Select Poems of Sidney Lanier [9]
*1* See `The Waving of the Corn' and `Corn'. *2* See `Clover'. *3* See `The Mocking-Bird' and `To Our Mocking-Bird'. *4* See `Tampa Robins'. *5* See `The Dove'. *6* See `From the Flats', last stanza. *7* See `Sunrise'. *8* See `Sunrise' and `Corn'. *9* See `The Song of the Chattahoochee' and `Sunrise'. *10* See `Corn'. *11* See `Sunrise' and `At Sunset'. *12* See `Individuality'. *13* See `Sunrise', etc. *14* See `At Sunset'. *15* See `The Marshes of Glynn', and read Barbe's tribute to Lanier, cited in the `Bibliography'. *16* `Intimations of Immortality', ll. 202-203. *17* `The Symphony', l. 3. *18* `The Symphony', ll. 13-14. *19* `Clover', l. 57. *20* `Individuality', l. 1. *21* `Sunrise', l. 42. *22* `Corn', ll. 4-9. Compare `The Symphony', ll. 183-190. *23* Hayne's `In the Gray of Evening': Autumn, ll. 37-46, in `Poems' (Boston, 1882), p. 250. *24* `The Marshes of Glynn', ll. 61-64, 75-78. *25* `Sunrise', ll. 39-53. *26* See his `Modern Painters', vol. v., part vi., chapter iv., and Scudder's note to the same in her `Introduction to Ruskin' (Chicago, 1892), p. 249. --
To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton, from Tacitus to the present, saw "something of the divine" in woman. It was this feeling that led him so severely to condemn a vice that is said to be growing, the marriage for convenience. I quote from `The Symphony', and the "melting Clarionet" is speaking: "So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, `Here, you lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1* And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that, at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's `One Way of Love', which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love. The Lady Clarionet is still speaking: "I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, `O Sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.'"*2* I imagine, too, that any wife that ever lived would be satisfied with his glorious tribute to Mrs. Lanier in `My Springs', which closes thus: "Dear eyes, dear eyes, and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet -- I marvel that God made you mine, For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine."*3* Almost equally felicitous are these lines of `Acknowledgment': "Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument."*4* But the cleverest thing that Lanier has written of woman occurs in his `Laus Mariae': "But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty fact. Oh, Sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of time in loving thee!"*5* -- a scrap worthy to be placed beside Steele's "To love her is a liberal education," which has often been declared the happiest thing on the subject in the English language.
-- *1* `The Symphony', ll. 232-240. *2* `The Symphony', ll. 241-248. *3* `My Springs', ll. 53-56. *4* `Acknowledgment', ll. 41-42. *5* `Laus Mariae', ll. 11-14. --
To Lanier there was but one thing that made life worth living, and that was love. Even the superficial reader must be struck with the frequent use of the term in the poet's works, while all must be uplifted by his conception of its purpose and power. The ills of agnosticism, mercantilism, and intolerance all find their solution here and here only, as is admirably set forth in `The Symphony', of which the opening strain is, "We are all for love," and the
To take up his next theme, Lanier, like every true Teuton, from Tacitus to the present, saw "something of the divine" in woman. It was this feeling that led him so severely to condemn a vice that is said to be growing, the marriage for convenience. I quote from `The Symphony', and the "melting Clarionet" is speaking: "So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, `Here, you lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1* And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that, at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's `One Way of Love', which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love. The Lady Clarionet is still speaking: "I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, `O Sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.'"*2* I imagine, too, that any wife that ever lived would be satisfied with his glorious tribute to Mrs. Lanier in `My Springs', which closes thus: "Dear eyes, dear eyes, and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet -- I marvel that God made you mine, For when he frowns, 'tis then ye shine."*3* Almost equally felicitous are these lines of `Acknowledgment': "Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument."*4* But the cleverest thing that Lanier has written of woman occurs in his `Laus Mariae': "But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty fact. Oh, Sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of time in loving thee!"*5* -- a scrap worthy to be placed beside Steele's "To love her is a liberal education," which has often been declared the happiest thing on the subject in the English language.
-- *1* `The Symphony', ll. 232-240. *2* `The Symphony', ll. 241-248. *3* `My Springs', ll. 53-56. *4* `Acknowledgment', ll. 41-42. *5* `Laus Mariae', ll. 11-14. --
To Lanier there was but one thing that made life worth living, and that was love. Even the superficial reader must be struck with the frequent use of the term in the poet's works, while all must be uplifted by his conception of its purpose and power. The ills of agnosticism, mercantilism, and intolerance all find their solution here and here only, as is admirably set forth in `The Symphony', of which the opening strain is, "We are all for love," and the