Chapter 6
As the title-page shows, `The Power of Prayer' is the joint production of Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The latter gentleman informs me that once he read a newspaper scrap of about ten lines stating that a Negro on first seeing a steamboat coming down the river was greatly frightened. Mr. Lanier then wrote out in metrical form the plot of `The Power of Prayer', substantially as we now have it, and sent it to his brother Sidney, who polished it up and published it under their joint names. Mr. Clifford Lanier had not seen the piece mentioned in the next paragraph, nor had his brother; but on being shown the piece, the former was of the opinion that his newspaper clipping must have been based on the work to which I turn, as it had already appeared and the incidents were so much alike.
In the third chapter of `The Gilded Age' (Hartford, Conn., 1873) by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, there is a piece, `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer', so similar to `The Power of Prayer' that I quote it almost entire. Uncle Dan'l (a Negro), his wife, his young mistress, and his two young masters were sitting on a log by the Mississippi River one moonlight night a-talking. "Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: `Chil'en, dah's sumfin a comin'!'
"All crowded close together and every heart beat faster. Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.
"A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torch-light procession.
"`What is it? Oh! what is it, Uncle Dan'l?'
"With deep solemnity the answer came:
"`It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!'
"It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications.
"`O Lord, we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de bad place, but, good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready -- let dese po' chil'en hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole niggah if you's got to hab somebody. -- Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't know whah you's a gwine to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', we know by de way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwine to ketch it. But, good Lord, dese chil'en don't 'blong heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin'-kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sich little chil'en as dese is when dey's so many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. O Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord, de ole ----'
"The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness and shouted (but rather feebly):
"`Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!'
"There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious reconnoissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough `The Lord' was just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked, the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and presently ceased altogether.
"`H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah. Dis chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!'"
There follows a discussion as to whether or not the prayer caused the apparition to go by, of which of course Uncle Dan'l has no doubt. The apparition reappears and Uncle Dan'l betakes himself to prayer again, this time a long way off.
I wrote the authors of `The Gilded Age' and asked the source of `Uncle Daniel's Apparition and Prayer'. Mr. Clemens kindly replied that he is the author of the piece, and that it is pure fiction without either history or tradition back of it.
A comparison of the two stories shows some differences. The scene in the one case is the Alabama River, in the other the Mississippi. Moreover, the PERSONNEL is different. The Negro man in Twain's story is about forty, in Lanier's he is old and has been blind for forty years. Another difference Mr. Sidney Lanier points out to his wife in his letter of October 1, 1874: "Cliff's and my `Power of Prayer' will come out in the Scribner's; probably in the `Etchings' at the end of the Magazine. I wrote thee what Dr. Holland said anent its resemblance to something of Mark Twain's in plot. Day before yesterday I called and asked Dr. Holland what work of Mark Twain's he referred to. `Well,' said he, `I know nothing about it myself: I read the poem to a friend, and he suggested that the plot was like something of Mark Twain's. But yesterday I read him your note, and he then recollected that in Twain's version it is God Almighty that is coming up the bend. In yours it is the Devil: -- which certainly makes a little difference!' and here he broke into a great laugh. `Yes,' I rejoined, `a difference toto coelo,' whereat he laughed again, and told me he had already ordered a check to be sent me for the poem."
Mr. Clifford Lanier was born at Griffin, Ga., April 24, 1844, entered business in Montgomery, Ala., at fourteen, subsequently attended college for a year and a half, and in May, 1862, joined his brother in the Confederate Army. His soldier life has been detailed in connection with that of the poet. In October, 1864, Mr. Clifford Lanier was assigned as signal officer to the blockade-runner `Talisman', which, after two successful runs to the Bermuda Islands, was wrecked in December, 1864. He escaped, however, and surrendered to the Federal authorities at the end of April, 1865. He has been successively lawyer, hotel manager, and superintendent of schools in Montgomery, Ala. For several years past he has been a director of the Bank of Montgomery and other corporations. All the while, however, he has been deeply interested in literature and has written some graceful sketches and poems, among which may be mentioned the following: `Thorn-fruit' (1867), `Love and Loyalty at War' (1893), `Biding Tryst' (1894), prose; `Greatest of These is Love', `The American Philomel', `Keats and Fanny B----', `The Spirit of Art', `Antinous to Hadrian', `Time', `Tireless', `Tramp' (in Stedman and Hutchinson's `Library of American Literature'), `Love and Life', `Edgar Allan Poe', etc. As stated in the `Introduction', the Chautauquans of 1898 have named themselves "The Laniers" in honor of Messrs. Sidney and Clifford Lanier. The motto of the class is the first line of Mr. Clifford Lanier's `Transformation' (`Sunday-school Times', Phila., June 30, 1894):
"The humblest life that lives may be divine."
8. The complete `Poems' has `the' before `world', but Mrs. Lanier thinks the poet must have used `de' here as elsewhere.
Rose-morals
I. -- Red
Would that my songs might be [1] What roses make by day and night -- Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight.
Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? Say yea -- say yea!
Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, [11] I strive, I pray.
II. -- White
Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer.
Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities!
Mulched with unsavory death, [21] Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate.
____ Baltimore, 1875.
Notes: Rose-morals
Rose-morals in English literature probably begin with Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century. At any rate, in the eighteenth chapter of his `Voyage and Travels' he professes to tell us the origin of red and white roses. A fair maid had been unjustly accused of wrong-doing and doomed to die by fire. "And as the woode began to brenne (burn) about hir, she made hir prayer to our Lorde as she was not gyltie of that thing, that he would helpe hir that it might be knowne to all men. And whan (when) she had thus sayde, she entered the fyre and anone the fyre went out, and those braunches that were brenninge (burning) became red Roses and those braunches that were not kindled became white Rosiers (rose bushes) full of white roses, and those were the fyrst roses and rosyers that any man sawe, and so was the mayden saved through the grace of God."
Thomas Carew has several rose-moralities, as `The True Beauty', beginning "He that loves a rosy cheek," and his exquisite `Red and White Roses':
"Read in these roses the sad story Of my hard fate and your own glory: In the white you may discover The paleness of a fainting lover; In the red, the flames still feeding On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding. The white will tell you how I languish, And the red express my anguish: The white my innocence displaying, The red my martyrdom betraying. The frowns that on your brow resided Have those roses thus divided; Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather, And then they both shall grow together."*
-- * See Saintsbury's `Elizabethan Literature' (Macmillan & Co., New York, 1887), p. 363. --
Rollicking Robert Herrick, too, draws his morals, now advising the virgins to make much of time, as in his `Gather ye rose-buds while ye may', now preaching a rarely pathetic sermon, as in `To Blossoms':
"Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, Why do ye fall so fast? Your date is not so past, But you may stay yet here awhile To blush and gently smile, And go at last.
"What, were ye born to be An hour or half's delight, And so to bid good-night? 'Twas pity Nature brought ye forth Merely to show your worth, And lose you quite.
"But you are lovely leaves, where we May read how soon things have Their end, though ne'er so brave: And after they have shown their pride Like you, awhile, they glide Into the grave."*
-- * `Palgrave', p. 89. --
Much like this last piece in import, and scarcely inferior to it in execution, is `My life is like the summer rose' of Richard Henry Wilde, which is familiar to every one.
Paul Hamilton Hayne's `The Red and the White Rose' (`Poems', pp. 231-232) is an interesting dialogue, which the author concludes by making the former an "earthly queen" and the latter a "heaven-bound votaress".
Mrs. Browning's `A Lay of the Early Rose' shows that we are not to strive "for the dole of praise."
To ----, with a Rose
I asked my heart to say [1] Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay Upon my Lady's natal day.
Then said my heart to me: `Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee What fits thy Love most lovingly.'
This gift that learning shows; For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes, I send a rose unto a Rose.
____ Philadelphia, 1876.
Notes: To ----, with a Rose
This poem was sent to Mrs. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia, who was one of Mr. Lanier's kindest and most appreciative friends. The poet's letters to Mr. and Mrs. Peacock have recently been published in `The Atlantic' (see `Thayer' in `Bibliography').
Of the numerous rose-compliments in English I can here specify but a few. One of the prettiest is that by Henry Constable (`Saintsbury', p. 113):
"My Lady's presence makes the Roses red, Because to see her lips they blush for shame."
Carew's compliment is hardly equal to his morals (`Gosse', p. 101):
"Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep."
Few better things have been written than this, the second stanza of Jonson's `Drink to me only with thine eyes' (`Gosse', p. 80):
"I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not withered be. But thou thereon did'st only breathe, And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee."*
Even more felicitous, perhaps, is Waller's `Go, lovely rose!' which is at once a compliment and a moral (`Gosse', p. 134):
"Go, lovely rose Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be.
"Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died.
"Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired; Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired.
"Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee; How small a part of time they share That are so wond'rous sweet and fair."
Browning's `Women and Roses' should also be mentioned, and Mrs. Browning's translation of Sappho's lovely `Song of the Rose'.
-- * The fact that Jonson here translates a prose love-letter of Philostratus, the Greek sophist, may detract from the originality but not the beauty of his poem. --
Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn
By Sidney and Clifford Lanier
SOLO. -- Sin's rooster's crowed, Ole Mahster's riz, [1] De sleepin'-time is pas'; Wake up dem lazy Baptissis, CHORUS. -- Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, Dey's mightily in de grass.
Ole Mahster's blowed de mornin' horn, He's blowed a powerful blas'; O Baptis' come, come hoe de corn, You's mightily in de grass, grass, You's mightily in de grass.
De Meth'dis team's done hitched; O fool, [11] De day's a-breakin' fas'; Gear up dat lean ole Baptis' mule, Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, Dey's mightily in de grass.
De workmen's few an' mons'rous slow, De cotton's sheddin' fas'; Whoop, look, jes' look at de Baptis' row, Hit's mightily in de grass, grass, Hit's mightily in de grass.
De jay-bird squeal to de mockin'-bird: "Stop! [21] Don' gimme none o' yo' sass; Better sing one song for de Baptis' crop, Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, Dey's mightily in de grass."
And de ole crow croak: "Don' work, no, no;" But de fiel'-lark say, "Yaas, yaas, An' I spec' you mighty glad, you debblish crow, Dat de Baptissis's in de grass, grass, Dat de Baptissis's in de grass!"
Lord, thunder us up to de plowin'-match, [31] Lord, peerten de hoein' fas', Yea, Lord, hab mussy on de Baptis' patch, Dey's mightily in de grass, grass, Dey's mightily in de grass.
____ 1876.
Notes: Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn
I think that the following note, prefixed by the authors to their poem, sufficiently explains what is to me one of their best humorous pieces:
"Not long ago a certain Georgia cotton-planter, driven to desperation by awaking each morning to find that the grass had quite outgrown the cotton overnight, and was likely to choke it, in defiance of his lazy freedmen's hoes and ploughs, set the whole State in a laugh by exclaiming to a group of fellow-sufferers: `It's all stuff about Cincinnatus leaving the plough to go into politics "for patriotism"; he was just a-runnin' from grass!'
"This state of things -- when the delicate young rootlets of the cotton are struggling against the hardier multitudes of the grass-suckers -- is universally described in plantation parlance by the phrase `in the grass'; and Uncle Jim appears to have found in it so much similarity to the condition of his own (`Baptis'') church, overrun, as it was, by the cares of this world, that he has embodied it in the refrain of a revival hymn such as the colored improvisator of the South not infrequently constructs from his daily surroundings. He has drawn all the ideas of his stanzas from the early morning phenomena of those critical weeks when the loud plantation-horn is blown before daylight, in order to rouse all hands for a long day's fight against the common enemy of cotton-planting mankind.
"In addition to these exegetical commentaries the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase `peerten up' means substantially `to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective `peert' (probably a corruption of `pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of `smart' in New England, as e.g., a `peert' horse, in antithesis to a `sorry' -- i.e., poor, mean, lazy one."
The Mocking-bird
Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray [1] That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue. What e'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. [11] Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree?
____ 1877.
Notes: The Mocking-bird
Besides this sonnet Mr. Lanier wrote a longer `To Our Mocking-bird', consisting of three sonnets, and `Bob', a charming account, in prose, of the life and death of the bird apostrophized.
