song' is the fifth of a series of seven poems +published under the general heading of `Street-cries', +with the two stanzas following as an introduction: + + "Oft seems the Time a market-town + Where many merchant-spirits meet + Who up and down and up and down + Cry out along the street + + "Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO: + Till all the ways are full of sound: + -- But still come rain, and sun, and snow, + And still the world goes round." + +The remaining numbers of the series are: 1. `Remonstrance', +given in this volume; 2. `The Ship of Earth'; 3. `How Love Looked for Hell'; +4. `Tyranny'; 6. `To Richard Wagner'; 7. `A Song of Love'. + +I can think of no more helpful comment on the subject of our poem +than this sentence from Milton's `Apology for Smectymnuus', +already alluded to in the `Introduction' (p. liv [Part VI]): +"And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, +that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter +in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, +a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; +not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, +unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that +which is praiseworthy." + +Lines 19-20. I have been pleased to discover that the application +I have made of this poem, especially of these lines +(see `Introduction', p. liv [Part VI]), is likewise made +by most students of Lanier's life, and that Mrs. Lanier has chosen +these two lines for inscription on the monument to be erected to his memory. +On the reverse side of the stone, I may add, are to be put these words: +"He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God" (I John iv. 16). + + + + +Jones's Private Argyment + + + +That air same Jones, which lived in Jones, [1] + He had this pint about him: +He'd swear with a hundred sighs and groans, +That farmers MUST stop gittin' loans, + And git along without 'em: + +That bankers, warehousemen, and sich + Was fatt'nin' on the planter, +And Tennessy was rotten-rich +A-raisin' meat and corn, all which + Draw'd money to Atlanta: + +And the only thing (says Jones) to do [11] + Is, eat no meat that's boughten: +BUT TEAR UP EVERY I, O, U, +AND PLANT ALL CORN AND SWEAR FOR TRUE + TO QUIT A-RAISIN' COTTON! + +Thus spouted Jones (whar folks could hear, + -- At Court and other gatherin's), +And thus kep' spoutin' many a year, +Proclaimin' loudly far and near + Sich fiddlesticks and blatherin's. + +But, one all-fired sweatin' day, [21] + It happened I was hoein' +My lower corn-field, which it lay +'Longside the road that runs my way + Whar I can see what's goin'. + +And a'ter twelve o'clock had come + I felt a kinder faggin', +And laid myself un'neath a plum +To let my dinner settle sum, + When 'long come Jones's waggin, + +And Jones was settin' in it, SO: [31] + A-readin' of a paper. +His mules was goin' powerful slow, +Fur he had tied the lines onto + The staple of the scraper. + +The mules they stopped about a rod + From me, and went to feedin' +'Longside the road, upon the sod, +But Jones (which he had tuck a tod) + Not knowin', kept a-readin'. + +And presently says he: "Hit's true; [41] + That Clisby's head is level. +Thar's one thing farmers all must do, +To keep themselves from goin' tew + Bankruptcy and the devil! + +"More corn! more corn! MUST plant less ground, + And MUSTN'T eat what's boughten! +Next year they'll do it: reasonin's sound: +(And, cotton will fetch 'bout a dollar a pound), + THARFORE, I'LL plant ALL cotton!" + +____ +Macon, Ga., 1870. + + + +Notes: Jones's Private Argyment + + +The themes of this poem, the relative claims of corn and cotton +upon the attention of the farmer and the disastrous results of speculation, +are treated indirectly in `Thar's More in the Man Than Thar Is in the Land', +and directly and with consummate art in `Corn'. + +1. "That air same Jones" appears in `Thar's More', etc., written in 1869, +in which we are told: + + "And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans, + And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones, + And his hogs was flat as his corn-bread pones, + And he had 'bout a thousand acres o' land." + +He sells his farm to Brown at a dollar and fifty cents an acre +and goes to Texas. Brown improves the farm, and, after five years, +is sitting down to a big dinner when Jones is discovered standing +out by the fence, without wagon or mules, "fur he had left Texas afoot +and cum to Georgy to see if he couldn't git some employment." +Brown invites Jones in to dinner, but cannot refrain +from the inference-drawing that names the poem. -- "Which lived in Jones," +"which Jones is a county of red hills and stones" (`Thar's More', etc.) +in central Georgia. + +13. Readers of `David Copperfield' will recall Micawber's +frequent use of `I-O-U-'s'. + +47. "Clisby's head" refers to Mr. Joseph Clisby, then editor +of the Macon (Ga.) `Telegraph and Messenger', who had written editorials +favoring the planting of more corn. + + + + +Corn + + + +To-day the woods are trembling through and through [1] +With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, +Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. + The leaves that wave against my cheek caress + Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express + A subtlety of mighty tenderness; + The copse-depths into little noises start, + That sound anon like beatings of a heart, + Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. + The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; + Through that vague wafture, expirations strong [11] + Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long +With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring + And ecstasy of burgeoning. + Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, + Forth venture odors of more quality + And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry, + Long muscadines +Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines, +And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines. + I pray with mosses, ferns, and flowers shy [21] + That hide like gentle nuns from human eye + To lift adoring perfumes to the sky. +I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green +Dying to silent hints of kisses keen +As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen. + I start at fragmentary whispers, blown + From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, + Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone. +Dreaming of gods, men, nuns, and brides, between +Old companies of oaks that inward lean [31] +To join their radiant amplitudes of green + I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass + Up from the matted miracles of grass +Into yon veined complex of space +Where sky and leafage interlace + So close, the heaven of blue is seen + Inwoven with a heaven of green. + +I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence +Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, +Contests with stolid vehemence [41] + The march of culture, setting limb and thorn + As pikes against the army of the corn. + +There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes +Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, + Of inward dignities +And large benignities and insights wise, + Graces and modest majesties. +Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; +Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, +And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed. [51] + +Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands +Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, + And waves his blades upon the very edge + And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. +Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, + Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime + That leads the vanward of his timid time + And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme -- +Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow +By double increment, above, below; [61] + Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, + Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry + That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; +Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, + By every godlike sense +Transmuted from the four wild elements. + Drawn to high plans, + Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, +Yet ever piercest downward in the mould + And keepest hold [71] + Upon the reverend and steadfast earth + That gave thee birth; + Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave, + Serene and brave, + With unremitting breath + Inhaling life from death, +Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, + Thyself thy monument. + + As poets should, +Thou hast built up thy hardihood [81] +With universal food, + Drawn in select proportion fair + From honest mould and vagabond air; +From darkness of the dreadful night, + And joyful light; + From antique ashes, whose departed flame + In thee has finer life and longer fame; +From wounds and balms, +From storms and calms, +From potsherds and dry bones [91] + And ruin-stones. +Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought +Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; + Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun + White radiance hot from out the sun. +So thou dost mutually leaven +Strength of earth with grace of heaven; + So thou dost marry new and old + Into a one of higher mould; + So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, [101] + The dark and bright, +And many a heart-perplexing opposite, + And so, + Akin by blood to high and low, +Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, +Richly expending thy much-bruised heart + In equal care to nourish lord in hall + Or beast in stall: + Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all. + +O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot [111] +Where thou wast born, that still repinest not -- +Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! -- + Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land + Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand +Of trade, for ever rise and fall +With alternation whimsical, + Enduring scarce a day, + Then swept away +By swift engulfments of incalculable tides +Whereon capricious Commerce rides. [121] +Look, thou substantial spirit of content! +Across this little vale, thy continent, + To where, beyond the mouldering mill, + Yon old deserted Georgian hill +Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest + And seamy breast, + By restless-hearted children left to lie + Untended there beneath the heedless sky, + As barbarous folk expose their old to die. +Upon that generous-rounding side, [131] + With gullies scarified + Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, +Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, +And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. + Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, + He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, + Then sat him down and waited for the rain. +He sailed in borrowed ships of usury -- +A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, +Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. [141] + Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance + He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance + Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. +Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, +He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, +And turned each field into a gambler's hell. + Aye, as each year began, + My farmer to the neighboring city ran; +Passed with a mournful anxious face +Into the banker's inner place; [151] +Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; + Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass; + Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass; + With many an `oh' and `if' and `but alas' +Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, +And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood. +At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, + He issues smiling from the fatal door, + And buys with lavish hand his yearly store + Till his small borrowings will yield no more. [161] +Aye, as each year declined, +With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind +He mourned his fate unkind. + In dust, in rain, with might and main, + He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, + Fretted for news that made him fret again, +Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, +And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail -- +In hope or fear alike for ever pale. + And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, [171] + With many a curse and many a secret tear, + Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, + At last +He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, + And all his best-of-life the easy prey + Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way + With vile array, +From rascal statesman down to petty knave; +Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, +A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. [181] + Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, + He fled away into the oblivious West, + Unmourned, unblest. + +Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear +Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, +E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer -- + King, that no subject man nor beast may own, + Discrowned, undaughtered and alone -- +Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, +And bring thee back into thy monarch state [191] + And majesty immaculate. + Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, + Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn + Visions of golden treasuries of corn -- +Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart +That manfully shall take thy part, + And tend thee, + And defend thee, +With antique sinew and with modern art. + +____ +Sunnyside, Ga., August, 1874. + + + +Notes: Corn + + +As stated elsewhere (`Introduction', p. xvii [Part I]), +`Corn' was the first of Lanier's poems to attract general attention; +for this reason as well as for its absolute merit the poem deserves +careful study. + +In the first of his letters to the Hon. Logan E. Bleckley, +Chief-justice of Georgia, dated October 9, 1874, Lanier tells us +how he came to write `Corn': "I enclose MS. of a poem +in which I have endeavored to carry some very prosaic matters +up to a loftier plane. I have been struck with alarm +in seeing the numbers of deserted old homesteads and gullied hills +in the older counties of Georgia: and, though they are +dreadfully commonplace, I have thought they are surely mournful enough +to be poetic." + +In the introductory note to `Jones's Private Argyment' +I have incidentally stated the theme of `Corn'. Instead of adding +a more detailed statement of my own here, I give Judge Bleckley's +analysis of the poem, which occurs in his reply to the above-mentioned letter. +After giving various minute criticism (for Lanier had requested +his unreserved judgment), Judge Bleckley continues: +"Now, for the general impression which your Ode has made upon me. +It presents four pictures; three of them landscapes and one a portrait. +You paint the woods, a corn-field, and a worn-out hill. +These are your landscapes. And your portrait is the likeness of an anxious, +unthrifty cotton-planter who always spends his crop before he has made it, +borrows on heavy interest to carry himself over from year to year, +wears out his land, meets at last with utter ruin, and migrates to the West. +Your second landscape is turned into a vegetable person, +and you give its portrait with many touches of marvel and mystery +in vegetable life. Your third landscape takes for an instant +the form and tragic state of King Lear; you thus make it +seize on our sympathies as if it were a real person, and you then restore it +to the inanimate, and contemplate its possible beneficence +in the distant future." + +A comparison of the first draft of `Corn', as sent Judge Bleckley, +with the final form shows that Lanier made many minute changes in the poem, +especially in the earlier part. Still this earlier draft agrees substantially +with the later, and was so fine in conception and execution +as to call forth this commendation of Judge Bleckley, which, +despite the shortcomings of `Corn', may with greater justice be applied +to the poem in its present form: "As an artist you seem to be Italian +in the first two pictures, and Dutch or Flemish in the latter two. +In your Italian vein you paint with the utmost delicacy and finish. +The drawing is scrupulously correct and the color soft and harmonious. +When you paint in Dutch or Flemish you are clear and strong, +but sometimes hard. There is less idealization and more of +the realistic element -- your SOLIDS predominate over your fluids." + +As already stated, Lanier has two other poems that indirectly treat the theme +of `Corn', namely, `Thar's More in the Man' and `Jones's Private Argyment'. +Moreover, he has `The Waving of the Corn', which, though charming, +is neither so elaborate nor artistic as `Corn'. + +Among poems on corn by other writers may be mentioned the following: + +1. Whittier's `The Corn-song' (before 1872), a poem of +praise and thanksgiving at the end of `The Huskers', +which tells of the gathering of the corn and of the "corn-husking", +known in the South as the "corn-shucking". + +2. Woolson's (Constance F.) `Corn Fields', a description of Ohio fields, +in `Harper's Monthly', 45, 444, Aug., 1872. + +3. Thompson's (Maurice) `Dropping Corn' (1877), a dainty love lyric, +in `Poems' (Boston, 1892), p. 78. + +4. Cromwell's (S. C.) `Corn-shucking Song', a dialect poem, +in `Harper', 69, 807, Oct., 1884. + +5. Coleman's (C. W.) `Corn', in `The Atlantic Monthly', 70, 228, Aug., 1892, +which, since it consists of but four lines and is more like Lanier's poem +than are the others, may be quoted: + + "Drawn up in serried ranks across the fields + That, as we gaze, seem ever to increase, + With tasseled flags and sun-emblazoned shields, + The glorious army of earth's perfect peace." + +6. Hayne's (W. H.) `Amid the Corn', a charming account of the denizens +of the corn-fields, in his `Sylvan Lyrics' (New York, 1893), p. 12. + +7. Dumas's (W. T.) `Corn-shucking' and `The Last Ear of Corn', +both life-like pictures of plantation life, in his +`The Golden Day and Miscellaneous Poems' (Phila., 1893). + +Other interesting articles are: `Mondamin, or the Origin of Indian Corn', +in `The Southern Literary Messenger' (Richmond, Va.), 29, 12-13, July, 1859; +`A Georgia Corn-shucking', by D. C. Barrow, Jr., in `The Century Magazine' +(New York), 2, 873-878, Oct., 1882; and `Old American Customs: A Corn-party', +an account of a corn-husking in New York, in `The Saturday Review' (London), +66, 237-238, Aug. 25, 1888. + +4-9. See `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III], and compare `The Symphony', +ll. 183-190. + +18. Paul Hamilton Hayne, whose love of nature rivals Lanier's, +has an interesting poem entitled `Muscadines' (`Poems', Boston, 1882, +pp. 222-224). + +21. Compare `The Symphony', l. 117 ff. + +57. See `Introduction', p. l [Part V]. + +125. In her introductory note to `Corn' Mrs. Lanier thus localizes the poem: +"His `fieldward-faring eyes took harvest' `among the stately corn-ranks,' +in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon. +It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches +to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, whose wholesome breath, +all unobstructed, here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory, +and the muscadine: a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier +as `that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses +calm themselves into pleasant hills before dying quite away +into the sea-board levels' -- where `a man can find +such temperances of heaven and earth -- enough of struggle with nature +to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle -- +that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circumstances +for man's life need not be sought.'" + +140. See `Jason' in any Dictionary of Mythology.