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=Poem Outlines.= By Sidney Lanier. Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Publishers, New York.
D’Israeli’s “Calamities and Quarrels of Authors” may be ransacked in
vain for an example of misfortune, suffering and heroic combat with
adversity, more pathetic and more admirable than that of Sidney Lanier.
The literary history of our own country presents many an instance of
the neglected genius, struggling with poverty, but none of them appeals
to us quite so powerfully as does that of the Georgia poet who wrote
the “Hymn to Sunrise”—wrote it when his hand was too weak to lift food
to his mouth and when his fever temperature was 104.
Born in Macon, Ga., in 1842, he had hardly graduated, with the first
honor, at Oglethorpe College, before the Civil War drew him, a youth of
eighteen, into the Macon Volunteers, the first Georgia troops that went
to the front.
At the end of the war,—in which he had been in several battles and had
spent months in prison—he returned on foot to Georgia.
After a long and desperate illness, he went to Alabama, where he
clerked in a store in Montgomery, and then became a school teacher.
He married in 1868 and soon afterwards had the first hemorrhage from
the lungs.
Returning to Macon, he studied law and began its practice, with his
father.
The lung trouble was a fixture, however, and he went to New York for
treatment. The remainder of his life presents the distressing spectacle
of pursuer and pursued—the Disease in chase of the victim. We find
him now in Texas, then in Florida, now in Pennsylvania, then in North
Carolina,—with his remorseless enemy on his trail, always.
In the occasional improvements in his health, in the temporary respites
from the implacable foe, was done the literary work which gives Sidney
Lanier his place in the hall of fame. A born musician, he played organ,
piano, flute, violin, banjo and guitar, but his preference was the
violin and his specialty the flute.
It was his exquisite music on the flute which secured and held for him
the leadership of the Peabody Symphony Concerts, in Baltimore. To this
city he went to live in 1873, and Baltimore was his home during the few
years that were left to him.
There is no record of a braver struggle with poverty and disease than
that made by the Georgia poet during these last tragical years.
Fugitive writings for the magazines, lecture courses to private
classes, books in prose and books in verse, first-flute in an
orchestra, public lectures at the Peabody Institute, and then the final
scene in North Carolina where the long, hideous battle comes to its
pitiful close. (Aug. 1881.)
It is not probable that Sidney Lanier ever got much money out of his
books.
“Tiger Lilies,” his novel, made no hit; “The Science of English Verse”
could not possibly appeal to many; and even his volumes of verse had
no considerable recognition during the poet’s life-time. Indeed, it
is doubtful whether Lanier will ever be one of the favorites of all
classes, like Burns and Byron, Longfellow and Bret Harte.
It appears to be the literal fact that the Georgia poet was =always=
hard up. Poverty and Consumption were =always= dogging his steps. To
keep himself and family from want, he =had= to be first-flute in the
Concert, =had= to deliver those lectures. No matter how weak he was, no
matter how ill and depressed, he =had= to go,—and he =did= go and go
and go, until he was so far spent that it may be said that his last
lectures were the death-rattle of a dying man. It is said that his
hearers, to whom his condition was but too evident, listened to these
final discourses “in a kind of fascinated terror.”
Read this extract from one of his letters to his wife:
“So many great ideas for Art are born to me each day, =I am swept away
into the land of All-Delight by their strenuous sweet whirlwind=; and
I find within myself such entire, yet humble, confidence of possessing
every single element of power to carry them all out, =save the little
paltry sum of money that would suffice to keep us clothed and fed in
the meantime=.
“=I do not understand this=.”
(The black type is ours.)
It reminds one of that letter of Edgar Poe, written to Childers of
Georgia, requesting a small loan and saying simply, abjectly, “I am so
miserably poor and friendless.”
His poverty cowed Poe, and caused him to do unmanly things. Poverty
did not cow Sidney Lanier, and never in his life did he do an unmanly
thing. Much of the time he was not able to have his family with him.
Therefore, the battle that was fought by this unfearing soul was a sick
man, a lonely man, a care-worn man, a sensitive man, a very poor man
against odds that he knew he could not long resist.
In 1905, Charles Scribner’s Sons brought out a complete collection of
the “Poems of Sidney Lanier, edited by his wife.” Of those poems we
have not space to write.
The present volume is unique and to those who value the brief
suggestion which fires a train of thought, it is valuable,—exceedingly
so.
Not all of these “Outlines” are properly so called. Many of them are as
complete in themselves as are the Cameos of Walter Savage Landor.
Like other Georgia bards—A. R. Watson, Dr. Frank Tickner, Joel
Chandler Harris, Frank L. Stanton and Don Marquis,—Sidney Lanier could
put so much thought and beauty into four lines as to give one a sense
of perfection.
For example,
“And then
A gentle violin =mated= with the flute,
=And both flew off into a wood of harmony,
Two doves of tone=.”
