During the winter of 1873-74, the first winter in Baltimore,
Lanier had, as has been seen, given his entire time to music.
The only poetry he had written had been inspired by love for his absent wife,
-- poems breathing of the deepest and tenderest affection.
Scarcely less poetical were the letters written to her giving expression
to his joy in the large new world into which he was entering,
and at the same time to his sense of loneliness and pain at their separation.
To her and his boys he went as soon as his engagement
with the Peabody Orchestra was ended. In one of his letters
he had spoken of himself as "an exile from his dear Land,
which is always the land where my loved ones are." He found delight
during this summer, as in the following ones, in the renewal of home ties,
and in the enjoyment of the natural scenery of Macon and Brunswick,
to whose beauty he never ceased to be sensitive.
It was in August, 1874, that he received a fresh impulse towards poetry,
or, at least, towards the writing of more important poems
than those he had heretofore written. While visiting at Sunnyside, Georgia,
some sixty miles from Macon, he was struck at once with
the beauty of cornfields and the pathos of deserted farms.
Hence arose his first poem that attracted attention throughout the country.
He took it to New York with him in the fall. Writing to his friend,
Judge Logan E. Bleckley, now Chief Justice of Georgia, who during this summer
spoke encouraging words to him about the faith he had in his literary future,
he inclosed his recently finished poem with these words: --
195 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y.
October 9, 1874.
My dear Sir, -- I could never tell you how sincerely grateful I am to you,
and shall always be, for a few words you spoke to me recently.
Such encouragement would have been pleasant at any time,
but this happened to come just at a critical moment when,
although I had succeeded in making up my mind finally and decisively
as to my own career, I was yet faint from a desperate struggle
with certain untoward circumstances which it would not become me to detail.
Did you ever lie for a whole day after being wounded, and then have water
brought you? If so, you will know how your words came to me.
I inclose the manuscript 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 number of old, deserted 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.
Please give me your judgment on my effort, WITHOUT RESERVE;
for if you should say you do not like it, the only effect on me will be
to make me write one that you do like.
Believe me always your friend,
Sidney Lanier.
The answer to this letter, giving a detailed criticism of the poem,
was very helpful to Lanier. Judge Bleckley is a man of much cultivation,
and is widely known throughout Georgia as at once one of
the leading lawyers of the State and a man who can in his leisure moments
engage in literary work which, though not published,
gives evidence of imagination and taste. Lanier was wise enough
to accept most of his criticism: the revised form of the poem
compared with the first form shows a great many changes,
and is striking evidence of Lanier's power to improve his work.
Judge Bleckley's characterization of "Corn" so accurately describes it
that his words may be quoted here: "It presents four pictures;
three of them landscapes and one a portrait. You paint the woods,
a cornfield, 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
[the cornstalk is Lanier's symbol of the poet], and you give its poetry
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."*
--
* Quoted in Callaway's `Select Poems of Lanier', p. 61.
--
The poem was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", February, 1875, and at once
attracted the attention of some discriminating readers of magazines,
notably Mr. Gibson Peacock, the editor of the Philadelphia "Evening Bulletin",
who reviewed it in a most sympathetic manner, and became
one of the poet's best friends during the remainder of his life.
It is noteworthy that the scenery of the poem should be
so distinctively and realistically Southern. There is in the first part
all of Lanier's love of the Southern forest: the shimmering forms
in the woods, the leaves, the subtlety of mighty tenderness
in the embracing boughs, the long muscadines, the mosses, ferns, and flowers,
are all delicately felt and described -- with a suggestion of Keats.
As he wanders from this forest to the zigzag-cornered fence,
his fieldward-faring eyes take in the beauty of the cornfield,
"the heaven of blue inwoven with a heaven of green." One tall corn captain
becomes to his mind the symbol of the poet-soul sublime, who takes from all
that he may give to all. The picture of the thriftless and negligent
Southern farmer, "a gamester's cat'spaw and a banker's slave,"
shows Lanier's keen insight into Southern conditions, which he had,
while living in Macon, studied with much care and which he now lifted
into the realm of poetry. The red hills of Georgia, deserted and barren,
are presented with true pathos. Nevertheless, like a genuine prophet,
the poet looks forward to a better day: --
Yet shall the great God turn thy fate,
And bring thee back into thy monarch state
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.
This vision of the South's restored agriculture was one
that remained with Lanier to the end. He did not properly appreciate
the development of manufacturing in the South, but he believed
that the redemption of the country would come through
the development of agriculture -- not the restoration of the large plantations
of the old regime, but the large number of small farms
with diversified products. On a later visit to the South
he exclaimed to his brother, "My countrymen, why plant ye not
the vineyards of the Lord?" and later he wrote in his essay on the "New South"
of the actual fulfillment of his prophecy in "Corn".
Encouraged by the success of "Corn", Lanier, while giving
a large part of his time to music during the winter of 1874-75,
looked more and more in the direction of poetry. He writes again
to Judge Bleckley, November 15, 1874: "Your encouraging words give me at once
strength and pleasure. I hope hard and work hard to do something
worthy of them some day. My head and my heart 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 then proceeds
to outline what is to be his first `magnum opus', "a long poem,
founded on that strange uprising in the middle of the fourteenth century
in France, called `The Jacquerie'. It was the first time
that the big hungers of THE PEOPLE appear in our modern civilization;
and it is full of significance. The peasants learned
from the merchant potentates of Flanders that a man who could not be
a lord by birth, might be one by wealth; and so Trade arose,
and overthrew Chivalry. Trade has now had possession of the civilized world
for four hundred years: it controls all things, it interprets the Bible,
it guides our national and almost all our individual life with its maxims;
and its oppressions upon the moral existence of man have come to be
ten thousand times more grievous than the worst tyrannies of the Feudal System
ever were. Thus in the reversals of time, it is NOW the GENTLEMAN
who must rise and overthrow Trade. That chivalry which every man has,
in some degree, in his heart; which does not depend upon birth,
but which is a revelation from God of justice, of fair dealing,
of scorn of mean advantages; which contemns the selling of stock
which one KNOWS is going to fall, to a man who BELIEVES
it is going to rise, as much as it would contemn any other form
of rascality or of injustice or of meanness -- it is this
which must in these latter days organize its insurrections and burn up
every one of the cunning moral castles from which Trade sends out its forays
upon the conscience of modern society. -- This is about the plan
which is to run through my book: though I conceal it under
the form of a pure novel."*
--
* Quoted in part in Callaway's `Select Poems of Lanier', p. 65.