* + +-- +* Gayley's `The Classic Myths in English Literature' (Boston, Ginn & Co.) + is an excellent book. +-- + +157. `Dives': See Appendix to Webster's `International Dictionary'. + +168. `Future Sale' -- sale for future delivery. + +185-6. See Shakespeare's `King Lear'. + + + + +My Springs + + + +In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know [1] +Two springs that with unbroken flow +Forever pour their lucent streams +Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams. + +Not larger than two eyes, they lie +Beneath the many-changing sky +And mirror all of life and time, +-- Serene and dainty pantomime. + +Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, +And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, +-- Thus heaven and earth together vie [11] +Their shining depths to sanctify. + +Always when the large Form of Love +Is hid by storms that rage above, +I gaze in my two springs and see +Love in his very verity. + +Always when Faith with stifling stress +Of grief hath died in bitterness, +I gaze in my two springs and see +A Faith that smiles immortally. + +Always when Charity and Hope, [21] +In darkness bounden, feebly grope, +I gaze in my two springs and see +A Light that sets my captives free. + +Always, when Art on perverse wing +Flies where I cannot hear him sing, +I gaze in my two springs and see +A charm that brings him back to me. + +When Labor faints, and Glory fails, +And coy Reward in sighs exhales, +I gaze in my two springs and see [31] +Attainment full and heavenly. + +O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, +-- My springs from out whose shining gray +Issue the sweet celestial streams +That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams. + +Oval and large and passion-pure +And gray and wise and honor-sure; +Soft as a dying violet-breath +Yet calmly unafraid of death; + +Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, [41] +With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves, +And home-loves and high glory-loves +And science-loves and story-loves, + +And loves for all that God and man +In art and nature make or plan, +And lady-loves for spidery lace +And broideries and supple grace + +And diamonds and the whole sweet round +Of littles that large life compound, +And loves for God and God's bare truth, [51] +And loves for Magdalen and Ruth, + +Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete -- +Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, +-- I marvel that God made you mine, +For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine! + +____ +Baltimore, 1874. + + + +Notes: My Springs + + +For my appreciation of this tribute to the poet's wife +see `Introduction', p. xxxv [Part III]. Mr. Lanier's estimate is given +in a letter of March, 1874, quoted in Mrs. Lanier's introductory note: +"Of course, since I have written it to print I cannot make it such +as _I_ desire in artistic design: for the forms of to-day +require a certain trim smugness and clean-shaven propriety +in the face and dress of a poem, and I must win a hearing +by conforming in some degree to these tyrannies, with a view +to overturning them in the future. Written so, it is not nearly so beautiful +as I would have it; and I therefore have another still in my heart, +which I will some day write for myself." + +Other tributes to his wife are: `In Absence', `Acknowledgment', +`Laus Mariae', `Special Pleading', `Evening Song', `Thou and I', +`One in Two', and `Two in One'; while she is referred to +in `The Hard Times in Elfland' and `June Dreams in January'. + +It will be interesting to compare `My Springs' with other poems on the eyes. +Among the most noteworthy* may be cited Shakespeare's + + "And those eyes, the break of day, + Lights that do mislead the morn;" + +Lodge's + + "Her eyes are sapphires set in snow, + Resembling heaven by every wink; + The Gods do fear whenas they glow, + And I do tremble when I think, + Heigh ho, would she were mine!" + +Jonson's + + "Drink to me only with thine eyes + And I will pledge with mine," etc.; + +Herrick's + + "Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes + Which starlike sparkle in their skies;" + +Thomas Stanley's + + "Oh turn away those cruel eyes, + The stars of my undoing; + Or death in such a bright disguise + May tempt a second wooing;" + +Byron's + + "She walks in beauty, like the night, + Of cloudless climes and starry skies; + And all that's best of dark and bright + Meet in her aspect and her eyes; + Thus mellowed to that tender light + Which heaven to gaudy day denies;" + +H. Coleridge's + + "She is not fair to outward view, + As many maidens be; + Her loveliness I never knew + Until she smiled on me. + O then I saw her eye was bright, + A well of love, a spring of light. + + "But now her looks are coy and cold, + To mine they ne'er reply, + And yet I cease not to behold + The love-light in her eye: + Her very frowns are fairer far + Than smiles of other maidens are;" + +and Wordsworth's + + "Her eyes are stars of twilight fair." + +-- +* These may be found either in Gosse's `English Lyrics' (D. Appleton & Co., + New York) or in Palgrave's `Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics' + (Macmillan & Co., New York). +-- + +49-50. See `Introduction', p. xlv [Part IV]. + +52. There is in early English literature a most interesting play +entitled `Mary Magdalene': see Pollard's `English Miracle Plays' (New York), +where extracts are given. + +55-56. See `Introduction', p. xlvi [Part IV]. + + + + +The Symphony + + + +"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! [1] +The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head: +We're all for love," the violins said. +"Of what avail the rigorous tale +Of bill for coin and box for bale? +Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: +Level red gold with blue sky-slope, +And base it deep as devils grope: +When all's done, what hast thou won +Of the only sweet that's under the sun? +Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh [11] +Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" +Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, +All the mightier strings assembling +Ranged them on the violins' side +As when the bridegroom leads the bride, +And, heart in voice, together cried: +"Yea, what avail the endless tale +Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? +Look up the land, look down the land, +The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand [21] +Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand +Against an inward-opening door +That pressure tightens evermore: +They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh +For the outside leagues of liberty, +Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky +Into a heavenly melody. +`Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), +`In the same old year-long, drear-long way, +We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, [31] +We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, +And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, +To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? -- +The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; +And so do we, and the world's a sty; +Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? +"Swinehood hath no remedy" +Say many men, and hasten by, +Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. +But who said once, in the lordly tone, [41] +"Man shall not live by bread alone +But all that cometh from the Throne?" + Hath God said so? + But Trade saith "No": +And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go: +There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. +Move out, if you think you're underpaid. +The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; + Trade is trade."'" +Thereat this passionate protesting [51] +Meekly changed, and softened till +It sank to sad requesting +And suggesting sadder still: +"And oh, if men might some time see +How piteous-false the poor decree +That trade no more than trade must be! +Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"? +Then `Trade is trade' but sings a lie: +'Tis only war grown miserly. +If business is battle, name it so: [61] +War-crimes less will shame it so, +And widows less will blame it so. +Alas, for the poor to have some part +In yon sweet living lands of Art, +Makes problem not for head, but heart. +Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: +Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." + +And then, as when from words that seem but rude +We pass to silent pain that sits abrood +Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, [71] +So sank the strings to gentle throbbing +Of long chords change-marked with sobbing -- +Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard +Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, +Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. +Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! +Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow +Died to a level with each level bow +And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, +As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go [81] +To linger in the sacred dark and green +Where many boughs the still pool overlean +And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. + But presently +A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly +Upon the bosom of that harmony, +And sailed and sailed incessantly, +As if a petal from a wild-rose blown +Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone +And boatwise dropped o' the convex side [91] +And floated down the glassy tide +And clarified and glorified +The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. +From the warm concave of that fluted note +Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, +As if a rose might somehow be a throat: +"When Nature from her far-off glen +Flutes her soft messages to men, + The flute can say them o'er again; + Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, [101] +Breathes through life's strident polyphone +The flute-voice in the world of tone. + Sweet friends, + Man's love ascends +To finer and diviner ends +Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends +For I, e'en I, +As here I lie, +A petal on a harmony, +Demand of Science whence and why [111] +Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, +When he doth gaze on earth and sky? +I am not overbold: + I hold +Full powers from Nature manifold. +I speak for each no-tongued tree +That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, +And dumbly and most wistfully +His mighty prayerful arms outspreads +Above men's oft-unheeding heads, [121] +And his big blessing downward sheds. +I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, +Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, +Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; +Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, +And briery mazes bounding lanes, +And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, +And milky stems and sugary veins; +For every long-armed woman-vine +That round a piteous tree doth twine; [131] +For passionate odors, and divine +Pistils, and petals crystalline; +All purities of shady springs, +All shynesses of film-winged things +That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; +All modesties of mountain-fawns +That leap to covert from wild lawns, +And tremble if the day but dawns; +All sparklings of small beady eyes +Of birds, and sidelong glances wise [141] +Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; +All piquancies of prickly burs, +And smoothnesses of downs and furs +Of eiders and of minevers; +All limpid honeys that do lie +At stamen-bases, nor deny +The humming-birds' fine roguery, +Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; +All gracious curves of slender wings, +Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, [151] +Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; +Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell +Wherewith in every lonesome dell +Time to himself his hours doth tell; +All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, +Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, +And night's unearthly under-tones; +All placid lakes and waveless deeps, +All cool reposing mountain-steeps, +Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- [161] +Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, +And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, +Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, +-- These doth my timid tongue present, +Their mouthpiece and leal instrument +And servant, all love-eloquent. +I heard, when `ALL FOR LOVE' the violins cried: +So, Nature calls through all her system wide, +`Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.' +Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, [171] +Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, +Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, +False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. +The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, +Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain +Never to lave its love in them again. +Later, a sweet Voice `Love thy neighbor' said; +Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread +Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. +Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: [181] +`ALL MEN ARE NEIGHBORS,' so the sweet Voice said. +So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, +The liberal compass of his warm embrace +Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; +With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, +Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: +Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees +And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, +And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. +But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! [191] +That stand by the inward-opening door +Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, +And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh +For the outside hills of liberty, +Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky +For Art to make into melody! +Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! + Change thy ways, + Change thy ways; +Let the sweaty laborers file [201] + A little while, + A little while, +Where Art and Nature sing and smile. +Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? +And hast thou nothing but a head? +I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, +And into sudden silence fled, +Like as a blush that while 'tis red +Dies to a still, still white instead. + +Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, [211] +Till presently the silence breeds +A little breeze among the reeds +That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: +Then from the gentle stir and fret +Sings out the melting clarionet, +Like as a lady sings while yet +Her eyes with salty tears are wet. +"O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, +"I too will wish thee utterly dead +If all thy heart is in thy head. [221] +For O my God! and O my God! +What shameful ways have women trod +At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! +Alas when sighs are traders' lies, +And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes + Are merchandise! +O purchased lips that kiss with pain! +O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! +O trafficked hearts that break in twain! +-- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? [231] +So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, +Men love not women as in olden time. +Ah, not in these cold merchantable days +Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays +The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. +Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- +Says, `Here, you Lady, if you'll sell I'll buy: +Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' +Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! +I would my lover kneeling at my feet [241] +In humble manliness should cry, `O sweet! +I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: +I ask not if thy love my love can meet: +Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, +I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: +I do but know I love thee, and I pray +To be thy knight until my dying day.' +Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! +Base love good women to base loving drives. +If men loved larger, larger were our lives; [251] +And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives." + +There thrust the bold straightforward horn +To battle for that lady lorn, +With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, +Like any knight in knighthood's morn. + "Now comfort thee," said he, + "Fair Lady. +For God shall right thy grievous wrong, +And man shall sing thee a true-love song, +Voiced in act his whole life long, [261] + Yea, all thy sweet life long, + Fair Lady. +Where's he that craftily hath said, +The day of chivalry is dead? +I'll prove that lie upon his head, + Or I will die