Poets of the South Part 6

After taking up his residence in Baltimore, Lanier entered upon a comprehensive course of reading and study, particularly in early English literature. He studied Anglo-Saxon, and familiarized himself with Langland and Chaucer. He understood that any great poetic achievement must be based on extensive knowledge. A sweet warbler may depend on momentary inspiration; but the great singer, who is to instruct and move his age, must possess the insight and breadth of vision that come alone from a profound acquaintance with Nature and human history. With keen critical discernment Lanier said that "the trouble with Poe was, he did not _know_ enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet." It was to prepare himself for the highest flights possible to him that he entered, with inextinguishable ardor, upon a wide course of reading.

In 1874 he was commissioned by a railroad company to write up the scenery, climate, and history of Florida. While spending a month or two with his family in Georgia, he wrote _Corn_, which deservedly ranks as one of his n.o.blest poems. The delicate forms and colors of Nature touched him to an ecstasy of delight; and at the same time they bodied forth to his imagination deep spiritual truths. As we read this poem, we feel that the poet has reached a height of which little promise is given in his earlier poems. Here are the opening lines:--

"To-day the woods are trembling through and through With s.h.i.+mmering forms, and flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.

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.

The beach dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy burgeoning."

This poem is remarkable, too, for its presentation of Lanier's conception of the poetic office. The poet should be a prophet and leader, arousing mankind to all n.o.ble truth and action:--

"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; 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."

For a time Lanier had difficulty in finding a publisher. He made a visit to New York, but met only with rebuffs. But upheld, like Wordsworth, by a strong consciousness of the excellence of his work, he did not lose his cheerful hope and courage. "The more I am thrown against these people here, and the more reverses I suffer at their hands, the more confident I am of beating them finally. I do not mean by 'beating' that I am in opposition to them, or that I hate them or feel aggrieved with them; no, they know no better and they act up to their light with wonderful energy and consistency. I only mean that I am sure of being able, some day, to teach them better things and n.o.bler modes of thought and conduct."

_Corn_ finally appeared in _Lippincott's Magazine_ for February, 1875.

From this time poetry became a larger part of Lanier's life. His poetic genius had attained to fullness of power. He gave freer rein to imagination and thought and expression. Speaking of _Special Pleading_, which was written in 1875, he says: "In this little song, I have begun to dare to give myself some freedom in my own peculiar style, and have allowed myself to treat words, similes, and meters with such freedom as I desired. The result convinces me that I can do so now safely." In the next two or three years he produced such notable poems as _The Song of the Chattahoochee_, _The Symphony_, _The Revenge of Hamish_, _Clover_, _The Bee_, and _The Waving of the Corn_. They slowly gained recognition, and brought him the fellows.h.i.+p and encouragement of not a few literary people of distinction, among whom Bayard Taylor and Edmund Clarence Stedman deserve especial mention.

Perhaps none of Lanier's poems has been more popular than _The Song of the Chattahoochee_. It does not reach the poetic heights of a few of his other poems, but it is perfectly clear, and has a pleasant lilting movement. Moreover, it teaches the important truth that we are to be dumb to the siren voices of ease and pleasure when the stern voice of duty calls. The concluding stanza is as follows:--

"But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall, Shall hinder the rain from attaining the plain, For downward the voices of duty call-- Downward to toil and be mixed with the main.

The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a thousand meadows mortally yearn, And the final main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, And calls through the valleys of Hall."

In 1876, upon the recommendation of Bayard Taylor, Lanier was invited to write the centennial _Cantata_. As a poem, not much can be said in its favor. Its thought and form fall far below its ambitious conception, in which Columbia presents a meditation on the completed century of our country's history. On its publication it was subject to a good deal of unfavorable criticism; but through it all, though it must have been a bitter disappointment, the poet never lost his faith in his genius and destiny. "The artist shall put forth, humbly and lovingly," he wrote to his father, "and without bitterness against opposition, the very best and highest that is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary criticism.

What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to respect--that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, and drove Dante into a h.e.l.l of exile?"