--
Lanier never finished this poem, but he was soon hard at work on another
which was based on the same idea, "The Symphony". Writing to
his newly acquired friend, Mr. Peacock, March 24, 1875, he says:
"About four days ago, a certain poem which I had vaguely ruminated
for a week before took hold of me like a real James River ague,
and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since.
I call it `The Symphony': I personify each instrument in the orchestra,
and make them discuss various deep social questions of the times,
in the progress of the music. It is now nearly finished; and I shall be
rejoiced thereat, for it verily racks all the bones of my spirit."
The poem was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", June, 1875;
and besides confirming the good opinion of Mr. Peacock,
won the praise of Bayard Taylor, George H. Calvert, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
and Charlotte Cushman, and was copied in full in Dwight's "Journal of Music".
As in his first poem Lanier had pointed out a defect in Southern life,
so in his second long poem he struck at one of the evils of national life.
In the South he felt that there was not enough of the spirit of industry;
looking at the nation as a whole, however, he exclaims: --
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The time needs heart -- 't is tired of head:
We are all for love," the violins said.
The germ of this poem is found perhaps in a letter written from Wheeling,
West Virginia, where he went with some of his fellow musicians
to give a concert, April 16, 1874. It is a realistic picture of a city
completely dominated by factory life. What he afterwards called
"the hell-colored smoke of the factories" created within him
a feeling of righteous indignation akin to that of Ruskin,
although it must be said in justice to Lanier that, in combating the evils
of industrial life, he never went to the extreme of eccentric passion
displayed by the English writer. Nor, on the other hand,
could he say with Walt Whitman: "I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated,
intense practical energy, the demand for facts, even the business materialism,
of the current age. . . . I perceive clearly that the extreme business energy
and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States
are parts of a melioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare
the very results I demand."
Lanier's poem is more applicable to the conditions that prevail to-day
than to those of his own time. He shows himself a prophet,
the truth of whose words is realized by many of the finer minds
of the country. He lets the various instruments of the orchestra
utter their protest against the evils of modern trade. The violin,
speaking for the poor who stand wedged by the pressing of trade's hand
and "weave in the mills and heave in the kilns," protests against
the spirit of competition that says even when human life is involved,
"Trade is only war grown miserly."
Alas, for the poor to have some part
In yon sweet living lands of art.
Then the flute -- Lanier's own flute, summing up the voices of nature,
"all fair forms, and sounds, and lights" -- echoes the words of the Master,
"All men are neighbors." Trade, the king of the modern days,
will not allow the poor a glimpse of "the outside hills of liberty".
The clarionet is the voice of a lady who speaks of the merchandise of love
and yearns for the old days of chivalry before trade had withered up
love's sinewy prime: --
If men loved larger, larger were our lives;
And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives.
To her the bold, straightforward horn answers, "like any knight
in knighthood's morn." He would bring back the age of chivalry,
when there would be "contempts of mean-got gain and hates of inward stain."
He voices, too, the idea long ago expressed by Milton that men should be
as pure as women: --
Shall woman scorch for a single sin,
That her betrayer may revel in,
And she be burnt, and he but grin
When that the flames begin,
Fair lady?
Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea,
`We maids would far, far whiter be
If that our eyes might sometimes see
Men maids in purity.'
Then the hautboy sings, "like any large-eyed child," calling for
simplicity and naturalness in this modern life. And all join at the last
in a triumphant chant of the power of love to heal all the ills of life: --
And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying,
And ever Love hears the women's sighing,
And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying,
And ever wise childhood's deep implying,
But never a trader's glozing and lying.
And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word.
By this time Lanier was hard at work for the publishers.
Although he never lost his love for music -- he could not -- he began to see
that his must be a literary career. In a letter of March 20, 1876,
he says to Judge Bleckley that he has had a year of frightful overwork.
"I have been working at such a rate as, if I could keep it up,
would soon make me the proverb of fecundity that Lope de Vega now is."
He refers to the India papers written for "Lippincott's".
"The collection of the multitudinous particulars involved in them
cost me such a world of labor among the libraries of Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore as would take a long time to describe. . . .
In addition to these I have written a number of papers not yet published,
and a dozen small poems which have appeared here and there.
"Now, I don't work for bread; in truth, I suppose that any man who,
after many days and nights of tribulation and bloody sweat,
has finally emerged from all doubt into the quiet and yet joyful activity
of one who KNOWS exactly what his Great Passion is and what his God
desires him to do, will straightway lose all anxiety as to what
he is working FOR, in the simple glory of doing that which lies
immediately before him. As for me, life has resolved simply into a time
during which I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems
with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket."
He quotes from "that simple and powerful sonnet of dear old William Drummond
of Hawthornden": --
Know what I list, this all cannot me move,
But that, O me! -- I both must write and love.
He had to give much of his time, however, to hack work.
During the summer of 1875 he was engaged in writing a book on Florida
for the Lippincotts. It is, as he wrote to Paul Hamilton Hayne,
"a sort of spiritualized guide-book" to a section which was then drawing
a large number of visitors. "The thing immediately began
to ramify and expand, until I quickly found I was in for
a long and very difficult job: so long, and so difficult,
that, after working day and night for the last three months
on the materials I had previously collected, I have just finished the book,
and am now up to my ears in proof-sheets and wood-cuts
which the publishers are rushing through in order to publish
at the earliest possible moment, the book having several features
designed to meet the wants of winter visitors to Florida." It is filled
with facts in regard to climate and scenery, practical hints for travelers,
and other things characteristic of a guide-book; but it is more than that.
