Chapter III: Part 3

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, [211] Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet. "O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, "I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. [221] For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! -- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? [231] So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, `Here, you Lady, if you'll sell I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet [241] In humble manliness should cry, `O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.' Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! Base love good women to base loving drives. If men loved larger, larger were our lives; [251] And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives."

There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn. "Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady. For God shall right thy grievous wrong, And man shall sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, [261] Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Lady. Where's he that craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave [271] To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold [281] At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet -- Blind to lips kiss-wise set -- Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, [291] Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer may revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Lady? Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, `We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see [301] Men maids in purity,' Fair Lady? Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes -- The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Lady? Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, [311] I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Lady, I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might. Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Lady. I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee -- ah me! and pray [321] To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Lady." Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away Into the thick of the melodious fray.

And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled. "Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led! [331] Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- `Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'" Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise bassoons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, [341] The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest.

"Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, [351] And double erasings Of chords most fit. Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest. To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true -- Love alone can do. And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, [361] And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying.

"And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word."

____ Baltimore, 1875.

Notes: The Symphony

The `Introduction' (pp. xxviii f., xxxiii ff. [Part III], xlvii [Part IV]) gives, besides the plan of `The Symphony', a detailed statement of its two themes, -- the evils of the trade-spirit in the commercial and social world and the need in each of the love-spirit. These questions preyed on the poet's mind and were to be treated at length in `The Jacquerie' also, which he expected to make his great work, but which he was unable to complete. This he tells us in a noble passage to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of November 15, 1874. After deploring the lack of time for literary labor (see quotation in `Introduction', p. xlvi [Part IV]), he continues: "I manage to get a little time tho' to work on what is to be my first `magnum opus', a long poem, founded on that strange uprising in the middle of the fourteenth century in France, called `The Jacquerie'. It was the first time that the big hungers of `the People' appear in our modern civilization; and it is full of significance. The peasants learned from the merchant potentates of Flanders that a man who could not be a lord by birth, might be one by wealth; and so Trade arose, and overthrew Chivalry. Trade has now had possession of the civilized world for four hundred years: it controls all things, it interprets the Bible, it guides our national and almost all our individual life with its maxims; and its oppressions upon the moral existence of man have come to be ten thousand times more grievous than the worst tyrannies of the Feudal System ever were. Thus in the reversals of time, it is NOW the GENTLEMAN who must rise and overthrow Trade. That chivalry which every man has, in some degree, in his heart; which does not depend upon birth, but which is a revelation from God of justice, of fair dealing, of scorn of mean advantages; which contemns the selling of stock which one KNOWS is going to fall, to a man who BELIEVES it is going to rise, as much as it would contemn any other form of rascality or of injustice or of meanness; -- it is this which must in these latter days organize its insurrections and burn up every one of the cunning moral castles from which Trade sends out its forays upon the conscience of modern society. -- This is about the plan which is to run through my book: though I conceal it under the form of a pure novel."

Mr. F. F. Browne is doubtless right in saying that `The Symphony' recalls parts of Tennyson's `Maud', but the closest congeners of `The Symphony' in English are, I think, Langland's `Piers The Plowman' in poetry and Ruskin's `Unto This Last' in prose. Widely as these two works differ from `The Symphony' in form, they are one with it in purpose and in spirit. All three voice the outcry of the poor against the hardness of their lot and their longing for a larger life; all three show that the only hope of relief lies in a broader and deeper love for humanity. Analogues to individual verses of `The Symphony' are cited below.

1-2. See `Introduction', p. xxviii [Part III].

31-61. See `Introduction', p. xxix [Part III].

42-43. See St. Matthew 4:4.

55-60. It is precisely this evil that Ruskin has in mind, I take it, when he condemns the commercial text, "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," and when he declares that "Competition is the law of death" (`Unto This Last', pp. 40, 59).

117. Compare `Corn', l. 21 ff.

161. For `lotos-sleeps' see Tennyson's `The Lotos-eaters', which almost lulls one to sleep, and `The Odyssey' ix. 80-104.

178. See St. Matthew 19:19.

182. See St. Luke 10:29, ff.

183-190. Compare `Corn', ll. 4-9, and see `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III].

