Poets of the South Part 20

"And many a luminous jewel lone-- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst-- Made lures with the lightnings of streaming stone."]

[Footnote 8: The revised form, with an awkward pause after the first foot, and also a useless antiquated phrase, reads--

"Avail! I am fain for to water the plain."]

[Footnote 9: Changed to "myriad of flowers."]

[Footnote 10: "Final" was changed to "lordly" with fine effect. This poem challenges comparison with other pieces of similar theme. It lacks the exquisite workmanship of Tennyson's _The Brook_, with its incomparable onomatopoeic effects:--

"I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles."

It should be compared with Hayne's _The River_ and also with his _The Meadow Brook_:--

"Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, Hark! the tiny swell; Of wavelets softly, silverly Toned like a fairy bell, Whose every note, dropped sweetly In mellow glamour round, Echo hath caught and harvested In airy sheaves of sound!"

But _The Song of the Chattahoochee_ has what the other poems lack, --a lofty moral purpose. The n.o.ble stream consciously resists the allurements of pleasure to heed "the voices of duty," and this spirit imparts to it a greater dignity and weight.]

[Footnote 11: This poem appeared in The Independent, July 15, 1880, from which it is taken. It ill.u.s.trates the intellectual rather than the musical side of Lanier's genius. It is purely didactic, and thought rather than melody guides the poet's pen. The meter is quite regular,--an unusual thing in our author's most characteristic work.

It shows Lanier's use of pentameter blank verse,--a use that is somewhat lacking in ease and clearness. The first sentence is longer than that of Paradise Lost, without Milton's unity and force. Such ponderous sentences are all too frequent in Lanier, and as a result he is sometimes obscure.

Repeated readings are necessary to take in the full meaning of his best work.

This poem, though not bearing the distinctive marks of his genius, is peculiarly interesting for two reasons,--it gives us an insight into his wide range of reading and study, and it exhibits his penetration and sanity as a critic. In the long list of great names he never fails to put his finger on the vulnerable spot. Frequently he is exceedingly felicitous, as when he speaks of "rapt Behmen, rapt too far," or of "Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self sometimes."]

[Footnote 12: It will be remembered that Lanier was a careful student of Shakespeare, on whom he lectured to private cla.s.ses in Baltimore.]

[Footnote 13: See second part of _King Henry IV_, iii. I. The pa.s.sage which the poet had in mind begins:--

"How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep!"]

[Footnote 14: See _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_.]

[Footnote 15: These characters are found as follows: Viola in _Twelfth Night_; Julia in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_; Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_; and Rosalind in _As You Like It_.]

[Footnote 16: Referring to the well-known catalogue of ships in the Second Book of the Illiad:--

"My song to fame shall give The chieftains, and enumerate their ships."

It is in this pa.s.sage in particular that Homer is supposed to nod.]

[Footnote 17: It will be recalled that Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, persuaded Helen, the fairest of women and wife of King Menelaus of Greece, to elope with him to Troy. This incident gave rise to the famous Trojan War.]

[Footnote 18: Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was an Athenian philosopher, of whom Cicero said that he "brought down philosophy from the heavens to the earth." His teachings are preserved in Xenophon's _Memorabilia_ and Plato's _Dialogues_.]

[Footnote 19: That is to say, his needless austerity was as much affected as the dandy's excessive and ostentatious refinement.]

[Footnote 20: Buddha, meaning _the enlightened one_, was Prince Siddhartha of Hindustan, who died about 477 B.C. He was the founder of the Buddhist religion, which teaches that the supreme attainment of mankind is Nirvana or extinction. This doctrine naturally follows from the Buddhist a.s.sumption that life is hopelessly evil. Many of the moral precepts of Buddhism are closely akin to those of Christianity.]

[Footnote 21: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a native of Florence, is the greatest poet of Italy and one of the greatest poets of the world. His immortal poem, _The Divine Comedy_, is divided into three parts --"h.e.l.l," "Purgatory," and "Paradise."]

[Footnote 22: This is a reference to the wars among the angels, which ended with the expulsion of Satan and his hosts from heaven, as related in the sixth book of Paradise Lost. This criticism of Milton is as just as it is felicitous.]

[Footnote 23: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was the father of Greek tragedy.

He presents _destiny_ in its sternest aspects. His _Prometheus Bound_ has been translated by Mrs. Browning, and his _Agamemnon_ by Robert Browning--two dramas that exhibit his grandeur and power at their best.]

