Select Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 3

*7* See 'Sunrise'.

*8* See 'Sunrise' and 'Corn'.

*9* See 'The Song of the Chattahoochee' and 'Sunrise'.

*10* See 'Corn'.

*11* See 'Sunrise' and 'At Sunset'.

*12* See 'Individuality'.

*13* See 'Sunrise', etc.

*14* See 'At Sunset'.

*15* See 'The Marshes of Glynn', and read Barbe's tribute to Lanier, cited in the 'Bibliography'.

*16* 'Intimations of Immortality', ll. 202-203.

*17* 'The Symphony', l. 3.

*18* 'The Symphony', ll. 13-14.

*19* 'Clover', l. 57.

*20* 'Individuality', l. 1.

*21* 'Sunrise', l. 42.

*22* 'Corn', ll. 4-9. Compare 'The Symphony', ll. 183-190.

*23* Hayne's 'In the Gray of Evening': Autumn, ll. 37-46, in 'Poems' (Boston, 1882), p. 250.

*24* 'The Marshes of Glynn', ll. 61-64, 75-78.

*25* 'Sunrise', ll. 39-53.

*26* See his 'Modern Painters', vol. v., part vi., chapter iv., and Scudder's note to the same in her 'Introduction to Ruskin'

(Chicago, 1892), p. 249.

--

To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton, from Tacitus to the present, saw "something of the divine" in woman.

It was this feeling that led him so severely to condemn a vice that is said to be growing, the marriage for convenience. I quote from 'The Symphony', and the "melting Clarionet" is speaking:

"So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time.

Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red sweet of gracious ladies'-praise.

Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, 'Here, you lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?'

Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1*

And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that, at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's 'One Way of Love', which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love.

The Lady Clarionet is still speaking:

"I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O Sweet!

I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy wors.h.i.+pful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.'"*2*

I imagine, too, that any wife that ever lived would be satisfied with his glorious tribute to Mrs. Lanier in 'My Springs', which closes thus:

"Dear eyes, dear eyes, and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet -- I marvel that G.o.d made you mine, For when he frowns, 'tis then ye s.h.i.+ne."*3*

Almost equally felicitous are these lines of 'Acknowledgment':

"Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument."*4*

But the cleverest thing that Lanier has written of woman occurs in his 'Laus Mariae':

"But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty fact.

Oh, Sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of time in loving thee!"*5*

-- a sc.r.a.p worthy to be placed beside Steele's "To love her is a liberal education," which has often been declared the happiest thing on the subject in the English language.

-- *1* 'The Symphony', ll. 232-240.

*2* 'The Symphony', ll. 241-248.

*3* 'My Springs', ll. 53-56.

*4* 'Acknowledgment', ll. 41-42.

*5* 'Laus Mariae', ll. 11-14.

--

To Lanier there was but one thing that made life worth living, and that was love. Even the superficial reader must be struck with the frequent use of the term in the poet's works, while all must be uplifted by his conception of its purpose and power.

The ills of agnosticism, mercantilism, and intolerance all find their solution here and here only, as is admirably set forth in 'The Symphony', of which the opening strain is, "We are all for love,"

and the closing, "Love alone can do." The matter is no less happily put in 'Tiger-lilies': "For I am quite confident that love is the only rope thrown out by Heaven to us who have fallen overboard into life.

Love for man, love for woman, love for G.o.d, -- these three chime like bells in a steeple and call us to wors.h.i.+p, which is to work. . . .

Inasmuch as we love, in so much do we conquer death and flesh; by as much as we love, by so much are we G.o.ds. For G.o.d is love; and could we love as He does, we could be as He is."*1*

To the same effect is his statement in 'The English Novel': "A republic is the government of the spirit."*2* The same thought recurs later: "In love, and love only, can great work that not only pulls down, but builds, be done; it is love, and love only, that is truly constructive in art."*3* In the poem ent.i.tled 'How Love Looked for h.e.l.l', Mind and Sense at Love's request go to seek h.e.l.l; but ever as they point it out to Love, whether in the material or the immaterial world, it vanishes; for where Love is there can be no h.e.l.l, since, in the words of Tolstoi's story, "Where Love is there is G.o.d." But in one of his poems Lanier sums up the whole matter in a line:

"When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught."*4*

-- *1* 'Tiger-lilies', p. 26.

*2* 'The English Novel', p. 55.

*3* 'The English Novel', p. 204.

*4* 'In Absence', l. 42.

--

It is but a short way from love to its source, -- G.o.d.

And, as Lanier was continually in the atmosphere of the one, so, I believe, he was ever in the presence of the other; for the poet's "Love means G.o.d"

is but another phrasing of the evangelist's "G.o.d is love".*1*

Of Lanier's grief over church broils and of his longing for freedom to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to one's own intuition, we have already learned from his 'Remonstrance'. What he thought of the Christ we learn from 'The Crystal', which closes with this invocation:

"But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2*

How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen in his 'Ballad of Trees and the Master', a dramatic presentation of the scene in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in the Christ may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne: "I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your 'Aethra's'. Every day when my work is done I take him in my strong arms, and lift him up, and pore in his face. The intense repose, penetrated somehow with a thrilling mystery of 'potential activity', which dwells in his large, open eye, teaches me new things. I say to myself, Where are the strong arms in which I, too, might lay me and repose, and yet be full of the fire of life? And always through the twilight come answers from the other world, 'Master! Master! there is one -- Christ -- in His arms we rest!'"*3* Perhaps, however, Lanier's notion of G.o.d, whom he declared*4* all his roads reached, is most clearly expressed in a sc.r.a.p quoted by Ward, apparently the outline for a poem: "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.'"*5* In this high spirituality Lanier is in line with the greatest poets of our race, from

"Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle,"*6*

to him

"Who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."*7*

-- *1* 1 John 4:16.

*2* 'The Crystal', ll. 100-111.

*3* Hayne's 'A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.

*4* In 'A Florida Sunday', l. 85.

*5* Ward's 'Memorial', p. x.x.xix.

*6* Lanier's 'The Crystal', ll. 90-93.

*7* Browning's 'Asolando': Epilogue, ll. 11-15.