The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 3

== "I fled in tears from the men's unG.o.dly quarrel about G.o.d.

I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth.

Then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground; and I looked and my cheek lay close to a violet. Then my heart took courage, and I said:

'I know that thou art the word of my G.o.d, dear Violet: And Oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads.

Measure what s.p.a.ce a violet stands above the ground; 'Tis no further climbing that my soul and angels have to do than that.'"

It was this quality, high and consecrate, as of a palmer with his vow, this knightly valiance, this constant San Greal quest after the lofty in character and aim, this pa.s.sion for Good and Love, which fellows him rather with Milton and Ruskin than with the less st.u.r.dily built poets of his day, and which puts him in sharpest contrast with the school led by Swinburne -- with Rossetti and Morris as his followers hard after him -- a school whose reed has a short gamut, and plays but two notes, Mors and Eros, hopeless death and lawless love. But poetry is larger and finer than they know. Its face is toward the world's future; it does not maunder after the flower-decked nymphs and yellow-skirted fays that have forever fled -- and good riddance -- their haunted springs and tangled thickets. It can feed on its growing sweet and fresh faiths, but will draw foul contagion from the rank mists that float over old and cold fables. For all knowledge is food, as faith is wine, to a genius like Lanier. A poet genius has great common sense.

He lives in to-day and to-morrow, not in yesterday.

Such men were Shakespeare and Goethe. The age of poetry is not past; there is nothing in culture or science hostile to it.

Milton was one of the world's great poets, but he was the most cultured and scholarly and statesmanlike man of his day.

He was no dreamer of dead dreams. Neither was Lanier a dreamer.

He came late to the opportunity he longed for, but when he came to it he was a tremendous student, not of music alone, but of language, of philosophy, and of science. He loved science. He was an inventor.

He had all the instincts and ambitions of this nineteenth century.

But that only made his range of poetic thought wider as his outlook became larger. The world is opening to the poet with every question the crucible asks of the elements, with every spectrum the prism steals from a star. The old he has and all the new.

All this a man of Lanier's breadth understood fully, for he had a large capacity and he sought a full equipment.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his gifts was their complete symmetry.

It is hard to tell what register of perception, or sensibility, or wit, or will was lacking. The constructive and the critical faculties, the imaginative and the practical, balanced each other. His wit and humor played upon the soberer background of his more recognized qualities.

The artist's withdrawn vision was at any need promptly exchanged for the exercise of that scrupulous exact.i.tude called for in the routine of the law-office or the post-office clerkship or other business relations, or for the play of those energies exerted in camp or field. There, so his comrades testify, the most wearing drudgeries of a soldier's life were always undertaken with notable alacrity and were thoroughly discharged, when he would as invariably return, the task being done, to the gentle region of his own high thoughts and the artist's realm of beauty.

But how short was his day, and how slender his opportunity!

From the time he was of age he waged a constant, courageous, hopeless fight against adverse circ.u.mstance for room to live and write.

Much very dear, and sweet, and most sympathetic helpfulness he met in the city of his adoption, and from friends elsewhere, but he could not command the time and leisure which might have lengthened his life and given him opportunity to write the music and the verse with which his soul was teeming. Yet short as was his literary life, and hindered though it were, its fruit will fill a large s.p.a.ce in the garnering of the poetic art of our country.

William Hayes Ward.

Mr. Lanier's published works, previous to the present volume, and exclusive of poems and essays published in literary journals, are the following:

Tiger Lilies: A novel. 16 mo, pp. v, 252. Hurd & Houghton, New York, 1867.

Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History. 12 mo, pp. 336.

J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1876.

Poems. Pp. 94. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1877.

The Boy's Froissart. Being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure, Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain, etc. Edited for Boys.

Crown 8vo, pp. xxviii, 422. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1878.

The Science of English Verse. Crown 8vo, pp. xv, 315.

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.

The Boy's King Arthur. Being Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, pp. xlviii, 404. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.

The Boy's Mabinogion. Being the Earliest Welsh Tales of King Arthur in the famous Red Book of Hergest. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, pp. xxiv, 378. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881.

The Boy's Percy. Being Old Ballads of War, Adventure, and Love, from Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, pp. x.x.xii, 442. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1882.

The English Novel and the Principles of its Development. Crown 8vo, pp. 293.

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1883.

Poems of Sidney Lanier.

----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUNRISE, the culminating poem, the highest vision of Sidney Lanier, was dedicated through his latest request to that friend who indeed came into his life only near its close, yet was at first meeting recognized by the poet as "the father of his spirit", GEORGE WESTFELDT. When words were very few and the poem was unread, even by any friend, the earnest bidding came: "Send him my SUNRISE, that he may know how entirely we are one in thought." -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hymns of the Marshes.

I. Sunrise.

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.

The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep.

Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes a.s.sembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter 'Yes,'

Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide.

I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide: I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide In your gospelling glooms, -- to be As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.

Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?

They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.

Reason's not one that weeps.

What logic of greeting lies Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan, So, (But would I could know, but would I could know,) With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man, -- So, with your silences purfling this silence of man While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban, Under the ban, -- So, ye have wrought me Designs on the night of our knowledge, -- yea, ye have taught me, So, That haply we know somewhat more than we know.