=That= is not the “=Outline=” of a poem; it is =a poem=, perfect in its
way and complete in itself. =There was nothing more to be said.=
Again,
“=Tolerance, like a Harbor=, lay
Smooth and shining and secure,
=Where ships carrying every flag
Of faith were anchored in peace=.”
This also,
“Who doubts but Eve had a rose in her hair
Ere fig leaves fettered her limbs?
So Life wore poetry’s perfect rose
Before ’twas clothed with economic prose.”
And,
“How did’st thou win her, Death?
Thou art the only rival that ever made her cold to me.”
And,
“Wan Silence lying, lip on ground.
=An outcast Angel from the heaven of sound=,
Prone and desolate
By the shut Gate.”
One more selection, and we leave off:
“Look out Death, I am coming,
=Art thou not glad?= What talks we’ll have,
What mem’ries of old battles.
Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.”
This is no “Outline”; it is a complete poem, =a terribly complete
poem=. Like the flash in a night of storm, it lights up a world of
raging elements and universal gloom.
* * * * *
=“Pokahuntas, Maid of Jamestown.”=
By Anne Sanford Green. The Exponent Press, Culpeper, Va.
In the Introduction, the author says,
“We have expended great pains, and much time and thought, to
demonstrate that the whole story of Pokahuntas and John Smith was
mainly true, and not mythological, and unfit to be told, as some
Virginia historians have been at pains to prove.
“But really, that it was true that Captain John Smith loved the Indian
maiden, and that he was the one love of her life.”
The author cites the county records of Virginia to substantiate the
facts upon which her story rests, and uses extensively the work of
Annas Todkill, “My Lady Pokahuntas,” published in the seventeenth
century.
Out of these materials has been evolved a narrative which is deeply
interesting. How the Indian girl saved Captain Smith’s life, how she
came to love him, how she saved the colony from starvation, how the
enemies of Captain Smith finally made his position unbearable and how
he sailed away, after a tender leave-taking of Pokahuntas, how the
ungrateful colonists captured the girl and held her as hostage, how the
report of Captain Smith’s death came to Jamestown and was believed by
all, how the Indian maiden was wooed and won by Rolfe, how she went to
England and was the honored guest of royalty, how she saw Captain Smith
at Shakespeare’s theatre, how her love for him revived and filled her
with despair, how she sickened and died,—such is the outline of this
fascinating story. The author tells it, without the waste of a word,
and with simplicity, directness and force.
* * * * *
=Disastrous Financial Panics=: Cause and Remedy.
By Jesse Gillmore, San Diego, Cal. Price 25 cents.
“Indeed, a most love of a book,” wrote some one rapturously of a volume
which had pleased him immensely. One is tempted to repeat the phrase
in reference to Mr. Gillmore’s little work, because he has swept
out the ambiguous, the obscure and tiresome, condensed statistical
tables into a few lines and made his subject vitally interesting. The
difficulty of enlightening a majority of people on the evils of our
financial system consists in the refusal of the reader to be bored by
dreary compilations of figures and tedious elaborations. Mr. Gillmore’s
book is history and logic in so entertaining a form that the reader
is delighted; and even a school boy would find in it nothing dull or
confusing. The true test of a popular work on an instructive subject
really is whether or not it is laid down by the reader with a definite:
“Why, I understand that. It was never made so plain to me before.”
The small price and the ease with which the pamphlet may be handled
and read should make “Disastrous Financial Panics” a very valuable
contribution to the cause of reform.
* * * * *
=The Cure of Consumption, Coughs and Colds.= By
Fred. K. Kaessman. Price 10 cents. Health-Wealth
Publishing House, Lawrence, Mass.
A neat booklet containing encouraging words and advice that will
prove exceedingly beneficial wherever practicable to follow. And even
where the suggestions cannot be carried out completely, the sufferer
from lung trouble should approximate the ideal conditions for cure
as closely as possible. The work emphasizes the value of fresh air,
exercise and wholesome food and the worthlessness of patent nostrums.
* * * * *
=Usury.= By Calvin Elliott. Price $1. Published by
the Anti-Usury League, Albany, Oregon.
It is safe to say that more sincere Christians have been gulled into
submission to injustice and oppression by the Scriptural phrase,
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” than by anything else.
Therefore, Mr. Calvin’s careful analysis of the economical situation
created by the custom of exacting usury is enormously strengthened by
his clear conception of the true meaning of Bible sayings. He traces
the history of interest through both Old and New Testaments down to
the present time and shows beyond cavil the inquiry of a system which
insures the perpetual enslavement of a debt-paying class for the
benefit of a moneyed aristocracy.
There can be no freedom so long as usury endures. We may sometimes sigh
for the power of a king—but what European monarch does not servilely
bow to the will of the house of Rothschild? Until we have corrected
the ability to extort taxes from generations yet unborn, we may expect
neither liberty, nor justice nor equality.
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