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Select Poems of Sidney Lanier
Edited by Morgan Callaway
March, 1998 [Etext #1229]
**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Select Poems of Sidney Lanier**
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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
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.
— *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
— *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
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
"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
"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
"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."