The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 36

Let fall on Her a rose-leaf rain of dreams, All pa.s.sionate-sweet, as are the loving beams Of starlight on the glimmering woods and streams.

____ Montgomery, Alabama, April, 1866.

June Dreams, in January.

"So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills, In languid palpitation, half a-swoon With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills;

"Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips Up to the sun, that turn him pa.s.sion-pale And then as red as any virgin's lips.

"O tender Darkness, when June-day hath ceased, -- Faint Odor from the day-flower's crus.h.i.+ng born, -- Dim, visible Sigh out of the mournful East That cannot see her lord again till morn:

"And many leaves, broad-palmed towards the sky To catch the sacred raining of star-light: And pallid petals, fain, all fain to die, Soul-stung by too keen pa.s.sion of the night:

"And short-breath'd winds, under yon gracious moon Doing mild errands for mild violets, Or carrying sighs from the red lips of June What aimless way the odor-current sets:

"And stars, ringed glittering in whorls and bells, Or bent along the sky in looped star-sprays, Or vine-wound, with bright grapes in panicles, Or bramble-tangled in a sweetest maze,

"Or lying like young lilies in a lake About the great white Lotus of the moon, Or blown and drifted, as if winds should shake Star blossoms down from silver stems too soon,

"Or budding thick about full open stars, Or clambering shyly up cloud-lattices, Or trampled pale in the red path of Mars, Or trim-set in quaint gardener's fantasies:

"And long June night-sounds crooned among the leaves, And whispered confidence of dark and green, And murmurs in old moss about old eaves, And tinklings floating over water-sheen!"

Then he that wrote laid down his pen and sighed; And straightway came old Scorn and Bitterness, Like Hunnish kings out of the barbarous land, And camped upon the transient Italy That he had dreamed to blossom in his soul.

"I'll date this dream," he said; "so: 'Given, these, On this, the coldest night in all the year, From this, the meanest garret in the world, In this, the greatest city in the land, To you, the richest folk this side of death, By one, the hungriest poet under heaven, -- Writ while his candle sputtered in the gust, And while his last, last ember died of cold, And while the mortal ice i' the air made free Of all his bones and bit and shrunk his heart, And while soft Luxury made show to strike Her gloved hands together and to smile What time her weary feet unconsciously Trode wheels that lifted Avarice to power, -- And while, moreover, -- O thou G.o.d, thou G.o.d -- His wors.h.i.+pful sweet wife sat still, afar, Within the village whence she sent him forth Into the town to make his name and fame, Waiting, all confident and proud and calm, Till he should make for her his name and fame, Waiting -- O Christ, how keen this cuts! -- large-eyed, With Baby Charley till her husband make For her and him a poet's name and fame.'

-- Read me," he cried, and rose, and stamped his foot Impatiently at Heaven, "read me this,"

(Putting th' inquiry full in the face of G.o.d) "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, G.o.d sent him sleep.

There came his room-fellow, Stout d.i.c.k, the painter, saw the written dream, Read, scratched his curly pate, smiled, winked, fell on The poem in big-hearted comic rage, Quick folded, thrust in envelope, addressed To him, the critic-G.o.d, that sitteth grim And giant-grisly on the stone causeway That leadeth to his magazine and fame.

Him, by due mail, the little Dream of June Encountered growling, and at unawares Stole in upon his poem-battered soul So that he smiled, -- then shook his head upon 't -- Then growled, then smiled again, till at the last, As one that deadly sinned against his will, He writ upon the margin of the Dream A wondrous, wondrous word that in a day Did turn the fleeting song to very bread, -- Whereat d.i.c.k Painter leapt, the poet wept, And Mary slept with happy drops a-gleam Upon long lashes of her serene eyes From twentieth reading of her poet's news Quick-sent, "O sweet my Sweet, to dream is power, And I can dream thee bread and dream thee wine, And I will dream thee robes and gems, dear Love, To clothe thy holy loveliness withal, And I will dream thee here to live by me, Thee and my little man thou hold'st at breast, -- Come, Name, come, Fame, and kiss my Sweetheart's feet!"

____ Georgia, 1869.

Notes to Poems.

I. Sunrise.

'Sunrise', Mr. Lanier's latest completed poem, was written while his sun of life seemed fairly at the setting, and the hand which first pencilled its lines had not strength to carry nourishment to the lips.

The three 'Hymns of the Marshes' which open this collection are the only written portions of a series of six 'Marsh Hymns'

that were designed by the author to form a separate volume.

The 'Song' of the Marshes, 'At Sunset', does not belong to this group, but is inserted among the 'Hymns' as forming a true accord with them.

IV. The Marshes of Glynn.

The salt marshes of Glynn County, Georgia, immediately around the sea-coast city of Brunswick.

Clover.

'Clover' is placed as the initial poem of a volume which was left in orderly arrangement among the author's papers. His own grouping in that volume has been followed as far as possible in this fuller collection.

The Mocking-Bird.

" . . . yon trim Shakespeare on the tree"

leads back, almost twenty years from its writing, to the poet's college note-book where we find the boy reflecting: "A poet is the mocking-bird of the spiritual universe.

In him are collected all the individual songs of all individual natures."

Corn.

'Corn' will hold a distinct interest for those who study the gathering forces in the author's growth: for it was the first outcome of his consciously-developing art-life. This life, the musician's and poet's, he entered upon -- after years of patient denial and suppression -- in September, 1873, uncertain of his powers but determined to give them wing.

His "fieldward-faring eyes took harvest" "among the stately corn-ranks", in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon.

It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches to the distant Blue Ridge mountains, whose wholesome breath, all un.o.bstructed, here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory and the muscadine: a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier, as "that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses calm themselves into pleasant hills before dying quite away into the sea-board levels" -- where "a man can find such temperances of heaven and earth -- enough of struggle with nature to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle -- that a more exquisite co-adaptation of all blessed circ.u.mstances for man's life need not be sought."

My Springs.

Of this newly-written poem Mr. Lanier says in a letter of March, 1874: "Of course, since I have written it to print I cannot make it such as *I* desire in artistic design: for the forms of to-day require a certain trim smugness and clean-shaven propriety in the face and dress of a poem, and I must win a hearing by conforming in some degree to these tyrannies, with a view to overturning them in the future. Written so, it is not nearly so beautiful as I would have it; and I therefore have another still in my heart, which I will some day write for myself."

VII. A Song of Love.

'A Song of Love', like 'Betrayal', belongs to the early plan of 'The Jacquerie'. It was written for one of the Fool's songs and, after several recastings, took its present shape in 1879.

To Nannette Falk-Auerbach.

This sonnet was originally written in the German and published in a German daily of Baltimore, while the author's translation appeared at the same time in the Baltimore 'Gazette'.