Chapter 3
So much for the poet's thoughts; what shall we say of their expression? In other words, is Lanier the literary artist equal to Lanier the seer? In order the better to answer this question, let us begin at the beginning, with the elements of style, some of which, however, I pass by as not calling for special comment.
Of Lanier's felicitous choice of words we have already had incidental illustration; but it is desirable, perhaps, to group here a few of his happiest phrases, to show that, as Lowell*1* said, he is "a man of genius with a rare gift for the happy word." Notice this speech about the brook:
"And down the hollow from a ferny nook `Lull' sings a little brook!"*2*
and this of the well-bucket:
"The rattling bucket plumps Souse down the well;"*3*
and this of the outburst of a bird:
"Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?"*4*
and the description of a mocking-bird as
"Yon trim Shakspere on the tree;"*5*
and of midnight as
"Death's and truth's unlocking time."*6*
Moreover, it should be observed that Lanier frequently uses significant compounds, -- a habit acquired, no doubt, from his study of Old English, in which, as in German, such compounds abound.
-- *1* See `Lowell' in `Bibliography'. *2* `From the Flats', ll. 23-24; cited by Gates. [Line 24 was changed (to "Bright leaps a living brook!") in later editions. -- A. L., 1998.] *3* `Clover', ll. 29-30. *4* `Sunrise', l. 57; cited by Gates. *5* `The Mocking-Bird', l. 14. *6* `The Crystal', l. 1. Other illustrations may be found in the paragraph on figures of speech. --
While in the main Lanier's sentence-construction is good, occasionally his sentences are too long, as in `My Springs', `To Bayard Taylor', and `Sunrise', in which we have sentences longer than the opening one in `Paradise Lost', and, what is of more moment, not so well balanced, and hence affording fewer breathing spaces. That this detracts from clearness and euphony both, every reader will admit.
To come to the figures of speech, one must be struck at once with the delicacy and the vigor of Lanier's imagination. The poet's fancy personifies what at first blush seems to us incapable of personification. Thus at one time*1* he likens men to clover-leaves and the Course-of-things to the browsing ox, which makes way with the clover-heads; while at another he addresses an old red hill of Georgia as
"Thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer."*2*
Like other Southern poets,*3* Lanier sometimes fails to check his imagination, and in consequence leaves his readers "bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze," as in his description of the stars in `June Dreams'*4* and in the `Psalm of the West'.*5* While I do not like a maze, brilliant though it be and sweet, I must say that I prefer the embarrassment of riches to the embarrassment of poverty. On the whole, however, Lanier's figures strike me as singularly fresh and happy. In `Sunrise', for example, the poet speaks of the marsh as follows:
"The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams Glimmers a limpid labyrinth of dreams;"*6*
and of the heavens reflected in the marsh waters:
"Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies Shine scant with one forked galaxy, -- The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie."*7*
Later, as the ebb-tide flows from marsh to sea, we are parenthetically treated to these two lines:
"Run home, little streams, With your lapfuls of stars and dreams."*8*
Finally, the heaven itself is thus pictured:
"Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue Big dew-drop of all heaven;"*9*
beside which must be hung this exquisite picture:
"The dew-drop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky."*10*
-- *1* In `Clover'. *2* `Corn', ll. 185-187. *3* See on this point the remarks of Professor Trent in his admirable life of `Simms' (Boston, 1892), p. 149. *4* `June Dreams', l. 21 ff. *5* `Psalm of the West', l. 183 ff. *6* `Sunrise', ll. 80-81. *7* Ibid., ll. 82-85. *8* Ibid., ll. 114-115. *9* Ibid., ll. 134-136. *10* `The Ship of Earth', l. 5. --
As to versification, Lanier uses almost all the types of verse -- iambic, trochaic, blank, the sonnet, etc. -- and with about equal skill. Three features, however, specially characterize his verse: the careful distribution of vowel-colors and the frequent use of alliteration and of phonetic syzygy,*1* by which last is meant a combination or succession of identical or similar consonants, whether initially, medially, or finally, as for instance the succession of M's in Tennyson's
"The moan of doves in immemorial elms And murmuring of innumerable bees."
All of these phenomena are illustrated in Lanier's `Song of the Chattahoochee', which has often been compared to Tennyson's `The Brook', and which alone proves the author a master in versification. To be sure, Lanier occasionally gives us an improper rhyme, as `thwart: heart',*2* etc., but so does every poet. No doubt, too, his love of music sometimes led him, not "to strain for form effects", but to indulge too much therein, or, in the words of Mr. Stedman, "to essay in language feats that only the gamut can render possible."*3* But, as Professor Kent admirably puts it, "Lanier was a poet as well as an artist, and if at times his artistic temperament seemed to eclipse his poetic thought, grant that to the poet mind the very manner of expression may indicate the thought that lies beneath, while to the duller ear the thought must come in completed form."*4* Moreover, as we shall see later, this extraordinary musical endowment gave Lanier a unique position among English poets.
-- *1* See `The Science of English Verse', p. 306 ff. *2* `In the Foam', ll. 6, 8. See, too, Kent's `Study of Lanier's Poems', which gives an exhaustive treatment of Lanier's versification. *3* Stedman's `Poets of America', p. 449. *4* `Kent', p. 60. --
After what has been said the qualities of style may be briefly handled. As we have already seen, Lanier sometimes fails in clearness, or, more precisely, in simplicity. This comes partly from infelicitous sentence-construction, partly, perhaps, from Lanier's extraordinary musical endowment, but chiefly, I think, from over-luxuriance of imagination. But this occasional defect has been unduly exaggerated. Thus Mr. Gosse*1* declares that Lanier is "never simple, never easy, never in one single lyric natural and spontaneous for more than one stanza," -- a statement so clearly hyperbolic as hardly to call for notice. As a matter of fact, Lanier has written numerous poems that offer little or no difficulty to the reader of average intelligence, as `Life and Song', `My Springs', `The Symphony', `The Mocking-Bird', `The Song of the Chattahoochee', `The Waving of the Corn', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', `A Ballad of Trees and the Master', etc. More than this, Lanier at times manifests the simplicity that is granted only to genius of the highest order: thus an English critic,*2* who by the way declares that Lanier's volume has more of genius than all the poems of Poe, or Longfellow, or Lowell (the humorous poems excepted), and who considers Lanier the most original of all American poets, and more original than any England has produced for the last thirty years, says that "nothing can be more perfect than --
`The whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound,'"*3*
lines in `My Springs', and that "the touch of wonder in the last two lines,
`I marvel that God made you mine, For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine,'*4*
is as simple and exquisite as any touch of tenderness in our literature." I frankly admit that several of Lanier's best poems, as `Corn', `The Marshes of Glynn', and `Sunrise', are not simple; but the same thing is true of Milton's `Paradise Lost' and of Browning's `The Ring and the Book', and yet this fact does not exclude these two works from the list of great poems. Mr. Gosse, however, declares that `Corn', `Sunrise', and `The Marshes of Glynn' "simulate poetic expression with extraordinary skill. But of the real thing, of the genuine traditional article, not a trace"! What do these poems show, then? Mr. Gosse answers: "I find a painful effort, a strain and rage, the most prominent qualities in everything he wrote;" which strikes me as the reverse of the facts. In one of his letters*5* to Judge Bleckley, Lanier wrote this sentence: "My head and my heart are both so full of poems which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache, purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." If, then, he committed an error (and I am far from considering him faultless), it was not that he beat and spurred on Pegasus, but that he failed to rein him in. Still, I repeat that I prefer the embarrassment of riches to the embarrassment of poverty. Finally, just as Milton tells us that the music of the spheres is not to be heard by the gross, unpurged ear, so I believe that many intelligent ears and eyes are at first too gross to hear and see what Lanier puts before them, whereas a bit of patient listening and looking reveals delights hitherto undreamed of.
