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 extraordinaryendowment 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 essentiallymusical, 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" target="_blank" title="a.有区别的；有特色的">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,