instead, + Fair Lady. +Is Honor gone into his grave? +Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, +And Selfhood turned into a slave [271] + To work in Mammon's cave, + Fair Lady? +Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? +Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain +All great contempts of mean-got gain + And hates of inward stain, + Fair Lady? +For aye shall name and fame be sold, +And place be hugged for the sake of gold, +And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold [281] + At Crime all money-bold, + Fair Lady? +Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget +Kiss-pardons for the daily fret +Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet -- + Blind to lips kiss-wise set -- + Fair Lady? +Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, +Till wooing grows a trading mart +Where much for little, and all for part, [291] + Make love a cheapening art, + Fair Lady? +Shall woman scorch for a single sin +That her betrayer may revel in, +And she be burnt, and he but grin + When that the flames begin, + Fair Lady? +Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, +`We maids would far, far whiter be +If that our eyes might sometimes see [301] + Men maids in purity,' + Fair Lady? +Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches +With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes -- +The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes + For Christ's and ladies' sakes, + Fair Lady? +Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed +To fight like a man and love like a maid, +Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, [311] + I' the scabbard, death, was laid, + Fair Lady, +I dare avouch my faith is bright +That God doth right and God hath might. +Nor time hath changed His hair to white, + Nor His dear love to spite, + Fair Lady. +I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, +And fight my fight in the patient modern way +For true love and for thee -- ah me! and pray [321] + To be thy knight until my dying day, + Fair Lady." +Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away +Into the thick of the melodious fray. + + +And then the hautboy played and smiled, +And sang like any large-eyed child, +Cool-hearted and all undefiled. + "Huge Trade!" he said, +"Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head +And run where'er my finger led! [331] +Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- +`Never shalt thou the heavens see, +Save as a little child thou be.'" +Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes +The ancient wise bassoons, + Like weird + Gray-beard +Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, + Chanted runes: +"Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, [341] +The sea of all doth lash and toss, +One wave forward and one across: +But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, +And worst doth foam and flash to best, + And curst to blest. + +"Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, + Love, Love alone can pore + On thy dissolving score + Of harsh half-phrasings, + Blotted ere writ, [351] + And double erasings + Of chords most fit. +Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, +May read thy weltering palimpsest. +To follow Time's dying melodies through, +And never to lose the old in the new, +And ever to solve the discords true -- + Love alone can do. +And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, +And ever Love hears the women's sighing, [361] +And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, +And ever wise childhood's deep implying, +But never a trader's glozing and lying. + +"And yet shall Love himself be heard, +Though long deferred, though long deferred: +O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: +Music is Love in search of a word." + +____ +Baltimore, 1875. + + + +Notes: The Symphony + + +The `Introduction' (pp. xxviii f., xxxiii ff. [Part III], xlvii [Part IV]) +gives, besides the plan of `The Symphony', a detailed statement +of its two themes, -- the evils of the trade-spirit +in the commercial and social world and the need in each of the love-spirit. +These questions preyed on the poet's mind and were to be treated at length +in `The Jacquerie' also, which he expected to make his great work, +but which he was unable to complete. This he tells us in a noble passage +to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of November 15, 1874. After deploring +the lack of time for literary labor (see quotation in `Introduction', +p. xlvi [Part IV]), he continues: "I manage to get a little time tho' +to work on what is to be my first `magnum opus', a long poem, +founded on that strange uprising in the middle of the fourteenth century +in France, called `The Jacquerie'. It was the first time +that the big hungers of `the People' appear in our modern civilization; +and it is full of significance. The peasants learned +from the merchant potentates of Flanders that a man who could not be +a lord by birth, might be one by wealth; and so Trade arose, +and overthrew Chivalry. Trade has now had possession of the civilized world +for four hundred years: it controls all things, it interprets the Bible, +it guides our national and almost all our individual life with its maxims; +and its oppressions upon the moral existence of man have come to be +ten thousand times more grievous than the worst tyrannies of the Feudal System +ever were. Thus in the reversals of time, it is NOW the GENTLEMAN +who must rise and overthrow Trade. That chivalry which every man has, +in some degree, in his heart; which does not depend upon birth, +but which is a revelation from God of justice, of fair dealing, +of scorn of mean advantages; which contemns the selling of stock which +one KNOWS is going to fall, to a man who BELIEVES it is going to rise, +as much as it would contemn any other form of rascality or of injustice +or of meanness; -- it is this which must in these latter days +organize its insurrections and burn up every one of the cunning moral castles +from which Trade sends out its forays upon the conscience of modern society. +-- This is about the plan which is to run through my book: +though I conceal it under the form of a pure novel." + +Mr. F. F. Browne is doubtless right in saying that `The Symphony' recalls +parts of Tennyson's `Maud', but the closest congeners of `The Symphony' +in English are, I think, Langland's `Piers The Plowman' in poetry +and Ruskin's `Unto This Last' in prose. Widely as these two works +differ from `The Symphony' in form, they are one with it +in purpose and in spirit. All three voice the outcry of the poor +against the hardness of their lot and their longing for a larger life; +all three show that the only hope of relief lies in a broader and deeper +love for humanity. Analogues to individual verses of `The Symphony' +are cited below. + +1-2. See `Introduction', p. xxviii [Part III]. + +31-61. See `Introduction', p. xxix [Part III]. + +42-43. See St. Matthew 4:4. + +55-60. It is precisely this evil that Ruskin has in mind, I take it, +when he condemns the commercial text, "Buy in the cheapest market and sell +in the dearest," and when he declares that "Competition is the law of death" +(`Unto This Last', pp. 40, 59). + +117. Compare `Corn', l. 21 ff. + +161. For `lotos-sleeps' see Tennyson's `The Lotos-eaters', +which almost lulls one to sleep, and `The Odyssey' ix. 80-104. + +178. See St. Matthew 19:19. + +182. See St. Luke 10:29, ff. + +183-190. Compare `Corn', ll. 4-9, and see `Introduction', +p. xxxii [Part III]. + +232-248. See `Introduction', p. xxxiv f., and Peacock's +`Lady Clarinda's Song' (Gosse's `English Lyrics'). + +294-298. See `Tiger-lilies', p. 49, and `Betrayal' in Lanier's +complete `Poems', p. 213. These lines of `The Symphony' show clearly that +Lanier did not believe that God made one law for man and another for woman, +or that one very grievous sin should forever blight a woman's life. +What Christ himself thought is clear from St. Luke 7:36-50, +and St. John 8:1-11. + +302. See `Introduction', p. liv [Part VI]. + +326. For a full account of the `hautboy' and other musical instruments +mentioned in the poem see Lanier's `The Orchestra of To-day', +cited in the `Bibliography'. + +359. See `Introduction', p. xxxvi [Part III]. Compare 1 Corinthians 13; +Drummond's `The Greatest Thing in the World'; William Morris's +`Love Is Enough'; `Aurora Leigh', Book ix.: + + "Art is much, but Love is more! + O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more! + Art symbolizes Heaven, but Love is God + And makes Heaven;" + +and Langland's `Piers the Plowman' (ed. by Skeat, i. 202-3): + + "Love is leche of lyf and nexte oure Lorde selve, + And also the graith gate that goth into hevene."* + +-- +* The two lines may be translated: "Love is the physician of life + and next to our Lord himself; moreover, it is the way that goes + straight to Heaven." +-- + +368. See `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III]. + + + + +The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama + + By Sidney and Clifford Lanier + + + +You, Dinah! Come and set me whar de ribber-roads does meet. [1] +De Lord, HE made dese black-jack roots to twis' into a seat. +Umph dar! De Lord have mussy on dis blin' old nigger's feet. + +It 'pear to me dis mornin' I kin smell de fust o' June. +I 'clar', I b'lieve dat mockin'-bird could play de fiddle soon! +Dem yonder town-bells sounds like dey was ringin' in de moon. + +Well, ef dis nigger IS been blind for fo'ty year or mo', +Dese ears, DEY sees de world, like, th'u' de cracks dat's in de do'. +For de Lord has built dis body wid de windows 'hind and 'fo'. + +I know my front ones IS stopped up, and things is sort o' dim, +But den, th'u' DEM, temptation's rain won't leak in on ole Jim! [11] +De back ones show me earth enough, aldo' dey's mons'ous slim. + +And as for Hebben, -- bless de Lord, and praise His holy name -- +DAT shines in all de co'ners of dis cabin jes' de same +As ef dat cabin hadn't nar' a plank upon de frame! + +Who CALL me? Listen down de ribber, Dinah! Don't you hyar +Somebody holl'in' "HOO, JIM, HOO?" My Sarah died las' y'ar; +IS dat black angel done come back to call ole Jim f'om hyar? + +My stars, dat cain't be Sarah, shuh! Jes' listen, Dinah, NOW! +What KIN be comin' up dat bend, a-makin' sich a row? +Fus' bellerin' like a pawin' bull, den squealin' like a sow? [21] + +De Lord 'a' mussy sakes alive, jes' hear, -- ker-woof, ker-woof -- +De Debble's comin' round dat bend, he's comin' shuh enuff, +A-splashin' up de water wid his tail and wid his hoof! + +I'se pow'ful skeered; but neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: +I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. +YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a gwine to pray. + +O hebbenly Marster, what thou willest, dat mus' be jes' so, +And ef Thou hast bespoke de word, some nigger's bound to go. +Den, Lord, please take ole Jim, and lef young Dinah hyar below! + +'Scuse Dinah, 'scuse her, Marster; for she's sich a little chile, [31] +She hardly jes' begin to scramble up de homeyard stile, +But dis ole traveller's feet been tired dis many a many a mile. + +I'se wufless as de rotten pole of las' year's fodder-stack. +De rheumatiz done bit my bones; you hear 'em crack and crack? +I cain'st sit down 'dout gruntin' like 'twas breakin' o' my back. + +What use de wheel, when hub and spokes is warped and split, and rotten? +What use dis dried-up cotton-stalk, when Life done picked my cotton? +I'se like a word dat somebody said, and den done been forgotten. + +But, Dinah! Shuh dat gal jes' like dis little hick'ry tree, +De sap's jes' risin' in her; she do grow owdaciouslee -- [41] +Lord, ef you's clarin' de underbrush, don't cut her down, cut me! + +I would not proud persume -- but I'll boldly make reques'; +Sence Jacob had dat wrastlin'-match, I, too, gwine do my bes'; +When Jacob got all underholt, de Lord he answered Yes! + +And what for waste de vittles, now, and th'ow away de bread, +Jes' for to strength dese idle hands to scratch dis ole bald head? +T'ink of de 'conomy, Marster, ef dis ole Jim was dead! + +Stop; -- ef I don't believe de Debble's gone on up de stream! +Jes' now he squealed down dar; -- hush; dat's a mighty weakly scream! +Yas, sir, he's gone, he's gone; -- he snort way off, like in a dream! [51] + +O glory hallelujah to de Lord dat reigns on high! +De Debble's fai'ly skeered to def, he done gone flyin' by; +I know'd he couldn't stand dat pra'r, I felt my Marster nigh! + +You, Dinah; ain't you 'shamed, now, dat you didn' trust to grace? +I heerd you thrashin' th'u' de bushes when he showed his face! +You fool, you think de Debble couldn't beat YOU in a race? + +I tell you, Dinah, jes' as shuh as you is standin' dar, +When folks starts prayin', answer-angels drops down th'u' de a'r. +YAS, DINAH, WHAR 'OULD YOU BE NOW, JES' 'CEPTIN' FUR DAT PRA'R? + +____ +Baltimore, 1875. + + + +Notes: The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama + + +As the title-page shows, `The Power of Prayer' is the joint production +of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The latter gentleman informs me +that once he read a newspaper scrap of about ten lines stating that a Negro +on first seeing a steamboat coming down the river was greatly frightened. +Mr. Lanier then wrote out in metrical form the plot of `The Power of Prayer', +substantially as we now have it, and sent it to his brother Sidney, +who polished it up and published it under their joint names. +Mr. Clifford Lanier had not seen the piece mentioned in the next paragraph, +nor had his brother; but on being shown the piece, the former +was of the opinion that his newspaper clipping must have been based +on the work to which I turn, as it had already appeared and the incidents +were so much alike. + +In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873) +by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, there is a piece, +`Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer', so similar to `The Power of Prayer' +that I quote it almost entire. Uncle Dan'l (a Negro), his wife, +his young mistress, and his two young masters were sitting on a log +by the Mississippi River one moonlight night a-talking. +"Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: `Chil'en, dah's sumfin a comin'!' + +"All crowded close together and every heart beat faster. +Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger. + +"A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape +that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant +a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent +a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing +grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, +glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself +out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, +starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away +into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, +till its long sides began to glow with spots of light +which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster +like a torch-light procession. + +"`What is it? Oh! what is it, Uncle Dan'l?' + +"With deep solemnity the answer came: + +"`It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!' + +"It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a moment. +And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger +and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice +lifted up its supplications. + +"`O Lord, we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go +to de bad place, but, good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, +we ain't ready -- let dese po' chil'en hab one mo' chance, +jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole niggah if you's got to hab somebody. -- +Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't know whah you's a gwine to, +we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', +we know by de way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah +dat some po' sinner's a gwine to ketch it. But, good Lord, dese chil'en +don't 'blong heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah dey don't know nuffin, +an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible. An' deah Lord, +good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like +yo' long-sufferin' lovin'-kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage +o' sich little chil'en as dese is when dey's so many ornery grown folks +chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. O Lord, +spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, +jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole niggah. +HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord, de ole ----' + +"The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, +and not twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve +suddenly burst forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly +Uncle Dan'l snatched a child under each arm and scoured into the woods +with the rest of the pack at his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, +he halted in the deep darkness and shouted (but rather feebly): + +"`Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!' + +"There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, +to the surprise and comfort of the party, it was plain +that the august presence had gone by, for its dreadful noises were receding. +Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious reconnoissance in the direction of the log. +Sure enough `The Lord' was just turning a point a short distance up the river, +and while they looked, the lights winked out and the coughing +diminished by degrees and presently ceased altogether. + +"`H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah. +Dis chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat prah? +Dat's it. Dat's it!'" + +There follows a discussion as to whether or not the prayer caused +the apparition to go by, of which of course Uncle Dan'l has no doubt. +The apparition reappears and Uncle Dan'l betakes himself to prayer again, +this time a long way off. + +I wrote the authors of `The Gilded Age' and asked the source +of `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer'. Mr. Clemens kindly replied +that he is the author of the piece, and that it is pure fiction +without either history or tradition back of it. + +A comparison of the two stories shows some differences. +The scene in the one case is the Alabama River, in the other the Mississippi. +Moreover, the PERSONNEL is different. The Negro man in Twain's story +is about forty, in Lanier's he is old and has been blind for forty years. +Another difference Mr. Sidney Lanier points out to his wife +in his letter of October 1, 1874: "Cliff's and my `Power of Prayer' +will come out in the Scribner's; probably in the `Etchings' +at the end of the Magazine. I wrote thee what Dr. Holland said +anent its resemblance to something of Mark Twain's in plot. +Day before yesterday I called and asked Dr. Holland what work of Mark Twain's +he referred to. `Well,' said he, `I know nothing about it myself: +I read the poem to a friend, and he suggested that the plot +was like something of Mark Twain's. But yesterday I read him your note, +and he then recollected that in Twain's version it is God Almighty +that is coming up the bend. In yours it is the Devil: -- which certainly +makes a little difference!' and here he broke into a great laugh. +`Yes,' I rejoined, `a difference toto coelo,' whereat he laughed again, +and told me he had already ordered a check to be sent me for the poem." + +Mr. Clifford Lanier was born at Griffin, Ga., April 24, 1844, entered business +in Montgomery, Ala., at fourteen, subsequently attended college +for a year and a half, and in May, 1862, joined his brother +in the Confederate Army. His soldier life has been detailed +in connection with that of the poet. In October, 1864, Mr. Clifford Lanier +was assigned as signal officer to the blockade-runner `Talisman', +which, after two successful runs to the Bermuda Islands, +was wrecked in December, 1864. He escaped, however, +and surrendered to the Federal authorities at the end of April, 1865. +He has been successively lawyer, hotel manager, and superintendent of schools +in Montgomery, Ala. For several years past he has been a director +of the Bank of Montgomery and other corporations. All the while, however, +he has been deeply interested in literature and has written +some graceful sketches and poems, among which may be mentioned the following: +`Thorn-fruit' (1867), `Love and Loyalty at War' (1893), +`Biding Tryst' (1894), prose; `Greatest of These is Love', +`The American Philomel', `Keats and Fanny B----', `The Spirit of Art', +`Antinous to Hadrian', `Time', `Tireless', `Tramp' (in Stedman +and Hutchinson's `Library of American Literature'), `Love and Life', +`Edgar Allan Poe', etc. As stated in the `Introduction', +the Chautauquans of 1898 have named themselves "The Laniers" +in honor of Messrs. Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The motto of the class +is the first line of Mr. Clifford Lanier's `Transformation' +(`Sunday-school Times', Phila., June 30, 1894): + + "The humblest life that lives may be divine." + +8. The complete `Poems' has `the' before `world', but Mrs. Lanier +thinks the poet must have used `de' here as elsewhere. + + + + +Rose-morals + + + + I. -- Red + + Would that my songs might be [1] + What roses make by day and night -- +Distillments of my clod of misery + Into delight. + + Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast + As yon red rose, and dare the day, +All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? + Say yea -- say yea! + + Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; + The wind is up; so; drift away. +That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, [11] + I strive, I pray. + + + II. -- White + + Soul, get thee to the heart + Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- +There breathe the meditations of thine art + Suffused with prayer. + + Of spirit grave yet light, + How fervent fragrances uprise +Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white + Virginities! + + Mulched with unsavory death, [21] + Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, +That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, + Thy work, thy fate. + +____ +Baltimore, 1875. + + + +Notes: Rose-morals + + +Rose-morals in English literature probably begin with +Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century. At any rate, +in the eighteenth chapter of his `Voyage and Travels' he professes +to tell us the origin of red and white roses. A fair maid had been +unjustly accused of wrong-doing and doomed to die by fire. +"And as the woode began to brenne (burn) about hir, she made hir prayer +to our Lorde as she was not gyltie of that thing, that he would helpe hir +that it might be knowne to all men. And whan (when) she had thus sayde, +she entered the fyre and anone the fyre went out, and those braunches +that were brenninge (burning) became red Roses and those braunches +that were not kindled became white Rosiers (rose bushes) full of white roses, +and those were the fyrst roses and rosyers that any man sawe, +and so was the mayden saved through the grace of God." + +Thomas Carew has several rose-moralities, as `The True Beauty', +beginning "He that loves a rosy cheek," and his exquisite +`Red and White Roses': + + "Read in these roses the sad story + Of my hard fate and your own glory: + In the white you may discover + The paleness of a fainting lover; + In the red, the flames still feeding + On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding. + The white will tell you how I languish, + And the red express my anguish: + The white my innocence displaying, + The red my martyrdom betraying. + The frowns that on your brow resided + Have those roses thus divided; + Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather, + And then they both shall grow together."* + +-- +* See Saintsbury's `Elizabethan Literature' (Macmillan & Co., New York, 1887), + p. 363. +-- + +Rollicking Robert Herrick, too, draws his morals, now advising the virgins +to make much of time, as in his `Gather ye rose-buds while ye may', +now preaching a rarely pathetic sermon, as in `To Blossoms': + + "Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, + Why do ye fall so fast? + Your date is not so past, + But you may stay yet here awhile + To blush and gently smile, + And go at last. + + "What, were ye born to be + An hour or half's delight, + And so to bid good-night? + 'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth + Merely to show your worth, + And lose you quite. + + "But you are lovely leaves, where we + May read how soon things have + Their end, though ne'er so brave: + And after they have shown their pride + Like you, awhile, they glide + Into the grave."* + +-- +* `Palgrave', p. 89. +-- + +Much like this last piece in import, and scarcely inferior to it in execution, +is `My life is like the summer rose' of Richard Henry Wilde, +which is familiar to every one. + +Paul Hamilton Hayne's `The Red and the White Rose' (`Poems', pp. 231-232) +is an interesting dialogue, which the author concludes by making the former +an "earthly queen" and the latter a "heaven-bound votaress". + +Mrs. Browning's `A Lay of the Early Rose' shows that we are not to strive +"for the dole of praise." + + + + +To ----, with a Rose + + + + I asked my heart to say [1] +Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay + Upon my Lady's natal day. + + Then said my heart to me: +`Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee + What fits thy Love most lovingly.' + + This gift that learning shows; +For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes, + I send a rose unto a Rose. + +____ +Philadelphia, 1876. + + + +Notes: To ----, with a Rose + + +This poem was sent to Mrs. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia, +who was one of Mr. Lanier's kindest and most appreciative friends. +The poet's letters to Mr. and Mrs. Peacock have recently been published +in `The Atlantic' (see `Thayer' in `Bibliography'). + +Of the numerous rose-compliments in English I can here specify but a few. +One of the prettiest is that by Henry Constable (`Saintsbury', p. 113): + + "My Lady's presence makes the Roses red, + Because to see her lips they blush for shame." + +Carew's compliment is hardly equal to his morals (`Gosse', p. 101): + + "Ask me no more where Jove bestows, + When June is past, the fading rose; + For in your beauty's orient deep + These flowers, as in their causes, sleep." + +Few better things have been written than this, the second stanza of Jonson's +`Drink to me only with thine eyes' (`Gosse', p. 80): + + "I sent thee late a rosy wreath, + Not so much honouring thee + As giving it a hope that there + It could not withered be. + But thou thereon did'st only breathe, + And sent'st it back to me; + Since when it grows and smells, I swear, + Not of itself, but thee."* + +Even more felicitous, perhaps, is Waller's `Go, lovely rose!' which is at once +a compliment and a moral (`Gosse', p. 134): + + "Go, lovely rose + Tell her that wastes her time and me, + That now she knows, + When I resemble her to thee, + How sweet and fair she seems to be. + + "Tell her that's young, + And shuns to have her graces spied, + That hadst thou sprung + In deserts, where no men abide, + Thou must have uncommended died. + + "Small is the worth + Of beauty from the light retired; + Bid her come forth, + Suffer herself to be desired, + And not blush so to be admired. + + "Then die! that she + The common fate of all things rare + May read in thee; + How small a part of time they share + That are so wond'rous sweet and fair." + +Browning's `Women and Roses' should also be mentioned, +and Mrs. Browning's translation of Sappho's lovely `Song of the Rose'. + +-- +* The fact that Jonson here translates a prose love-letter of Philostratus, + the Greek sophist, may detract from the originality but not the beauty + of his poem. +-- + + + + +Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn + + By Sidney and Clifford Lanier + + + +SOLO. -- Sin's rooster's crowed, Ole Mahster's riz, [1] + De sleepin'-time is pas'; + Wake up dem lazy Baptissis, +CHORUS. -- Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, + Dey's mightily in de grass. + + Ole Mahster's blowed de mornin' horn, + He's blowed a powerful blas'; + O Baptis' come, come hoe de corn, + You's mightily in de grass, grass, + You's mightily in de grass. + + De Meth'dis team's done hitched; O fool, [11] + De day's a-breakin' fas'; + Gear up dat lean ole Baptis' mule, + Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, + Dey's mightily in de grass. + + De workmen's few an' mons'rous slow, + De cotton's sheddin' fas'; + Whoop, look, jes' look at de Baptis' row, + Hit's mightily in de grass, grass, + Hit's mightily in de grass. + + De jay-bird squeal to de mockin'-bird: "Stop! [21] + Don' gimme none o' yo' sass; + Better sing one song for de Baptis' crop, + Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, + Dey's mightily in de grass." + + And de ole crow croak: "Don' work, no, no;" + But de fiel'-lark say, "Yaas, yaas, + An' I spec' you mighty glad, you debblish crow, + Dat de Baptissis's in de grass, grass, + Dat de Baptissis's in de grass!" + + Lord, thunder us up to de plowin'-match, [31] + Lord, peerten de hoein' fas', + Yea, Lord, hab mussy on de Baptis' patch, + Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, + Dey's mightily in de grass. + +____ +1876. + + + +Notes: Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn + + +I think that the following note, prefixed by the authors to their poem, +sufficiently explains what is to me one of their best humorous pieces: + +"Not long ago a certain Georgia cotton-planter, driven to desperation +by awaking each morning to find that the grass had quite outgrown +the cotton overnight, and was likely to choke it, in defiance of +his lazy freedmen's hoes and ploughs, set the whole State in a laugh +by exclaiming to a group of fellow-sufferers: `It's all stuff +about Cincinnatus leaving the plough to go into politics "for patriotism"; +he was just a-runnin' from grass!' + +"This state of things -- when the delicate young rootlets of the cotton +are struggling against the hardier multitudes of the grass-suckers -- +is universally described in plantation parlance by the phrase `in the grass'; +and Uncle Jim appears to have found in it so much similarity +to the condition of his own (`Baptis'') church, overrun, as it was, +by the cares of this world, that he has embodied it in the refrain +of a revival hymn such as the colored improvisator of the South +not infrequently constructs from his daily surroundings. +He has drawn all the ideas of his stanzas from the early morning phenomena +of those critical weeks when the loud plantation-horn is blown +before daylight, in order to rouse all hands for a long day's fight +against the common enemy of cotton-planting mankind. + +"In addition to these exegetical commentaries the Northern reader +probably needs to be informed that the phrase `peerten up' means substantially +`to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective `peert' +(probably a corruption of `pert'), which is so common in the South, +and which has much the signification of `smart' in New England, as e.g., +a `peert' horse, in antithesis to a `sorry' -- i.e., poor, mean, lazy one." + + + + +The Mocking-bird + + + +Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray [1] +That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, +He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew +The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay +Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, +And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew +At morn in brake or bosky avenue. +What e'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. +Then down he shot, bounced airily along +The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song +Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. [11] +Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: +How may the death of that dull insect be +The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree? + +____ +1877. + + + +Notes: The Mocking-bird + + +Besides this sonnet Mr. Lanier wrote a longer `To Our Mocking-bird', +consisting of three sonnets, and `Bob', a charming account, in prose, +of the life and death of the bird apostrophized. + +In his `Birds and Poets' (Boston, 1877), Mr. John Burroughs says +that he knows of only two noteworthy poetical tributes to the mocking-bird, +those by Whitman and by Wilde, both of which he quotes. +But since the appearance of his book many poems have been written +to the mocking-bird, several of which are of enduring worth. +Indeed, several noteworthy poems had been published +before the appearance of Mr. Burroughs's essay, as will appear +from the list below. In a search of two days I found +thirty-two different authors paying tribute to our marvelous singer: +Julia Bacon (see J. W. Davidson's `Living Writers of the South'. +New York: Carleton, 1869), St. L. L. Carter (ib.), Edna P. Clarke +(`Century', 24. 391, July, 1893), Fortunatus Crosby (`Davidson', l.c.), +J. R. Drake (Duyckinck's `Cyclopaedia of American Literature'. +New York, 1855), R. T. W. Duke, Jr. (`Southern Bivouac', 2. 631, March, 1887), +W. T. Dumas (`The Golden Day and Miscellaneous Poems', Philadelphia, 1893), +F. (`Southern Literary Messenger', Richmond, Va., 5. 523, August, 1839), +H. L. Flash (`Davidson', l.c.), Va. Gentleman (`Harper's Magazine', +15. 566, September, 1857), Caroline Gilman (May's `American Female Poets', +Philadelphia, 1865), Hannah F. Gould (`Davidson', l.c.), +Paul Granald (`So. Lit. Mes.', 8, 508, August, 1842), +P. H. Hayne (`Poems', Boston, 1882: two), W. H. Hayne (`Century', 24. 676, +September, 1893), C. W. Hubner (`Poems and Essays', New York, 1881), +C. Lanier (`Sunday-school Times', Phila., July 8, 1893), +S. Lanier (two, as above cited), Gen. Edwin G. Lee (`Southern Metropolis', +Baltimore, 1869), A. B. Meek (in his `Songs and Poems of the South', +New York, 1857), W. Mitchell (`Scribner's Magazine', 11. 171, December, 1875), +Nugator (`So. Lit. Mes.', 4. 356, June, 1838), C. J. O'Malley +(`So. Bivouac', 2. 698, April, 1887), Albert Pike (Stedman & Hutchinson's +`Amer. Lit.', New York, 1891, vol. 6), D. Robinson (`Century', 24. 480, +July, 1893), Clinton Scollard (`Pictures in Song', New York, 1884), +H. J. Stockard (`The Century', xlviii. 898, Oct., 1894), +T (`So. Lit. Mes.', 11. 117, February, 1845), Maurice Thompson +(`Poems', Boston, 1892: several; also `Lippincott's Magazine', 32. 624, +December, 1883), L. V. (`So. Lit. Mes.', 10. 414, July, 1844), +Walt Whitman (`Burroughs', l.c., also in Whitman's `Poems'), R. H. Wilde +(`Burroughs', l.c., and Stedman & Hutchinson's `Am. Lit.', vol. 5). + +Roughly speaking, the poems may be divided into two classes -- +first those that, as in the Indian legend cited below, +make out the mocking-bird only or chiefly a thief and thing of evil, +and second those that find him, though a borrower, original and great. +The former view, fortunately upheld by few, is strikingly set forth +in Granald's `The Mock-bird and the Sparrow'. After describing minutely +the various songs of the mocking-bird and emphasizing +that they all come from other birds, the author gives the dialogue +between the mock-bird and the sparrow. The former taunted the latter +and insisted on his singing; and + + "The sparrow cock'd a knowing eye, + And made him this most tart reply -- + `You steal from all and call it wit, + But I prefer my simple "twit".'" + +But the latter view is espoused by most of the writers mentioned, +notably and nobly by Drake, the Haynes, the Laniers, Lee, Meek, and Thompson, +the poet-laureate of the mocking-bird, whose poems should be read +by every lover of nature and especially of the mocking-bird. +As Thompson's tributes are all too long for quotation, I give here Meek's, +in the hope that I may rescue it from the long oblivion of an out-of-print. +My attention was called to it by my friend, Dr. C. H. Ross, +to whom every reader will be indebted along with myself. It runs as follows: + + "From the vale, what music ringing, + Fills the bosom of the night; + On the sense, entranced, flinging + Spells of witchery and delight! + O'er magnolia, lime and cedar, + From yon locust-top, it swells, + Like the chant of serenader, + Or the rhymes of silver bells! + Listen! dearest, listen to it! + Sweeter sounds were never heard! + 'Tis the song of that wild poet -- + Mime and minstrel -- Mocking-bird. + + "See him, swinging in his glory, + On yon topmost bending limb! + Carolling his amorous story, + Like some wild crusader's hymn! + Now it faints in tones delicious + As the first low vow of love! + Now it bursts in swells capricious, + All the moonlit vale above! + Listen! dearest, etc. + + "Why is't thus, this sylvan Petrarch + Pours all night his serenade? + 'Tis for some proud woodland Laura, + His sad sonnets all are made! + But he changes now his measure -- + Gladness bubbling from his mouth -- + Jest and gibe, and mimic pleasure -- + Winged Anacreon of the South! + Listen! dearest, etc. + + "Bird of music, wit and gladness, + Troubadour of sunny climes, + Disenchanter of all sadness, -- + Would thine art were in my rhymes. + O'er the heart that's beating by me, + I would weave a spell divine; + Is there aught she could deny me, + Drinking in such strains as thine? + Listen! dearest, etc." + +As is well known, the mocking-bird is often called the American nightingale. +As to their relative merits as singers, here is the judgment of one +that has heard both birds, Professor James A. Harrison (`The Critic', +New York, 2. 