232-248. See `Introduction', p. xxxiv f., and Peacock's `Lady Clarinda's Song' (Gosse's `English Lyrics').

294-298. See `Tiger-lilies', p. 49, and `Betrayal' in Lanier's complete `Poems', p. 213. These lines of `The Symphony' show clearly that Lanier did not believe that God made one law for man and another for woman, or that one very grievous sin should forever blight a woman's life. What Christ himself thought is clear from St. Luke 7:36-50, and St. John 8:1-11.

302. See `Introduction', p. liv [Part VI].

326. For a full account of the `hautboy' and other musical instruments mentioned in the poem see Lanier's `The Orchestra of To-day', cited in the `Bibliography'.

359. See `Introduction', p. xxxvi [Part III]. Compare 1 Corinthians 13; Drummond's `The Greatest Thing in the World'; William Morris's `Love Is Enough'; `Aurora Leigh', Book ix.:

"Art is much, but Love is more!
O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more!
Art symbolizes Heaven, but Love is God
And makes Heaven;"

and Langland's `Piers the Plowman' (ed. by Skeat, i. 202-3):

"Love is leche of lyf and nexte oure Lorde selve,
And also the graith gate that goth into hevene."*

-- * The two lines may be translated: "Love is the physician of life and next to our Lord himself; moreover, it is the way that goes straight to Heaven." --

368. See `Introduction', p. xxxii [Part III].

The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama

By Sidney and Clifford Lanier

You, Dinah! Come and set me whar de ribber-roads does meet. [1] De Lord, HE made dese black-jack roots to twis' into a seat. Umph dar! De Lord have mussy on dis blin' old nigger's feet.

It 'pear to me dis mornin' I kin smell de fust o' June. I 'clar', I b'lieve dat mockin'-bird could play de fiddle soon! Dem yonder town-bells sounds like dey was ringin' in de moon.

Well, ef dis nigger IS been blind for fo'ty year or mo', Dese ears, DEY sees de world, like, th'u' de cracks dat's in de do'. For de Lord has built dis body wid de windows 'hind and 'fo'.

I know my front ones IS stopped up, and things is sort o' dim, But den, th'u' DEM, temptation's rain won't leak in on ole Jim! [11] De back ones show me earth enough, aldo' dey's mons'ous slim.

And as for Hebben, -- bless de Lord, and praise His holy name -- DAT shines in all de co'ners of dis cabin jes' de same As ef dat cabin hadn't nar' a plank upon de frame!

Who CALL me? Listen down de ribber, Dinah! Don't you hyar Somebody holl'in' "HOO, JIM, HOO?" My Sarah died las' y'ar; IS dat black angel done come back to call ole Jim f'om hyar?

My stars, dat cain't be Sarah, shuh! Jes' listen, Dinah, NOW! What KIN be comin' up dat bend, a-makin' sich a row? Fus' bellerin' like a pawin' bull, den squealin' like a sow? [21]

De Lord 'a' mussy sakes alive, jes' hear, -- ker-woof, ker-woof -- De Debble's comin' round dat bend, he's comin' shuh enuff, A-splashin' up de water wid his tail and wid his hoof!

I'se pow'ful skeered; but neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a gwine to pray.

O hebbenly Marster, what thou willest, dat mus' be jes' so, And ef Thou hast bespoke de word, some nigger's bound to go. Den, Lord, please take ole Jim, and lef young Dinah hyar below!

'Scuse Dinah, 'scuse her, Marster; for she's sich a little chile, [31] She hardly jes' begin to scramble up de homeyard stile, But dis ole traveller's feet been tired dis many a many a mile.

I'se wufless as de rotten pole of las' year's fodder-stack. De rheumatiz done bit my bones; you hear 'em crack and crack? I cain'st sit down 'dout gruntin' like 'twas breakin' o' my back.

What use de wheel, when hub and spokes is warped and split, and rotten? What use dis dried-up cotton-stalk, when Life done picked my cotton? I'se like a word dat somebody said, and den done been forgotten.