Like everything else that Lanier ever did, -- even the dreariest hack work, --
he threw himself into it with great zest. It has suggestions to consumptives
born out of his own experience. There are allusions to music,
literature, and philosophy. There are descriptions and historical anecdotes
of the cities of South Carolina and Georgia; above all,
there are descriptions of the Florida country which only a poet could write.
Two passages are characteristic: --
"And now it is bed-time. Let me tell you how to sleep
on an Ocklawaha steamer in May. With a small bribe persuade Jim, the steward,
to take the mattress out of your berth and lay it slanting
just along the railing that incloses the lower part of the deck
in front and to the left of the pilot-house. Lie flat on your back
down on the mattress, draw your blanket over you, put your cap on your head,
on account of the night air, fold your arms, say some little prayer or other,
and fall asleep with a star looking right down on your eye.
When you wake in the morning you will feel as new as Adam."
"Presently we abandoned the broad highway of the St. Johns,
and turned off to the right into the narrow lane of the Ocklawaha.
This is the sweetest water-lane in the world, a lane which runs
for more than one hundred and fifty miles of pure delight betwixt
hedge-rows of oaks and cypresses and palms and magnolias and mosses and vines;
a lane clean to travel, for there is never a speck of dust in it save
the blue dust and gold dust which the wind blows out of the flags and lilies."
In the discussion of "The Symphony", emphasis was laid upon
Lanier's national point of view. The opportunity soon came to him
of giving expression to his love of the Union. At Bayard Taylor's suggestion
he was appointed by the Centennial Commission to write the words for a cantata
to be sung at the opening exercises of the exposition in Philadelphia.
Taylor, in announcing the fact, on December 28, 1875, said:
"I have just had a visit from Theodore Thomas and Mr. Buck,
and we talked the whole matter over. Thomas remembers you well,
and Mr. Buck says it will be especially agreeable to him to compose for
the words of a Southern poet. I have taken the liberty of speaking for you,
both to them and to General Hawley, and you must not fail me. . . .
"Now, my dear Lanier, I am sure you CAN do this worthily.
It's a great occasion, -- not especially for poetry as an art,
but for Poetry to assert herself as a power."* To this letter Lanier replied:
"If it were a cantata upon your goodness, . . . I am willing to wager
I could write a stirring one and a grateful withal.
--
* `Letters', p. 136.
--
"Of course I will accept -- when 't is offered. I only write a hasty line now
to say how deeply I am touched by the friendly forethought of your letter."*
--
* `Letters', p. 137.
--
He announces the fact to his wife in a jubilant letter of January 8, 1876:
"Moreover, I have a charming piece of news which -- although thou art not yet
to communicate it to any one except Clifford -- I cannot keep from thee.
The opening ceremonies of the Centennial Exhibition will be very grand;
and among other things there are to be sung by a full chorus
(and played by the orchestra, under Thomas's direction) a hymn and a cantata.
General Hawley, President of the Centennial Commission, has written
inviting me to write the latter (I mean the POEM; Dudley Buck, of New York,
is to write the music). Bayard Taylor is to write the hymn.* This is
very pleasing to me; for I am chosen as representative of our dear South;
and the matter puts my name by the side of very delightful and honorable ones,
besides bringing me in contact with many people I would desire to know.
--
* Whittier wrote this hymn and Bayard Taylor wrote the Ode
for the Fourth of July celebration.
--
"Mr. Buck has written me that he wants the poem by January 15,
which as I have not yet had the least time for it, gives me just seven days
to write it in. I would much rather have had seven months; but God is great.
Remember, thou and Cliff, that this is not yet to be spoken of at all."*
--
* Quoted in Baskervill's `Southern Writers', p. 200.
--
With enthusiasm the poet entered upon the task assigned him.
The progress of the Cantata from the time when it first
presented itself to his mind to the time when he completed it,
may be traced in the letters to Bayard Taylor and Gibson Peacock,
which have already been published.* Writing to Mr. Dudley Buck,
January 15, 1876, he said: --
--
* See `Letters', passim.
--
Dear Mr. Buck, -- I send you herewith the complete text for the Cantata.
I have tried to make it a genuine Song, at once full of fire
and of large and artless simplicity befitting a young but already
colossal land.
I have made out a working copy for you, with marginal notes
which give an analysis of each movement (or rather MOTIVE,
for I take it the whole will be a continuous progression;
and I only use the word "movement" as indicating the entire contrast
which I have secured between each two adjacent MOTIVES), and which will,
I hope, facilitate your labor by presenting an outline of the tones
characterizing each change of idea. One movement is placed on each page.
Mr. Thomas was kind enough to express himself very cordially
as to the ideas of the piece; and I devoutly trust that they will meet
your views. I found that the projection which I had made in my own mind
embraced all the substantial features of the Scheme which had occurred to you,
and therefore, although greatly differing in details, I have not hesitated
to avail myself of your thoughtful warning against being in any way hampered.
It will give me keen pleasure to know from you, as soon as you
shall have digested the poem, that you like it.
God send you a soul full of colossal and simple chords, -- says
Yours sincerely,
Sidney Lanier.
In another letter, of February 1, 1876, he wrote: "I will leave
the whole matter of the publication of the poem in the hands
of Mr. Thomas and yourself; only begging that the inclosed copy be the one
which shall go to the printer. The truth is, I shrank from the criticism
which I fear my poem will provoke, -- not because I think it unworthy,
but because I have purposely made it absolutely free
from all melodramatic artifice, and wholly simple and artless;
and although I did this in the full consciousness that I would thereby give it
such a form as would inevitably cause it to be disappointing
on the first reading to most people, yet I had somewhat the same feeling
(when your unexpected proposition to print first came) as when
a raw salt spray dashes suddenly in your face and makes you duck your head.
