Chapter 7

"Bird of music, wit and gladness, Troubadour of sunny climes, Disenchanter of all sadness, -- Would thine art were in my rhymes. O'er the heart that's beating by me, I would weave a spell divine; Is there aught she could deny me, Drinking in such strains as thine? Listen! dearest, etc."

As is well known, the mocking-bird is often called the American nightingale. As to their relative merits as singers, here is the judgment of one that has heard both birds, Professor James A. Harrison (`The Critic', New York, 2. 284, December 13, 1884): "Well, it is my honest opinion that philomel will not compare with the singer of the South in sweetness, versatility, passion, or lyrical beauty. The mocking-bird -- better the echo-bird, with a voice compounded of all sweet sounds, as the blossom of the Chinese olive is compounded of all sweet scents -- is a pure lyrist; its throat is a lyre -- Aeolian, capricious, many-stringed; as its name suggests, it is a polyglot mime, a bird linguist, a feathered Mezzofanti singing all the bird languages; yet over and above all this, with a something of its own that cannot be described." The mocking-bird speaks for himself in Thompson's `To an English Nightingale':

"What do you think of me? Do I sing by rote? Or by note? Have I a parrot's echo-throat? Oh no! I caught my strains From Nature's freshest veins.

. . . . .

"He A match for me! No more than a wren or a chickadee! Mine is the voice of the young and strong, Mine the soul of the brave and free!"

This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses all the musical qualifications of this king of song, who has derived all from Nature's self. Yes, reader, all!"

It will be interesting and instructive to compare the tributes to the mocking-bird with Keats's `Ode to a Nightingale', Shelley's `To a Skylark', and Wordsworth's `To the Skylark'.

Aside from Audubon's `Birds of America' and Ridgway's `Manual of North American Birds', the student may consult with profit Burroughs's `Birds and Poets', Thompson's `In the Haunts of the Mocking-bird' (`The Atlantic', 54. 620, November, 1884), various articles by Olive Thorne Miller in `The Atlantic' (vol. 54 on), and Winterfield's `The Mocking-bird, an Indian Legend' (`The American Whig Review', New York, 1. 497, May, 1845).

14. Wilde compares the mocking-bird to Yorick and to Jacques; Meek, to Petrarch; Lanier, to Keats, in `To Our Mocking-bird', as does Wm. H. Hayne:

"Each golden note of music greets The listening leaves divinely stirred, As if the vanished soul of Keats Had found its new birth in a bird."

Song of the Chattahoochee

Out of the hills of Habersham, [1] Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham, [11] All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried `Abide, abide,' The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,' The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall.'

High o'er the hills of Habersham, [21] Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall.'

And oft in the hills of Habersham, [31] And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone -- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst -- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, [41] And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call -- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall.

____ 1877.

Notes: Song of the Chattahoochee

The Chattahoochee River rises in Habersham County, in northeast Georgia, and, intersecting Hall County, flows southwestward to West Point, then southward until it unites with the Flint River at the southwestern extremity of Georgia. The Chattahoochee is about five hundred miles long, and small steamboats can ascend it to Columbus, Ga. Hon. Henry R. Jackson, of Savannah, Ga., late Minister to Mexico, has an interesting poem `To the Chattahoochee River', in his `Tallulah and Other Poems' (Savannah, Ga., 1850); and Mr. M. V. Moore, in his poem, `Southern Rivers' (`Harper', 66. 464, February, 1883), has a paragraph on the rivers of Georgia, in which he speaks of "the sandy Chattahoochee".

In the `Introduction' (pp. xxxi [Part III], xliv, xlvii [Part IV]) I have spoken of this `Song' as Lanier's most finished nature poem, as the most musical of his productions. "The music of a song easily eludes all analysis and may be dissipated by a critic's breath, but let us try to catch the means by which the effect is in part produced. In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs in all save twelve lines. In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs, sometimes joining the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines. Syzygy is used for the same purpose. Of the letters occurring in the poem about one-fifth are liquids and about one-twelfth are sibilants. The effect of the whole is musical beyond description. It sings itself and yet nowhere sacrifices the thought" (Kent).