The need of a regular income became more and more a necessity. "My head and my heart," he wrote, "are both so full of poems, which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." He sought various positions--a clerks.h.i.+p in Was.h.i.+ngton, an a.s.sistant's place in the Peabody Library, a consuls.h.i.+p in the south of France--all in vain. He lectured to parlor cla.s.ses in literature--an enterprise from which he seems to have derived more fame than money.

Finally, in 1879, he was appointed to a lectures.h.i.+p in English literature in Johns Hopkins University, from which dates the final period of his literary activity and of his life.

The first fruits of this appointment were a series of lectures on metrical forms, which appeared, in 1880, in a volume ent.i.tled _The Science of English Verse_. It is an original and suggestive work, in which, however, the author's predilections for music carry him too far.

He has done well to emphasize the time element in English versification; but his attempt to reduce all forms of verse to a musical notation can hardly be regarded as successful. His work, though comprehensive in scope, was not intended to impose a new set of laws upon the poet. "For the artist in verse," he says in his brief concluding chapter, "there is no law: the perception and love of beauty const.i.tute the whole outfit; and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely as enlarging that perception and exalting that love. In all cases, the appeal is to the ear; but the ear should, for that purpose, be educated up to the highest possible plane of culture."

A second series of lectures, composed and delivered when the anguish of mortal illness was upon him, was subsequently published under the t.i.tle, _The English Novel_. Its aim was to trace the development of personality in literature. It contains much suggestive and sound criticism. He did not share the fear entertained by some of his contemporaries, that science would gradually abolish poetry. Many of the finest poems in our language, as he pointed out, have been written while the wonderful discoveries of recent science were being made. "Now," he continues, "if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to me that we find--as to the _substance_ of poetry--a steadily increasing confidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith and love and duty and friends.h.i.+p and marriage, and the sovereign fact of man's personality, while as to the _form_ of the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cutting away much unproductive wood and effloresence, and creating finer reserves and richer yields." Among novelists he a.s.signs the highest place to George Eliot, who "shows man what he maybe in terms of what he is."

There are two poems of this closing period that exhibit Lanier's characteristic manner at its best. They are the high-water mark of his poetic achievement. They exemplify his musical theories of meter. They show the trend forced upon him by his innate love of music; and though he might have written much more, if his life had been prolonged, it is doubtful whether he would have produced anything finer. Any further effort at musical effects would probably have resulted in a kind of ecstatic rhapsody. The first of the poems in question is the _Marshes of Glynn_, descriptive of the sea marshes near the city of Brunswick, Georgia.

"Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free-- Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won G.o.d out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain, And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain."

The other poem of his closing period, _Sunrise_, his greatest production, was written during the high fever of his last illness. In the poet's collected works, it is placed first in the series called _Hymns of the Marshes_. At times it almost reaches the point of ecstasy. His love of Nature finds supreme utterance.

"In my sleep I was fain of their fellows.h.i.+p, 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.

"Oh, what if a sound should be made!

Oh, what if a bound should be laid To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,-- To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string!

I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam Will break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream,-- Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of s.p.a.ce and of night, Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light, Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, Or a sound or a motion made."

Throughout his artistic life Lanier was true to the loftiest ideals. He did not separate artistic from moral beauty. To his sensitive spirit, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty seemed interchangeable terms. He did not make the shallow cry of "art for art's sake" a pretext or excuse for moral taint. On the contrary, he maintained that all art should be the embodiment of truth, goodness, love. "Can not one say with authority," he inquires in one of his university lectures, "to the young artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character- forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that, unless you are suffused--soul and body, one might say-- with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love--that is, the love of all things in their proper relation--unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with truth; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness. In a word, unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."

Through these years of high aspiration and manly endeavor, the poet and musician was waging a losing fight with consumption. He was finally driven to tent life in a high, pure atmosphere as his only hope. He first went to Asheville, North Carolina, and a little later to Lynn. But his efforts to regain his health proved in vain; and on the 7th of September, 1881, the tragic struggle was brought to a close.

The time has hardly come to give a final judgment as to Lanier's place in American letters. He certainly deserves a place by the side of the very best poets of the South, and perhaps, as many believe, by the side of the greatest masters of American song. His genius had elements of originality equaled only by Poe. He had the high moral purpose of the artist- prophets; but his efforts after musical effects, as well as his untimely death, prevented the full fruitage of his admirable genius. Many of the poems that he has left us are lacking in spontaneity and artistic finish.