But, Dinah! Shuh dat gal jes' like dis little hick'ry tree, De sap's jes' risin' in her; she do grow owdaciouslee -- [41] Lord, ef you's clarin' de underbrush, don't cut her down, cut me!

I would not proud persume -- but I'll boldly make reques'; Sence Jacob had dat wrastlin'-match, I, too, gwine do my bes'; When Jacob got all underholt, de Lord he answered Yes!

And what for waste de vittles, now, and th'ow away de bread, Jes' for to strength dese idle hands to scratch dis ole bald head? T'ink of de 'conomy, Marster, ef dis ole Jim was dead!

Stop; -- ef I don't believe de Debble's gone on up de stream! Jes' now he squealed down dar; -- hush; dat's a mighty weakly scream! Yas, sir, he's gone, he's gone; -- he snort way off, like in a dream! [51]

O glory hallelujah to de Lord dat reigns on high! De Debble's fai'ly skeered to def, he done gone flyin' by; I know'd he couldn't stand dat pra'r, I felt my Marster nigh!

You, Dinah; ain't you 'shamed, now, dat you didn' trust to grace? I heerd you thrashin' th'u' de bushes when he showed his face! You fool, you think de Debble couldn't beat YOU in a race?

I tell you, Dinah, jes' as shuh as you is standin' dar, When folks starts prayin', answer-angels drops down th'u' de a'r. YAS, DINAH, WHAR 'OULD YOU BE NOW, JES' 'CEPTIN' FUR DAT PRA'R?

____ Baltimore, 1875.

Notes: The Power of Prayer; or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama

As the title-page shows, `The Power of Prayer' is the joint production of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The latter gentleman informs me that once he read a newspaper scrap of about ten lines stating that a Negro on first seeing a steamboat coming down the river was greatly frightened. Mr. Lanier then wrote out in metrical form the plot of `The Power of Prayer', substantially as we now have it, and sent it to his brother Sidney, who polished it up and published it under their joint names. Mr. Clifford Lanier had not seen the piece mentioned in the next paragraph, nor had his brother; but on being shown the piece, the former was of the opinion that his newspaper clipping must have been based on the work to which I turn, as it had already appeared and the incidents were so much alike.

In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873) by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, there is a piece, `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer', so similar to `The Power of Prayer' that I quote it almost entire. Uncle Dan'l (a Negro), his wife, his young mistress, and his two young masters were sitting on a log by the Mississippi River one moonlight night a-talking. "Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: `Chil'en, dah's sumfin a comin'!'

"All crowded close together and every heart beat faster. Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.

"A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torch-light procession.

"`What is it? Oh! what is it, Uncle Dan'l?'

"With deep solemnity the answer came:

"`It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!'

"It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications.

"`O Lord, we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de bad place, but, good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready -- let dese po' chil'en hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole niggah if you's got to hab somebody. -- Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't know whah you's a gwine to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', we know by de way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwine to ketch it. But, good Lord, dese chil'en don't 'blong heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin'-kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sich little chil'en as dese is when dey's so many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. O Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord, de ole ----'

"The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness and shouted (but rather feebly):

"`Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!'

"There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious reconnoissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough `The Lord' was just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked, the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and presently ceased altogether.

"`H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah. Dis chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!'"

There follows a discussion as to whether or not the prayer caused the apparition to go by, of which of course Uncle Dan'l has no doubt. The apparition reappears and Uncle Dan'l betakes himself to prayer again, this time a long way off.

I wrote the authors of `The Gilded Age' and asked the source of `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer'. Mr. Clemens kindly replied that he is the author of the piece, and that it is pure fiction without either history or tradition back of it.

