Chapter II: Part 2

All of these phenomena are illustrated in Lanier's `Song of the Chattahoochee', which has often been compared to Tennyson's `The Brook', and which alone proves the author a master in versification. To be sure, Lanier occasionally gives us an improper rhyme, as `thwart: heart',*2* etc., but so does every poet. No doubt, too, his love of music sometimes led him, not "to strain for form effects", but to indulge too much therein, or, in the words of Mr. Stedman, "to essay in language feats that only the gamut can render possible."*3* But, as Professor Kent admirably puts it, "Lanier was a poet as well as an artist, and if at times his artistic temperament seemed to eclipse his poetic thought, grant that to the poet mind the very manner of expression may indicate the thought that lies beneath, while to the duller ear the thought must come in completed form."*4* Moreover, as we shall see later, this extraordinary musical endowment gave Lanier a unique position among English poets.

-- *1* See `The Science of English Verse', p. 306 ff. *2* `In the Foam', ll. 6, 8. See, too, Kent's `Study of Lanier's Poems', which gives an exhaustive treatment of Lanier's versification. *3* Stedman's `Poets of America', p. 449. *4* `Kent', p. 60. --

After what has been said the qualities of style may be briefly handled. As we have already seen, Lanier sometimes fails in clearness, or, more precisely, in simplicity. This comes partly from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps, from Lanier's extraordinary musical endowment, but chiefly, I think, from over-luxuriance of imagination. But this occasional defect has been unduly exaggerated. Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares that Lanier is "never simple, never easy, never in one single lyric natural and spontaneous for more than one stanza," -- a statement so clearly hyperbolic as hardly to call for notice. As a matter of fact, Lanier has written numerous poems that offer little or no difficulty to the reader of average intelligence, as `Life and Song', `My Springs', `The Symphony', `The Mocking-Bird', `The Song of the Chattahoochee', `The Waving of the Corn', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', `A Ballad of Trees and the Master', etc. More than this, Lanier at times manifests the simplicity that is granted only to genius of the highest order: thus an English critic,*2* who by the way declares that Lanier's volume has more of genius than all the poems of Poe, or Longfellow, or Lowell (the humorous poems excepted), and who considers Lanier the most original of all American poets, and more original than any England has produced for the last thirty years, says that "nothing can be more perfect than --

`The whole sweet round
Of littles that large life compound,'"*3*

lines in `My Springs', and that "the touch of wonder in the last two lines,

`I marvel that God made you mine,
For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine,'*4*

is as simple and exquisite as any touch of tenderness in our literature." I frankly admit that several of Lanier's best poems, as `Corn', `The Marshes of Glynn', and `Sunrise', are not simple; but the same thing is true of Milton's `Paradise Lost' and of Browning's `The Ring and the Book', and yet this fact does not exclude these two works from the list of great poems. Mr. Gosse, however, declares that `Corn', `Sunrise', and `The Marshes of Glynn' "simulate poetic expression with extraordinary skill. But of the real thing, of the genuine traditional article, not a trace"! What do these poems show, then? Mr. Gosse answers: "I find a painful effort, a strain and rage, the most prominent qualities in everything he wrote;" which strikes me as the reverse of the facts. In one of his letters*5* to Judge Bleckley, Lanier wrote this sentence: "My head and my heart are both so full of poems which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache, purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." If, then, he committed an error (and I am far from considering him faultless), it was not that he beat and spurred on Pegasus, but that he failed to rein him in. Still, I repeat that I prefer the embarrassment of riches to the embarrassment of poverty. Finally, just as Milton tells us that the music of the spheres is not to be heard by the gross, unpurged ear, so I believe that many intelligent ears and eyes are at first too gross to hear and see what Lanier puts before them, whereas a bit of patient listening and looking reveals delights hitherto undreamed of.