Another way to test the beauty of `The Song of the Chattahoochee' is to compare it with other kindred poems. There are many stream-songs in English, several of which are very pretty, but there is, I think, but one rival to our `Song', and that is Tennyson's `The Brook'. Even so careful a critic as Mr. Ward says that `The Song of the Chattahoochee' "strikes a higher key, and is scarcely less musical." It will be instructive, too, to compare Lanier's poem with Southey's `The Cataract of Lodore' (see `Gates', p. 25), which exhibits considerable talent, if not inspiration; with P. H. Hayne's `The Meadow Brook', which is simple and sweet; and with Wordsworth's `Brook! whose society the Poet seeks', which is grave and elevated. Professor Kent suggests as interesting analogues Poe's `Ulalume' and Buchanan Read's `Bay of Naples'; and, if the student cares to extend his list, he should read the stream-songs by Bryant, Mary Ainge De Vere (`Century', 21. 283, December, 1891), Longfellow, Weir Mitchell (`Atlantic', 65. 629, May, 1890), Clinton Scollard (`Lippincott', 50. 226, August, 1892), etc., etc.

The Revenge of Hamish

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; [1] And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, [11] Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvelous bound, The hounds swept after with never a sound, But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild, And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds: "I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child."

So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand; [21] But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," -- Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn, Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand."

Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height of the hill, Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below. Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go [31] All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" [41] Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; [51] And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, And that place of the lashing is live with men, And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold. [61] They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! -- Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep, And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please [71] For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead?

"Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband, the lashing will heal; [81] But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel

With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight [91] Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer -- And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face -- In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree --

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine, [101] And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

Notes: The Revenge of Hamish

For an appreciation of this fine poem see `Introduction', pp. xlv, xlvii [Part IV], Mr. J. R. Tait, a friend with whom Mr. Lanier discussed `The Revenge of Hamish', kindly writes me that the author took the plot from William Black's novel, `Macleod of Dare'. In chapter iii. Macleod, of Castle Dare, Mull, tells the story to his London entertainer; but, as the story of the novel is identical with that of the poem, it need not be given here. The novel, I should add, gives the name of the chieftain only, though, as it has a Hamish in another connection, it doubtless gave Lanier this name for the henchman. Previous to the reception of Mr. Tait's letter I supposed that Lanier had borrowed his plot from a poem by Charles Mackay, `Maclaine's Child, A Legend of Lochbuy, Mull', which in plot is identical with Lanier's poem, except that the former begins with the speech of the flogged henchman, here named Evan, and ends by telling us that the bodies were found and that of Evan was hanged on a gallows-tree. The poem is too long for quotation, but may be found in any edition of Mackay or in Garrett's `One Hundred Choice Selections: Number Nine' (Phila., 1887).

17. The Macleans, for centuries one of the most powerful of Scottish clans, have since the fourteenth century lived in Mull, one of the largest of the Hebrides Islands. The two leading branches of the clan were the Macleans of Dowart and the Macleans of Lochbuy, both taking their names from the seats of their castles. The Lochbuy family now spells its name MacLAINE. For a detailed history of the clan see Keltie's `History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans', etc. (London, 1885). Interesting books about Mull and the Hebrides are: Johnson's `A Journey to the Hebrides' and Robert Buchanan's `The Hebrid Isles' (London, 1883). Instructive, too, is Cummin's `Around Mull' (`The Atlantic Monthly', 16. 11-19, 167-176, July, August, 1865).

The Marshes of Glynn

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven [1] With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, -- Emerald twilights, -- Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; -- [11]

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, -- Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, -- Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; --

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, [21] And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, -- Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore [31] When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, --

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark: -- So: [41] Affable live-oak, leaning low, -- Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl [51] As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? [61] Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

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.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, [71] Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go [81] About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; [91] Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken [101] The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

Notes: The Marshes of Glynn

Although Dr. Callaway noted in his preface the importance of this poem, he did not include it for lack of space. This would seem to indicate that when he published these "Selected Poems" in 1895, "The Marshes of Glynn" had not yet achieved its later prominence as the greatest of Sidney Lanier's poems -- as now seems to be the opinion. The setting of the poem is the salt marshes surrounding the coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia, which is in Glynn County -- an area well deserving of the fame Lanier has given it -- and it was intended as one installment in a series of "Hymns of the Marshes", of which four poems were completed.

The text is taken from the 1916 edition of "Poems of Sidney Lanier".

William Hayes Ward wrote of this poem: "How naturally his large faith in God finds expression in his `Marshes of Glynn'."

Edwin Mims, in his biography of Sidney Lanier, concludes by quoting this poem. He writes:

"His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. . . . Sometimes, as in the `Marshes of Glynn' and in the best parts of `Sunrise', there is a cosmic rhythm that is like unto the rhythmic beating of the heart of God, of which Poe and Lanier have written eloquently."

And later continues: