But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier,
and I turn to the posthumous edition of his `Poems' gotten out by his wife.
At the outset let us ask, How did the poet look at the world?
what problems engaged his attention and how were they solved?
A careful investigation will show, I believe, that,
despite the brevity of his life and its consuming cares,
Lanier studied the chief questions of our age, and that in his poems
he has offered us noteworthy solutions.
What, for instance, is more characteristic of our age than its tendency
to agnosticism? I pass by the manifestations of this spirit
in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard,
and give an illustration or two from the field of history and politics.
Picturesque Pocahontas, we are told, is no more to be believed in;
moreover, the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth Rock,
nor did Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn
there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information
but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit,
we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness
that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism,
we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency
has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza
from Lanier's `Acknowledgment':
"O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,
Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire
To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.
Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,
Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell;
Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat
His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."*
--
* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12.
--
More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people,
is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century,
especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly
and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony',
his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments.
The violins begin:
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."*
Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving
the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand":
"`We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,
And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? --
The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;
And so do we, and the world's a sty;
Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?
"Swinehood hath no remedy"
Say many men, and hasten by,
Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.
But who said once, in the lordly tone,
"Man shall not live by bread alone
But all that cometh from the throne"?
Hath God said so?
But Trade saith "No":
And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go:
There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know.
Move out, if you think you're underpaid.
The poor are prolific; we're not afraid;
Trade is Trade."'
"Thereat this passionate protesting
Meekly changed, and softened till
It sank to sad requesting
And suggesting sadder still:
`And oh, if men might some time see
How piteous-false the poor decree
That trade no more than trade must be!
Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"?
Then "Trade is trade" but sings a lie:
'Tis only war grown miserly.
If business is battle, name it so.'"**
--
* `The Symphony', ll. 1-2.
** `The Symphony', ll. 31-61.
--
Of even wider sweep than mercantilism is the spirit of intolerance;
for, while the diffusion of knowledge and of grace has in a measure
repressed this spirit, it lacks much of being subdued. I do not wonder
that Lanier "fled in tears from men's ungodly quarrel about God,"
and that, in his poem entitled `Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance
with all the vehemence of a prophet of old.
But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills.
To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early passion
for the violin and his substitution of the flute therefor,
we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly
the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting
when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher.
With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages
with fine tributes thereto. In `Tiger-lilies', for instance,
he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found
some nations that had no god, he knows of none that had no music,
and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony;
harmony means love; and love means -- God!"*3* Even more explicit
is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know
that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL;
poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES.
I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly,
and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music,
which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4*
We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony'
the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs
his felicitous definition,
"Music is love in search of a word."*5*
In `To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself:
"I know not how, I care not why,
Thy music brings this broil at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal cry
In satisfying symphonies.
"Yea, it forgives me all my sins,
Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme,
And tunes the task each day begins
By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6*
It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier
to write his work on `The Science of English Verse', and gave him
a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson.
--
*1* See Ward's `Memorial', pp. xx, xxxi.
*2* Hayne's (P. H.) `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.
*3* `Tiger-lilies', p. 32.
*4* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. After settling in Baltimore
Lanier devoted more time to poetry than to music, as we may see
from this sentence to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of March 20, 1876:
"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."
*5* `The Symphony', l. 368.
*6* `To Beethoven', ll. 61-68.
--
Like most great poets of modern times, Lanier was a sincere lover of nature.
And it seems to me that with him this love was as all-embracing as
with Wordsworth. Lanier found beauty in the waving corn*1* and the clover;*2*
in the mocking-bird,*3* the robin,*4* and the dove;*5*
in the hickory,*6* the dogwood,*6* and the live-oak;*7*
in the murmuring leaves*8* and the chattering streams;*9*
in the old red hills*10* and the sea;*11* in the clouds,*12*
sunrise,*13* and sunset;*14* and even in the marshes,*15*
which "burst into bloom" for this worshiper. Again, Lanier's love of nature
was no less insistent than Wordsworth's. We all remember the latter's
oft-quoted lines:
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"*16*
and beside them one may put this line of Lanier's,
"The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep,"*17*
because, as the context shows, he was
"Shaken with happiness:
The gates of sleep stood wide."*18*
And how naive and tender was this nature-worship! He speaks of
the clover*19* and the clouds*20* as cousins, and of the leaves*21*
as sisters, and in so doing reminds us of the earliest Italian poetry,
especially of `The Canticle of the Sun', by St. Francis of Assisi,
who brothers the wind, the fire, and the sun, and sisters the water,
the stars, and the moon. Notice the tenderness in these lines of `Corn':
"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;"*22*
to which we find a beautiful parallel in a poem by Paul Hamilton Hayne,
himself a reverent nature-worshiper:
"Ah! Nature seems
Through something sweeter than all dreams
To woo me; yea, she seems to speak
How closely, kindly, her fond cheek
Rested on mine, her mystic blood
Pulsing in tender neighborhood,
And soft as any mortal maid,
Half veiled in the twilight shade,
Who leans above her love to tell
Secrets almost ineffable!"*23*
Moreover, this worship is restful:
"Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
. . . . .
"By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn."*24*
But to Lanier the ministration of nature was by no means passive;
and we find him calling upon the leaves actively to minister to his need
and even to intercede for him to their Maker:
"Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,
Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me
Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, --
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet
That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, --
Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me
The passion of patience, -- sift me, -- impeach me, --
And there, oh there
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,
Pray me a myriad prayer."*25*
In this earnest ascription of spirituality to the leaves
Lanier recalls Ruskin.*26*
--
*1* See `The Waving of the Corn' and `Corn'.
*2* See `Clover'.
*3* See `The Mocking-Bird' and `To Our Mocking-Bird'.
*4* See `Tampa Robins'.
*5* See `The Dove'.
*6* See `From the Flats', last stanza.
*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 worshipful 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 God made you mine,
For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine."*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 scrap 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 God, -- these three chime
like bells in a steeple and call us to worship, 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 gods. For God 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 entitled
`How Love Looked for Hell', Mind and Sense at Love's request
go to seek Hell; 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 Hell, since, in the words of Tolstoi's story,
"Where Love is there is God." 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, -- God.
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 God"
is but another phrasing of the evangelist's "God is love".*1*
Of Lanier's grief over church broils and of his longing for freedom
to worship God 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 God,
whom he declared*4* all his roads reached, is most clearly expressed
in a scrap quoted by Ward, apparently the outline for a poem:
"I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God.
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 God, dear Violet.
And oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads.
Measure what space 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. xxxix.
*6* Lanier's `The Crystal', ll. 90-93.
*7* Browning's `Asolando': Epilogue, ll. 11-15.
--
Perhaps I may append here a paragraph upon Lanier's criticisms
of other writers, for they seem to me acute in the extreme.
Despite the elaborate essays in defence of Whitman's poetry
by Dowden,*1* Symonds,*2* and Whitman himself, I believe Lanier is right
in declaring that "Whitman is poetry's butcher. Huge raw collops
slashed from the rump of poetry and never mind gristle --
is what Whitman feeds our souls with. As near as I can make it out,
Whitman's argument seems to be, that, because a prairie is wide,
therefore debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long,
therefore every American is God."*3* Notice, again, how well
the defect of `Paradise Lost' is pointed out:
"And I forgive
Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars
Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel,
Immortals smite immortals mortalwise
And fill all heaven with folly."*4*