-- *1* See `Bibliography'. *2* `The Spectator' (London); see `Bibliography'. *3* `My Springs', ll. 49-50. *4* `My Springs', ll. 55-56. *5* It is to be hoped that these letters may yet be published. I quote from one dated November 15, 1874. --

If not always simple, Lanier is often forcible in the extreme, as in `The Symphony', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', and `Sunrise'. Of course, it is open to any one to see in these poems the "rage" attributed to Lanier by Mr. Gosse, but I prefer to consider it divine wrath in all but the last, and in it wonder unutterable, which yet is so uttered that ears become eyes. I allude to the stanzas* describing the break of dawn and the rising of the sun.

-- * `Sunrise', ll. 86-152. --

Of the poet's marvelous euphony, `The Song of the Chattahoochee' speaks clearly enough. As we have seen in our treatment of versification, it is here a question not of too little but of too much. But, despite an occasional too great yielding to his passion for music, his extraordinary endowment in this direction gave Lanier a unique position among English poets. I quote again from Professor Kent:* "But if his sense of beauty made him a peer of our great poets, it was the heavenly gift of music that distinguished him from them. Milton, it is true, whom he most resembles in this respect, had a knowledge of music, but not the same passion for it. Milton's music was more a recreation, an accompaniment of reverie; Lanier's was a fiery zeal; a yearning love, a chosen and adequate form of expression of his soul's deepest feeling. Combined with this passion for music was his technical knowledge of the art, and these combined formed at once the foundation and the framework of his poetry. He seems literally to have sung his poems; they are essentially musical, tuneful, and melodious. Surcharged with music, he overflows in mellifluous numbers. Here, then, Lanier stands out differentiated in the choir of poets, and here we find that distinctive quality which is the very flavor of his writing."

-- * P. 62. --

While most of Lanier's poems are in a serious strain, several disclose no mean sense of humor. I refer to his dialect poems, such as `Jones's Private Argyment', `Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn', and `The Power of Prayer', especially the last, written in conjunction with his brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier.

There are passages in the poems no less pathetic than the poet's life. In discussing his love of nature we have seen that he was a pantheist in the best sense of the term. So delicate was his sensibility that we do not wonder when we hear him declaring,

"And I am one with all the kinsmen things
That e'er my Father fathered,"*

a saying as felicitous as the Roman's "I am a man, and, therefore, nothing human is stranger to me." The tenderness of the `Ballad of Trees and the Master' must touch all readers. Few passages are more pathetic, I think, than that, in `June Dreams in January', telling of the poet's struggle for bread and fame, while "his worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar, within the village whence she sent him forth, waiting all confident and proud and calm." And, if there occurs therein a plaintive tone, let us remember that it is the only time that he complained of his lot, and that here really he has more in mind his dearer self, his wife, and that calm succeeded to unrest just as it does in this passage:

"`Why can we poets dream us beauty, so,
But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I
Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June
Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul,
Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf
Out of this same chill matter, no, not one
For Mary, though she starved upon my breast?'
And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed,
And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er
The very edge of breaking, fain to fall,
God sent him sleep."**

-- * `A Florida Sunday', ll. 102-103. ** `June Dreams in January', ll. 68-78. --

V. Lanier's Theory of Poetry

It is now time to say a word about Lanier's theory of art, especially the art of poetry. His views upon the formal side of poetry have already been noticed in the consideration of his `Science of English Verse', and hence receive no further comment here.

That Lanier keenly appreciated the responsibility resting upon the artist, appears from `Individuality', where he tells us,

"Awful is art because 'tis free,"*1*

and,

"Each artist -- gift of terror! -- owns his will."*2*

But he accepts the responsibility reverently and confidently:

"I work in freedom wild,
But work, as plays a little child,
Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone."*3*

-- *1* `Individuality', l. 62. *2* `Individuality', l. 76. *3* `Individuality', ll. 89-91. --

Again, the province of poetry is pointed out, as in `Clover':

"The artist's market is the heart of man;
The artist's price, some little good of man;"*1*

and in `The Bee':

"Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?'
He beareth starry stuff about his wings
To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2*

In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime."

