human
Can you write me a poem about sidney lanier in the style of Victor [pseud.] Appleton?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about sidney lanier in the style of Victor [pseud.] Appleton:
  Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation
appear with the poems, instead of in a separate section.]
This edition of the `Select Poems of Sidney Lanier' is issued
To these as to older people, the poems will, it is believed,
The biographical section of the Introduction rests in the main
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"
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
Among the friends that have helped me by counsel or otherwise
I gratefully name Mr. Clifford Lanier, brother of the poet;
Chief-justice Logan E. Bleckley, of Georgia, a man of letters
My chief indebtedness, however, is to Mrs. Sidney Lanier,
Jones's Private Argyment
Rose-morals
Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn
The Mocking-bird
From the time of Queen Elizabeth to the Restoration,
distinguished for their love of oratory, music, and poetry.
* For the full title of works cited see `Bibliography'.
With such an ancestry we are not surprised to learn that
his power over which we shall hear of farther on.  At first,
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
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,
for the most part afoot, and reached home March 15th.
An account of his war-life is given in his novel, `Tiger-lilies',
* It is sometimes erroneously stated that each was put in charge
of a blockade-runner.
Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature
the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him
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,
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
who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature.
Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated
for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled
with rare distinction for six years.  As to his literary work,
and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts.
can be gathered from the following words of Mr. Ward:
going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture,
his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath
*2* They are named in the `Bibliography'.
** 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
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,
hung the flute of Lanier, which had so often been his solace,
and a roll of his manuscript music.  The bust was crowned
was given to those who were present.  Upon its face was a wreath,
a flute with ivy twined about it."*3*  The exercises,
which were interspersed with music, were as follows:
Miss Susan Hayes Ward, of Newark, N.J.; a paper on Lanier's
in prose and verse, by Messrs. W. B. Hill, Hugh V. Washington,
is the steadily growing study devoted to Lanier's works.
upon the list of Harvard books to be kept only a fortnight,
given us an imaginative study of the character of Mr. Lanier.
the poet and his brother.
*3* Gilman's `A Memorial of Sidney Lanier', pp. 5-6.
*6* See recent files of `The Independent' (New York).
that, according to the promise of the preface, he gives
* This may be found in Professor Tolman's article,
cited in the `Bibliography'.
is "first, to inquire what is the special relation of the novel
in the personality of man" (p. 5); (2) that what we moderns
were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity
* Mrs. Lanier informs me that `The English Novel' will soon
be issued in an amended form and with a new sub-title,
of its seeming incompleteness as to scope.
But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier,
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,
in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard,
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."*
"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
"`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;
"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.'"**
But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills.
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,
We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony'
"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*
*2* Hayne's (P. H.) `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.
I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems
with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket."
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*
"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 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*
"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 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;
"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*
*6* See `From the Flats', last stanza.
*26* See his `Modern Painters', vol. v., part vi., chapter iv.,
and Scudder's note to the same in her `Introduction to Ruskin'
To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton,
"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*
"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
"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.
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,
Love for man, love for woman, love for God, -- these three chime
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':
`How Love Looked for Hell', Mind and Sense at Love's request
"When life's all love, 'tis life:  aught else, 'tis naught."*4*
It is but a short way from love to its source, -- God.
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*
with a thrilling mystery of `potential activity', which dwells
in his large, open eye, teaches me new things.  I say to myself,
"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.
"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,
*3* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.
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
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
or of Tennyson than this, --
"Largest voice
Since Milton, yet some register of wit
`The Crystal' abounds in such happy characterizations.
*2* See Symonds's `Walt Whitman:  A Study'.  London, 1893.
as not calling for special comment.
Of Lanier's felicitous choice of words we have already had
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:
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,
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
To come to the figures of speech, one must be struck at once
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*
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 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*
"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*
*3* See on this point the remarks of Professor Trent
As to versification, Lanier uses almost all the types of verse
the careful distribution of vowel-colors and the frequent use
of alliteration and of phonetic syzygy,*1* by which last is meant
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
or, more precisely, in simplicity.  This comes partly
from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps,
has been unduly exaggerated.  Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares
Lanier at times manifests the simplicity that is granted
only to genius of the highest order:  thus an English critic,*2*
`The whole sweet round
Of littles that large life compound,'"*3*
`I marvel that God made you mine,
For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine,'*4*
as `Corn', `The Marshes of Glynn', and `Sunrise', are not simple;
too gross to hear and see what Lanier puts before them,
whereas a bit of patient listening and looking reveals delights
hitherto undreamed of.
*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,
the break of dawn and the rising of the sun.
Of the poet's marvelous euphony, `The Song of the Chattahoochee'
"But if his sense of beauty made him a peer of our great poets,
While most of Lanier's poems are in a serious strain,
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,"*
the `Ballad of Trees and the Master' must touch all readers.
that it is the only time that he complained of his lot,
"`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."**
It is now time to say a word about Lanier's theory of art,
"Awful is art because 'tis free,"*1*
"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*
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*
"Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?'
He beareth starry stuff about his wings
To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2*
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,
his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy,
`The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is,
was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"*
"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
yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh,
the great artist."*  By copious quotations Lanier then shows
that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while
with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction
that unless you are suffused -- soul and body, one might say --
(`Preface' to his edition of `Wordsworth's Poems'),
John Ruskin (`Stones of Venice', vol. iii., chap. iv.),
and Victor Hugo (`William Shakespeare', Book VI.).
Milton has somewhere said that in order to be a great poet
several other great poets.  Now of all English poets,
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.
* Mr. Thayer puts it stronger:  "As a master of melodious metre
but the younger poet's treatment is as much his own
which is his most striking quality.  It may be doubted
If life were caught by a clarionet,            
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           
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!'
`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',
I can think of no more helpful comment on the subject of our poem
already alluded to in the `Introduction' (p. liv [Part VI]):
"And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion,
a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things;
(see `Introduction', p. liv [Part VI]), is likewise made
Jones's Private Argyment
That air same Jones, which lived in Jones,     
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         
Is, eat no meat that's boughten:
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,              
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
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:              
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;          
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!"
Notes:  Jones's Private Argyment
The themes of this poem, the relative claims of corn and cotton
"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
Brown invites Jones in to dinner, but cannot refrain
To-day the woods are trembling through and through       
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         
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             
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                  
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
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                          
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.       
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;                      
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                                    
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                        
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                            
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,              
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               
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.                     
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,                      
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.                 
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;                         
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.         
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,    
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.             
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             
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.
As stated elsewhere (`Introduction', p. xvii [Part I]),
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 the introductory note to `Jones's Private Argyment'
his unreserved judgment), Judge Bleckley continues:
"Now, for the general impression which your Ode has made upon me.
and you give its portrait with many touches of marvel and mystery
the form and tragic state of King Lear; you thus make it
in the distant future."
as to call forth this commendation of Judge Bleckley, which,
but sometimes hard.  There is less idealization and more of
praise and thanksgiving at the end of `The Huskers',
"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."
both life-like pictures of plantation life, in his
into the sea-board levels' -- where `a man can find
for man's life need not be sought.'"
In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know           
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              
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,                      
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                   
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,       
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,            
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!
For my appreciation of this tribute to the poet's wife
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
Other tributes to his wife are:  `In Absence', `Acknowledgment',
`One in Two', and `Two in One'; while she is referred to
"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."
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!            
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                   
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           
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,      
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:                 
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,       
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        
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            
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,           
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                  
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,
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,                  
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;             
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               
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,                 
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; --          
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,  
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.
`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!             
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                      
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,                
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.                  
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?      
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              
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;       
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,
For God shall right thy grievous wrong,
And man shall sing thee a true-love song,
Voiced in act his whole life long,                
Yea, all thy sweet life long,
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,
Is Honor gone into his grave?
Hath Faith become a caitiff knave,
And Selfhood turned into a slave                  
To work in Mammon's cave,
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,
For aye shall name and fame be sold,
And place be hugged for the sake of gold,
And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold             
At Crime all money-bold,
Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget
Kiss-pardons for the daily fret
Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet --
Blind to lips kiss-wise set --
Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart,
Till wooing grows a trading mart
Where much for little, and all for part,          
Make love a cheapening art,
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,
Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea,
`We maids would far, far whiter be
If that our eyes might sometimes see              
Men maids in purity,'
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,
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,       
I' the scabbard, death, was laid,
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,
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     
To be thy knight until my dying day,
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!                   
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,              
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,                             
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,          
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."
of its two themes, -- the evils of the trade-spirit
but which is a revelation from God of justice, of fair dealing,
though I conceal it under the form of a pure novel."
in purpose and in spirit.  All three voice the outcry of the poor
which almost lulls one to sleep, and `The Odyssey' ix. 80-104.
p. xxxii [Part III].
`Lady Clarinda's Song' (Gosse's `English Lyrics').
cited in the `Bibliography'.
`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."*
straight to Heaven."
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.
I know my front ones IS stopped up, and things is sort o' dim,
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?
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,
Den, Lord, please take ole Jim, and lef young Dinah hyar below!
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.
But, Dinah!  Shuh dat gal jes' like dis little hick'ry tree,
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,
Stop; -- ef I don't believe de Debble's gone on up de stream!
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?
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.
In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873)
by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, there is a piece,
"All crowded close together and every heart beat faster.
Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.
a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent
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!'
we ain't ready -- let dese po' chil'en hab one mo' chance,
"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
"`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
diminished by degrees and presently ceased altogether.
There follows a discussion as to whether or not the prayer caused
I wrote the authors of `The Gilded Age' and asked the source
without either history or tradition back of it.
A comparison of the two stories shows some differences.
at the end of the Magazine.  I wrote thee what Dr. Holland said
anent its resemblance to something of Mark Twain's in plot.
for a year and a half, and in May, 1862, joined his brother
in the Confederate Army.  His soldier life has been detailed
was wrecked in December, 1864.  He escaped, however,
`Biding Tryst' (1894), prose; `Greatest of These is Love',
the Chautauquans of 1898 have named themselves "The Laniers"
"The humblest life that lives may be divine."
Rose-morals
Would that my songs might be                       
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,    
I strive, I pray.
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
Mulched with unsavory death,                      
Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath,
Thy work, thy fate.
Notes:  Rose-morals
Rose-morals in English literature probably begin with
Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century.  At any rate,
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
"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."*
"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."*
which is familiar to every one.
I asked my heart to say                     
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.
Notes:  To ----, with a Rose
This poem was sent to Mrs. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia,
"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame."
"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."
"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."*
"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,
Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn
SOLO. --  Sin's rooster's crowed, Ole Mahster's riz,     
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,              
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!        
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,              
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.
Notes:  Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn
not infrequently constructs from his daily surroundings.
"In addition to these exegetical commentaries the Northern reader
The Mocking-bird
Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray                     
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.      
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?
Notes:  The Mocking-bird
In his `Birds and Poets' (Boston, 1877), Mr. John Burroughs says
But since the appearance of his book many poems have been written
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
Roughly speaking, the poems may be divided into two classes --
first those that, as in the Indian legend cited below,
"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,
"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 --
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."
"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.
.    .    .    .    .
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!"
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
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."
Out of the hills of Habersham,              
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,           
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,          
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,         
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
-- 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,        
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.
at the southwestern extremity of Georgia.  The Chattahoochee
in which he speaks of "the sandy Chattahoochee".
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'
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
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.
The hounds swept after with never a sound,
But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.
For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds:
Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn,
Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does
Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose
"Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?"
I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me
"Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,
If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,
But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he.
Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals
And the lady cries:  "Clansmen, run for a fee! --
Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall,
Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!"
Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave?
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face --
And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back
And the mother stared white on the waste of blue,
For an appreciation of this fine poem see `Introduction',
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,
is identical with Lanier's poem, except that the former begins
with the speech of the flogged henchman, here named Evan,
were the Macleans of Dowart and the Macleans of Lochbuy,
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
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, --
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, --
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;
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 belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
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: --
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,
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
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.
To the terminal blue of the main.
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
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.
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
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.
Here and there,
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
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,
Under the waters of sleep?
"The Marshes of Glynn" had not yet achieved its later prominence
And later continues:
that there is something so individual and original about it,
Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spirituality
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
Opinion, let me alone:  I am not thine.                 
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,                  
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."                           
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                  
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,       
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;         
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 --
Those rights the true, true Son of Man doth own
By Love's authority -- thou Rebel cold               
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.