-- *1* See `Bibliography'. *2* `The Spectator' (London); see `Bibliography'. *3* `My Springs', ll. 49-50. *4* `My Springs', ll. 55-56. *5* It is to be hoped that these letters may yet be published. I quote from one dated November 15, 1874. --
If not always simple, Lanier is often forcible in the extreme, as in `The Symphony', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', and `Sunrise'. Of course, it is open to any one to see in these poems the "rage" attributed to Lanier by Mr. Gosse, but I prefer to consider it divine wrath in all but the last, and in it wonder unutterable, which yet is so uttered that ears become eyes. I allude to the stanzas* describing the break of dawn and the rising of the sun.
-- * `Sunrise', ll. 86-152. --
Of the poet's marvelous euphony, `The Song of the Chattahoochee' speaks clearly enough. As we have seen in our treatment of versification, it is here a question not of too little but of too much. But, despite an occasional too great yielding to his passion for music, his extraordinary endowment in this direction gave Lanier a unique position among English poets. I quote again from Professor Kent:* "But if his sense of beauty made him a peer of our great poets, it was the heavenly gift of music that distinguished him from them. Milton, it is true, whom he most resembles in this respect, had a knowledge of music, but not the same passion for it. Milton's music was more a recreation, an accompaniment of reverie; Lanier's was a fiery zeal; a yearning love, a chosen and adequate form of expression of his soul's deepest feeling. Combined with this passion for music was his technical knowledge of the art, and these combined formed at once the foundation and the framework of his poetry. He seems literally to have sung his poems; they are essentially musical, tuneful, and melodious. Surcharged with music, he overflows in mellifluous numbers. Here, then, Lanier stands out differentiated in the choir of poets, and here we find that distinctive quality which is the very flavor of his writing."
-- * P. 62. --
While most of Lanier's poems are in a serious strain, several disclose no mean sense of humor. I refer to his dialect poems, such as `Jones's Private Argyment', `Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn', and `The Power of Prayer', especially the last, written in conjunction with his brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier.
There are passages in the poems no less pathetic than the poet's life. In discussing his love of nature we have seen that he was a pantheist in the best sense of the term. So delicate was his sensibility that we do not wonder when we hear him declaring,
"And I am one with all the kinsmen things That e'er my Father fathered,"*
a saying as felicitous as the Roman's "I am a man, and, therefore, nothing human is stranger to me." The tenderness of the `Ballad of Trees and the Master' must touch all readers. Few passages are more pathetic, I think, than that, in `June Dreams in January', telling of the poet's struggle for bread and fame, while "his worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar, within the village whence she sent him forth, waiting all confident and proud and calm." And, if there occurs therein a plaintive tone, let us remember that it is the only time that he complained of his lot, and that here really he has more in mind his dearer self, his wife, and that calm succeeded to unrest just as it does in this passage:
"`Why can we poets dream us beauty, so, But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul, Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf Out of this same chill matter, no, not one For Mary, though she starved upon my breast?' And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed, And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er The very edge of breaking, fain to fall, God sent him sleep."**
-- * `A Florida Sunday', ll. 102-103. ** `June Dreams in January', ll. 68-78. --
V. Lanier's Theory of Poetry
It is now time to say a word about Lanier's theory of art, especially the art of poetry. His views upon the formal side of poetry have already been noticed in the consideration of his `Science of English Verse', and hence receive no further comment here.
That Lanier keenly appreciated the responsibility resting upon the artist, appears from `Individuality', where he tells us,
"Awful is art because 'tis free,"*1*
and,
"Each artist -- gift of terror! -- owns his will."*2*
But he accepts the responsibility reverently and confidently:
"I work in freedom wild, But work, as plays a little child, Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone."*3*
-- *1* `Individuality', l. 62. *2* `Individuality', l. 76. *3* `Individuality', ll. 89-91. --
Again, the province of poetry is pointed out, as in `Clover':
"The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man;"*1*
and in `The Bee':
"Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2*
In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime."
-- *1* `Clover', ll. 126-127. *2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42. *3* `Corn', l. 52 ff. --
But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place, he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal, a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers: "You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."* That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy, and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last, I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute, and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics in the University of Virginia thought considerable.**
-- * `Gates', p. 29. ** See `West', p. 23. --
In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art should be scientific. It was this that led him to write `The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, "But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are." In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"* and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, --
"For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou."