Alliterative effects are sometimes obtrusive. His poetic theories, as presented in _The Science of English Verse_, often outstripped his execution. But, after all these abatements are made, it remains true that in a few pieces he has reached a trembling height of poetic and musical rapture that is unsurpa.s.sed in the whole range of American poetry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FATHER RYAN.]

CHAPTER VI

ABRAM J. RYAN

The poems of Abram J. Ryan, better known as Father Ryan, are unambitious.

The poet modestly wished to call them only verses; and, as he tells us, they "were written at random,--off and on, here, there, anywhere,--just as the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry." His poems do not exhibit a painstaking, polished art. They are largely emotional outpourings of a heart that readily found expression in fluent, melodious lays. The poet-priest understood their character too well to a.s.sign them a very high place in the realm of song; yet the wish he expressed, that they might echo from heart to heart, has been fulfilled in no small degree. In _Sentinel Songs_ he says:--

"I sing with a voice too low To be heard beyond to-day, In minor keys of my people's woe, But my songs pa.s.s away.

"To-morrow hears them not-- To-morrow belongs to fame-- My songs, like the birds', will be forgot, And forgotten shall be my name.

"And yet who knows? Betimes The grandest songs depart, While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes Will echo from heart to heart."

But few facts are recorded of Father Ryan's life. The memoir and the critique prefixed to the latest edition of his poems but poorly fulfill their design. Besides the absence of detail, there is an evident lack of taste and breadth of view. The poet's ecclesiastical relation is unduly magnified; and the invidious comparisons made and the immoderate laudation expressed are far from agreeable. But we are not left wholly at a loss. With the few recorded facts of his life as guide, the poems of Father Ryan become an interesting and instructive autobiography. He was a spontaneous singer whose inspiration came, not from distant fields of legend, history, science, but from his own experience; and it is not difficult to read there a romance, or rather a tragedy, which imparts a deep pathos to his life. His _interior_ life, as reflected in his poems, is all of good report, in no point clas.h.i.+ng with the moral excellence befitting the priestly office.

Abram J. Ryan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, August 15, 1839, whither his parents, natives of Ireland, had immigrated not long before. He possessed the quick sensibilities characteristic of the Celtic race; and his love for Ireland is reflected in a stout martial lyric ent.i.tled _Erin's Flag:_--

"Lift it up! lift it up! the old Banner of Green!

The blood of its sons has but brightened its sheen; What though the tyrant has trampled it down, Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown?"

When he was seven or eight years old, his parents removed to St. Louis.

He is said to have shown great apt.i.tude in acquiring knowledge; and his superior intellectual gifts, a.s.sociated with an unusual reverence for sacred things, early indicated the priesthood as his future vocation. In the autobiographic poem, _Their Story Runneth Thus_, we have a picture of his youthful character. With a warm heart, he had more than the changefulness of the Celtic temperament. In his boyhood, as throughout his maturity, he was strangely restless. As he says himself:--

"The boy was full of moods.

Upon his soul and face the dark and bright Were strangely intermingled. Hours would pa.s.s Rippling with his bright prattle--and then, hours Would come and go, and never hear a word Fall from his lips, and never see a smile Upon his face. He was so like a cloud With ever-changeful hues."

When his preliminary training was ended, he entered the Roman Catholic seminary at Niagara, New York. He was moved to the priesthood by a spirit of deep consecration. The writer of his memoir dwells on the regret with which he severed the ties binding him to home. No doubt he loved and honored his parents. But there was a still stronger attachment, which, broken by his call to the priesthood, filled all his subsequent life with a consecrated sorrow. It was his love for Ethel:--

"A fair, sweet girl, with great, brown, wond'ring eyes That seemed to listen just as if they held The gift of hearing with the power of sight."

The two lovers, forgetting the sacredness of true human affection, had, with equal self-abnegation, resolved to give themselves to the church, she as a nun and he as a priest. He has given a touching picture of their last meeting:--

"One night in mid of May their faces met As pure as all the stars that gazed on them.

They met to part from themselves and the world.