As for my own private poems, I do not even see the criticisms on them,
and am far above the plane where they could possibly reach me;
but this poem is NOT mine, it is to represent the people,
and the people have a right that it should please them."
In this letter Lanier anticipates the criticism that was sure
to come upon the poem when printed without the music.
It was at once received with ridicule in all parts of the country.
The leading critical journal of America exclaimed: "It reads
like a communication from the spirit of Nat Lee, rendered through
a bedlamite medium, failing in all the ordinary laws of sense and sound,
melody and prosody." It urged the commissioners to "save American letters
from the humiliation of presenting to the assembled world such a farrago
as this." For several weeks Lanier could not pick up a newspaper
without seeing his name held up to ridicule, the Southern papers alone,
out of purely sectional pride and with "no understanding
of the PRINCIPLES involved," coming to his rescue. The spirit in which
he received this criticism may be seen in a letter written to his brother: --
This is the sixth letter I've written since nine o'clock to-night,
and it is like saying one's prayers before going to bed,
to have a quiet word with you.
Your letter came to-day, and I see that you have been annoyed
by the howling of the critics over the Cantata. I was greatly so at first,
before I had recovered from my amazement at finding a work of art
received in this way, sufficiently to think, but now the whole matter
is quite plain to me and gives me no more thought, at all. . . .
The whole agitation has been of infinite value to me. It has taught me,
in the first place, to lift my heart absolutely above all EXPECTATION
save that which finds its fulfillment in the large consciousness
of beautiful devotion to the highest ideals in art. This enables me
to work in tranquillity.
In the second place, it has naturally caused me to make
a merciless arraignment and trial of my artistic purposes;
and an unspeakable content arises out of the revelation
that they come from the ordeal confirmed in innocence and clearly defined
in their relations with all things. . . .
The commotion about the Cantata has not been unfavorable, on the whole,
to my personal interests. It has led many to read closely
what they would otherwise have read cursorily, and I believe
I have many earnest friends whose liking was of a nature to be confirmed
by such opposition. . . .
And now, dear little Boy, may God convoy you over to the morning
across this night, and across all nights, Prays your
S. L.
That the poem was misjudged cannot be denied. Lanier's defense
published in the New York "Tribune" must be taken as a justification,
in part at least, of the principles he had in mind.* It was not written
as a poem, -- and Mrs. Lanier has wisely put it as an appendix
to her edition of the poems, -- but as the words of a musical composition
to be rendered by a large orchestra and chorus. It compares, therefore,
with a lyric very much as one of the librettos of a Wagner drama
would compare with a genuine drama. It serves merely to give the ideas
which were to be interpreted emotionally through the forms of music.
Lanier knew well the requirements of an orchestra. He knew
the effect of contrasts and of short, simple words which would suggest
the deeper emotions intended by the author. He thought of Beethoven's
"large and artless forms" rather than that of formal lyric poetry.
He had heard Von Buelow conduct the Peabody Orchestra in a symphony
based on one of Uhland's poems, in which only the simple elemental words
were retained, "leaving all else to his hearers' imaginations."
This served as a model for his Cantata.
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 80.
--
That the Cantata was a success is borne out by contemporary evidence.
The very paper which had criticised Lanier most severely said, in giving
an account of the opening exercises, "The rendering of Lanier's Cantata
was exquisite, and Whitney's bass solo deserves to the full all the praise
that has been heaped upon it." Ex-President Gilman thus writes of the effect
produced on the vast audience assembled in Philadelphia:
"As a Baltimorean who had just formed the acquaintance of Lanier
(both of us being strangers at that time in a city we came to love
as a most hospitable and responsive home), -- I was much interested
in his appointment. It was then true, though Dr. Holmes had not yet said it,
that Baltimore had produced three poems, each of them the best of its kind:
the `Star-Spangled Banner' of Key, `The Raven', of Poe,
and `Maryland, My Maryland', by Randall. Was it to produce
a fourth poem as remarkable as these? Lanier's Cantata appeared
in one of the daily journals, prematurely. I read it as one reads
newspaper articles, with a rapid glance, and could make no sense of it.
I heard the comments of other bewildered critics. I read the piece
again and again and again, before the meaning began to dawn on me.
Soon afterwards, Lanier's own explanation, and the dawn became daylight.
The ode was not written `to be read'. It was to be sung --
and sung, not by a single voice, with a piano accompaniment,
but in the open air, by a chorus of many hundred voices,
and with the accompaniment of a majestic orchestra, to music
especially written for it by a composer of great distinction.
The critical test would be its rendition. From this point of view
the Cantata must be judged.
"I remember well the day of trial. The President of the United States,
the Emperor of Brazil, the governors of States, the judges
of the highest courts, the chief military and naval heroes,
were seated on the platform in the face of an immense assembly.
There was no pictorial effect in the way they were grouped.
They were a mass of living beings, a crowd of black-coated dignitaries,
not arranged in any impressive order. No cathedral of Canterbury,
no Sanders Hall, no episcopal or academic gowns. The oratory
was likewise ineffective. There were loud voices and vigorous gestures,
but none of the eloquence which enchants a multitude.
The devotional exercises awakened no sentiment of reverence.
At length came the Cantata. From the overture to the closing cadence
it held the attention of the vast throng of listeners,
and when it was concluded loud applause rang through the air.
A noble conception had been nobly rendered. Words and music,
voices and instruments, produced an impression as remarkable as
the rendering of the Hallelujah Chorus in the nave of Westminster Abbey.
Lanier had triumphed. It was an opportunity of a lifetime
to test upon a grand scale his theory of verse. He came off victorious."*
--
* `South Atlantic Quarterly', April, 1905.