284, December 13, 1884): "Well, it is my honest opinion +that philomel will not compare with the singer of the South +in sweetness, versatility, passion, or lyrical beauty. The mocking-bird +-- better the echo-bird, with a voice compounded of all sweet sounds, +as the blossom of the Chinese olive is compounded of all sweet scents -- +is a pure lyrist; its throat is a lyre -- Aeolian, capricious, many-stringed; +as its name suggests, it is a polyglot mime, a bird linguist, +a feathered Mezzofanti singing all the bird languages; yet over and above +all this, with a something of its own that cannot be described." +The mocking-bird speaks for himself in Thompson's `To an English Nightingale': + + "What do you think of me? + Do I sing by rote? + Or by note? + Have I a parrot's echo-throat? + Oh no! I caught my strains + From Nature's freshest veins. + + . . . . . + + "He + A match for me! + No more than a wren or a chickadee! + Mine is the voice of the young and strong, + Mine the soul of the brave and free!" + +This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, +Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses +all the musical qualifications of this king of song, who has derived all +from Nature's self. Yes, reader, all!" + +It will be interesting and instructive to compare the tributes +to the mocking-bird with Keats's `Ode to a Nightingale', +Shelley's `To a Skylark', and Wordsworth's `To the Skylark'. + +Aside from Audubon's `Birds of America' and Ridgway's +`Manual of North American Birds', the student may consult with profit +Burroughs's `Birds and Poets', Thompson's `In the Haunts of the Mocking-bird' +(`The Atlantic', 54. 620, November, 1884), various articles +by Olive Thorne Miller in `The Atlantic' (vol. 54 on), and Winterfield's +`The Mocking-bird, an Indian Legend' (`The American Whig Review', +New York, 1. 497, May, 1845). + +14. Wilde compares the mocking-bird to Yorick and to Jacques; +Meek, to Petrarch; Lanier, to Keats, in `To Our Mocking-bird', +as does Wm. H. Hayne: + + "Each golden note of music greets + The listening leaves divinely stirred, + As if the vanished soul of Keats + Had found its new birth in a bird." + + + + +Song of the Chattahoochee + + + + Out of the hills of Habersham, [1] + Down the valleys of Hall, +I hurry amain to reach the plain, +Run the rapid and leap the fall, +Split at the rock and together again, +Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, +And flee from folly on every side +With a lover's pain to attain the plain + Far from the hills of Habersham, + Far from the valleys of Hall. + + All down the hills of Habersham, [11] + All through the valleys of Hall, +The rushes cried `Abide, abide,' +The willful waterweeds held me thrall, +The laving laurel turned my tide, +The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,' +The dewberry dipped for to work delay, +And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, + Here in the hills of Habersham, + Here in the valleys of Hall.' + + High o'er the hills of Habersham, [21] + Veiling the valleys of Hall, +The hickory told me manifold +Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall +Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, +The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, +Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, +Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold + Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, + These glades in the valleys of Hall.' + + And oft in the hills of Habersham, [31] + And oft in the valleys of Hall, +The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone +Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, +And many a luminous jewel lone +-- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, +Ruby, garnet, and amethyst -- +Made lures with the lights of streaming stone + In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, + In the beds of the valleys of Hall. + + But oh, not the hills of Habersham, [41] + And oh, not the valleys of Hall +Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. +Downward the voices of Duty call -- +Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, +The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, +And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, +And the lordly main from beyond the plain + Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, + Calls through the valleys of Hall. + +____ +1877. + + + +Notes: Song of the Chattahoochee + + +The Chattahoochee River rises in Habersham County, in northeast Georgia, +and, intersecting Hall County, flows southwestward to West Point, +then southward until it unites with the Flint River +at the southwestern extremity of Georgia. The Chattahoochee +is about five hundred miles long, and small steamboats can ascend it +to Columbus, Ga. Hon. Henry R. Jackson, of Savannah, Ga., +late Minister to Mexico, has an interesting poem `To the Chattahoochee River', +in his `Tallulah and Other Poems' (Savannah, Ga., 1850); +and Mr. M. V. Moore, in his poem, `Southern Rivers' (`Harper', 66. 464, +February, 1883), has a paragraph on the rivers of Georgia, +in which he speaks of "the sandy Chattahoochee". + +In the `Introduction' (pp. xxxi [Part III], xliv, xlvii [Part IV]) +I have spoken of this `Song' as Lanier's most finished nature poem, +as the most musical of his productions. "The music of a song +easily eludes all analysis and may be dissipated by a critic's breath, +but let us try to catch the means by which the effect is in part produced. +In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs in all +save twelve lines. In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs, +sometimes joining the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines. +Syzygy is used for the same purpose. Of the letters occurring in the poem +about one-fifth are liquids and about one-twelfth are sibilants. +The effect of the whole is musical beyond description. +It sings itself and yet nowhere sacrifices the thought" (Kent). + +Another way to test the beauty of `The Song of the Chattahoochee' +is to compare it with other kindred poems. There are many stream-songs +in English, several of which are very pretty, but there is, I think, +but one rival to our `Song', and that is Tennyson's `The Brook'. +Even so careful a critic as Mr. Ward says that `The Song of the Chattahoochee' +"strikes a higher key, and is scarcely less musical." It will be instructive, +too, to compare Lanier's poem with Southey's `The Cataract of Lodore' +(see `Gates', p. 25), which exhibits considerable talent, if not inspiration; +with P. H. Hayne's `The Meadow Brook', which is simple and sweet; +and with Wordsworth's `Brook! whose society the Poet seeks', +which is grave and elevated. Professor Kent suggests as interesting analogues +Poe's `Ulalume' and Buchanan Read's `Bay of Naples'; and, if the student +cares to extend his list, he should read the stream-songs by Bryant, +Mary Ainge De Vere (`Century', 21. 283, December, 1891), +Longfellow, Weir Mitchell (`Atlantic', 65. 629, May, 1890), +Clinton Scollard (`Lippincott', 50. 226, August, 1892), etc., etc. + + + + +The Revenge of Hamish + + + +It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; [1] + And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, + Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran +Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way. + +Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; + In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern + She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. +Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go + +Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; + And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, + For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, [11] +Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear. + +Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, + The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvelous bound, + The hounds swept after with never a sound, +But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh. + +For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild, + And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds + For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds: +"I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife + and the child." + +So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand; [21] + But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," -- + Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn, +Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand." + +Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height + of the hill, + Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does + Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose +His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak + for his will. + +So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. + But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below. + Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go [31] +All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern, + +And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, + As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. + "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" +Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown. + +"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, + "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; + I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." +Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child + +I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me + a snail's own wrong!" [41] + Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: + "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, +And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!" + +So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. + "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, + If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, +I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!" + +Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill + Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; + And that place of the lashing full quiet became; [51] +And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still. + +But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. + "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. + Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, +He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea. + +Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, + Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, + And that place of the lashing is live with men, +And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race. + +Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals + all the tale untold. [61] + They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, + And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! -- +Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold + +Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep, + And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. + But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; +Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep. + +Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. + And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, + Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please [71] +For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will. + +On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, + Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, + Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, +And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!" + +Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, + Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! + Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" +But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead? + +"Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- + "Husband, the lashing will heal; [81] + But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? + Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? +Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly + to kneel + +With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. + Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; + "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; +Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child + in his mirth. + +And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. + When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, + And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight [91] +Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong. + +And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer -- + And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, + Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face -- +In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air, + +And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, + Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, + Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, +Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots + of a tree -- + +And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back + drip-dripped in the brine, [101] + And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, + And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, +And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine. + +____ +Baltimore, 1878. + + + +Notes: The Revenge of Hamish + + +For an appreciation of this fine poem see `Introduction', +pp. xlv, xlvii [Part IV], Mr. J. R. Tait, a friend with whom Mr. Lanier +discussed `The Revenge of Hamish', kindly writes me that the author +took the plot from William Black's novel, `Macleod of Dare'. +In chapter iii. Macleod, of Castle Dare, Mull, tells the story +to his London entertainer; but, as the story of the novel +is identical with that of the poem, it need not be given here. +The novel, I should add, gives the name of the chieftain only, +though, as it has a Hamish in another connection, it doubtless gave Lanier +this name for the henchman. Previous to the reception of Mr. Tait's letter +I supposed that Lanier had borrowed his plot from a poem by Charles Mackay, +`Maclaine's Child, A Legend of Lochbuy, Mull', which in plot +is identical with Lanier's poem, except that the former begins +with the speech of the flogged henchman, here named Evan, +and ends by telling us that the bodies were found and that of Evan was hanged +on a gallows-tree. The poem is too long for quotation, but may be found +in any edition of Mackay or in Garrett's `One Hundred Choice Selections: +Number Nine' (Phila., 1887). + +17. The Macleans, for centuries one of the most powerful of Scottish clans, +have since the fourteenth century lived in Mull, one of the largest +of the Hebrides Islands. The two leading branches of the clan +were the Macleans of Dowart and the Macleans of Lochbuy, +both taking their names from the seats of their castles. The Lochbuy family +now spells its name MacLAINE. For a detailed history of the clan +see Keltie's `History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans', etc. +(London, 1885). Interesting books about Mull and the Hebrides are: +Johnson's `A Journey to the Hebrides' and Robert Buchanan's `The Hebrid Isles' +(London, 1883). Instructive, too, is Cummin's `Around Mull' +(`The Atlantic Monthly', 16. 