A comparison of the two stories shows some differences. The scene in the one case is the Alabama River, in the other the Mississippi. Moreover, the PERSONNEL is different. The Negro man in Twain's story is about forty, in Lanier's he is old and has been blind for forty years. Another difference Mr. Sidney Lanier points out to his wife in his letter of October 1, 1874: "Cliff's and my `Power of Prayer' will come out in the Scribner's; probably in the `Etchings' at the end of the Magazine. I wrote thee what Dr. Holland said anent its resemblance to something of Mark Twain's in plot. Day before yesterday I called and asked Dr. Holland what work of Mark Twain's he referred to. `Well,' said he, `I know nothing about it myself: I read the poem to a friend, and he suggested that the plot was like something of Mark Twain's. But yesterday I read him your note, and he then recollected that in Twain's version it is God Almighty that is coming up the bend. In yours it is the Devil: -- which certainly makes a little difference!' and here he broke into a great laugh. `Yes,' I rejoined, `a difference toto coelo,' whereat he laughed again, and told me he had already ordered a check to be sent me for the poem."

Mr. Clifford Lanier was born at Griffin, Ga., April 24, 1844, entered business in Montgomery, Ala., at fourteen, subsequently attended college for a year and a half, and in May, 1862, joined his brother in the Confederate Army. His soldier life has been detailed in connection with that of the poet. In October, 1864, Mr. Clifford Lanier was assigned as signal officer to the blockade-runner `Talisman', which, after two successful runs to the Bermuda Islands, was wrecked in December, 1864. He escaped, however, and surrendered to the Federal authorities at the end of April, 1865. He has been successively lawyer, hotel manager, and superintendent of schools in Montgomery, Ala. For several years past he has been a director of the Bank of Montgomery and other corporations. All the while, however, he has been deeply interested in literature and has written some graceful sketches and poems, among which may be mentioned the following: `Thorn-fruit' (1867), `Love and Loyalty at War' (1893), `Biding Tryst' (1894), prose; `Greatest of These is Love', `The American Philomel', `Keats and Fanny B----', `The Spirit of Art', `Antinous to Hadrian', `Time', `Tireless', `Tramp' (in Stedman and Hutchinson's `Library of American Literature'), `Love and Life', `Edgar Allan Poe', etc. As stated in the `Introduction', the Chautauquans of 1898 have named themselves "The Laniers" in honor of Messrs. Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The motto of the class is the first line of Mr. Clifford Lanier's `Transformation' (`Sunday-school Times', Phila., June 30, 1894):

"The humblest life that lives may be divine."

8. The complete `Poems' has `the' before `world', but Mrs. Lanier thinks the poet must have used `de' here as elsewhere.

Rose-morals

I. -- Red

Would that my songs might be [1]
What roses make by day and night --
Distillments of my clod of misery
Into delight.

Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast
As yon red rose, and dare the day,
All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
Say yea -- say yea!

Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye;
The wind is up; so; drift away.
That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, [11]
I strive, I pray.

II. -- White

Soul, get thee to the heart
Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there --
There breathe the meditations of thine art
Suffused with prayer.

Of spirit grave yet light,
How fervent fragrances uprise
Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white
Virginities!

Mulched with unsavory death, [21]
Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath,
Thy work, thy fate.

____ Baltimore, 1875.

Notes: Rose-morals

Rose-morals in English literature probably begin with Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century. At any rate, in the eighteenth chapter of his `Voyage and Travels' he professes to tell us the origin of red and white roses. A fair maid had been unjustly accused of wrong-doing and doomed to die by fire. "And as the woode began to brenne (burn) about hir, she made hir prayer to our Lorde as she was not gyltie of that thing, that he would helpe hir that it might be knowne to all men. And whan (when) she had thus sayde, she entered the fyre and anone the fyre went out, and those braunches that were brenninge (burning) became red Roses and those braunches that were not kindled became white Rosiers (rose bushes) full of white roses, and those were the fyrst roses and rosyers that any man sawe, and so was the mayden saved through the grace of God."

Thomas Carew has several rose-moralities, as `The True Beauty', beginning "He that loves a rosy cheek," and his exquisite `Red and White Roses':

"Read in these roses the sad story
Of my hard fate and your own glory:
In the white you may discover
The paleness of a fainting lover;
In the red, the flames still feeding
On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding.
The white will tell you how I languish,
And the red express my anguish:
The white my innocence displaying,
The red my martyrdom betraying.
The frowns that on your brow resided
Have those roses thus divided;
Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather,
And then they both shall grow together."*

-- * See Saintsbury's `Elizabethan Literature' (Macmillan & Co., New York, 1887), p. 363. --

Rollicking Robert Herrick, too, draws his morals, now advising the virgins to make much of time, as in his `Gather ye rose-buds while ye may', now preaching a rarely pathetic sermon, as in `To Blossoms':

"Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past,
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.

