Select Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 8

Dreaming of G.o.ds, 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 pa.s.s Up from the matted miracles of gra.s.s Into yon veined complex of s.p.a.ce Where sky and leaf.a.ge interlace So close, the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sa.s.safras, 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 l.u.s.trous 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 G.o.dlike sense Trans.m.u.ted 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 Circ.u.mstance 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 Circ.u.mstance 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 h.e.l.l.

Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran; Pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pa.s.s; 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 ta.s.seled 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 Sat.u.r.day Review' (London), 66, 237-238, Aug. 25, 1888.

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

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

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