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Lanier's Place in Letter

A Critical Notice of the Work of Sidney Lanier's Poems.

No One Has Durpassed Him in Depth of Feeling or Appreciation of Nature-Nora Perry;s Poems.

"Poems of Sidney Lanier" New York, Charles Scribners Sons.

Like flowers that spring from the rich decay of a human grave is the love that grows for a poet after he is dead.

Sidney Lanier is a name which was known to few while the bearer of it lived but growing daily dearer to those who find out God through the messages of His posts. One hesitates to say that Lanier is the greatest of American poets because it seems like ingratitde to others who are dear-to Whitman, Whitter, Longfellow, Lowell, Stoddard and Steadman. Aldrich and Harte, Por-but one docs not count Por, for what he thought was art was only artifice. It is impossible to be a poet unless there is love and revereuce in the soul. Poe had neither love nor reverence-except for Por. Jonquin Miller, one almost count, because now and then when he forgets himself has verses almost thrill [s?ll], the embody only a sentiment or an ipression. There are so few who dug deep at the roots or truth.

Of course there is Holmes Many In Boston think he is a poet But a poet is a star which shines eternal In the heavens. Holines is a calclum light, used to light banquet balls and esatern college chapels And there is Bryant He wrote Thanatopsis. The rest of his work is an anticlimax.

The greatest poet is he who tells the most truth in the highest way. Whitman has told the truth , but he forgot to put it into poetry. Longfellow has said so many things such a kind and familiar way, and lives so intimately In the homes of us all, sitting at our board, comforting us at night when we are tired, telling us always to hope and to be true, that it is hard to remember that he lacked the passion, the splendor, the wild music of great poets. A stream which flows through a plenteouts land adding to its beauty and its richness, is a blessed thing. But its not the sea!

Judged by standards of art and by standards of ethics, Lowell came nearer to being a poet than any other of the great Americans. But curcumstances forved him to do what may be termed poetic drudfery And it is Lowell's satires that have won for him the greater part of the unique reputation

So, looking over the held of American poetry, I know of no one whose whole expression was full of the passion of art as was Lauler's

He was born in Macon, Ga, In 1842, and he had as fine an sucestry as America can provide; his forefaters helped to make the farms, the laws and the drawing rooms of a new continent. His passio nwas music, and sometimes it found expression on the violin, and sometimes in "rhymed words," But his father found these pursults hardly espectable, and so he made a laywer of him. In this professio he was able to earn more than a competence, but the [vol?es] of the dead immorials clamored for his company, and he voluntarily book privation, and late lu his short life gave himself up to singing the songs that Gor recated him to sing He was in the war of the rebellion-and of course fought as Georgia fought Probably he entered the war more because it represented an enthusiasm than for any other reason. He had a wife whom he loved, and whose tenderness was balm for the wounds of of sorry fate. He [stru???d] hand to hand with death for years and his veres are made eloquent by the poigant prick of his pain.

"From the time he was of age," writes on of his biographers, "he waged a comstant, courageous, hopeless fight against adverse circumstances for room to live and write."

There never was a poet from when it is more difficult to make selctions, for his thought flow on continuously-grand, waveward, compelling, unaccountable like the wund. He had not the allocation of epigrams He does not [pa???] out of his thougth in martable packages He is incapable of beauty rhymed clap=trap verses, which are so well liked by persons of votable tounges and indolent memories. And one thing it is necessary to explain, because in this he differs from any poet he never dicorces man from the rest of nature. He does not count ties as the fuel and and birds as the food, and the sea as the inajestic servitor of man, but all as pastor of recreation-all skin. The clous he calls his cousin, trees are his close friends, the marsh, the sea, the dawn are his fellowship" He is roused at night by the voices of the marsh whish can to him. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep," he cries. He sense to he with his ear at the very hear of nature. Hr hears The great soft rumble of the course of things" Never were verses loss artificial. Big things are big with Lanier. Petty things property. No miasma form vanity far [poisonatie?] pure at whcih he breathes. Pope was his satics and his scount hav philosphy, Bryon with his pucrille bitterness Shelley with his glues at Delty, all seem pitisue compared with Lanier=speaking of them as men. Of course there is no lutention of saying that the art of Laner compues witht hat of Shelly. America is yet to have the Shelly and her keats. Yet neither one nor the other of thses great masters would have refused close fellowship with the man who could write lines as musicals as these.

Lanier's Place in Letter