"What, were ye born to be
An hour or half's delight,
And so to bid good-night?
'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.

"But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave:
And after they have shown their pride
Like you, awhile, they glide
Into the grave."*

-- * `Palgrave', p. 89. --

Much like this last piece in import, and scarcely inferior to it in execution, is `My life is like the summer rose' of Richard Henry Wilde, which is familiar to every one.

Paul Hamilton Hayne's `The Red and the White Rose' (`Poems', pp. 231-232) is an interesting dialogue, which the author concludes by making the former an "earthly queen" and the latter a "heaven-bound votaress".

Mrs. Browning's `A Lay of the Early Rose' shows that we are not to strive "for the dole of praise."

To ----, with a Rose

I asked my heart to say [1]
Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay
Upon my Lady's natal day.

Then said my heart to me:
`Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee
What fits thy Love most lovingly.'

This gift that learning shows;
For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes,
I send a rose unto a Rose.

____ Philadelphia, 1876.

Notes: To ----, with a Rose

This poem was sent to Mrs. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia, who was one of Mr. Lanier's kindest and most appreciative friends. The poet's letters to Mr. and Mrs. Peacock have recently been published in `The Atlantic' (see `Thayer' in `Bibliography').

Of the numerous rose-compliments in English I can here specify but a few. One of the prettiest is that by Henry Constable (`Saintsbury', p. 113):

"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame."

Carew's compliment is hardly equal to his morals (`Gosse', p. 101):

"Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep."

Few better things have been written than this, the second stanza of Jonson's `Drink to me only with thine eyes' (`Gosse', p. 80):

"I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon did'st only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee."*

Even more felicitous, perhaps, is Waller's `Go, lovely rose!' which is at once a compliment and a moral (`Gosse', p. 134):

"Go, lovely rose
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

"Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

"Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

"Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wond'rous sweet and fair."

Browning's `Women and Roses' should also be mentioned, and Mrs. Browning's translation of Sappho's lovely `Song of the Rose'.

-- * The fact that Jonson here translates a prose love-letter of Philostratus, the Greek sophist, may detract from the originality but not the beauty of his poem. --

Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn

By Sidney and Clifford Lanier

SOLO. -- Sin's rooster's crowed, Ole Mahster's riz, [1]
De sleepin'-time is pas';
Wake up dem lazy Baptissis,
CHORUS. -- Dey's mightily in de grass, grass,
Dey's mightily in de grass.

Ole Mahster's blowed de mornin' horn,
He's blowed a powerful blas';
O Baptis' come, come hoe de corn,
You's mightily in de grass, grass,
You's mightily in de grass.

De Meth'dis team's done hitched; O fool, [11]
De day's a-breakin' fas';
Gear up dat lean ole Baptis' mule,
Dey's mightily in de grass, grass,
Dey's mightily in de grass.

De workmen's few an' mons'rous slow,
De cotton's sheddin' fas';
Whoop, look, jes' look at de Baptis' row,
Hit's mightily in de grass, grass,
Hit's mightily in de grass.

De jay-bird squeal to de mockin'-bird: "Stop! [21]
Don' gimme none o' yo' sass;
Better sing one song for de Baptis' crop,
Dey's mightily in de grass, grass,
Dey's mightily in de grass."

And de ole crow croak: "Don' work, no, no;"
But de fiel'-lark say, "Yaas, yaas,
An' I spec' you mighty glad, you debblish crow,
Dat de Baptissis's in de grass, grass,
Dat de Baptissis's in de grass!"

Lord, thunder us up to de plowin'-match, [31]
Lord, peerten de hoein' fas',
Yea, Lord, hab mussy on de Baptis' patch,
Dey's mightily in de grass, grass,
Dey's mightily in de grass.