11-19, 167-176, July, August, 1865). + + + + +The Marshes of Glynn + + + +Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven [1] +With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven + Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, -- + Emerald twilights, -- + Virginal shy lights, +Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, +When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades +Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, + Of the heavenly woods and glades, +That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within + The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; -- [11] + +Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, -- +Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, +Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, -- +Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, +Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, +Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; -- + +O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, +While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine +Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; +But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, [21] +And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, +And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem +Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, -- +Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, +And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke + Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, + And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, + And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, +That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn +Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore [31] +When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, +And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain +Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, -- + +Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face + The vast sweet visage of space. +To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, +Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, + For a mete and a mark + To the forest-dark: -- + So: [41] +Affable live-oak, leaning low, -- +Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand, +(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) +Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand +On the firm-packed sand, + Free +By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. + + Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band + Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. +Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines + linger and curl [51] +As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows + the firm sweet limbs of a girl. +Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, +Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. +And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? +The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! +A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, +Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, +Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, +To the terminal blue of the main. + +Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? [61] + Somehow my soul seems suddenly free +From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, +By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. + +Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free +Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! +Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, +Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won +God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain +And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. + +As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, [71] +Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: +I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies +In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: +By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod +I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: +Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within +The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. + +And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea +Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: +Look how the grace of the sea doth go [81] +About and about through the intricate channels that flow + Here and there, + Everywhere, +Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, +And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, +That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow + In the rose-and-silver evening glow. + Farewell, my lord Sun! +The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run +'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; [91] +Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; +Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; +And the sea and the marsh are one. + +How still the plains of the waters be! +The tide is in his ecstasy. +The tide is at his highest height: + And it is night. + +And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep +Roll in on the souls of men, +But who will reveal to our waking ken [101] +The forms that swim and the shapes that creep + Under the waters of sleep? +And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in +On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. + +____ +Baltimore, 1878. + + + +Notes: The Marshes of Glynn + + +Although Dr. Callaway noted in his preface the importance of this poem, +he did not include it for lack of space. This would seem to indicate +that when he published these "Selected Poems" in 1895, +"The Marshes of Glynn" had not yet achieved its later prominence +as the greatest of Sidney Lanier's poems -- as now seems to be the opinion. +The setting of the poem is the salt marshes surrounding +the coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia, which is in Glynn County -- an area +well deserving of the fame Lanier has given it -- and it was intended +as one installment in a series of "Hymns of the Marshes", of which four poems +were completed. + +The text is taken from the 1916 edition of "Poems of Sidney Lanier". + +William Hayes Ward wrote of this poem: "How naturally his large faith in God +finds expression in his `Marshes of Glynn'." + +Edwin Mims, in his biography of Sidney Lanier, concludes by quoting this poem. +He writes: + +"His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. . . . Sometimes, as in +the `Marshes of Glynn' and in the best parts of `Sunrise', there is +a cosmic rhythm that is like unto the rhythmic beating of the heart of God, +of which Poe and Lanier have written eloquently." + +And later continues: + +"Indeed, if one had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame of Lanier, +he could single out `The Marshes of Glynn' with assurance +that there is something so individual and original about it, +and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and range of verse in it, +that it will surely live not only in American poetry but in English. +Here the imagination has taken the place of fancy, the effort +to do great things ends in victory, and the melody of the poem corresponds +to the exalted thought. It has all the strong points of `Sunrise', +with but few of its limitations. There is something of +Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spirituality +combined with the haunting melody of Poe's best work. Written in 1878, +when Lanier was in the full exercise of all his powers, +it is the best expression of his genius and one of the few +great American poems. + +"The background of the poem -- as of `Sunrise' -- is the forest, +the coast and the marshes near Brunswick, Georgia. Early in life +Lanier had been thrilled by this wonderful natural scenery, +and later visits had the more powerfully impressed his imagination. +He is the poet of the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests, +or Wordsworth of the mountains. + +"The poet represents himself as having spent the day in the forest +and coming at sunset into full view of the length and the breadth +and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the live-oaks +and the emerald twilights of the `dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,' +have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that, +in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known +the passionate pleasure of prayer and the joy of elevated thought. +His spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, -- he is ready +for what Wordsworth calls a `god-like hour'." + +Mr. Callaway also treats the poem in Part III of the `Introduction'. + + + + +Remonstrance + + + + Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. [1] +Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear + To feature me my Lord by rule and line. +Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, + Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, + Would'st count the strings upon an angel's harp? + Forbear, forbear. + + Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep +Than there is line to sound with: let me love + My fellow not as men that mandates keep: +Yea, all that's lovable, below, above, [11] + That let me love by heart, by heart, because + (Free from the penal pressure of the laws) + I find it fair. + + The tears I weep by day and bitter night, +Opinion! for thy sole salt vintage fall. + -- As morn by morn I rise with fresh delight, +Time through my casement cheerily doth call, + "Nature is new, 'tis birthday every day, + Come feast with me, let no man say me nay, + Whate'er befall." [21] + + So fare I forth to feast: I sit beside +Some brother bright: but, ere good-morrow's passed, + Burly Opinion wedging in hath cried, +"Thou shalt not sit by us, to break thy fast, + Save to our Rubric thou subscribe and swear -- + `Religion hath blue eyes and yellow hair': + She's Saxon, all." + + Then, hard a-hungered for my brother's grace +Till well-nigh fain to swear his folly's true, + In sad dissent I turn my longing face [31] +To him that sits on the left: "Brother, -- with you?" + -- "Nay, not with me, save thou subscribe and swear + `Religion hath black eyes and raven hair': + Nought else is true." + + Debarred of banquets that my heart could make +With every man on every day of life, + I homeward turn, my fires of pain to slake +In deep endearments of a worshiped wife. + "I love thee well, dear Love," quoth she, "and yet + Would that thy creed with mine completely met, [41] + As one, not two." + + Assassin! Thief! Opinion, 'tis thy work. +By Church, by throne, by hearth, by every good + That's in the Town of Time, I see thee lurk, +And e'er some shadow stays where thou hast stood. + Thou hand'st sweet Socrates his hemlock sour; + Thou sav'st Barabbas in that hideous hour, + And stabb'st the good + + Deliverer Christ; thou rack'st the souls of men; +Thou tossest girls to lions and boys to flames; [51] + Thou hew'st Crusader down by Saracen; +Thou buildest closets full of secret shames; + Indifferent cruel, thou dost blow the blaze + Round Ridley or Servetus; all thy days + Smell scorched; I would + + -- Thou base-born Accident of time and place -- +Bigot Pretender unto Judgment's throne -- + Bastard, that claimest with a cunning face +Those rights the true, true Son of Man doth own + By Love's authority -- thou Rebel cold [61] + At head of civil wars and quarrels old -- + Thou Knife on a throne -- + + I would thou left'st me free, to live with love, +And faith, that through the love of love doth find + My Lord's dear presence in the stars above, +The clods below, the flesh without, the mind + Within, the bread, the tear, the smile. + Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, + Let me alone. + +____ +Baltimore, 1878-9. + + + +Notes: Remonstrance + + +This is the first and the greatest of the `Street-cries': +see the introductory note to `Life and Song'. + +For an interpretation of the poem see `Introduction', pp. xxix [Part III], +xlv, xlvii [Part IV]. + +26, 33. Amusing illustrations of such intolerance may be found +in `Jack-knife and Brambles' (Nashville, 1893), by Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, +of the Methodist Church, South. One brother, we are told (p. 278), +objected to hearing Bishop Haygood in 1859 because of his wearing a beard; +while another (p. 281), along in the thirties, voted against licensing +Bishop George F. Pierce because his hair was "combed back from his forehead"! + +46. For an account of Socrates, the Greek philosopher, poisoned in 399 B.C., +see Xenophon's `Memorabilia' and Plato's dialogues. + +47. See St. Matthew 27:20. + +54. For the burning of Nicholas Ridley, an English Bishop, +on October 16, 1555, see Green's `Shorter History of England'. +Michael Servetus, a Spanish scientific and theological writer, +was burned as a heretic at Geneva, October 27, 1553. + + + + +Opposition + + + +Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, [1] + Complain no more; for these, O heart, +Direct the random of the will + As rhymes direct the rage of art. + +The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart + The strain and purpose of the string, +For governance and nice consort + Doth bar his willful wavering. + +The dark hath many dear avails; + The dark distils divinest dews; +The dark is rich with nightingales, [11] + With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse. + +Bleeding with thorns of petty strife, + I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart +With sonnets to my lady Life + Writ red in issues from the heart. + +What grace may lie within the chill + Of favor frozen fast in scorn! +When Good's a-freeze, we call it Ill! + This rosy Time is glacier-born. + +Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, [21] + Complain thou not, O heart; for these +Bank-in the current of the will + To uses, arts, and charities. + +____ +Baltimore, 1879-80. + + + +Notes: Opposition + + +As an introduction to this poem I quote a sentence from Dr. Gates's +excellent essay: "As we look at the circumstances of his life, +let us carry with us the strains of this poem, which interprets +the use of crosses, interferences, and attempted thwartings of one's purpose; +for the ethical value of Lanier's life and writings can be fully understood +only by remembering how much he overcame and how heroically he persisted +in manly work in his chosen art through years of such broken health +as would have driven most men to the inert, self-indulgent life of an invalid. +The superb power of will which he displayed is a lesson as valuable +as the noble poems which it illustrates and enforces." + + + + +Marsh Song -- At Sunset + + + +Over the monstrous shambling sea, [1] + Over the Caliban sea, +Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest: +Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West, -- + Thy Prospero I'll be. + +Over the humped and fishy sea, + Over the Caliban sea, +O cloud in the West, like a thought in the heart +Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start, + And do a grace for me. + +Over the huge and huddling sea, [11] + Over the Caliban sea, +Bring hither my brother Antonio, -- Man, -- +My injurer: night breaks the ban; + Brother, I pardon thee. + +____ +Baltimore, 1879-80. + + + +Notes: Marsh Song -- At Sunset + + +At the first reading, no doubt, this song appears indistinct, though poetical. +On a second reading, however, with Shakespeare's `Tempest' fresh in mind, +it seems, as it is, highly artistic; and we wonder at the happy use +made of the Shakespearean characters: the gracious, forgiving Prospero, +the rightful Duke of Milan; Antonio, his usurping brother, +forgiven notwithstanding; Caliban, the savage, deformed, fish-like slave; +and Ariel, the ministering spirit of the air. + +With `At Sunset' compare Lanier's `Evening Song', another and a more agreeable +sunset picture. + + + + +A Ballad of Trees and the Master + + + +Into the woods my Master went, [1] +Clean forspent, forspent. +Into the woods my Master came, +Forspent with love and shame. +But the olives they were not blind to Him, +The little gray leaves were kind to Him: +The thorn-tree had a mind to Him +When into the woods He came. + +Out of the woods my Master went, +And He was well content. +Out of the woods my Master came, [11] +Content with death and shame. +When Death and Shame would woo Him last, +From under the trees they drew Him last: +'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- last +When out of the woods He came. + +____ +Baltimore, November, 1880. + + + +Notes: A Ballad of Trees and the Master + + +In the `Introduction' (p. xxxi ff. [Part III]) I have tried to show +the intensity and the breadth of Lanier's love of nature in general. +President Gates gives a separate section to Lanier's love +of trees and plant-life; and, after quoting some lines +on the soothing and inspiring companionship of trees, +thus speaks of our Ballad: "This ministration of trees to a mind and heart +`forspent with shame and grief' finds its culmination in the pathetic lines +upon that olive-garden near Jerusalem, which to those of us +who have sat within its shade must always seem the most sacred spot on earth. +The almost mystic exaltation of the power of poetic sympathy +which inspired these intense lines, `Into the Woods my Master went', +may impair their religious effect for many devout souls. +But to many others this short poem will express most wonderfully +that essential human-heartedness in the Son of Man, our Divine Saviour, +which made Him one with us in His need of the quiet, +sympathetic ministrations of nature -- perhaps the heart of the reason +why this olive-grove was `the place where He was wont to go' for prayer." +See St. Luke 22:39. + +For Lanier's other poems on Christ see `Introduction', +p. xxxvii f. [Part III]. + + + + +Sunrise + + + +In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain [1] + Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. +The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; +Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, +Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, + Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting, + Came to the gates of sleep. +Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep +Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, +Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: + The gates of sleep fell a-trembling [11] +Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter "yes", + Shaken with happiness: + The gates of sleep stood wide. + +I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide: +I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide + In your gospelling glooms, -- to be +As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea. + +Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree +That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know +From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? [21] +They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. + Reason's not one that weeps. + What logic of greeting lies +Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes? + +O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss +All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss +The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan, + So, + (But would I could know, but would I could know,) +With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man, -- [31] +So, with your silences purfling this silence of man +While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban, + Under the ban, -- + So, ye have wrought me +Designs on the night of our knowledge, -- yea, ye have taught me, + So, + That haply we know somewhat more than we know. + + Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, + Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, + Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, [41] + Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, +Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me +Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, -- +Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet +That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat +Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath +From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, -- + Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me + The passion of patience, -- sift me, -- impeach me, -- + And there, oh there [51] +As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, + Pray me a myriad prayer. + + My gossip, the owl, -- is it thou +That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough, + As I pass to the beach, art stirred? + Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird? + + . . . . . + +Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, + Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, + Distilling silence, -- lo, +That which our father-age had died to know -- [61] + The menstruum that dissolves all matter -- thou +Hast found it: for this silence, filling now +The globed clarity of receiving space, +This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, +Death, love, sin, sanity, +Must in yon silence clear solution lie. +Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse? +The blackest night could bring us brighter news. +Yet precious qualities of silence haunt +Round these vast