A Biography of Sidney Lanier Part 28

I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine, Holding the hills and heavens in my heart For contemplation.

Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed.

A perfect life in perfect labor wrought.

The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man.

He summ'd the words in song.

The whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound!

My brain is beating like the heart of Haste.

Where an artist plays, the sky is low.

Thou 'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.

Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!

Music is love in search of a word.

His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand!

And Science be known as the sense making love to the All, And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All.

Indeed, if one had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame of Lanier, he could single out "The Marshes of Glynn" with a.s.surance that there is something so individual and original about it, and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and range of verse in it, that it will surely live not only in American poetry but in English.

Here the imagination has taken the place of fancy, the effort to do great things ends in victory, and the melody of the poem corresponds to the exalted thought. It has all the strong points of "Sunrise", with but few of its limitations. There is something of Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spirituality combined with the haunting melody of Poe's best work. Written in 1878, when Lanier was in the full exercise of all his powers, it is the best expression of his genius and one of the few great American poems.

The background of the poem -- as of "Sunrise" -- is the forest, the coast and the marshes near Brunswick, Georgia. Early in life Lanier had been thrilled by this wonderful natural scenery, and later visits had the more powerfully impressed his imagination.

He is the poet of the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests, or Wordsworth of the mountains.

The poet represents himself as having spent the day in the forest and coming at sunset into full view of the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the live-oaks and the emerald twilights of the "dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,"

have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that, in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known the pa.s.sionate pleasure of prayer and the joy of elevated thought.

His spirit is grown to a lordly great compa.s.s within, -- he is ready for what Wordsworth calls a "G.o.d-like hour": --

But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, 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 compa.s.s 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 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 s.p.a.ce.

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: 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.

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-gra.s.s, 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?

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.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of G.o.d: I will fly in the greatness of G.o.d as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the s.p.a.ce 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-gra.s.s sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of G.o.d: Oh, like to the greatness of G.o.d 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 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-gra.s.s stir; Pa.s.seth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Pa.s.seth, 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 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 marvelous marshes of Glynn.

In the light of such a poem Lanier's poetry and his life take on a new significance. The struggles through which he pa.s.sed and the victory he achieved are summed up in a pa.s.sage which may well be the last word of this biography. For Sidney Lanier was

The catholic man who hath mightily won G.o.d out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.