____ 1876.

Notes: Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn

I think that the following note, prefixed by the authors to their poem, sufficiently explains what is to me one of their best humorous pieces:

"Not long ago a certain Georgia cotton-planter, driven to desperation by awaking each morning to find that the grass had quite outgrown the cotton overnight, and was likely to choke it, in defiance of his lazy freedmen's hoes and ploughs, set the whole State in a laugh by exclaiming to a group of fellow-sufferers: `It's all stuff about Cincinnatus leaving the plough to go into politics "for patriotism"; he was just a-runnin' from grass!'

"This state of things -- when the delicate young rootlets of the cotton are struggling against the hardier multitudes of the grass-suckers -- is universally described in plantation parlance by the phrase `in the grass'; and Uncle Jim appears to have found in it so much similarity to the condition of his own (`Baptis'') church, overrun, as it was, by the cares of this world, that he has embodied it in the refrain of a revival hymn such as the colored improvisator of the South not infrequently constructs from his daily surroundings. He has drawn all the ideas of his stanzas from the early morning phenomena of those critical weeks when the loud plantation-horn is blown before daylight, in order to rouse all hands for a long day's fight against the common enemy of cotton-planting mankind.

"In addition to these exegetical commentaries the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase `peerten up' means substantially `to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective `peert' (probably a corruption of `pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of `smart' in New England, as e.g., a `peert' horse, in antithesis to a `sorry' -- i.e., poor, mean, lazy one."

The Mocking-bird

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray [1] That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue. What e'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. [11] Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree?

____ 1877.

Notes: The Mocking-bird

Besides this sonnet Mr. Lanier wrote a longer `To Our Mocking-bird', consisting of three sonnets, and `Bob', a charming account, in prose, of the life and death of the bird apostrophized.

In his `Birds and Poets' (Boston, 1877), Mr. John Burroughs says that he knows of only two noteworthy poetical tributes to the mocking-bird, those by Whitman and by Wilde, both of which he quotes. But since the appearance of his book many poems have been written to the mocking-bird, several of which are of enduring worth. Indeed, several noteworthy poems had been published before the appearance of Mr. Burroughs's essay, as will appear from the list below. In a search of two days I found thirty-two different authors paying tribute to our marvelous singer: Julia Bacon (see J. W. Davidson's `Living Writers of the South'. New York: Carleton, 1869), St. L. L. Carter (ib.), Edna P. Clarke (`Century', 24. 391, July, 1893), Fortunatus Crosby (`Davidson', l.c.), J. R. Drake (Duyckinck's `Cyclopaedia of American Literature'. New York, 1855), R. T. W. Duke, Jr. (`Southern Bivouac', 2. 631, March, 1887), W. T. Dumas (`The Golden Day and Miscellaneous Poems', Philadelphia, 1893), F. (`Southern Literary Messenger', Richmond, Va., 5. 523, August, 1839), H. L. Flash (`Davidson', l.c.), Va. Gentleman (`Harper's Magazine', 15. 566, September, 1857), Caroline Gilman (May's `American Female Poets', Philadelphia, 1865), Hannah F. Gould (`Davidson', l.c.), Paul Granald (`So. Lit. Mes.', 8, 508, August, 1842), P. H. Hayne (`Poems', Boston, 1882: two), W. H. Hayne (`Century', 24. 676, September, 1893), C. W. Hubner (`Poems and Essays', New York, 1881), C. Lanier (`Sunday-school Times', Phila., July 8, 1893), S. Lanier (two, as above cited), Gen. Edwin G. Lee (`Southern Metropolis', Baltimore, 1869), A. B. Meek (in his `Songs and Poems of the South', New York, 1857), W. Mitchell (`Scribner's Magazine', 11. 171, December, 1875), Nugator (`So. Lit. Mes.', 4. 356, June, 1838), C. J. O'Malley (`So. Bivouac', 2. 698, April, 1887), Albert Pike (Stedman & Hutchinson's `Amer. Lit.', New York, 1891, vol. 6), D. Robinson (`Century', 24. 480, July, 1893), Clinton Scollard (`Pictures in Song', New York, 1884), H. J. Stockard (`The Century', xlviii. 898, Oct., 1894), T (`So. Lit. Mes.', 11. 117, February, 1845), Maurice Thompson (`Poems', Boston, 1892: several; also `Lippincott's Magazine', 32. 624, December, 1883), L. V. (`So. Lit. Mes.', 10. 414, July, 1844), Walt Whitman (`Burroughs', l.c., also in Whitman's `Poems'), R. H. Wilde (`Burroughs', l.c., and Stedman & Hutchinson's `Am. Lit.', vol. 5).