--
The most important thing, however, about the writing of the Cantata
was that it gave expression to a strong faith in the nation as felt by one
who had been a Confederate soldier. The central note of the poem
is the preservation of the Union. In spite of all the physical obstacles
that had hindered the early settlers, in spite of the distinct individualities
of the various people of the sections, in spite of sectional misunderstandings
which had led in the process of time to a bloody civil war,
the nation had survived. All of these had said, "No, thou shalt not be."
Now praise to God's oft-granted grace,
Now praise to man's undaunted face,
Despite the land, despite the sea,
I was: I am: and I shall be.
Lanier desired, however, to avoid anything like spread-eagleism,
and so after the chorus of jubilation just quoted, there is a note of doubt
as to how long the nation will last. The answer, sung by the Boston soloist,
Myron D. Whitney, was particularly impressive: --
Long as thine Art shall love true love,
Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove,
Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy Brother every man below,
So long, dear Land of all my love,
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!
Soon after finishing the Centennial Cantata, Lanier started upon
a much longer centennial poem which, as the "Psalm of the West",
was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", June, 1876,
and for which he received $300. "By the grace of God,"
he writes to Bayard Taylor, April 4, 1876, "my centennial Ode is finished.
I now only know how divine has been the agony of the last three weeks,
during which I have been rapt away to heights where all my own purposes
as to a revisal of artistic forms lay clear before me,
and where the sole travail was of choice out of multitude."
This poem was written with the idea of a symphony in his mind.
One of the last things he planned was to write the music for it.
The poem as a whole is a musical rhapsody rather than a self-contained
work of art. Although there are fancies and obscurities,
the general theme, the magnificent opening lines, and the Columbus sonnets,
with here and there lines of imaginative power, make it noteworthy.
The poem is a passionate assertion of the triumph of freedom in America, --
freedom, the Eve of this tall Adam of lands.
Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast,
Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest,
Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West.
Freedom with all its dangers is the precious heritage of Americans.
"For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength with a chain."
With the aid of the God of the artist the poet reviews
the history of the past, beginning with the time when in this continent
"Blank was king and Nothing had his will." The coming of the Northmen,
the discovery of the land by Columbus, the voyage of the Mayflower,
-- ship of Faith's best hope, -- the battle of Lexington,
the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the opening up
of the West, are all chanted in unrestrained poetry. The Civil War
is described as a tournament: --
Heartstrong South would have his way,
Headstrong North hath said him nay.
They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled;
Brain rose again, ungloved;
Heart fainting smiled and softly said,
`My love to my Beloved.'
Heart and brain! no more be twain;
Throb and think, one flesh again!
Lo! they weep, they turn, they run;
Lo! they kiss: Love, thou art one.
The poem closes as it began, with the triumphant vision of the future: --
At heart let no man fear for thee:
Thy Past sings ever Freedom's song,
Thy Future's voice sounds wondrous free;
And Freedom is more large than Crime,
And Error is more small than Time.
The significance of the national spirit in these two poems may be seen
only when it is looked at from the standpoint of the sectionalism
that prevailed in the South and in the North. At the very time
when Lanier was writing them, men in Congress were giving
exhibitions of partisanship and prejudice that threatened
to make of the Centennial a farce. "The fate of the Centennial bill
in Congress," he writes to Dudley Buck, "reveals -- in spite of its passage --
a good deal of opposition. All this will die out in a couple of months,
and THEN every one will be in a temper to receive a poem of reconciliation.
I fancy that to print the poem NOW will be much like making a dinner speech
before the wine has been around." Indeed, there were few men in America
at this time who really understood the significance of the national spirit.
Southern men, smarting under reconstruction governments and bitter with
the prejudice engendered by the war, had not been able, except in rare cases,
to rise to a national point of view. The sectional spirit was ready
to break out at any time. It was but natural. In the Centennial year
a speaker at the University of Virginia said: "Not space, or time,
or the convenience of any human arm, can reconcile institutions
for the turbulent fanatic of Plymouth Rock and the God-fearing Christian
of Jamestown. . . . You may assign them to the closest territorial proximity,
with all the forms, modes, and shows of civilization,
but you can never cement them into the bonds of brotherhood."
On the other hand, the leading public men of the North,
while protesting their love of the Union and naturally believing in the Union,
which Northern armies had saved, had little of the spirit
of a sympathetic realization of the South's problem and her condition.
Only in a few large-minded publicists, and in editors like Godkin
and poets like Lowell and Walt Whitman, did the national spirit prevail.
Lanier came forward, therefore, at a critical time to express
his passionate faith in the future of the American Union.
He was not the only Southerner, however, who felt this way. His two friends,
Senators Morgan of Alabama and Lamar of Mississippi (formerly of Georgia),
had been stout upholders of the national idea in Congress.
As early as 1873 Lamar had paid a notable tribute to Charles Sumner.
He had risen to the point where he could see the whole struggle
against slavery and against secession from Sumner's standpoint.
At the conclusion of his remarkable address he said: "Bound to each other
by a common constitution, destined to live together under a common government,
shall we not now at last endeavor to grow TOWARD each other once more
in heart, as we are already indissolubly linked in fortunes? . . .
Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament to-day
could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord
in tones which should reach every heart throughout this broad territory:
My countrymen! KNOW one another, and you will LOVE one another."
In 1876 he made an extended argument for the Centennial bill,
an eloquent plea AGAINST the old States'-rights arguments. "He poured out,"
says his biographer, "an exposition of nationalism and constitutionalism
which equaled in effect one of Webster's masterpieces."
"As a representative of the South," Lamar said at a later time,
"I felt myself, with my Southern associates, to be a joint heir
of a mighty and glorious heritage of honor and responsibility."