margins, ministrant. [71] +Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space, +With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race +Just to be fellow'd, when that thou hast found +No man with room, or grace enough of bound +To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art, -- +'Tis here, 'tis here thou canst unhand thy heart +And breathe it free, and breathe it free, +By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty. + +The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams +Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. [81] +Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies +A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies +Shine scant with one forked galaxy, -- +The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie. + +Oh, what if a sound should be made! +Oh, what if a bound should be laid +To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring, -- +To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string! +I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam +Will break as a bubble o'er-blown in a dream, -- [91] +Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night, +Over-weighted with stars, over-freighted with light, +Over-sated with beauty and silence, will seem + But a bubble that broke in a dream, +If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, + Or a sound or a motion made. + +But no: it is made: list! somewhere, -- mystery, where? + In the leaves? in the air? +In my heart? is a motion made: +'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade. [101] +In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring +Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring, +Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still; +But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill, -- +And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river, -- + And look where a passionate shiver + Expectant is bending the blades +Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades, -- +And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting, + Are beating [111] +The dark overhead as my heart beats, -- and steady and free +Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea -- + (Run home, little streams, + With your lapfuls of stars and dreams), -- +And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak, +For list, down the inshore curve of the creek + How merrily flutters the sail, -- +And lo, in the East! Will the East unveil? +The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed +A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive: 'tis dead, ere the West [121] +Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis unwithdrawn: + Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn. + +Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled: + To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold +Is builded, in shape as a bee-hive, from out of the sea: +The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee, + The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, + Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee +That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea. + + Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray, [131] + Shall live their little lucid sober day + Ere with the sun their souls exhale away. +Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew +The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue +Big dew-drop of all heaven: with these lit shrines +O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines, +The sacramental marsh one pious plain +Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign +Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, +Minded of nought but peace, and of a child. [141] + +Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure +Of motion, -- not faster than dateless Olympian leisure +Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure, -- +The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling, + Forever revealing, revealing, revealing, +Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise, -- 'tis done! + Good-morrow, lord Sun! +With several voice, with ascription one, +The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul +Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll, [151] +Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun. + +O Artisan born in the purple, -- Workman Heat, -- +Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet +And be mixed in the death-cold oneness, -- innermost Guest +At the marriage of elements, -- fellow of publicans, -- blest +King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er +The idle skies yet laborest fast evermore, -- +Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat +Of the heart of a man, thou Motive, -- Laborer Heat: +Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news, [161] +With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, +Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues +Ever shaming the maidens, -- lily and rose +Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows +In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, + It is thine, it is thine: + +Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl +Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl +In the magnet earth, -- yea, thou with a storm for a heart, +Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part [171] +From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, +Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright +Than the eye of a man may avail of: -- manifold One, +I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun: +Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown; +The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town: +But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done; + I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun: +How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, + I am lit with the Sun. [181] + +Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas + Of traffic shall hide thee, +Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories + Hide thee, +Never the reek of the time's fen-politics + Hide thee, +And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee, +And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, + Labor, at leisure, in art, -- till yonder beside thee + My soul shall float, friend Sun, [191] + The day being done. + +____ +Baltimore, December, 1880. + + + +Notes: Sunrise + + +In the words of Mrs. Lanier, "`Sunrise', Mr. Lanier's latest completed poem, +was written while his sun of life seemed fairly at the setting, +and the hand which first pencilled its lines had not strength +to carry nourishment to the lips." See `Introduction', p. xviii [Part I]. +Lanier has two other poems on the same theme, both short: +`A Sunrise Song' and `Between Dawn and Sunrise' (entered under `Marsh Hymns'). + +As already pointed out (`Introduction', pp. xxxi [Part III], xlvii [Part IV]), +`Sunrise' shows in a powerful way the delicacy and the comprehensiveness +of Lanier's love for nature. True, as I have elsewhere stated +(`Introduction', p. xlvi [Part IV]), the poem has some serious limitations, +more I think than has `The Marshes of Glynn'; but, despite its shortcomings, +`Sunrise' is from an absolute stand-point a great poem; +while, if we consider the circumstances under which it was produced, +it is, in the words of Professor Kent, "a world-marvel". + +Aside from the numerous unapproachable snatches in Shakespeare,* +I know of nothing on the subject in English literature +comparable to `Sunrise'. Mr. W. W. Story's `Sunrise' is perhaps +the closest parallel, and yet it is far inferior to Lanier's, +as every reader of the two will admit. If one wishes to make +further comparisons, he may find sunrise poems in the following authors: +Blake, Cowper, Emerson, Hood, Keats, Longfellow, Southey, Thompson, +Willis, etc. I may add that an interesting, though superficial article +on `The Poetry of Sunrise and Sunset' may be found in +`Chambers's Edinburgh Journal', 22, 234, October 7, 1854. + +-- +* Among others I may cite the following passages: + + "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings," + + in `Cymbeline', 2, 3; + + "But look the morn in russet mantle clad + Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill," + + in `Hamlet', 1, 1; + + "Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day + Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops," + + in `Romeo and Juliet', 3, 5; and + + "Full many a glorious morning have I seen" etc., + + `Sonnet xxxiii'. +-- + +3, 13-14. See `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III], and compare l. 26. + +39-53. See `Introduction', p. xxxiii [Part III]. + +42. I had made the comparison between Lanier and St. Francis +before reading Dr. Gates's essay on Lanier, and was delighted to find +my judgment confirmed by so competent a critic. Dr. Gates is quite emphatic: +"Since St. Francis, no soul has seemed so heavily overcharged +with this feeling of brotherhood for all created things." +`The Canticle of the Sun', otherwise known as `The Song of the Creatures', +may be found in metrical form in Mrs. Oliphant's life of St. Francis +(New York, 1870) and in prose in Sabatier's (Scribners, New York, 1894). + +54. Lanier has an `Owl against Robin'. + +57. See `Introduction', p. xli [Part IV]. + +80-85. See `Introduction', p. xliii [Part IV]. + +86-152. See `Introduction', p. xlvii [Part IV]. Mr. F. F. Browne says +that in lyric sweetness ll. 86-97 recall the best of Keats and Shelley. + +114-115. See `Introduction', p. xliv [Part IV]. + +127. Lanier has a poem entitled `The Bee'. + +134-136. See `Introduction', p. xliii [Part IV]. + +181. Compare Mrs. Easter's tribute, `Lit with the Sun'. + +189-192. See `Introduction', p. xxi [Part I], and compare Cowdin's tribute, +`Hopeset and Sunrise', and the closing stanza of Hamlin Garland's: + + "While heart's blood ebbed at every breath + He passed life's head-land bleak and dun, + Flew through the western gate of Death + And took his place beside the sun." + + + + + + Bibliography + + + + + +I. Collected Prose Works + + + +Tiger-lilies: A Novel. 16mo, pp. v, 252. Hurd & Houghton, New York, 1867. +Out of print. + +Florida: Its Scenery, Climate, and History. 12mo, pp. 336. +J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1876. + +The Boy's Froissart. Being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure, +Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain, etc. Edited for Boys. +Crown 8vo, pp. xxviii, 422. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1878. + +The Science of English Verse. Crown 8vo, pp. xv, 315. +Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880. + +The Boy's King Arthur. Being Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur +and his Knights of the Round Table. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, +pp. xlviii, 404. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880. + +The Boy's Mabinogion. Being the Earliest Welsh Tales of King Arthur +in the famous Red Book of Hergest. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, +pp. xxiv, 378. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881. + +The Boy's Percy. Being Old Ballads of War, Adventure, and Love, +from Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. +Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, pp. xxxii, 442. Charles Scribner's Sons, +New York, 1882. + +The English Novel and the Principles of its Development. Crown 8vo, pp. 293. +Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1883. + + + + +II. Collected Poetical Works + + + +Poems. Pp. 94. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1877. +Contained `To Charlotte Cushman' (dedication), `Corn', `The Symphony', +`The Psalm of the West', `In Absence', `Acknowledgment', `Betrayal', +`Special Pleading', `To Charlotte Cushman', `Rose-morals', +`To ---- with a Rose'. + +Poems of Sidney Lanier, Edited by his Wife, with a Memorial +by William Hayes Ward. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884, +252 pp., 12mo. + + + + +III. Uncollected Prose Pieces + + + +Three Waterfalls: `Scott's Magazine' (Atlanta, Ga.), August, September, 1867. + +Address before the Furlow Masonic Female College (Ga.), June 30, 1869: +`Catalogue' of the College for 1869. + +Confederate Memorial Address at Macon, Ga., April 26, 1870: +`Macon Daily Telegraph' of April 27, 1870, and reprinted in same +for April 27, 1887. + +Retrospects and Prospects: `Southern Magazine' (Baltimore) 8. 283-290, +446-456, March, April, 1871. + +Nature-Metaphors: `Southern Magazine' 10. 172-182, February, 1872. + +San Antonio de Bexar: `Southern Magazine' 13. 83-99, 138-152, +July, August, 1873. + +Peace: `Southern Magazine' 15. 406-410, October, 1874. + +Review of Hayne's Poems: `Southern Magazine', 1874. + +The Ocklawaha in May: `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia) 16. 403-413, +October, 1875. + +St. Augustine in April: `Lippincott's Magazine' 16. 537-550, November, 1875. + +Sketches of India, published anonymously: `Lippincott's Magazine' 17. 37-51, +172-183, 283-301, 409-427, January-April, 1876. + +Defence of Centennial Cantata: `The Tribune' (New York), 1876. + +Musical Festival in Baltimore: `The Sun' (Baltimore), May 28, 29, 30, 1878. + +Criticism of Rubinstein's Ocean Symphony: `The Sun' (Baltimore), +January 31, 1880. + +The Story of a Proverb: `Lippincott's Magazine' 23. 109-113, January, 1879. + +Letter to Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, a banker of New York, +giving an account of the Laniers in Europe and of their coming to America: +privately printed, Baltimore, April 2, 1879, pp. 17. + +A Fairy Tale for Grown People: `St. Nicholas Magazine', 1879. + +The Orchestra of To-day: `Scribner's Monthly' (New York) 19. 897-904, +April, 1880. + +The New South: `Scribner's Monthly' 20. 840-851. October, 1880. + +Bob: `The Independent' (New York) 34. 1-3, August 3, 1882. + +Moral Purpose in Art: `The Century Magazine' (New York) 4. 131-137, +May, 1883. + +Two Letters to Bayard Taylor: Taylor (M. H.) and Scudder's +`Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor' (Boston, 1884), vol. ii., 677, 693-94. + +The Legend of St. Leonor, a Fragment from an Unfinished Lecture +on "The Relations of Poetry and Science": `The Independent' 37. 1627, +December 17, 1885. + +The Happy Soul's Address to the Dead Body, from Shakespeare +Course of Lectures: `The Independent', 1886. + +A Great Man Wanted, Extract from Letter of November 15, 1874, +to Judge L. E. Bleckley, of Georgia: `The Acorn' (Towson, Md.), June, 1887; +reprinted in `The Critic' (New York) 7. 309, June 18, 1887. + +From Bacon to Beethoven, published anonymously: `Lippincott's Magazine' +41. 643-655, May, 1888. + +Chaucer and Shakespeare: `The Independent' 43. 1337-1338, 1371-1372, +September 10 and 17, 1891. + +Chaucer and Shakespeare Compared: `The Independent' 43. 1401-1402, +September 24, 1891. + +What I Know about Flowers, a S. S. address delivered about 1868, +but first published in `The Sunday-school Times' (Philadelphia) 33. 739, +November 21, 1891. + +How to Read Chaucer: `The Independent' 43. 1748, November 26, 1891. + +Blood-red Flower of War, an extract from `Tiger-lilies' (pp. 115-121): +`The Sunday News' (Baltimore), November 27, 1892. + +Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Gibson Peacock, from January 26, 1875, +to June 1, 1880, edited by Wm. R. Thayer: `The Atlantic Monthly' (Boston) +74. 14-28, 181-193, July, August, 1894. + + + + +IV. Uncollected Poems + + + +Laughter in the Senate: `The Round Table' (New York), 1868. + +Civil Rights: `The Herald' (Atlanta, Ga.), 1874. + +Songs Against Death (five stanzas, the last fragmentary): +`The Century Magazine' 10. 377, July, 1886. + +One in Two: `Century Magazine' 12. 417, July, 1887. + +Two in One: `Century Magazine' 12. 417, July, 1887. + +To "The White Flower" of The English Novel, written in 1878, +but printed in 1890 by L. Prang (Boston) on an illustrated Christmas Card. + +On the Receipt of a Jar of Marmalade, written for Mrs. C. N. Hawkins in 1877, +but printed in her husband's paper, `The New Castle (Va.) Record', +April 11, 1891. + +The Lord's Romance of Time, an Outline: `Sunday-school Times' +(Philadelphia), 1892. + +To Lucie, written on St. Valentine's Day, 1880, published in `From Dixie', +Richmond, Va., 1893. + + + + +V. Poems in Anthologies + + + +Blackman, O.: see `Lawrence, W. M.' + +Hutchinson, Ellen M.: see `Stedman, E. C.' + +Lawrence (W. M.) and Blackman (O.): `The Riverside Song Book' (Boston, 1893) +has `Baby Charley' (p. 91) and `May the Maiden' (p. 97), both set to music. + +Putnam, S. A. Brock: `The Poetry of America' (New York, 1894) +has `Life and Song', `Nirvana', `Ballad of Trees and the Master', +and `Sunrise'. + +Roberts, C. G. D.: `Poems of Wild Life' (London, 1888) +has `The Revenge of Hamish' (pp. 57-62). + +Sladen, Douglas: `Younger American Poets' (New York, 1891) +gives (pp. 131-145) `Sunrise', `The Marshes of Glynn', +`Song of the Chattahoochee', `A Ballad of Trees and the Master', +an extract from `The Symphony', and `The Crystal'. + +Stedman (E. C.) and Hutchinson (Ellen M.): `A Library of American Literature' +(New York, 1891) gives (vol. x., pp. 145-151) `The Marshes of Glynn', +`Song of the Chattahoochee', `The Mocking-bird', `The Revenge of Hamish', +`Night and Day', and a portrait. + + + + +VI. Criticisms* of Lanier's Life and Works + +* Unless the title of the criticism is given, the article treats + Lanier's life and works in general. Except in special cases + no account is made of articles in the daily papers. -- For brevity's sake + I cite under this head the music composed for several of Lanier's poems. + + + +American Youth (Chicago): 3. 102. + +Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia (New York): 1881, p. 685: `Obituary'. + +Black, G. D.: `The Antiochian' (Yellow Springs, O.) 2: 4. 4-6, +February, 1886. + +Black, G. D.: `Belford's Magazine' (Chicago) 6. 187-190, January, 1891. + +Blackman, O.: see `Lawrence' under `V'. + +Boykin, Laurette N.: `Home Life of Sidney Lanier', Atlanta, Ga., 1889, 12 pp. + +Browne, F. F.: `The Dial' (Chicago) 5. 244-246, January, 1885. + +Browne, Wm. H.: `Memorial Address' before the Johns Hopkins University, +October 22, 1881, 8 pp. Privately printed. + +Browne, Wm. H.: `Letter at the Unveiling of a Bust of the Poet +at Macon, Ga.', October 17, 1890, in `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' +of October 19, 1890. + +Browne, Wm. H.: `From Dixie' (Richmond, Va., 1893), pp. 40-51. + +Buck, Dudley: Music to Lanier's `Centennial Cantata'. +New York: G. Schirmer, 1876. + +Buck, Dudley: `Sunset', music to Lanier's `Evening Song'. +New York: G. Schirmer, 1877. + +Buckham, J.: `An Account of the Hopkins Memorial Meeting +of February 3, 1888', `Literary World' (Boston) 19. 