History of American Literature Part 33

"... love notes fill the enchanted land; Through leaf-wrought bars they storm the stars, These love songs of the mocking-birds!"

The chief characteristics of his finest poetry are a tender love of nature, a profusion of figurative language, and a gentle air of meditation.

SIDNEY LANIER, 1842-1881

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIDNEY LANIER]

LIFE.--Sidney Lanier was the product of a long line of cultured ancestors, among whom appeared, both in England and America, men of striking musical and artistic ability. He was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842. He served in the Confederate army during the four years of the war, and was taken prisoner and exposed to the hardest conditions, both during his confinement and after his release. The remainder of his life was a losing fight against the ravages of consumption.

He was fairly successful for a short time in his father's law office; but if ever a man believed that it was his duty to devote his every breath to the gift of music and poetry bestowed upon him, that man was Lanier. His wife agreed with him in his ideals and faith, so in 1873 he left his family in Georgia and went to Baltimore, the land of libraries and orchestras. He secured the position of first flute in the Peabody orchestra, and, by sheer force of genius, took up the most difficult scores and faultlessly led all the flutes. He read and studied, wrote and lectured like one who had suffered from mental starvation. In 1879 he received the appointment of lecturer on English literature at the Johns Hopkins University, a position which his friends had long wished to see him fill. He held it only two years, however, before his death. His health had fast been failing. He wrote part of the time while lying on his back, and, because of physical weakness, he delivered some of his lectures in whispers. In search of relief, he was taken to Florida, Texas, and North Carolina, but no permanent benefit came, and he died in his temporary quarters in North Carolina in 1881.

Works.--Lanier wrote both prose and poetry. His prose comprises books for children and critical studies. _The Science of English Verse_ (1880) and _The English Novel_ (1883) are of interest because of their clear setting forth of his theory of versification and art. In his poetry he strives to embody the ideals proclaimed in his prose work, which are, first, to write nothing that is not moral and elevating in tone, and, second, to express himself in versification which is obedient to the laws of regular musical composition, in rhyme, rhythm, vowel a.s.sonance, alliteration, and phrasings.

Lanier's creed, that the poet should be an inspiration for good to his readers, is found in his lines:--

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

The great inspiration of his life was love, and he has some fine love poems, such as _My Springs_, _In Absence_, _Evening Song_, and _Laus Mariae_. In _The Symphony_, which voices the social sorrow for the overworked and downtrodden, he says the problem is not one for the head but the heart:--

"Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it, Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."

In ending the poem, he says that even

"Music is Love in search of a word."

Strong personal love, tender pitying love for humanity, impa.s.sioned love of nature, and a reverent love of G.o.d are found in Lanier.

The striking musical quality of Lanier's best verse is seen in these stanzas from _Tampa Robins_:--

"The robin laughed in the orange-tree: 'Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While b.r.e.a.s.t.s are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me --Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

"'I'll south with the sun and keep my clime; My wing is king of the summer-time; My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; And I'll call down through the green and gold, _Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, Bestir thee under the orange-tree_.'"

The music of the bird, the sparkle of the sunlight, and the pure joy of living are in this poem, which is one of Lanier's finest lyrical outbursts.

_The Song of the Chattahoochee_ is another of his great successes in pure melody. The rhymes, the rhythm, the alliteration beautifully express the flowing of the river.

His n.o.blest and most characteristic poem, however, is _The Marshes of Glynn_. It seems to breathe the very spirit of the broad open marshes and to interpret their meaning to the heart of man, while the long, sweeping, melodious lines of the verse convey a rich volume of music, of which he was at times a wonderful master.

"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn."

This poem, original and beautiful, both in subject and form, expresses Lanier's strong faith in G.o.d. He says:--

"As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of G.o.d: I will fly in the greatness of G.o.d as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the s.p.a.ce 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-gra.s.s sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold of the greatness of G.o.d."

No Puritan could show a truer faith than Lanier's, nor a faith more poetically and devoutly expressed. In his _Sunrise_ he attains at times the beauty of _The Marshes of Glynn_, and voices in some of the lines a veritable rhapsody of faith. Yet for sustained elevation of feeling and for unbroken musical harmonies, _Sunrise_ cannot equal _The Marshes of Glynn_, which alone would suffice to keep Lanier's name on the scroll of the greater American poets.