-- *1* `Clover', ll. 126-127. *2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42. *3* `Corn', l. 52 ff. --

But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place, he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal, a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers: "You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."* That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy, and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last, I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute, and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics in the University of Virginia thought considerable.**

-- * `Gates', p. 29. ** See `West', p. 23. --

In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art should be scientific. It was this that led him to write `The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, "But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are." In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"* and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, --

"For a good poet's made as well as born,
And such wert thou."

But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it."

-- * `The English Novel', p. 33. --

In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage: "Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty -- that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him; he is not yet the great artist."* By copious quotations Lanier then shows that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom, Goodness, and the like," and concludes thus: "And if this be true, cannot one say with authority to the young artist, -- whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused -- soul and body, one might say -- with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love -- that is, the love of all things in their proper relation -- unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not meddle with love; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; -- in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness, AND love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."**

--
* `The English Novel', p. 272 f.
** `The English Novel', p. 280. Of the numerous discussions of this thesis,
the student should consult at least those by Matthew Arnold
(`Preface' to his edition of `Wordsworth's Poems'),
John Ruskin (`Stones of Venice', vol. iii., chap. iv.),
and Victor Hugo (`William Shakespeare', Book VI.).
--

VI. Conclusion

Milton has somewhere said that in order to be a great poet one must himself be a true poem, a dictum none the less trustworthy because of its inapplicability to its author along with several other great poets. Now of all English poets, I know of none that came nearer being a true poem than did Lanier. He was as spotless as "the Lady of Christ's", and infinitely more lovable. Indeed, he seems to me to have realized the ideal of his own knightly Horn, who hopes that some day men will be "maids in purity".* I will not recall his gentle yet heroic life amid drawbacks almost unparalleled; for it is even sadder than it is beautiful. It is my deliberate judgment that, while, as the poet says in his `Life and Song', no singer has ever wholly lived his minstrelsy, Lanier came so near it that we may fairly say, in the closing lines of the poem,

"His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand."

And, for my part, I am as grateful for his noble private life as for his distinguished public work.

-- * `The Symphony', l. 302. --

And yet I will not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years, by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps, by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind, indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;* in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley; in the love of nature, to Wordsworth; and in spirituality, to Ruskin, the gist of whose teaching is that we are souls temporarily having bodies; to Milton, "God-gifted organ-voice of England"; and to Browning, "subtlest assertor of the soul in song". To be sure, Lanier's genius is not equal to that of any one of the poets mentioned, but I venture to believe that it is of the same order, and, therefore, deserving of lasting remembrance.

--
* Mr. Thayer puts it stronger: "As a master of melodious metre
only Tennyson, and he not often, has equalled Lanier." Mr. F. F. Browne,
Editor of `The Dial' (Chicago), compares the two poets in another aspect:
"`The Symphony' of Lanier may recall some parts of `Maud';
but the younger poet's treatment is as much his own
as the elder's is his own. The comparison of Lanier with Tennyson will,
indeed, only deepen the impression of his originality,
which is his most striking quality. It may be doubted
if any English poet of our time, except Tennyson, has cast his work
in an ampler mould, or wrought with more of freedom, or stamped his product
with the impress of a stronger personality. His thought, his stand-point,
his expression, his form, his treatment, are his alone; and through them all
he justifies his right to the title of poet."
--

Poems

Life and Song

If life were caught by a clarionet, [1] And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, And utter its heart in every deed,

Then would this breathing clarionet Type what the poet fain would be; For none o' the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,

Or clearly sung his true, true thought, Or utterly bodied forth his life, Or out of life and song has wrought [11] The perfect one of man and wife;

Or lived and sung, that Life and Song Might each express the other's all, Careless if life or art were long Since both were one, to stand or fall:

So that the wonder struck the crowd, Who shouted it about the land: `His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand!'

____ 1868.

Notes: Life and Song

`Life and Song' is the fifth of a series of seven poems published under the general heading of `Street-cries', with the two stanzas following as an introduction:

"Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street

"Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO:
Till all the ways are full of sound:
-- But still come rain, and sun, and snow,
And still the world goes round."