But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it."
-- * `The English Novel', p. 33. --
In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage: "Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty -- that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him; he is not yet the great artist."* By copious quotations Lanier then shows that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom, Goodness, and the like," and concludes thus: "And if this be true, cannot one say with authority to the young artist, -- whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused -- soul and body, one might say -- with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love -- that is, the love of all things in their proper relation -- unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not meddle with love; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; -- in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness, AND love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."**
-- * `The English Novel', p. 272 f. ** `The English Novel', p. 280. Of the numerous discussions of this thesis, the student should consult at least those by Matthew Arnold (`Preface' to his edition of `Wordsworth's Poems'), John Ruskin (`Stones of Venice', vol. iii., chap. iv.), and Victor Hugo (`William Shakespeare', Book VI.). --
VI. Conclusion
Milton has somewhere said that in order to be a great poet one must himself be a true poem, a dictum none the less trustworthy because of its inapplicability to its author along with several other great poets. Now of all English poets, I know of none that came nearer being a true poem than did Lanier. He was as spotless as "the Lady of Christ's", and infinitely more lovable. Indeed, he seems to me to have realized the ideal of his own knightly Horn, who hopes that some day men will be "maids in purity".* I will not recall his gentle yet heroic life amid drawbacks almost unparalleled; for it is even sadder than it is beautiful. It is my deliberate judgment that, while, as the poet says in his `Life and Song', no singer has ever wholly lived his minstrelsy, Lanier came so near it that we may fairly say, in the closing lines of the poem,
"His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand."
And, for my part, I am as grateful for his noble private life as for his distinguished public work.
-- * `The Symphony', l. 302. --
And yet I will not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years, by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps, by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind, indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;* in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley; in the love of nature, to Wordsworth; and in spirituality, to Ruskin, the gist of whose teaching is that we are souls temporarily having bodies; to Milton, "God-gifted organ-voice of England"; and to Browning, "subtlest assertor of the soul in song". To be sure, Lanier's genius is not equal to that of any one of the poets mentioned, but I venture to believe that it is of the same order, and, therefore, deserving of lasting remembrance.
-- * Mr. Thayer puts it stronger: "As a master of melodious metre only Tennyson, and he not often, has equalled Lanier." Mr. F. F. Browne, Editor of `The Dial' (Chicago), compares the two poets in another aspect: "`The Symphony' of Lanier may recall some parts of `Maud'; but the younger poet's treatment is as much his own as the elder's is his own. The comparison of Lanier with Tennyson will, indeed, only deepen the impression of his originality, which is his most striking quality. It may be doubted if any English poet of our time, except Tennyson, has cast his work in an ampler mould, or wrought with more of freedom, or stamped his product with the impress of a stronger personality. His thought, his stand-point, his expression, his form, his treatment, are his alone; and through them all he justifies his right to the title of poet." --
Poems
Life and Song
If life were caught by a clarionet, [1] And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, And utter its heart in every deed,
Then would this breathing clarionet Type what the poet fain would be; For none o' the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,
Or clearly sung his true, true thought, Or utterly bodied forth his life, Or out of life and song has wrought [11] The perfect one of man and wife;
Or lived and sung, that Life and Song Might each express the other's all, Careless if life or art were long Since both were one, to stand or fall:
So that the wonder struck the crowd, Who shouted it about the land: `His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand!'
____ 1868.
Notes: Life and Song
`Life and Song' is the fifth of a series of seven poems published under the general heading of `Street-cries', with the two stanzas following as an introduction:
"Oft seems the Time a market-town Where many merchant-spirits meet Who up and down and up and down Cry out along the street
"Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO: Till all the ways are full of sound: -- But still come rain, and sun, and snow, And still the world goes round."
The remaining numbers of the series are: 1. `Remonstrance', given in this volume; 2. `The Ship of Earth'; 3. `How Love Looked for Hell'; 4. `Tyranny'; 6. `To Richard Wagner'; 7. `A Song of Love'.