General Characteristics.--Lanier is an ambitious poet. He attempts to voice the unutterable, to feel the intangible, to describe the indescribable, and to clothe this ecstasy in language that will be a harmonious accompaniment to the thought. This striving after practically impossible effects sometimes gives the feeling of artificiality and strain to his verse. It is not always simple, and sometimes one overcharged stanza will mar an otherwise exquisite poem.

On the other hand, Lanier never gives voice to anything that is merely trivial or pretty. He is always in earnest, and the feeling most often aroused by him is a pa.s.sionate exaltation. He is a nature poet. The color, the sunshine, the cornfields, the hills, and the marshes of the South are found in his work. But more than their outer aspect, he likes to interpret their spirit,--the peace of the marsh, the joy of the bird, the mystery of the forest, and the evidences of love everywhere.

The music of his lines varies with his subjects. It is light and delicate in _Tampa Robins_, rippling and gurgling in _The Song of the Chattahoochee_, and deeply sonorous in _The Marshes of Glynn_. Few surpa.s.s him in the long, swinging, grave harmonies of his most highly inspired verse. In individual lines, in selected stanzas, Lanier has few rivals in America. His poetical endowment was rich, his pa.s.sion for music was a rare gift, his love of beauty was intense, and his soul was on fire with ideals.

FATHER RYAN, 1839-1886

[Ill.u.s.tration: FATHER RYAN]

Another poet who will long be remembered for at least one poem is Abram Joseph Ryan (1839-1886), better known as "Father Ryan." He was a Roman Catholic priest who served as chaplain in the Confederate army, and though longing and waiting only for death in order to go to the land that held joy for him, he wrote and worked for his fellow-man with a gentleness and sympathy that left regret in many hearts when he died in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1886.

He loved the South and pitied her plight, and in his pathetic poem, _The Conquered Banner_, voiced the woe of a heart-broken people:--

"Furl that Banner, softly, slowly!

Treat it gently--it is holy-- For it droops above the dead.

Touch it not--unfold it never-- Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are dead."

JOHN BANNISTER TABB, 1845-1909

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN BANNISTER TABB]

John Bannister Tabb was born in 1845 on the family estate in Amelia County, Virginia. He was a strong adherent of the southern cause, and during the war he served as clerk on one of the boats carrying military stores. He was taken prisoner, and placed in Point Lookout Prison, where Lanier also was confined. After the war, Tabb devoted some time to music and taught school.

His studies led him toward the church, and at the age of thirty-nine he received the priest's orders in the Roman Catholic church. When he died in 1909, he was a teacher in St. Charles College, Ellicott City, Maryland. He had been blind for two years.

Tabb's poems are preeminently "short swallow-flights of song," for most of them are only from four to eight lines long. Some of these verses are comic, while others are grave and full of religious ardor. The most beautiful of all his poems are those of nature. The one called _The Brook_ is among the brightest and most fanciful:--

"It is the mountain to the sea That makes a messenger of me: And, lest I loiter on the way And lose what I am sent to say, He sets his reverie to song And bids me sing it all day long.

Farewell! for here the stream is slow, And I have many a mile to go."

[Footnote: _Poems_, 1894.]

_The Water Lily_ is another dainty product, full of poetic feeling for nature:--

"Whence, O fragrant form of light, Hast thou drifted through the night, Swanlike, to a leafy nest, On the restless waves, at rest?

"Art thou from the snowy zone Of a mountain-summit blown, Or the blossom of a dream, Fashioned in the foamy stream?"

[Footnote: _The Water Lily_, from _Poems_, 1894.]

In _Quips and Quiddits_ he loves to show that type of humor dependent on unexpected changes in the meaning of words. The following lines ill.u.s.trate this characteristic:--

"To jewels her taste did incline; But she had not a trinket to wear Till she slept after taking quinine, And awoke with a ring in each ear."

Tabb's power lay in condensing into a small compa.s.s a single thought or feeling and giving it complete artistic expression. The more serious poems, especially the sacred ones, sometimes seem to have too slight a body to carry their full weight of thought, but the idea is always fully expressed, no matter how narrow the compa.s.s of the verse. His poetry usually has the qualities of lightness, airiness, and fancifulness.