In his `Birds and Poets' (Boston, 1877), Mr. John Burroughs says that he knows of only two noteworthy poetical tributes to the mocking-bird, those by Whitman and by Wilde, both of which he quotes. But since the appearance of his book many poems have been written to the mocking-bird, several of which are of enduring worth. Indeed, several noteworthy poems had been published before the appearance of Mr. Burroughs's essay, as will appear from the list below. In a search of two days I found thirty-two different authors paying tribute to our marvelous singer: Julia Bacon (see J. W. Davidson's `Living Writers of the South'. New York: Carleton, 1869), St. L. L. Carter (ib.), Edna P. Clarke (`Century', 24. 391, July, 1893), Fortunatus Crosby (`Davidson', l.c.), J. R. Drake (Duyckinck's `Cyclopaedia of American Literature'. New York, 1855), R. T. W. Duke, Jr. (`Southern Bivouac', 2. 631, March, 1887), W. T. Dumas (`The Golden Day and Miscellaneous Poems', Philadelphia, 1893), F. (`Southern Literary Messenger', Richmond, Va., 5. 523, August, 1839), H. L. Flash (`Davidson', l.c.), Va. Gentleman (`Harper's Magazine', 15. 566, September, 1857), Caroline Gilman (May's `American Female Poets', Philadelphia, 1865), Hannah F. Gould (`Davidson', l.c.), Paul Granald (`So. Lit. Mes.', 8, 508, August, 1842), P. H. Hayne (`Poems', Boston, 1882: two), W. H. Hayne (`Century', 24. 676, September, 1893), C. W. Hubner (`Poems and Essays', New York, 1881), C. Lanier (`Sunday-school Times', Phila., July 8, 1893), S. Lanier (two, as above cited), Gen. Edwin G. Lee (`Southern Metropolis', Baltimore, 1869), A. B. Meek (in his `Songs and Poems of the South', New York, 1857), W. Mitchell (`Scribner's Magazine', 11. 171, December, 1875), Nugator (`So. Lit. Mes.', 4. 356, June, 1838), C. J. O'Malley (`So. Bivouac', 2. 698, April, 1887), Albert Pike (Stedman & Hutchinson's `Amer. Lit.', New York, 1891, vol. 6), D. Robinson (`Century', 24. 480, July, 1893), Clinton Scollard (`Pictures in Song', New York, 1884), H. J. Stockard (`The Century', xlviii. 898, Oct., 1894), T (`So. Lit. Mes.', 11. 117, February, 1845), Maurice Thompson (`Poems', Boston, 1892: several; also `Lippincott's Magazine', 32. 624, December, 1883), L. V. (`So. Lit. Mes.', 10. 414, July, 1844), Walt Whitman (`Burroughs', l.c., also in Whitman's `Poems'), R. H. Wilde (`Burroughs', l.c., and Stedman & Hutchinson's `Am. Lit.', vol. 5).
Roughly speaking, the poems may be divided into two classes -- first those that, as in the Indian legend cited below, make out the mocking-bird only or chiefly a thief and thing of evil, and second those that find him, though a borrower, original and great. The former view, fortunately upheld by few, is strikingly set forth in Granald's `The Mock-bird and the Sparrow'. After describing minutely the various songs of the mocking-bird and emphasizing that they all come from other birds, the author gives the dialogue between the mock-bird and the sparrow. The former taunted the latter and insisted on his singing; and
"The sparrow cock'd a knowing eye, And made him this most tart reply -- `You steal from all and call it wit, But I prefer my simple "twit".'"
But the latter view is espoused by most of the writers mentioned, notably and nobly by Drake, the Haynes, the Laniers, Lee, Meek, and Thompson, the poet-laureate of the mocking-bird, whose poems should be read by every lover of nature and especially of the mocking-bird. As Thompson's tributes are all too long for quotation, I give here Meek's, in the hope that I may rescue it from the long oblivion of an out-of-print. My attention was called to it by my friend, Dr. C. H. Ross, to whom every reader will be indebted along with myself. It runs as follows:
"From the vale, what music ringing, Fills the bosom of the night; On the sense, entranced, flinging Spells of witchery and delight! O'er magnolia, lime and cedar, From yon locust-top, it swells, Like the chant of serenader, Or the rhymes of silver bells! Listen! dearest, listen to it! Sweeter sounds were never heard! 'Tis the song of that wild poet -- Mime and minstrel -- Mocking-bird.
"See him, swinging in his glory, On yon topmost bending limb! Carolling his amorous story, Like some wild crusader's hymn! Now it faints in tones delicious As the first low vow of love! Now it bursts in swells capricious, All the moonlit vale above! Listen! dearest, etc.
"Why is't thus, this sylvan Petrarch Pours all night his serenade? 'Tis for some proud woodland Laura, His sad sonnets all are made! But he changes now his measure -- Gladness bubbling from his mouth -- Jest and gibe, and mimic pleasure -- Winged Anacreon of the South! Listen! dearest, etc.