It was in this spirit and to voice the better sentiment of the South,
that Lanier eagerly responded to the invitation to write
the Centennial poems. He had fought with valor in the Confederate armies,
hoping to the last that they would be victorious. He had suffered
all the poverty and humiliation of reconstruction days,
but he had risen out of sectionalism into nationalism. It is a striking fact
that the two poets who are the least sectional of all American poets
-- for even Lowell never saw Southern life and Southern problems
from a national point of view -- were Walt Whitman and Lanier,
the only two poets of first importance who took part in the Civil War.
It is also significant, that in Lanier's "Psalm of the West"
we have a Southerner chanting the glory of freedom, without any chance
of having the slavery of a race to make the boast a paradox.
"Corn", "The Symphony", and the "Psalm of the West", with a few shorter poems,
were published in a volume in the fall of 1876 (the volume bore
the date 1877, however). Reserving the discussion of the merits of the volume
for a future chapter, I wish now to give some idea of Lanier's widening
acquaintance with men of culture and of letters. The first man of prominence
to herald him as a new poet was, as has been seen, Mr. Gibson Peacock.
The correspondence between them is well known to all students of Lanier.*
Mr. Peacock "had read widely the best English literature, was familiar with
the modern languages, had traveled far in this country and in Europe,
and had cultivated himself not less in dramatic criticism than in books."
He brought to Lanier financial aid at critical times in his life;
but more than that, his home in Philadelphia was as a second home to the poet
in those years before he had settled in Baltimore, when,
as he wrote Hayne, he was "as homeless as the ghost of Judas Iscariot."
Mrs. Peacock -- a good linguist, a highly skilled musician,
and withal a most magnetic personality -- joined with her husband
in his hearty friendship for the newly discovered poet.
She was the daughter of the Marquis de la Figaniere,
Portuguese minister to this country. In their home were entertained
all the first-rate artistic people who came to Philadelphia,
such as Salvini, Charlotte Cushman, Bayard Taylor, and others.
It was a home in which music and literature were highly honored,
and here Lanier met some of the most interesting people then living
in Philadelphia, such as John Foster Kirk, editor of "Lippincott's Magazine",
Charles Heber Clarke -- "big, heartsome, `Max Adeler'" -- and others.
--
* See `Letters'.
--
Soon after meeting Mr. Peacock and his wife, Lanier was sought out
by Charlotte Cushman on one of her trips to Baltimore.
She had been much interested in reading "Corn", and was so attracted
by the personality of the author (as he was by her),
that an intimate friendship sprang up between them, growing in intensity
until her death, February 18, 1876. She had but recently been greeted
with a great ovation in New York city, at a meeting in which Joseph Jefferson
had represented the stage and Bryant and Stoddard the realm of letters.
The ovation was repeated in the cities of Boston and Philadelphia.
"Though coming into the circle of her friendships during the latter years
of her life, when she had become famous throughout the English-speaking world,
Lanier won for himself there a warm and high place," says her biographer.
There was much to attract the two to each other. Both had
the highest ideals of their art; for to Miss Cushman as to Lanier,
art was a sacred thing. "I know," she said, "He does not fail
to set me his work to do and help me to do it and help others to help me."
Furthermore, they were both sufferers from an incurable malady,
and both victors over it in a certain serene spirit which
transcended suffering. Her words are paralleled by many of Lanier's:
"I know my enemy; he is ever before me and he must conquer,
but I cannot give up to him; I laugh in his face and try to be jolly --
and I am! I declare I am even when he presses me hardest."
She talked much with him of the great men she had known and discussed with him
the ideals of art.
Lanier threw himself into this friendship with characteristic ardor.
He gave her the manuscript copies of his poems and dedicated
the first volume to her, greeting her as "Art's artist, Love's dear woman,
Fame's good queen." During 1875 he wrote many letters to her,
letters full of chivalry and love and humility. Some of these
tell the story of his life during the months of 1875 so well,
and are at the same time so characteristic, that I quote: --
Brunswick, Ga., June 17, 1875.
It is only seldom, dear Miss Cushman, that I can bring myself
to such a point of daring as to ask that you will stretch out your tired arms
merely to take one of my little roses, -- you whose hands are already filled
with the best flowers this world can grow.
Does she not (I say to myself) find them under her feet and wear them
about her brows; may she not walk on them by day and lie on them by night,
nay, does not her life stand rooted in men's regard like one pistil
in a great lily?
But sometimes I really cannot help making love to you,
just for one little intense minute; there is a certain Communistic temper
always adhering in true love which WILL occasionally break out
and behead all the Royal Proprieties and hang Law to the first lamp-post:
it is even now so, my heart is a little '93, `aux armes!'
Where is this minister that imprisons us, away from our friends,
in the Bastile of Separation, let him die, -- and as for Silence,
that luxurious tyrant that collects all the dead for his taxes,
behold, I am even now pricking him to a terrible death
with the point of this good pen.
When one is in a state of insurrection, one makes demands:
mine is that you write me, dear friend, if you are quite recovered
from the fatigues of Baltimore and of Boston, and if you have not
nourished yourself to new strength in feeding upon the honeys
the people brought you there so freely.
. . . . .
Copies of "The Symphony" have been ordered sent to you and Miss Stebbins,
and I have the MS. copy which you desired, ready to transmit to you.
You will be glad to know that "The Symphony" has met with favor.
The "Power of Prayer" in "Scribner's" for June -- although the editor
cruelly mutilated the dialect in some places, turning, for instance, "Marster"
(which is pure Alabama negro) into Mah'sr (which is only Dan Bryant negro,
and does not exist in real life) -- has gone all over the land,
and reappears before my eyes in frequent heart-breaking yet comical disguises
of misprints and disfigurements. Tell me; OUGHT one to be a little ashamed
of writing a dialect poem, -- as at least one newspaper has hinted?
And did Robert Burns prove himself no poet by writing mostly in dialect?
And is Tennyson's "Death of the North Country Farmer"
-- certainly one of the very strongest things he ever wrote --
not a poem, really?
Mr. Peacock's friendship, in the matter of "The Symphony", as indeed
in all others, has been wonderful, a thing too fine to speak of in prose.
