Select Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 2

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!

The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."*

Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand":

"'We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O G.o.d, what manner of ills? -- The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?

"Swinehood hath no remedy"

Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.

But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the throne"?

Hath G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate protesting Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: 'And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be!

Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"?

Then "Trade is trade" but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly.

If business is battle, name it so.'"**

-- * 'The Symphony', ll. 1-2.

** 'The Symphony', ll. 31-61.

--

Of even wider sweep than mercantilism is the spirit of intolerance; for, while the diffusion of knowledge and of grace has in a measure repressed this spirit, it lacks much of being subdued. I do not wonder that Lanier "fled in tears from men's unG.o.dly quarrel about G.o.d,"

and that, in his poem ent.i.tled 'Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance with all the vehemence of a prophet of old.

But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills.

To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early pa.s.sion for the violin and his subst.i.tution of the flute therefor, we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher.

With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages with fine tributes thereto. In 'Tiger-lilies', for instance, he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found some nations that had no G.o.d, he knows of none that had no music, and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony; harmony means love; and love means -- G.o.d!"*3* Even more explicit is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL; poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES.

I could play pa.s.sably on several instruments before I could write legibly, and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music, which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4*

We have already seen incidentally that in his 'Symphony'

the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs his felicitous definition,

"Music is love in search of a word."*5*

In 'To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself:

"I know not how, I care not why, Thy music brings this broil at ease, And melts my pa.s.sion's mortal cry In satisfying symphonies.

"Yea, it forgives me all my sins, Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, And tunes the task each day begins By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6*

It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier to write his work on 'The Science of English Verse', and gave him a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson.

-- *1* See Ward's 'Memorial', pp. xx, x.x.xi.

*2* Hayne's (P. H.) 'A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.

*3* 'Tiger-lilies', p. 32.

*4* Hayne's 'A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. After settling in Baltimore Lanier devoted more time to poetry than to music, as we may see from this sentence to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of March 20, 1876: "As for me, life has resolved simply into a time during which I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket."

*5* 'The Symphony', l. 368.

*6* 'To Beethoven', ll. 61-68.

--

Like most great poets of modern times, Lanier was a sincere lover of nature.

And it seems to me that with him this love was as all-embracing as with Wordsworth. Lanier found beauty in the waving corn*1* and the clover;*2*

in the mocking-bird,*3* the robin,*4* and the dove;*5*

in the hickory,*6* the dogwood,*6* and the live-oak;*7*

in the murmuring leaves*8* and the chattering streams;*9*

in the old red hills*10* and the sea;*11* in the clouds,*12*

sunrise,*13* and sunset;*14* and even in the marshes,*15*

which "burst into bloom" for this worshiper. Again, Lanier's love of nature was no less insistent than Wordsworth's. We all remember the latter's oft-quoted lines:

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"*16*

and beside them one may put this line of Lanier's,

"The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep,"*17*

because, as the context shows, he was

"Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide."*18*

And how naive and tender was this nature-worship! He speaks of the clover*19* and the clouds*20* as cousins, and of the leaves*21*

as sisters, and in so doing reminds us of the earliest Italian poetry, especially of 'The Canticle of the Sun', by St. Francis of a.s.sisi, who brothers the wind, the fire, and the sun, and sisters the water, the stars, and the moon. Notice the tenderness in these lines of 'Corn':

"The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart;"*22*

to which we find a beautiful parallel in a poem by Paul Hamilton Hayne, himself a reverent nature-worshiper:

"Ah! Nature seems Through something sweeter than all dreams To woo me; yea, she seems to speak How closely, kindly, her fond cheek Rested on mine, her mystic blood Pulsing in tender neighborhood, And soft as any mortal maid, Half veiled in the twilight shade, Who leans above her love to tell Secrets almost ineffable!"*23*

Moreover, this worship is restful:

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

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

. . . . .

"By so many roots as the marsh-gra.s.s sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of G.o.d: Oh, like to the greatness of G.o.d is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn."*24*

But to Lanier the ministration of nature was by no means pa.s.sive; and we find him calling upon the leaves actively to minister to his need and even to intercede for him to their Maker:

"Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, Ye ministers meet for each pa.s.sion that grieves, Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, -- Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, -- Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me The pa.s.sion of patience, -- sift me, -- impeach me, -- And there, oh there As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, Pray me a myriad prayer."*25*

In this earnest ascription of spirituality to the leaves Lanier recalls Ruskin.*26*

-- *1* See 'The Waving of the Corn' and 'Corn'.

*2* See 'Clover'.

*3* See 'The Mocking-Bird' and 'To Our Mocking-Bird'.

*4* See 'Tampa Robins'.

*5* See 'The Dove'.

*6* See 'From the Flats', last stanza.