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Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done,
Love, lay thine hand in mine.

Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.

O night! divorce our sun and sky apart

Never our lips, our hands.

"The Waving of the Corn" reflects the full richness of the Southern field in summertime even better than does his longer poem, "Corn" (1875), which was the first of his productions to attract wide attention. "Clover" (1876) is another poem of color and fragrance. "Life and Song" treats of the poet's art as an outward expression of the poet's life

His song was only living aloud,

His work a singing with the hand.

"My Springs" is a loving tribute to his wife's eyes:

My springs from out whose shining gray

Issue the sweet, celestial streams

That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Of the longer poems, those most truly expressive of Lanier's genius are "The Symphony," "The Marshes of Glynn," and "Sunrise." "The Symphony" (1875) is a plea for more heart and less head in our national industrial life-a more humane treatment of the poor. It is an indictment of Trade's heartless arrogance by a chorus of musical instruments, in which the clear notes of the flute and the violin are the voices pleading for a chivalry of labor. The poem closes with the oft-quoted line:

Music is Love in search of a word.

"The Marshes of Glynn" is one of a projected series of six poems, only three of which were completed. The "marshes" are those of Glynn county, Georgia, around the seacoast city

of Brunswick. In "The Marshes of Glynn" the time is a June evening; the sun is setting and the tide is coming in. The impressive scene is painted in alternating lights and shadows: the musical stanzas, varied to harmonize with the coloring of the forest and the movement of the flood, swell out to the final union of marsh and sea. The poet's soul is exalted and set free by the vastness and peace of the scene:

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain

The sweep and majesty, the moral suggestiveness, and the solemn musical tones, of "The Marshes of Glynn" entitle it to be called Lanier's masterpiece. It shows a sureness of grasp and a definiteness rarely found in his poetry. Read aloud in a sympathetic voice it takes captive the ear and uplifts the spirit by its harmony and its splendid imagery.

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"Sunrise" is in sad reality the poet's sunset hymn. He penned it in weakness, when the hectic flush was coloring his fancy. It is a rhapsody of sweet sounds and a riot of colors. All the million-veined splendor bursts full-orbed in the rising sun, which seems to symbolize the triumph of art over traffic:

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas

Of traffic shall hide thee,

Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories

Hide thee,

Never the reek of the time's fen-politics

Hide thee,

And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge

Abide thee,

And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath

Tried thee,

Labor, at leisure, in art,-till yonder beside thee

My soul shall float, friend Sun,

The day being done.

Less musical and of clearer structure are the two ballads, "The Revenge of Hamish" and "How Love Looked for Hell," good narrative pieces of considerable dramatic power. "The Psalm of the West" (1876) is a fine centennial hymn.

Lanier had lofty ideas in regard to the mission and the form of poetry. He emphasizes the moral element in art; herein he differs from Poe. "Unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love," said he, "abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist." His poetry is accordingly leavened with spiritual truth. "The beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty" is a favorite phrase with him. He believed, moreover, that between poetry and music there is a close kinship. This theory he fully elaborates in his Science of English Verse, which will be briefly considered presently. Throughout his poetry the musical element gives tone and color; indeed, several poems are so formless, so much a matter of sound, that they seem to hover midway between the articulate and the inarticulate, ever on the point of vanishing into "airy nothings." They are struggling to be free from the bondage of speech; they would clothe themselves in the shimmering and tenuous vestments of musical rhapsody. Language fails and only the radiant, ethereal spirit of melody remains.

His Prose Works.-Lanier prepared editions of several old romances for boys-King Arthur, Mabinogion, Froissart, Percy-in which he succeeded, in spite of the hackwork nature of the undertaking, for the subjects were congenial to his poetic temperament. Other prose works are The Science of English Verse, The Development of the English Novel, and Shakespeare and his Predecessors, originally prepared as lectures. Of these works only one, The Science of English Verse, demands notice.

In The Science of English Verse Lanier sets forth with abundant illustration the theory that poetry may be musically annotated. Poetry, he says, should be measured, as music is, by time rather than by accent. Instead of feet in poetic scansion he would have beats-time-units instead of stress-units. He

would not count syllables and accents, but measures; and he would gain richness of coloring-what is called "tone-color"by the free use of alliteration, assonance, and rhyme. In short, he would apply to poetry the principles of musical composition. This theory Lanier works out with great ingenuity, and to lyric verse its application often seems warranted, for the pure lyric and music are closely akin. In general, however, the theory attaches entirely too much importance to sound and color, to the neglect of substance and clearness. It is an interesting and clever attempt to effect a perfect union between music and poetry, but more admirable than convincing.

Characteristics and Contribution.-Lanier's poetry reflects the coloring of Southern field and stream and forest. It shows a delicate appreciation of the myriad lights and shadows of landscape and wood. It reveals a high-souled, chivalrous regard for trees, herbs, birds, and flowers. Between the poet and nature there seems to exist a Platonic friendship-no common intimacy, but a sacred reverence for personality in natural objects. Along with this coloring and spiritual sensibility goes the perfection of harmony. Music is everywhere; his soul is steeped in it.

Lanier's unique contribution, then, is the consistent application of musical technique to poetry. New metrical forms and stanza-arrangements were brought by him into English verse. Herein he most resembles Swinburne. To unmusical people his poetry is sometimes vague and almost meaningless, because the idea is so often merely secondary. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." This exquisite tone-color frequently means the sacrifice of directness and simplicity. His poetry is apt to impress the casual reader as involved and fragmentary —meandering rivulets of song losing themselves in marsh or clover field. But despite its formal limitations, the verse of Lanier has the clear accent of originality and loftiness. It is luminous with the sense of imperishable beauty and vital with human sympathy and spiritual ideals.

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His Life.-Henry Timrod was born in Charleston, South Carolina, December 8, 1829. On his father's side he was of German descent, and on his mother's, of English. His father was a man of literary taste and sometimes wrote poetry. Henry went to the Charleston schools and later, attended the University of Georgia, but delicate health and lack of means prevented him from remaining to take his degree. At school and college he was specially devoted to English literature and the classics and to athletic sports. He early showed a love for nature. Like many other literary men, he studied law only to find it distasteful. Then he did some tutoring. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry; his verses were published in Boston in 1860, but the small volume was little read in the stirring times of on-coming war. He entered the Confederate army, but soon found his weak constitution unequal to the hardships of camp life. He served as army correspondent, and in one way and another proved his loyalty to the cause in which his heart was enlisted. His stirring war lyrics show his patriotism.

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