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244Lanier's Place in Letter A Critical Notice of the Work of Sidney Lanier's Poems. No One Has Surpassed Him in Depth of Feeling or Appreciation of Nature-Nora Perry's Poems. "Poems of Sidney Lanier" New York, Charles Scribner's 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 ingratitude to others who are dear-to Whitman, Whitter, Longfellow, Lowell, Stoddard and Steadman. Aldrich and Harte, Poe-but one does not count Poe, for what he thought was art was only artifice. It is impossible to be a poet unless there is love and reverence in the soul. Poe had neither love nor reverence-except for Poe. Joaquin Miller, one almost counts, because now and then when he forgets himself has verses almost thrill. Still, they embody only a sentiment or an impression. There are so few who dug deep at the roots of 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. Holmes is a calcium light, used to light banquet halls and eastern 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 plenteous 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 circumstances forced him to do what may be termed poetic drudgery. 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 ancestry as America can provide; his forefathers helped to make the farms, the laws and the drawing rooms of a new continent. His passion was music, and sometimes it found expression on the violin, and sometimes in "rhymed words," But his father found these pursuits hardly respectable, and so he made a laywer of him. In this profession he was able to earn more than a competence, but the [voices?] of the dead immortals clamored for his company, and he voluntarily took privation, and late lu his short life gave himself up to singing the songs that God created 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 sorry fate. He struggled hand to hand with death for years and his verses are made eloquent by the poignant prick of his pain. "From the time he was of age," writes one of his biographers, "he waged a constant, 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 selections, for his thoughts flow on continuously-grand, wayward, compelling, unaccountable like the wind. He had not the allocation of epigrams. He does not [pa?] out of his thoughts in marketable packages. He is incapable of neatly rhymed clap-trap verses, which are so well liked by persons of votable tongues and indolent memories. And one thing it is necessary to explain, because in this he differs from any poet he never divorces man from the rest of nature. He does not count ties as the fuel and birds as the food, and the sea as the majestic servitor of man, but all as pastor of recreation-all skin. The cloud he calls his cousin, trees are his close friends, the marsh, the sea, the dawn are "of his fellowship." He is roused at night by the voices of the marsh which call to him. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep," he cries. He seems to lie with his ear at the very hear of nature. He hears "The great soft rumble of the course of things." Never were verses less artificial. Big things are big with Lanier. Petty things petty. No [miasma?] form vanity far poisons the pure at which he breathes. Pope was his attires and his second wave philosophy, Bryon with his puerile bitterness, Shelley with his gibes at Delty, all seem pitiable compared with Lanier--speaking of them as men. Of course there is no intention of saying that the art of Laner compares with that of Shelly. America is yet to her Shelly and her Keats. Yet neither one nor the other of these great masters would have refused close fellowship with the man who could write lines as musicals as these. But on a sudden lot Here is a song of [?]--a ballad of the divine tragedy where peace and love triumphed over pain. All the forces of nature quiver with His passion; the [?] in the trees throbs as the blood does in his quaking frame. Poetry and art each their climax when they express the highest ideals of a people. Here is the most inspiring moment of Christian history redeemed from the horror with which the church has invested it and once more made luminous. A BALLAD OF [?] AND THE MASTER Out of the woods my master went, And here is a love song, warm as Bayard Taylor could have written. Dudley Buck has composed music for it which is no shame to the words. EVENING SONG. Now in the sea a red vintage meets the sun, Come forth, sweet stars and comfort heaven's heart. The fierce and grotesque spirit of the French revolution is embodied in this wild snatch from "The Jacquerie." SONG FROM "THE JACQUERIE" The hound was cuffed, the hound was kicked He rarely wept, he never slept, | 244Lanier's Place in Letter A Critical Notice of the Work of Sidney Lanier's Poems. No One Has Surpassed Him in Depth of Feeling or Appreciation of Nature-Nora Perry's Poems. "Poems of Sidney Lanier" New York, Charles Scribner's 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 ingratitude to others who are dear-to Whitman, Whitter, Longfellow, Lowell, Stoddard and Steadman. Aldrich and Harte, Poe-but one does not count Poe, for what he thought was art was only artifice. It is impossible to be a poet unless there is love and reverence in the soul. Poe had neither love nor reverence-except for Poe. Joaquin Miller, one almost counts, because now and then when he forgets himself has verses almost thrill. Still, they embody only a sentiment or an impression. There are so few who dug deep at the roots of 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. Holmes is a calcium light, used to light banquet halls and eastern 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 plenteous 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 circumstances forced him to do what may be termed poetic drudgery. 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 ancestry as America can provide; his forefathers helped to make the farms, the laws and the drawing rooms of a new continent. His passion was music, and sometimes it found expression on the violin, and sometimes in "rhymed words," But his father found these pursuits hardly respectable, and so he made a laywer of him. In this profession he was able to earn more than a competence, but the [voices?] of the dead immortals clamored for his company, and he voluntarily took privation, and late lu his short life gave himself up to singing the songs that God created 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 sorry fate. He struggled hand to hand with death for years and his verses are made eloquent by the poignant prick of his pain. "From the time he was of age," writes one of his biographers, "he waged a constant, 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 selections, for his thoughts flow on continuously-grand, wayward, compelling, unaccountable like the wind. He had not the allocation of epigrams. He does not [pa?] out of his thoughts in marketable packages. He is incapable of neatly rhymed clap-trap verses, which are so well liked by persons of votable tongues and indolent memories. And one thing it is necessary to explain, because in this he differs from any poet he never divorces man from the rest of nature. He does not count ties as the fuel and birds as the food, and the sea as the majestic servitor of man, but all as pastor of recreation-all skin. The cloud he calls his cousin, trees are his close friends, the marsh, the sea, the dawn are "of his fellowship." He is roused at night by the voices of the marsh which call to him. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep," he cries. He seems to lie with his ear at the very hear of nature. He hears "The great soft rumble of the course of things." Never were verses less artificial. Big things are big with Lanier. Petty things petty. No [miasma?] form vanity far poisons the pure at which he breathes. Pope was his attires and his second wave philosophy, Bryon with his puerile bitterness, Shelley with his gibes at Delty, all seem pitiable compared with Lanier--speaking of them as men. Of course there is no intention of saying that the art of Laner compares with that of Shelly. America is yet to her Shelly and her Keats. Yet neither one nor the other of these great masters would have refused close fellowship with the man who could write lines as musicals as these. But on a sudden lot |