To-morrow I go to Savannah, and hope to find there a letter
from Miss Stebbins. Tell me of her, when you write: and tell HER, from me,
how truly and faithfully I am her and
Your friend,
Sidney Lanier.
Philadelphia, Pa., July 31, 1875.
It was so good of you, my dear friend, to write me in the midst
of your suffering, that it amounts to a translation of pain
into something beautiful; and with this thought I console myself for the fear
lest your exertion may have caused you some pang that might have been spared.
I long to hear from you; though Miss Stebbin's letter brought me
a good account from your physician about you. If tender wishes
were but medicinal, if fervent aspirations could but cure,
if my daily upward breathings in your behalf were but as powerful
as they are earnest, -- how perfect would be your state!
I have latterly been a shuttlecock betwixt two big battledores --
New York and Florida. I scarcely dare to recall how many times
I have been to and fro these two States in the last six weeks.
It has been just move on, all the time: car dust, cinders,
the fumes of hot axle grease, these have been my portion; and between them
I have almost felt sometimes as if my soul would be asphyxiated.
But I now cease to wander for a month, with inexpressible delight.
To-morrow I leave here for Brooklyn, where I will be engaged in hard labor
for a month, namely, in finishing up the Florida book. . . .
I am very glad to find my "Symphony" copied in full in Dwight's
"Journal of Music": and I am sure you will care to know that the poem
has found great favor in all parts of the land. I have the keenest desire
to see some English judgment on this poem; but not the least idea
how to compass that end. Can you make me any suggestion in that behalf?
I am full curious to hear you talk about Tennyson's "Queen Mary".
Nothing could be more astonishing than the methods of treatment
with which this production has been disposed of, in the few criticisms
I have seen upon it. One critic declared that it was a good poem
but no drama; another avers decidedly that it is a fine drama, but not a poem;
while the "Nation" man thinks that it is neither a poem nor a drama,
but a sort of didactic narrative intended to be in the first place British,
and, in the second place, a warning against the advancing powers
of the Catholic Church. There is but a solitary thread of judgment in common
among these criticisms.
I cannot tell you with how much delight I read the account of Sidney Dobell,
nor with how much loving recognition I took into my heart
all the extracts from his poems given in the review. I am going to read
all his poems when my little holiday comes, I hope in September,
and I will send you then some organized and critical thanks
for having introduced me to so noble and beautiful a soul. . . .
As for you, my dear Queen Catherine, may this velvety night
be spread under your feet even as Raleigh's cloak was spread
for HIS queen's, so that you may walk dry shod as to all pain
over to the morning, -- prays
Your faithful Sidney Lanier.
195 Dean St., Brooklyn, N.Y.,
August 15, 1875.
I did not dream, my dear friend, of giving you anything
in the least approaching the nature of a worry, -- in asking you
for a suggestion as to the best method of piercing the British hearts of oak;
and you must not "think about it" as you declare you are going to do --
for a single minute. Indeed, I had, in mentioning it to you,
no more definite idea in my head than that perhaps you might know somebody
who knew somebody that knew somebody that . . . etc., etc., ad infinitum
. . . that might . . . and then my idea of what the somebody was to do,
completely faded into vague nothing.
It isn't WORTH thinking about, to you; and I have not the least doubt
that what I want will finally come, in just such measure as I shall deserve.
The publishers have limited me in time so rigorously,
quoad the Florida book, that I will have to work night and day
to get it ready. I do not now see the least chance for a single day
to devote to my own devices before the fifth or sixth of September.
And I do SO long to see you and Miss Stebbins!
Out of the sombre depths of a bottomless sea of Florida statistics
in which I am at this present floundering, pray accept, my liege Queen,
in art as in friendliness, all such loyal messages and fair reports
compacted of love, as may come from so dull a waste of waters;
graciously resting in your mind upon nothing therein
save the true faithful allegiance of your humble knight and subject,
Sidney L.
In November, 1875, he visited her for a week at the Parker House in Boston.
Though she was at that time critically ill, she was "fairly overflowing
with all manner of tender and bright and witty sayings."
"Each day," he wrote, "was crowded with pleasant things which
she and her numerous friends had prepared for me." On this visit to Boston
Lanier spent two "delightful afternoons" with Lowell and Longfellow.
Of this visit Lowell afterwards wrote President Gilman:
"He was not only a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word,
but had in him qualities that won affection and commanded respect.
I had the pleasure of seeing him but once, when he called on me
`in more gladsome days', at Elmwood, but the image of his shining presence
is among the friendliest in my memory."
Lanier returned from Boston and on New Year's day sent a greeting
to Miss Cushman. It is quoted as an illustration of Lanier's
considerate regard for his friends, which expressed itself in many
delicate ways, especially on anniversaries and special seasons of the year.
It is an Elizabethan sonnet in prose: --
If this New Year that approaches you (more happy than I, who cannot)
did but know you as well as I (more happy than he, who does not)
he would strew his days about you even as white apple-blossoms
and his nights as blue-black heart's-ease; for then he should be
your true faithful-serving lover -- as am I -- and should desire
-- as I do -- that the general pelting of time might become to you
only a tender rain of such flowers as foretell fruit and of such
as make tranquil beds.
But though I cannot teach this same New Year to be the servant
of my fair wishes, I can persuade him to be the bearer of them; and I trust
he and these words will come to you together; giving you such report,
and so freshly from my heart, as shall confirm to you that my message,
though greatly briefer than my love, is yet greatly longer than I would
the interval were, which stands betwixt you and your often-longing,
S. L.
Another friend that Mr. Peacock interested in Lanier was Bayard Taylor,
who was the means of bringing the poet into the world of letters,
and became one of the most inspiring influences in his life.