Roughly speaking, the poems may be divided into two classes -- first those that, as in the Indian legend cited below, make out the mocking-bird only or chiefly a thief and thing of evil, and second those that find him, though a borrower, original and great. The former view, fortunately upheld by few, is strikingly set forth in Granald's `The Mock-bird and the Sparrow'. After describing minutely the various songs of the mocking-bird and emphasizing that they all come from other birds, the author gives the dialogue between the mock-bird and the sparrow. The former taunted the latter and insisted on his singing; and

"The sparrow cock'd a knowing eye,
And made him this most tart reply --
`You steal from all and call it wit,
But I prefer my simple "twit".'"

But the latter view is espoused by most of the writers mentioned, notably and nobly by Drake, the Haynes, the Laniers, Lee, Meek, and Thompson, the poet-laureate of the mocking-bird, whose poems should be read by every lover of nature and especially of the mocking-bird. As Thompson's tributes are all too long for quotation, I give here Meek's, in the hope that I may rescue it from the long oblivion of an out-of-print. My attention was called to it by my friend, Dr. C. H. Ross, to whom every reader will be indebted along with myself. It runs as follows:

"From the vale, what music ringing,
Fills the bosom of the night;
On the sense, entranced, flinging
Spells of witchery and delight!
O'er magnolia, lime and cedar,
From yon locust-top, it swells,
Like the chant of serenader,
Or the rhymes of silver bells!
Listen! dearest, listen to it!
Sweeter sounds were never heard!
'Tis the song of that wild poet --
Mime and minstrel -- Mocking-bird.

"See him, swinging in his glory,
On yon topmost bending limb!
Carolling his amorous story,
Like some wild crusader's hymn!
Now it faints in tones delicious
As the first low vow of love!
Now it bursts in swells capricious,
All the moonlit vale above!
Listen! dearest, etc.

"Why is't thus, this sylvan Petrarch
Pours all night his serenade?
'Tis for some proud woodland Laura,
His sad sonnets all are made!
But he changes now his measure --
Gladness bubbling from his mouth --
Jest and gibe, and mimic pleasure --
Winged Anacreon of the South!
Listen! dearest, etc.

"Bird of music, wit and gladness,
Troubadour of sunny climes,
Disenchanter of all sadness, --
Would thine art were in my rhymes.
O'er the heart that's beating by me,
I would weave a spell divine;
Is there aught she could deny me,
Drinking in such strains as thine?
Listen! dearest, etc."

As is well known, the mocking-bird is often called the American nightingale. As to their relative merits as singers, here is the judgment of one that has heard both birds, Professor James A. Harrison (`The Critic', New York, 2. 284, December 13, 1884): "Well, it is my honest opinion that philomel will not compare with the singer of the South in sweetness, versatility, passion, or lyrical beauty. The mocking-bird -- better the echo-bird, with a voice compounded of all sweet sounds, as the blossom of the Chinese olive is compounded of all sweet scents -- is a pure lyrist; its throat is a lyre -- Aeolian, capricious, many-stringed; as its name suggests, it is a polyglot mime, a bird linguist, a feathered Mezzofanti singing all the bird languages; yet over and above all this, with a something of its own that cannot be described." The mocking-bird speaks for himself in Thompson's `To an English Nightingale':

"What do you think of me?
Do I sing by rote?
Or by note?
Have I a parrot's echo-throat?
Oh no! I caught my strains
From Nature's freshest veins.

. . . . .

"He
A match for me!
No more than a wren or a chickadee!
Mine is the voice of the young and strong,
Mine the soul of the brave and free!"

This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses all the musical qualifications of this king of song, who has derived all from Nature's self. Yes, reader, all!"