[Footnote 24: Lucretius (about 95-51 B.C.) was the author of a didactic poem in six books ent.i.tled _De Rerum Natura_. It is Epicurean in morals and atheistic in philosophy. At the same time, as a work of art, it is one of the most perfect poems that have descended to us from antiquity.]

[Footnote 25: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.), one of the best emperors of Rome, was a n.o.ble Stoic philosopher. His _Meditations_ is regarded by John Stuart Mill as almost equal to the Sermon on the Mount in moral elevation.]

[Footnote 26: Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) was the author of the famous _Imitation of Christ_ in which, as Dean Milman says, "is gathered and concentered all that is elevating, pa.s.sionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics." No other book, except the Bible, has been so often translated and printed.]

[Footnote 27: Epictetus (born about 50 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher, many of whose moral teachings resemble those of Christianity. But he unduly emphasized renunciation, and wished to restrict human aspiration to the narrow limits of the attainable.]

[Footnote 28: Jacob Behmen, or Bohme (1575-1624), was a devout mystic philosopher, whose speculations, containing much that was beautiful and profound, sometimes pa.s.sed the bounds of intelligibility.]

[Footnote 29: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish philosopher and theologian. His princ.i.p.al work, _Arcana Caelestia_, is made up of profound speculations and spiritualistic extravagance. He often oversteps the bounds of sanity.]

[Footnote 30: William Langland, or Langley (about 1332-1400), a disciple of Wycliffe, was a poet, whose _Vision of Piers Plowman_, written in strong, alliterative verse, describes, in a series of nine visions, the manifold corruptions of society, church, and state in England.]

[Footnote 31: Caedmon (lived about 670) was a cowherd attached to the monastery of Whitby in England. Later he became a poet, and wrote on Scripture themes in his native Anglo-Saxon. His _Paraphrase_, is, next to _Beowulf_, the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem in existence.]

[Footnote 32: Lanier was deeply religious, but his beliefs were broader than any creed. In _Remonstrance_ he exclaims,--

"Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.

Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line."

Yet, as shown in the conclusion of _The Crystal_ he had an exalted sense of the unapproachable beauty of the life and teachings of Christ.

His tenderest poem is _A Ballad of Trees and the Master_:--

"Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him; The thorn-tree had a mind to Him, When into the woods He came.

"Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content.

Out of the woods my Master came, Content with death and shame.

When Death and Shame would woo Him last, From under the trees they drew Him last: 'Twas on a tree they slew Him--last When out of the woods He came."]

[Footnote 33: This poem was first published in _The Independent_, December 14, 1882, from which it is here taken. The editor said, "This poem, we do not hesitate to say, is one of the few great poems that have been written on this side of the ocean." With this judgment there will be general agreement on the part of appreciative readers. On the emotional side, it may be said to reach the high-water mark of poetic achievement in this country. Its emotion at times reaches the summits of poetic rapture; a little more, and it would have pa.s.sed into the boundary of hysterical ecstasy.

The circ.u.mstances of its composition possess a melancholy interest. It was Lanier's last and greatest poem. He penciled it a few months before his death when he was too feeble to raise his food to his mouth and when a burning fever was consuming him. Had he not made this supreme effort, American literature would be the poorer. This poem exhibits, in a high degree, the poet's love for Nature. Indeed, most of his great pieces-- _The Marshes of Glynn, Clover, Corn_, and others--are inspired by the sights and sounds of Nature. _Sunrise_, in general tone and style, closely resembles _The Marshes of Glynn_.

The musical theories of Lanier in relation to poetry find their highest exemplification in _Sunrise_. It is made up of all the poetic feet --iambics, trochees, dactyls, anapests--so that it almost defies any attempt at scansion. But the melody of the verse never fails; equality of time is observed, along with a rich use of alliteration and a.s.sonance.

The poem may be easily a.n.a.lyzed; and a distinct notation of its successive themes may be helpful to the young reader. Its divisions are marked by its irregular stanzas. It consists of fifteen parts as follows: 1. The call of the marshes to the poet in his slumbers, and his awaking.

2. He comes as a lover to the live-oaks and marshes. 3. His address to the "man-bodied tree," and the "cunning green leaves." 4. His pet.i.tion for wisdom and for a prayer of intercession. 5. The stirring of the owl.

6. Address to the "reverend marsh, distilling silence." 7. Description of the full tide. 8. "The bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence." 9.

The motion of dawn. 10. The golden flush of the eastern sky. 11. The sacramental marsh at worship. 12. The slow rising of the sun above the sea horizon. 13. Apostrophe to heat. 14. The worker must pa.s.s from the contemplation of this splendor to his toil. 15. The poet's inextinguishable adoration of the sun.]