Taylor had been a very prominent figure in the literary world
for over twenty-five years, as author, translator, traveller,
diplomatist, and lecturer. To meet him was like the fulfillment of a dream
to a man who had lived all his life outside of literary circles,
and Taylor's encouraging words to Lanier were "as inspiriting as those from
a strong swimmer whom one perceives far ahead, advancing calmly and swiftly."
Taylor, on the other hand, was glad to extend the young poet's acquaintance
among those whom he had a right to know. Through him Lanier attended
the Goethe celebration, August 28, 1875, and was admitted to the Century Club,
of which Bryant was at that time president, and where Taylor,
Stoddard, Stedman, and "many other good fellows" frequently met.
What this meant to Lanier is shown in the following quotation: --
"As to pen and ink, and all toil, I've been almost suppressed by
continued illness. I can't tell you how much I sigh for some quiet evenings
at the Century, where I might hear some of you talk about the matters I love,
or merely sit and think in the atmosphere of the thinkers.
I fancy one can almost come to know the dead thinkers too well:
a certain mournfulness of longing seems sometimes to peer out
from behind one's joy in one's Shakespeare and one's Chaucer, --
a sort of physical protest and yearning of the living eye for its like.
Perhaps one's friendship with the dead poets comes indeed to acquire
something of the quality of worship, through the very mystery
which withdraws them from us and which allows no more messages from them,
cry how we will, after that sudden and perilous Stoppage.
I hope those are not illegitimate moods in which one sometimes desires
to surround one's self with a companionship less awful,
and would rather have a friend than a god."*
--
* `Letters', p. 171.
--
Mr. Stedman has recorded his impression of Lanier as he met him
at Bayard Taylor's: "I saw him more than once in the study
of our lamented Deucalion, -- the host so buoyant and sympathetic,
the Southerner nervous and eager, with dark hair and silken beard,
features delicately moulded, pallid complexion, and hands of the slender,
white, artistic type." The friendship between Lanier and Taylor
was no less cherished by the older poet. He rejoiced to recognize in Lanier
"a new, TRUE poet -- such a poet as I believe you to be --
the genuine poetic nature, temperament, and MORALE."
He was heartily glad to welcome him into the fellowship of authors.
He gave him some valuable criticism as to the details of his work,
and encouraged him by showing him that the struggle through which
he was passing was identical with his own. He, too, had to resort
to pot-boiling and hack work of all kinds, and he had also been
severely criticised by the same men who now criticised Lanier.
So he closed many of his letters with the inspiriting words:
"Be of good cheer! On! be bold!" The friendship which began
as a literary friendship soon developed on Taylor's part,
as well as Lanier's, into one of deep personal regard. Taylor recognized,
as did every other man who came in personal touch with Lanier,
the charm and the fineness of his personality.
By the summer of 1876 Lanier had thus established himself
as a promising man of letters. He had not only written poetry that
had attracted attention, but he had found a place among a group of artists
who recognized the value of his work and the charm of his personality.
When Charlotte Cushman died, he had the promise that he would be employed
by her family to write her life. Upon the basis of this promise he brought
his family North, and they settled down at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania.
Soon afterwards, however, he received the disappointing news
that Miss Stebbins, on account of ill health, could not fulfill her part
of the contract, namely, to go over the correspondence of Miss Cushman.
This was a severe blow to him, and probably had something to do
with his breakdown in health. He spent several weeks at Mr. Peacock's
in Philadelphia, attended by the best physicians in the city.
He was planning to go back to Baltimore to resume his place
in the orchestra, when he was told that he must go at once to Florida
if he wished to save his life. He went, attended by his wife,
and they spent the winter there and the spring in Brunswick and Macon.
The letters written by him to Mr. Peacock and Bayard Taylor
are among the best he ever wrote, full as they are of sunshine and hope.
A few extracts are given:* --
--
* `Letters', passim.
--
"I have found a shaggy gray mare upon whose back I thrid
the great pine forests daily, much to my delight. Nothing seems
so restorative to me as a good gallop."
"What would I not give to transport you from your frozen sorrows
instantly into the midst of the green leaves, the gold oranges,
the glitter of great and tranquil waters, the liberal friendship of the sun,
the heavenly conversation of robins and mocking-birds and larks,
which fill my days with delight!"
"In truth I `bubble song' continually during these heavenly days,
and it is as hard to keep me from the pen as a toper from his tipple."
"I have at command a springy mare, with ankles like a Spanish girl,
upon whose back I go darting through the green overgrown woodpaths,
like a thrasher about his thicket. The whole air feels full of fecundity:
as I ride I am like one of those insects that are fertilized on the wing, --
every leaf that I brush against breeds a poem. God help the world
when this now-hatching brood of my Ephemerae shall take flight
and darken the air."
"I long to be steadily writing again. I am taken with a poem
pretty nearly every day, and have to content myself with making
a note of its train of thought on the back of whatever letter
is in my coat-pocket. I don't write it out, because I find my poetry now
wholly unsatisfactory in consequence of a certain haunting impatience
which has its root in the straining uncertainty of my daily affairs;
and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts
until some approach to the certainty of next week's dinner
shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose
which ought to fill the artist's firmament while he is creating."
They returned to the North in June and spent another summer at Chadd's Ford,
-- a place of great natural beauty. "As for me," says Lanier,
"all this loveliness of wood, earth, and water makes me feel as if I could do
the whole Universe into poetry; but I don't want to write anything large
for a year or so. And thus I content myself with throwing off
a sort of spray of little songs, whereof the magazines now have several."
Notwithstanding his illness, then, the year ending with September, 1877,
was one of marked productivity. He wrote "Waving of the Corn",
"Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut", "From the Flats", "The Mocking-Bird",
"Tampa Robins", "The Bee", "A Florida Sunday", "The Stirrup-Cup",
"To Beethoven", "The Dove", "The Song of the Chattahoochee",
and "An Evening Song". He was in a fair way to realize his ambition
with regard to poetry. Again, however, he was to be deflected
from his course, but at the same time to find "fresh woods and pastures new".