Select Poems of Sidney Lanier [16]
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
-- * `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