The remaining numbers of the series are: 1. `Remonstrance', given in this volume; 2. `The Ship of Earth'; 3. `How Love Looked for Hell'; 4. `Tyranny'; 6. `To Richard Wagner'; 7. `A Song of Love'.

I can think of no more helpful comment on the subject of our poem than this sentence from Milton's `Apology for Smectymnuus', already alluded to in the `Introduction' (p. liv [Part VI]): "And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy."

Lines 19-20. I have been pleased to discover that the application I have made of this poem, especially of these lines (see `Introduction', p. liv [Part VI]), is likewise made by most students of Lanier's life, and that Mrs. Lanier has chosen these two lines for inscription on the monument to be erected to his memory. On the reverse side of the stone, I may add, are to be put these words: "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God" (I John iv. 16).

Jones's Private Argyment

That air same Jones, which lived in Jones, [1] He had this pint about him: He'd swear with a hundred sighs and groans, That farmers MUST stop gittin' loans, And git along without 'em:

That bankers, warehousemen, and sich Was fatt'nin' on the planter, And Tennessy was rotten-rich A-raisin' meat and corn, all which Draw'd money to Atlanta:

And the only thing (says Jones) to do [11] Is, eat no meat that's boughten: BUT TEAR UP EVERY I, O, U, AND PLANT ALL CORN AND SWEAR FOR TRUE TO QUIT A-RAISIN' COTTON!

Thus spouted Jones (whar folks could hear, -- At Court and other gatherin's), And thus kep' spoutin' many a year, Proclaimin' loudly far and near Sich fiddlesticks and blatherin's.

But, one all-fired sweatin' day, [21] It happened I was hoein' My lower corn-field, which it lay 'Longside the road that runs my way Whar I can see what's goin'.

And a'ter twelve o'clock had come I felt a kinder faggin', And laid myself un'neath a plum To let my dinner settle sum, When 'long come Jones's waggin,

And Jones was settin' in it, SO: [31] A-readin' of a paper. His mules was goin' powerful slow, Fur he had tied the lines onto The staple of the scraper.

The mules they stopped about a rod From me, and went to feedin' 'Longside the road, upon the sod, But Jones (which he had tuck a tod) Not knowin', kept a-readin'.

And presently says he: "Hit's true; [41] That Clisby's head is level. Thar's one thing farmers all must do, To keep themselves from goin' tew Bankruptcy and the devil!

"More corn! more corn! MUST plant less ground, And MUSTN'T eat what's boughten! Next year they'll do it: reasonin's sound: (And, cotton will fetch 'bout a dollar a pound), THARFORE, I'LL plant ALL cotton!"

____ Macon, Ga., 1870.

Notes: Jones's Private Argyment

The themes of this poem, the relative claims of corn and cotton upon the attention of the farmer and the disastrous results of speculation, are treated indirectly in `Thar's More in the Man Than Thar Is in the Land', and directly and with consummate art in `Corn'.

1. "That air same Jones" appears in `Thar's More', etc., written in 1869, in which we are told:

"And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans,
And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones,
And his hogs was flat as his corn-bread pones,
And he had 'bout a thousand acres o' land."

He sells his farm to Brown at a dollar and fifty cents an acre and goes to Texas. Brown improves the farm, and, after five years, is sitting down to a big dinner when Jones is discovered standing out by the fence, without wagon or mules, "fur he had left Texas afoot and cum to Georgy to see if he couldn't git some employment." Brown invites Jones in to dinner, but cannot refrain from the inference-drawing that names the poem. -- "Which lived in Jones," "which Jones is a county of red hills and stones" (`Thar's More', etc.) in central Georgia.

13. Readers of `David Copperfield' will recall Micawber's frequent use of `I-O-U-'s'.

47. "Clisby's head" refers to Mr. Joseph Clisby, then editor of the Macon (Ga.) `Telegraph and Messenger', who had written editorials favoring the planting of more corn.

Corn

To-day the woods are trembling through and through [1] With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong [11] Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy of burgeoning. Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Forth venture odors of more quality And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry, Long muscadines Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines, And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines. I pray with mosses, ferns, and flowers shy [21] That hide like gentle nuns from human eye To lift adoring perfumes to the sky. I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green Dying to silent hints of kisses keen As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen. I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone. Dreaming of gods, men, nuns, and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean [31] To join their radiant amplitudes of green I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass Up from the matted miracles of grass Into yon veined complex of space Where sky and leafage interlace So close, the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence [41] The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, Of inward dignities And large benignities and insights wise, Graces and modest majesties. Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed. [51]

Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme -- Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; [61] Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements. Drawn to high plans, Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, Yet ever piercest downward in the mould And keepest hold [71] Upon the reverend and steadfast earth That gave thee birth; Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave, Serene and brave, With unremitting breath Inhaling life from death, Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, Thyself thy monument.

As poets should, Thou hast built up thy hardihood [81] With universal food, Drawn in select proportion fair From honest mould and vagabond air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones [91] And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, [101] The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by blood to high and low, Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, Richly expending thy much-bruised heart In equal care to nourish lord in hall Or beast in stall: Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all.

O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot [111] Where thou wast born, that still repinest not -- Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! -- Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides. [121] Look, thou substantial spirit of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die. Upon that generous-rounding side, [131] With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury -- A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. [141] Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran; Passed with a mournful anxious face Into the banker's inner place; [151] Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass; With many an `oh' and `if' and `but alas' Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood. At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, He issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store Till his small borrowings will yield no more. [161] Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind. In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail -- In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, [171] With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, And all his best-of-life the easy prey Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. [181] Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious West, Unmourned, unblest.

Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer -- King, that no subject man nor beast may own, Discrowned, undaughtered and alone -- Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, And bring thee back into thy monarch state [191] And majesty immaculate. Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn Visions of golden treasuries of corn -- Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart That manfully shall take thy part, And tend thee, And defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art.

____ Sunnyside, Ga., August, 1874.

Notes: Corn

As stated elsewhere (`Introduction', p. xvii [Part I]), `Corn' was the first of Lanier's poems to attract general attention; for this reason as well as for its absolute merit the poem deserves careful study.

In the first of his letters to the Hon. Logan E. Bleckley, Chief-justice of Georgia, dated October 9, 1874, Lanier tells us how he came to write `Corn': "I enclose MS. of a poem in which I have endeavored to carry some very prosaic matters up to a loftier plane. I have been struck with alarm in seeing the numbers of deserted old homesteads and gullied hills in the older counties of Georgia: and, though they are dreadfully commonplace, I have thought they are surely mournful enough to be poetic."

In the introductory note to `Jones's Private Argyment' I have incidentally stated the theme of `Corn'. Instead of adding a more detailed statement of my own here, I give Judge Bleckley's analysis of the poem, which occurs in his reply to the above-mentioned letter. After giving various minute criticism (for Lanier had requested his unreserved judgment), Judge Bleckley continues: "Now, for the general impression which your Ode has made upon me. It presents four pictures; three of them landscapes and one a portrait. You paint the woods, a corn-field, and a worn-out hill. These are your landscapes. And your portrait is the likeness of an anxious, unthrifty cotton-planter who always spends his crop before he has made it, borrows on heavy interest to carry himself over from year to year, wears out his land, meets at last with utter ruin, and migrates to the West. Your second landscape is turned into a vegetable person, and you give its portrait with many touches of marvel and mystery in vegetable life. Your third landscape takes for an instant the form and tragic state of King Lear; you thus make it seize on our sympathies as if it were a real person, and you then restore it to the inanimate, and contemplate its possible beneficence in the distant future."

A comparison of the first draft of `Corn', as sent Judge Bleckley, with the final form shows that Lanier made many minute changes in the poem, especially in the earlier part. Still this earlier draft agrees substantially with the later, and was so fine in conception and execution as to call forth this commendation of Judge Bleckley, which, despite the shortcomings of `Corn', may with greater justice be applied to the poem in its present form: "As an artist you seem to be Italian in the first two pictures, and Dutch or Flemish in the latter two. In your Italian vein you paint with the utmost delicacy and finish. The drawing is scrupulously correct and the color soft and harmonious. When you paint in Dutch or Flemish you are clear and strong, but sometimes hard. There is less idealization and more of the realistic element -- your SOLIDS predominate over your fluids."

As already stated, Lanier has two other poems that indirectly treat the theme of `Corn', namely, `Thar's More in the Man' and `Jones's Private Argyment'. Moreover, he has `The Waving of the Corn', which, though charming, is neither so elaborate nor artistic as `Corn'.

Among poems on corn by other writers may be mentioned the following:

1. Whittier's `The Corn-song' (before 1872), a poem of praise and thanksgiving at the end of `The Huskers', which tells of the gathering of the corn and of the "corn-husking", known in the South as the "corn-shucking".

2. Woolson's (Constance F.) `Corn Fields', a description of Ohio fields, in `Harper's Monthly', 45, 444, Aug., 1872.

3. Thompson's (Maurice) `Dropping Corn' (1877), a dainty love lyric, in `Poems' (Boston, 1892), p. 78.

4. Cromwell's (S. C.) `Corn-shucking Song', a dialect poem, in `Harper', 69, 807, Oct., 1884.

5. Coleman's (C. W.) `Corn', in `The Atlantic Monthly', 70, 228, Aug., 1892, which, since it consists of but four lines and is more like Lanier's poem than are the others, may be quoted:

"Drawn up in serried ranks across the fields
That, as we gaze, seem ever to increase,
With tasseled flags and sun-emblazoned shields,
The glorious army of earth's perfect peace."

6. Hayne's (W. H.) `Amid the Corn', a charming account of the denizens of the corn-fields, in his `Sylvan Lyrics' (New York, 1893), p. 12.

7. Dumas's (W. T.) `Corn-shucking' and `The Last Ear of Corn', both life-like pictures of plantation life, in his `The Golden Day and Miscellaneous Poems' (Phila., 1893).

Other interesting articles are: `Mondamin, or the Origin of Indian Corn', in `The Southern Literary Messenger' (Richmond, Va.), 29, 12-13, July, 1859; `A Georgia Corn-shucking', by D. C. Barrow, Jr., in `The Century Magazine' (New York), 2, 873-878, Oct., 1882; and `Old American Customs: A Corn-party', an account of a corn-husking in New York, in `The Saturday Review' (London), 66, 237-238, Aug. 25, 1888.

4-9. See `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III], and compare `The Symphony', ll. 183-190.

18. Paul Hamilton Hayne, whose love of nature rivals Lanier's, has an interesting poem entitled `Muscadines' (`Poems', Boston, 1882, pp. 222-224).

21. Compare `The Symphony', l. 117 ff.

57. See `Introduction', p. l [Part V].

125. In her introductory note to `Corn' Mrs. Lanier thus localizes the poem: "His `fieldward-faring eyes took harvest' `among the stately corn-ranks,' in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon. It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, whose wholesome breath, all unobstructed, here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory, and the muscadine: a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier as `that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses calm themselves into pleasant hills before dying quite away into the sea-board levels' -- where `a man can find such temperances of heaven and earth -- enough of struggle with nature to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle -- that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circumstances for man's life need not be sought.'"

140. See `Jason' in any Dictionary of Mythology.*

-- * Gayley's `The Classic Myths in English Literature' (Boston, Ginn & Co.) is an excellent book. --

157. `Dives': See Appendix to Webster's `International Dictionary'.

168. `Future Sale' -- sale for future delivery.

185-6. See Shakespeare's `King Lear'.

My Springs

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know [1] Two springs that with unbroken flow Forever pour their lucent streams Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, -- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, -- Thus heaven and earth together vie [11] Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love Is hid by storms that rage above, I gaze in my two springs and see Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress Of grief hath died in bitterness, I gaze in my two springs and see A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and Hope, [21] In darkness bounden, feebly grope, I gaze in my two springs and see A Light that sets my captives free.

Always, when Art on perverse wing Flies where I cannot hear him sing, I gaze in my two springs and see A charm that brings him back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see [31] Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, -- My springs from out whose shining gray Issue the sweet celestial streams That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and passion-pure And gray and wise and honor-sure; Soft as a dying violet-breath Yet calmly unafraid of death;

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, [41] With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves, And home-loves and high glory-loves And science-loves and story-loves,

And loves for all that God and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace

And diamonds and the whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound, And loves for God and God's bare truth, [51] And loves for Magdalen and Ruth,

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, -- I marvel that God made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!

____ Baltimore, 1874.

Notes: My Springs

For my appreciation of this tribute to the poet's wife see `Introduction', p. xxxv [Part III]. Mr. Lanier's estimate is given in a letter of March, 1874, quoted in Mrs. Lanier's introductory note: "Of course, since I have written it to print I cannot make it such as _I_ desire in artistic design: for the forms of to-day require a certain trim smugness and clean-shaven propriety in the face and dress of a poem, and I must win a hearing by conforming in some degree to these tyrannies, with a view to overturning them in the future. Written so, it is not nearly so beautiful as I would have it; and I therefore have another still in my heart, which I will some day write for myself."

Other tributes to his wife are: `In Absence', `Acknowledgment', `Laus Mariae', `Special Pleading', `Evening Song', `Thou and I', `One in Two', and `Two in One'; while she is referred to in `The Hard Times in Elfland' and `June Dreams in January'.

It will be interesting to compare `My Springs' with other poems on the eyes. Among the most noteworthy* may be cited Shakespeare's

"And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn;"

Lodge's

"Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
Resembling heaven by every wink;
The Gods do fear whenas they glow,
And I do tremble when I think,
Heigh ho, would she were mine!"

Jonson's

"Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine," etc.;

Herrick's

"Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies;"

Thomas Stanley's

"Oh turn away those cruel eyes,
The stars of my undoing;
Or death in such a bright disguise
May tempt a second wooing;"

Byron's

"She walks in beauty, like the night,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies;"

H. Coleridge's

"She is not fair to outward view,
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me.
O then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.

"But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are;"

and Wordsworth's

"Her eyes are stars of twilight fair."

-- * These may be found either in Gosse's `English Lyrics' (D. Appleton & Co., New York) or in Palgrave's `Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics' (Macmillan & Co., New York). --

49-50. See `Introduction', p. xlv [Part IV].

52. There is in early English literature a most interesting play entitled `Mary Magdalene': see Pollard's `English Miracle Plays' (New York), where extracts are given.

55-56. See `Introduction', p. xlvi [Part IV].

The Symphony

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! [1] The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. "Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale? Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope: When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh [11] Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, All the mightier strings assembling Ranged them on the violins' side As when the bridegroom leads the bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? Look up the land, look down the land, The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand [21] Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore: They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside leagues of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody. `Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), `In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, [31] We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? -- The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? "Swinehood hath no remedy" Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. But who said once, in the lordly tone, [41] "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the Throne?" Hath God said so? But Trade saith "No": And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go: There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. Move out, if you think you're underpaid. The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; Trade is trade."'" Thereat this passionate protesting [51] Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: "And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be! Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"? Then `Trade is trade' but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly. If business is battle, name it so: [61] War-crimes less will shame it so, And widows less will blame it so. Alas, for the poor to have some part In yon sweet living lands of Art, Makes problem not for head, but heart. Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."

And then, as when from words that seem but rude We pass to silent pain that sits abrood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, [71] So sank the strings to gentle throbbing Of long chords change-marked with sobbing -- Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go [81] To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side [91] And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, [101] Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why [111] Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, [121] And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; [131] For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise [141] Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, [151] Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- [161] Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, -- These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent. I heard, when `ALL FOR LOVE' the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, `Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.' Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, [171] Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice `Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: [181] `ALL MEN ARE NEIGHBORS,' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! [191] That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside hills of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody! Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file [201] A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile. Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? And hast thou nothing but a head? I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, And into sudden silence fled, Like as a blush that while 'tis red Dies to a still, still white instead.