This is the first and the greatest of the `Street-cries':
see the introductory note to `Life and Song'.
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.
Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,     
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,      
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,    
Complain thou not, O heart; for these
Bank-in the current of the will
To uses, arts, and charities.
let us carry with us the strains of this poem, which interprets
Over the monstrous shambling sea,              
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,               
Over the Caliban sea,
Bring hither my brother Antonio, -- Man, --
My injurer:  night breaks the ban;
Brother, I pardon thee.
Into the woods my Master went,       
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,    
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.
of trees and plant-life; and, after quoting some lines
on the soothing and inspiring companionship of trees,
But to many others this short poem will express most wonderfully
For Lanier's other poems on Christ see `Introduction',
p. xxxvii f. [Part III].
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
Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling:
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
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,
(But would I could know, but would I could know,)
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,
That haply we know somewhat more than we know.
Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
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.
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?
.    .    .    .    .
Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,
Old chemist, rapt in alchemy,
Distilling silence, -- lo,
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
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
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, --
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:
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, --
Expectant is bending the blades
Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades, --
And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting,
Are beating                                               
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
Have a care, sweet Heaven!  'Tis Dawn.
Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled:
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.
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,
Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure
Of motion, -- not faster than dateless Olympian leisure
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
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:
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,
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.                                    
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,
Labor, at leisure, in art, -- till yonder beside thee
and the hand which first pencilled its lines had not strength
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
* Among others I may cite the following passages:
"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,"
"But look the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill,"
"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,"
"Full many a glorious morning have I seen" etc.,
`Sonnet xxxiii'.
with this feeling of brotherhood for all created things."
"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."
Florida:  Its Scenery, Climate, and History.  12mo, pp. 336.
The Science of English Verse.  Crown 8vo, pp. xv, 315.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.
The Boy's Percy.  Being Old Ballads of War, Adventure, and Love,
from Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
Poems of Sidney Lanier, Edited by his Wife, with a Memorial
by William Hayes Ward.  New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884,
`Macon Daily Telegraph' of April 27, 1870, and reprinted in same
Review of Hayne's Poems:  `Southern Magazine', 1874.
Criticism of Rubinstein's Ocean Symphony:  `The Sun' (Baltimore),
Letter to Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, a banker of New York,
Two Letters to Bayard Taylor:  Taylor (M. H.) and Scudder's
The Legend of St. Leonor, a Fragment from an Unfinished Lecture
The Happy Soul's Address to the Dead Body, from Shakespeare
A Great Man Wanted, Extract from Letter of November 15, 1874,
What I Know about Flowers, a S. S. address delivered about 1868,
Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Gibson Peacock, from January 26, 1875,
Songs Against Death (five stanzas, the last fragmentary):
To "The White Flower" of The English Novel, written in 1878,
The Lord's Romance of Time, an Outline:  `Sunday-school Times'
an extract from `The Symphony', and `The Crystal'.
* Unless the title of the criticism is given, the article treats
Lanier's life and works in general.  Except in special cases
Blackman, O.:  see `Lawrence' under `V'.
Buck, Dudley:  Music to Lanier's `Centennial Cantata'.
Buck, Dudley:  `Sunset', music to Lanier's `Evening Song'.
Burton, Richard E.:  `Lanier Bibliography', in Gilman's
Coleman, C. W., Jr.:  `Homes of Some Southern Authors IV.',
Kent, C. W.:  `A Study of Lanier's Poems, in Publications of
Lawrence, W. M.:  see under `V'.
Newell, A. C.:  `Lanier's Life at Oglethorpe College',
has a short Sketch of Lanier.
has a short sketch of Lanier.
Spann, Minnie:  `Sidney Lanier's Youth, S. L.'s Manhood',
Taylor (M. H.) and Scudder's `Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor',
Thayer, W. R. (ed.):  `Letters of Sidney Lanier' [to Mr. and Mrs.
`Owl against Robin'.
Wilson (J. G.) and Fiske (J.), eds.:  `Appleton's Cyclopaedia
has brief sketches of S. and C. Lanier.
Burton, Richard E.:  Gilman's `Memorial', p. 12.
Lanier, Clifford:  `Acknowledgment, To all who love S. L.',