56-57, February 18, 1888. + +Burton, R. E.: `An Account of the Hopkins Memorial Meeting +of February 3, 1888', `The Critic' (New York), 9. 63-64, February 11, 1888; +also in Gilman's `Memorial of Sidney Lanier', pp. 47-50. + +Burton, Richard E.: `Lanier Bibliography', in Gilman's +`Memorial of Sidney Lanier' (Baltimore, 1888), pp. 51-56. + +Calvert, G. H.: `The Golden Age', June 12, 1875. + +Carmichael, Mary: `A May Song', music to Lanier's `Song for the Jacquerie'. +London: Stanley, Lucas, Weber & Co., 1889. + +Century Magazine (New York): 1. 475, January, 1882: `Boy's Mabinogion'. + +Chamberlain, D. H.: `The New Englander' (New Haven, Conn.) 44. 227-238, +March, 1885. + +Coleman, C. W., Jr.: `Homes of Some Southern Authors IV.', +`The Chautauquan' (Meadville, Pa.) 8. 343-344. + +Critic, The (New York): 3. 3-4, January 3, 1885: `Poems'; +9. 97, February 28, 1888: `Professor J. H. Gilmore's Lecture on Lanier'; +9. 224, May 5, 1888; 9. 245, May 19, 1888; 15. 130, March 7, 1891; +16. 197, October 17, 1891: `Poems' (ed. of 1891); 20. 95, August 5, 1893: +`Professor W. D. McClintock's Lecture on Lanier'. + +Cummings, Miss M. A.: `Catholic Mirror' (Baltimore), May 7, 1892. + +Dewey, T. E.: `Address before the Kansas Academy of Language and Literature', +at Baker University, Baldwin, April 7, 1892, 34 pp. + +Dial, The (Chicago): 2. 182-3, December, 1881: `Boy's Mabinogion'; +3. 176, December, 1882: `Boy's Percy'; 4. 40, June, 1883. + +Fiske, John: see `Wilson, J. G.' + +Gates, M. E.: `Sidney Lanier's Moral Earnestness', `The Critic' 3. 227, +May 9, 1885, as quoted from the Rutgers College `Targum'. + +Gates, M. E.: `Presbyterian Review' (New York), 8. 669-701, October, 1887; +also in pamphlet form; summarized in Sladen's `Younger American Poets' +(pp. 635-644). + +Gates, M. E.: `On the Ethical Influence of Lanier', in Gilman's `Memorial', +pp. 31-36. + +Gilder, R. W.: `Letter to President Gilman', in latter's `Memorial', +pp. 27-29. + +Gilman, D. C.: `Our Continent' (Chicago), February, 1882. + +Gilman, D. C. (ed.): `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier' (Baltimore, 1888), 52 pp. + +Gilman, D. C.: `Letter at the Unveiling of a Bust of the Poet at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, in `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Gosse, Edmund: `Questions at Issue', London, 1893, pp. 78-81. + +Hankins, V. W.: `Southern Bivouac' (Louisville, Ky.), 2. 760-61, May, 1887. + +Harper's Magazine (New York): 54. 617, March, 1877: `Poems' (1877 ed.); +60. 474, February, 1880: `Boy's Froissart'; 61. 796-97, October, 1880: +`Science of English Verse'; 62. 315, January, 1881: `Boy's King Arthur'; +64. 316, January, 1882: `Boy's Mabinogion'; 66. 316, January, 1883: +`Boy's Percy'; 67. 798-99, October, 1883: `The English Novel'. + +Harris, Joel Chandler: `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' +of September 12, 1881. + +Harris, J. C.: `Letter at Unveiling of a Bust of the Poet at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Hawthorne (J.) and Lemmon (L.): `American Literature', Boston, 1893, +pp. 276-77. + +Hayne, Paul H.: `A Poet's Letters to a Friend', `The Critic' 5. 77-78, 89-90, +February 13, 20, 1886. + +Higginson, T. W.: `The Chautauquan' (Meadville, Pa.) 7. 416-418, April, 1887. + +Higginson, T. W.: `Women and Men', Boston, 1888, chap. 58. + +Hill, Mrs. K.: `Marie', music to Lanier's `Song for the Jacquerie', +Riga, P. Neldner, 1891. + +Hill, W. B.: `Address in Presenting Bust of the Poet to City of Macon, Ga.', +`The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Hubner, Chas. W.: `The American', Atlanta, Ga., November 29, 1888. + +Kent, C. W.: `A Study of Lanier's Poems, in Publications of +the Modern Language Association' (Baltimore) 7: 2. 33-63, April-June, 1892. + +Kirk, J. F.: `A Supplement to Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature' +(Philadelphia), 1891, vol. ii., 973, has a brief sketch of Lanier. + +Kirkus, Wm.: `American Literary Churchman', October, 1881. + +Lanier, Charles: `Letter at Unveiling of Poet's Bust at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Lanier, Clifford: `Letter at Unveiling of Poet's Bust at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Lawrence, W. M.: see under `V'. + +Lemmon, L.: see `Hawthorne'. + +Lind, W. Murdoch: `Sidney Lanier's Library', `The Daily News' (Baltimore), +July 24, 1892. + +Link, S. A.: `New England Magazine' (Boston) 10. 14-19, March, 1894. + +Literary World, The (Boston): 6. 116, January, 1876: `Florida'; +7. 103, December, 1876: `Poems' (Lippincott ed.); 11. 227, July 3, 1880: +`Science of English Verse'; 11. 441, December 4, 1880: `Boy's King Arthur'; +12. 215, June 18, 1881: `Florida'; 12. 449, December 3, 1881: +`Boy's Mabinogion'; 14. 204-205, June 30, 1883: `English Novel'; +16. 40-41, February 7, 1885: `Poems'; 16. 350-352, April 10, 1885: `Poems'. + +Lowell, James Russell: `Letter to President Gilman' in latter's `Memorial', +p. 25. + +Macmechan, A.: `The Varsity' (Toronto), March 3, 1888. + +Marble, E.: `Cottage Hearth' (Boston), 4. 141-142, June, 1877. + +Morris, H. S.: `The Poetry of S. L.', `The American' (Philadelphia), +No. 393, pp. 284-285, February 18, 1888. + +Nation, The (New York): 31. 310-311, October 28, 1880: +`Science of English Verse'; 33. 216, September 15, 1881; +33. 994, November 17, 1881; 35. 468, November 30, 1882: `Boy's Percy'; +37. 38, July 12, 1883: `English Novel'; 39. 528, December 18, 1884: `Poems'; +46. 51-52, February 9, 1888; 53. 297, October 15, 1891: `Poems' (1891 ed.). + +Newell, A. C.: `Lanier's Life at Oglethorpe College', +`The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of February 27, 1894. + +New Englander (New Haven, Conn.): 39. 566, July, 1880: +`Science of English Verse'. + +Penn, A.: `S. L. on the English Novel', `Century Magazine', 5. 957-958, +April, 1884. + +Pitts, W. A.: `Wofford College Journal' (Spartanburg, S.C.) 4. 307-312, +June, 1893. + +Poet-lore (Philadelphia): 2. 303, 1890; 3. 369, 1891. + +Putnam, S. A. Brock: `The Poetry of America', New York, 1894, +has a short Sketch of Lanier. + +Richardson, Charles F.: `American Literature' (1607-1885), 2 vols., +New York, 1889-1891; vol. 2. 231-2, 242, 398. + +Roberts, Chas. G. D.: `St. John (N. B.) Globe', April 25, 1885. + +Roberts, Chas. G. D. (ed.): `Poems of Wild Life', London, 1888, +has a short sketch of Lanier. + +Roberts, C. G. D.: `Letter at Unveiling of Poet's Bust at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Rutherford, Mildred: `American Authors', Atlanta, Ga., 1894, pp. 368-375. + +Scott, W. J.: `Quarterly Review of M. E. Church, South' (Nashville), +New Series, 5. 157-171, October, 1888. + +Scribner's Monthly (New York): 20. 473-4, July, 1880: +`Science of English Verse'; 21. 322, December, 1880: `Boy's King Arthur'. + +Semple, Patty B.: `Southern Bivouac' (Louisville) 2. 661-7, April, 1887. + +Sladen, Douglas: `Some Younger American Poets I.', `The Independent' +(New York) 42. 806, June 12, 1890. + +Sladen, Douglas: `Younger American Poets', New York, 1891, +pp. xxvi-xxviii, 635-655: a slightly expanded form of the preceding. +See, too, `Gates' and `Turnbull'. + +Sladen, Douglas: `The American Rossetti', `Literary World' (London), +pp. 378-9, November 17, 1893. + +Smyth, A. H.: `American Literature', Philadelphia, 1889, p. 132. + +Spann, Minnie: `Sidney Lanier's Youth, S. L.'s Manhood', +`The Independent' (New York) 46. 800, 821-2, June 21, 28, 1894. + +Spectator, The (London): 65. 828-9, December 6, 1890. + +Stedman, E. C.: `Letter to President Gilman', pp. 12-14 of Browne's +`Memorial Address'. + +Stedman, E. C.: `The Critic' (New York), 1. 298, 1881. + +Stedman, E. C.: `Poets of America', Boston, 1885, pp. 449-451. + +Stedman, E. C.: `Letter to President Gilman' in latter's `Memorial', +pp. 25-27. + +Stedman (E. C.) and Hutchinson (Ellen M.): `Library of American Literature' +(New York, 1891), vol. xi., 542, gives brief sketches +of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. + +Stoddard, F. H.: `Review of The English Novel', `New Englander' +(New Haven, Conn.) 43. 97-104, January, 1884. + +Tabb, J. B.: `Sidney Lanier's Last Lines', `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' +of October 19, 1890. + +Tait, John R.: `Lippincott's Magazine' (Phila.) 40. 723-724, November, 1887. + +Taylor, Bayard: `The Tribune' (New York), 1876. + +Taylor (M. H.) and Scudder's `Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor', +vol. 2. 669-723, has several letters from B. T. to S. L. + +Thayer, W. R.: `The Independent' (New York), 1883; March, 1884; +June 12, 1884; December 18, 1884; 1886: `Stedman's Poets of America'. + +Thayer, W. R.: `The American' (Phila.) December 20, 1884; February 18, 1888. + +Thayer, W. R. (ed.): `Letters of Sidney Lanier' [to Mr. and Mrs. +Gibson Peacock], `The Atlantic Monthly' (Boston) 74. 14-28, 181-193, +July and August, 1894. + +Tolman, A. H.: `Lanier's Science of English Verse', in Gilman's `Memorial', +pp. 37-45. + +Travelers' Record, The (Hartford, Conn.): October, 1885: +`Owl against Robin'. + +Turnbull, Mrs. Lawrence: `The Catholic Man: A Study', Boston, 1890, +gives, in Paul, the poet, an imaginative study of the character of Mr. Lanier, +with whom the author was intimately acquainted and to whom she was devoted. + +Turnbull, Francese L. (= Mrs. Lawrence T.): `Sidney Lanier: A Study', +in Sladen's `Younger American Poets', New York, 1891, pp. 645-655. + +Urban, Francis: Music to Lanier's `A Ballad of Trees and the Master'. +Baltimore: Otto Sutro & Co., 1886. + +Von Sturmer, H. H.: `A Soldier-poet', `Excelsior' (Barbados) 1. 233-236, +October, 1890. + +Walker, Geo. W.: `Quarterly Review of M. E. Church, South' (Macon, Ga.) +7. 193-206, April, 1885. + +Ward, Wm. Hayes: `Sidney Lanier on Moral Purpose in Art', +`The Independent' (New York), May 3, 1883. + +Ward, Wm. Hayes: `Sidney Lanier, Poet', `Century Magazine' 5. 816-821, +April, 1884. + +Ward, Wm. Hayes: `Memorial', prefixed to `Poems of Sidney Lanier', +edited by his wife, pp. xi-xl. + +Warner, Charles Dudley: `Letter at Unveiling of Poet's Bust at Macon, Ga.', +October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Washington, Hugh V.: `Address on Accepting the Bust of Lanier for +the City of Macon, Ga.', October 17, 1890, `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' +of October 19, 1890. + +West, Charles N.: `Address before the Georgia Historical Society', +Savannah, December 5, 1887, 25 pp. + +Wilkinson, W. C.: `The Independent' (New York), September, 1886. + +Wilson, Heileman: `Fetter's Southern Magazine' (Louisville, Ky.) 2. 11-15, +February, 1893. + +Wilson (J. G.) and Fiske (J.), eds.: `Appleton's Cyclopaedia +of American Biography', New York, 1888, vol. iii., 613, +has brief sketches of S. and C. Lanier. + +Wray, J. E.: `Song of the Chattahoochee', `Quarterly Review +of M. E. Church, South' (Nashville), New Series, 16. 157-163, April, 1894. + + + + +VII. Poetical Tributes + + + +Andrews, Maude Annulet: `Literary World' (Boston) 18. 184, June 11, 1887. + +Barbe, Waiteman: in his `Ashes and Incense', Philadelphia, 1892. + +Burroughs, Ellen: `Literary World' (Boston) 21. 40, February 1, 1890. + +Burton, Richard E.: Gilman's `Memorial', p. 12. + +Clark, Simeon Tupper: `The Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier', November, 1881. + +Colquitt, Mel R.: `The Period', Atlanta, Ga. + +Cowdin, Jasper Barnett: `Hopeset and Sunrise', `Southern Bivouac' +(Louisville, Ky.) 1. 614-615, March, 1886. + +Cummings, James: Gilman's `Memorial', pp. 13-17. + +Dandridge, Danske: in her `Joy and Other Poems', New York and London, 1888. + +Easter, Marguerite E.: in her `Clytie and Other Poems', Boston, 1891. + +Edwards, Harry S.: `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890. + +Garland, Hamlin: `Southern Bivouac' (Louisville, Ky.) 2. 759, May, 1887. + +Gates, Mrs. Merrill E.: `Home Journal' (New York), April 16, 1890. + +Hayne, Paul Hamilton: `The Pole of Death', in `Poems' (Boston, 1882), p. 322. + +Hayne, Wm. H.: `Poem for the Unveiling of the Bust of S. L. at Macon, Ga., +October 17, 1890', `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890; +`Sidney Lanier', in his `Sylvan Lyrics and Other Verses' (New York), 1893. + +Hubner, Charles W.: `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of September 12, 1881. + +Lanier, Clifford: `Acknowledgment, To all who love S. L.', +`The Independent' (New York), April 9, 1885. + +Reese, Lizette Woodworth: `Southern Bivouac' (Louisville, Ky.) 2. 488, +January, 1887; `With a Copy of Lanier's Poems', `The Independent' (New York) +44. 322, March 3, 1892. + +Roberts, Charles G. D.: `To the Memory of S. L.', in his `In Divers Tones', +Boston, 1886, pp. 95-96; `On Reading the Poems of S. L.', ib., p. 97; +`For a Bust of L.', `The Independent' (New York) 43. 625, April 30, 1891. + +Scollard, Clinton: `Literary World' (Boston), vol. 18, May 14, 1886. + +Tabb, John B.: `To Sidney Lanier', in Gilman's `Memorial', p. 11; +`Sidney Lanier', `The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution' of October 19, 1890; +`Greeting to S. L.', in `The Times-Democrat' (New Orleans) of December, 1891, +and quoted by Spann in `The Independent' (New York) 46. 822, June 28, 1894. + +Thomas, Edith M.: Gilman's `Memorial', pp. 22-23. + +Turnbull, Francese E.: Gilman's `Memorial', pp. 18-21. + + + + +[End of original text.] + + + + +Other sources relating to Sidney Lanier: + + (No attempt has been made to be complete. This only serves + as a pointer to other materials.) + + + +Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier (in 10 volumes), +ed. Charles R. Anderson and others (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945). + +Flute Concerto of Sidney Lanier, by Myrtle Whittemore +(New York: Pageant Press, 1953). * + +The Life of Sidney Lanier, by Lincoln Lorenz (New York: Coward-McCann, 1935). + +A Living Minstrelsy: The Poetry and Music of Sidney Lanier, +by Jane S. Gabin (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985). * + +Sidney Lanier, by Jack De Bellis (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972). + +Sidney Lanier, by Edwin Mims (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., +1905), also available as an etext: Project Gutenberg, February, 1998. * + +Sidney Lanier: A Biographical and Critical Study, by Aubrey Harrison Starke +(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933). * + +Sidney Lanier, Poet and Prosodist, by Richard Webb +(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1941). * + +Sidney Lanier: The Man, the Poet, the Critic, by Edd Winfield Parks +(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969). + +Letters of Sidney Lanier, Selections from His Correspondence, 1866-1881, +ed. Henry W. Lanier (New York: Scribner's, 1899). + +Letters of Sidney Lanier to Col. John G. James, ed. Margaret Lee Wiley +(Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1942). + +Some Reminiscences and Early Letters of Sidney Lanier, +ed. George Herbert Clarke (Macon, Ga.: Burke, 1907). + +-- +* According to Mrs. Oliver at the Middle Georgia Historical Society, + in Macon, Ga., patrons express special interest in these works. +-- + + +The Johns Hopkins University has a large collection of Lanier materials. +Cynthia Requardt, the Curator of Special Collections, has noted +that many visitors are more interested in his music than his poetry. +Joan Grattan (Manuscripts) has confirmed that the above selections +represent the most important materials on Lanier. +The index to these materials is online, at gopher://musicbox.mse.jhu.edu/ +and more specifically at gopher://musicbox.mse.jhu.edu/00/mss/ms007.txt +(as of 5 March 1998). + + + + +Notes to the text: + + + +This text has been amended to include "The Marshes of Glynn", +and some notes on the same (mostly drawn from the biography of Sidney Lanier, +by Edwin Mims, 1905) that were not in the original. + +The Notes to the poems were originally in a section to themselves, +between the Poems and the Bibliography. + +References to page numbers in the introduction have had amended +to include a reference to which part of the introduction that page is in. + +The text of some of the poems differs slightly in spelling and punctuation +from the text in `Poems of Sidney Lanier'. No effort has been made +to make the texts conform, except where this text appeared to be in error. + + + +Changes to the text: + + +Introduction: IV. Lanier's Poetry: Its Style: + +[ Of littles that large life compound,'*3* ] + changed to: +[ Of littles that large life compound,'"*3* ] + + +"The Revenge of Hamish", line 27: + +[ Drew leaping to-burn-ward; huskily rose ] + changed to: +[ Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose ] + as per "Poems of Sidney Lanier" and common sense. + + +"Notes: A Ballad of Trees and the Master": + +[ which inspired these intense lines, `Into the Wood my Master went', ] + changed to: +[ which inspired these intense lines, `Into the Woods my Master went', ] + as per the line in the poem. + +(It should also be noted that "A Ballad of Trees and the Master" +has sometimes been published under the title "Into the Woods My Master Went".) + + +Bibliography: IV: Uncollected Poems: + +[ One in Two: `Century Magazine' 12. 417, July, 1877 ] + changed to: +[ One in Two: `Century Magazine' 12. 417, July, 1887 ] + as per the evidence. + +Various minor punctuation errors in the Bibliography have also been corrected. + +References to verses of scripture have been changed to modern form. +(E.g., John 3:16 instead of John iii. 16.) + + +ASCII does not allow for the easy use of accents. +The following had to be stripped: + +All instances of `Laus Mari(ae)' +All instances of C(ae)dmon +when compared with that of (Ae)schylus, shows an "enormous growth + Half veile\d in the twilight shade, +"I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your `Ae"thra's'. Every day +Richly expending thy much-bruise/d heart +I speak for each no-tongue/d tree +I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blesse\d day. +`Yes,' I rejoined, `a difference toto c(oe)lo,' whereat he laughed again, +Superb and sole, upon a plume/d spray [1] +All instances of Cyclop(ae)dia + On the sense, entrance/d, flinging +(Ae)olian +The globe/d clarity of receiving space, +From part oft sundered, yet ever a globe/d light, +`Nirva^na' + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Select Poems of Sidney Lanier + diff --git a/1229.zip b/1229.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ebf166 --- /dev/null +++ b/1229.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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