125. In her introductory note to `Corn' Mrs. Lanier thus localizes the poem:
"His `fieldward-faring eyes took harvest' `among the stately corn-ranks,'
in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon.
It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches
to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains, whose wholesome breath,
all unobstructed, here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory,
and the muscadine: a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier
as `that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses
calm themselves into pleasant hills before dying quite away
into the sea-board levels' -- where `a man can find
such temperances of heaven and earth -- enough of struggle with nature
to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle --
that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circumstances
for man's life need not be sought.'"