It will be interesting and instructive to compare the tributes to the mocking-bird with Keats's `Ode to a Nightingale', Shelley's `To a Skylark', and Wordsworth's `To the Skylark'.

Aside from Audubon's `Birds of America' and Ridgway's `Manual of North American Birds', the student may consult with profit Burroughs's `Birds and Poets', Thompson's `In the Haunts of the Mocking-bird' (`The Atlantic', 54. 620, November, 1884), various articles by Olive Thorne Miller in `The Atlantic' (vol. 54 on), and Winterfield's `The Mocking-bird, an Indian Legend' (`The American Whig Review', New York, 1. 497, May, 1845).

14. Wilde compares the mocking-bird to Yorick and to Jacques; Meek, to Petrarch; Lanier, to Keats, in `To Our Mocking-bird', as does Wm. H. Hayne:

"Each golden note of music greets
The listening leaves divinely stirred,
As if the vanished soul of Keats
Had found its new birth in a bird."

Song of the Chattahoochee

Out of the hills of Habersham, [1] Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham, [11] All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried `Abide, abide,' The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,' The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall.'

High o'er the hills of Habersham, [21] Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall.'

And oft in the hills of Habersham, [31] And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone -- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst -- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, [41] And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call -- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall.

____ 1877.

Notes: Song of the Chattahoochee

The Chattahoochee River rises in Habersham County, in northeast Georgia, and, intersecting Hall County, flows southwestward to West Point, then southward until it unites with the Flint River at the southwestern extremity of Georgia. The Chattahoochee is about five hundred miles long, and small steamboats can ascend it to Columbus, Ga. Hon. Henry R. Jackson, of Savannah, Ga., late Minister to Mexico, has an interesting poem `To the Chattahoochee River', in his `Tallulah and Other Poems' (Savannah, Ga., 1850); and Mr. M. V. Moore, in his poem, `Southern Rivers' (`Harper', 66. 464, February, 1883), has a paragraph on the rivers of Georgia, in which he speaks of "the sandy Chattahoochee".

In the `Introduction' (pp. xxxi [Part III], xliv, xlvii [Part IV]) I have spoken of this `Song' as Lanier's most finished nature poem, as the most musical of his productions. "The music of a song easily eludes all analysis and may be dissipated by a critic's breath, but let us try to catch the means by which the effect is in part produced. In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs in all save twelve lines. In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs, sometimes joining the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines. Syzygy is used for the same purpose. Of the letters occurring in the poem about one-fifth are liquids and about one-twelfth are sibilants. The effect of the whole is musical beyond description. It sings itself and yet nowhere sacrifices the thought" (Kent).

Another way to test the beauty of `The Song of the Chattahoochee' is to compare it with other kindred poems. There are many stream-songs in English, several of which are very pretty, but there is, I think, but one rival to our `Song', and that is Tennyson's `The Brook'. Even so careful a critic as Mr. Ward says that `The Song of the Chattahoochee' "strikes a higher key, and is scarcely less musical." It will be instructive, too, to compare Lanier's poem with Southey's `The Cataract of Lodore' (see `Gates', p. 25), which exhibits considerable talent, if not inspiration; with P. H. Hayne's `The Meadow Brook', which is simple and sweet; and with Wordsworth's `Brook! whose society the Poet seeks', which is grave and elevated. Professor Kent suggests as interesting analogues Poe's `Ulalume' and Buchanan Read's `Bay of Naples'; and, if the student cares to extend his list, he should read the stream-songs by Bryant, Mary Ainge De Vere (`Century', 21. 283, December, 1891), Longfellow, Weir Mitchell (`Atlantic', 65. 629, May, 1890), Clinton Scollard (`Lippincott', 50. 226, August, 1892), etc., etc.

The Revenge of Hamish

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; [1] And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, [11] Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvelous bound, The hounds swept after with never a sound, But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild, And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds: "I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child."

So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand; [21] But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," -- Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn, Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand."

Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height of the hill, Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below. Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go [31] All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" [41] Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; [51] And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, And that place of the lashing is live with men, And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold. [61] They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! -- Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep, And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please [71] For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead?

"Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband, the lashing will heal; [81] But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel

With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth.