Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

This standard he could not forget in his judgments of artists. There was something in Whitman which "refreshed him like harsh salt spray," but to Whitman's lawlessness of art he was an utter foe. We find it written down in his notes:

== "Whitman is poetry's butcher. Huge raw collops slashed from the rump of poetry, and never mind gristle -- is what Whitman feeds our souls with."

"As near as I can make it out, Whitman's argument seems to be, that, because a prairie is wide, therefore debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long, therefore every American is God." ==

So he says of Swinburne:

== "He invited me to eat; the service was silver and gold, but no food therein save pepper and salt." ==

And of William Morris:

== "He caught a crystal cupful of the yellow light of sunset, and persuading himself to dream it wine, drank it with a sort of smile." ==

Though not what would be called a religious writer, Lanier's large and deep thought took him to the deepest spiritual faiths, and the vastness of Nature drew him to a trust in the Infinite above us. Thus, his young search after God and truth brought him into the membership of the Presbyterian Church while at Oglethorpe College; and though in after years his creed became broader than that imposed by the Church he had joined on its clergy, he could not outgrow the simple faith and consecration which are all it requires of its membership. His college notebook records his earnestness;

== "Liberty, patriotism, and civilization are on their knees before the men of the South, and with clasped hands and straining eyes are begging them to become Christians." ==

How naturally his large faith in God finds expression in his "Marshes of Glynn"; or his reverent discipleship of the great Artist and Master in his "Ballad of the Trees and the Master", or his "The Crystal", which was Christ. Yet, with not a whit less of worshipfulness and consecration, there grew in him a repugnance to the sectarianism of the Churches which put him somewhat out of sympathy with their formal organizations. He wrote, in what may have been a sketch for a poem:

== "I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God. I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth. Then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground; and I looked and my cheek lay close to a violet. Then my heart took courage, and I said:

`I know that thou art the word of my God, dear Violet:
And Oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads.
Measure what space a violet stands above the ground;
'Tis no further climbing that my soul and angels have to do than that.'"
==

It was this quality, high and consecrate, as of a palmer with his vow, this knightly valiance, this constant San Greal quest after the lofty in character and aim, this passion for Good and Love, which fellows him rather with Milton and Ruskin than with the less sturdily built poets of his day, and which puts him in sharpest contrast with the school led by Swinburne -- with Rossetti and Morris as his followers hard after him -- a school whose reed has a short gamut, and plays but two notes, Mors and Eros, hopeless death and lawless love. But poetry is larger and finer than they know. Its face is toward the world's future; it does not maunder after the flower-decked nymphs and yellow-skirted fays that have forever fled -- and good riddance -- their haunted springs and tangled thickets. It can feed on its growing sweet and fresh faiths, but will draw foul contagion from the rank mists that float over old and cold fables. For all knowledge is food, as faith is wine, to a genius like Lanier. A poet genius has great common sense. He lives in to-day and to-morrow, not in yesterday. Such men were Shakespeare and Goethe. The age of poetry is not past; there is nothing in culture or science hostile to it. Milton was one of the world's great poets, but he was the most cultured and scholarly and statesmanlike man of his day. He was no dreamer of dead dreams. Neither was Lanier a dreamer. He came late to the opportunity he longed for, but when he came to it he was a tremendous student, not of music alone, but of language, of philosophy, and of science. He loved science. He was an inventor. He had all the instincts and ambitions of this nineteenth century. But that only made his range of poetic thought wider as his outlook became larger. The world is opening to the poet with every question the crucible asks of the elements, with every spectrum the prism steals from a star. The old he has and all the new.

All this a man of Lanier's breadth understood fully, for he had a large capacity and he sought a full equipment. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his gifts was their complete symmetry. It is hard to tell what register of perception, or sensibility, or wit, or will was lacking. The constructive and the critical faculties, the imaginative and the practical, balanced each other. His wit and humor played upon the soberer background of his more recognized qualities. The artist's withdrawn vision was at any need promptly exchanged for the exercise of that scrupulous exactitude called for in the routine of the law-office or the post-office clerkship or other business relations, or for the play of those energies exerted in camp or field. There, so his comrades testify, the most wearing drudgeries of a soldier's life were always undertaken with notable alacrity and were thoroughly discharged, when he would as invariably return, the task being done, to the gentle region of his own high thoughts and the artist's realm of beauty.

But how short was his day, and how slender his opportunity! From the time he was of age he waged a constant, courageous, hopeless fight against adverse circumstance for room to live and write. Much very dear, and sweet, and most sympathetic helpfulness he met in the city of his adoption, and from friends elsewhere, but he could not command the time and leisure which might have lengthened his life and given him opportunity to write the music and the verse with which his soul was teeming. Yet short as was his literary life, and hindered though it were, its fruit will fill a large space in the garnering of the poetic art of our country.

William Hayes Ward.

Mr. Lanier's published works, previous to the present volume, and exclusive of poems and essays published in literary journals, are the following:

Tiger Lilies: A novel. 16 mo, pp. v, 252. Hurd & Houghton, New York, 1867.

Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History. 12 mo, pp. 336.
J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1876.

Poems. Pp. 94. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1877.

The Boy's Froissart. Being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure,
Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain, etc. Edited for Boys.
Crown 8vo, pp. xxviii, 422. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1878.

The Science of English Verse. Crown 8vo, pp. xv, 315.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.

The Boy's King Arthur. Being Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur
and his Knights of the Round Table. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo,
pp. xlviii, 404. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.

The Boy's Mabinogion. Being the Earliest Welsh Tales of King Arthur
in the famous Red Book of Hergest. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo,
pp. xxiv, 378. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881.

The Boy's Percy. Being Old Ballads of War, Adventure, and Love,
from Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo, pp. xxxii, 442. Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York, 1882.

The English Novel and the Principles of its Development. Crown 8vo, pp. 293.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1883.

Poems of Sidney Lanier.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| SUNRISE, the culminating poem, the highest vision of Sidney Lanier, |
| was dedicated through his latest request to that friend |
| who indeed came into his life only near its close, |
| yet was at first meeting recognized by the poet |
| as "the father of his spirit", |
| GEORGE WESTFELDT. |
| When words were very few and the poem was unread, |
| even by any friend, the earnest bidding came: |
| "Send him my SUNRISE, |
| that he may know how entirely we are one in thought." |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hymns of the Marshes.

I. Sunrise.

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter `Yes,' Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide.

I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide: I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide In your gospelling glooms, -- to be As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.

Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. Reason's not one that weeps. What logic of greeting lies Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan, So, (But would I could know, but would I could know,) With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man, -- So, with your silences purfling this silence of man While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban, Under the ban, -- So, ye have wrought me Designs on the night of our knowledge, -- yea, ye have taught me, So, That haply we know somewhat more than we know.

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me, -- Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet That advise me of more than they bring, -- repeat Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath From the heaven-side bank of the river of death, -- Teach me the terms of silence, -- preach me The passion of patience, -- sift me, -- impeach me, -- And there, oh there As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl, -- is it thou
That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough,
As I pass to the beach, art stirred?
Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

* * * * *

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, Distilling silence, -- lo, That which our father-age had died to know -- The menstruum that dissolves all matter -- thou Hast found it: for this silence, filling now The globed clarity of receiving space, This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, Death, love, sin, sanity, Must in yon silence' clear solution lie. Too clear! That crystal nothing who'll peruse? The blackest night could bring us brighter news. Yet precious qualities of silence haunt Round these vast margins, ministrant. Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space, With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race Just to be fellow'd, when that thou hast found No man with room, or grace enough of bound To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art, -- 'Tis here, 'tis here thou canst unhand thy heart And breathe it free, and breathe it free, By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

The tide's at full: the marsh with flooded streams Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies Shine scant with one forked galaxy, -- The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie.

Oh, what if a sound should be made! Oh, what if a bound should be laid To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring, -- To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string! I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam Will break as a bubble o'er-blown in a dream, -- Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night, Over-weighted with stars, over-freighted with light, Over-sated with beauty and silence, will seem But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid, Or a sound or a motion made.

But no: it is made: list! somewhere, -- mystery, where? In the leaves? in the air? In my heart? is a motion made: 'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade. In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring, Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still; But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill, -- And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river, -- And look where a passionate shiver Expectant is bending the blades Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades, -- And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting, Are beating The dark overhead as my heart beats, -- and steady and free Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea -- (Run home, little streams, With your lapfulls of stars and dreams), -- And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak, For list, down the inshore curve of the creek How merrily flutters the sail, -- And lo, in the East! Will the East unveil? The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive: 'tis dead, ere the West Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis unwithdrawn: Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn.

Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled: To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold Is builded, in shape as a bee-hive, from out of the sea: The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee, The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.

Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray, Shall live their little lucid sober day Ere with the sun their souls exhale away. Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue Big dew-drop of all heaven: with these lit shrines O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines, The sacramental marsh one pious plain Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, Minded of nought but peace, and of a child.

Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure Of motion, -- not faster than dateless Olympian leisure Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure, -- The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling, Forever revealing, revealing, revealing, Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise, -- 'tis done! Good-morrow, lord Sun! With several voice, with ascription one, The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll, Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun.

O Artisan born in the purple, -- Workman Heat, -- Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet And be mixed in the death-cold oneness, -- innermost Guest At the marriage of elements, -- fellow of publicans, -- blest King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er The idle skies yet laborest fast evermore, -- Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat Of the heart of a man, thou Motive, -- Laborer Heat: Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news, With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues, Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues Ever shaming the maidens, -- lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine, It is thine, it is thine:

Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl In the magnet earth, -- yea, thou with a storm for a heart, Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright Than the eye of a man may avail of: -- manifold One, I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun: Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown; The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town: But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done; I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun: How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, I am lit with the Sun.

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas Of traffic shall hide thee, Never the hell-colored smoke of the factories Hide thee, Never the reek of the time's fen-politics Hide thee, And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee, And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, Labor, at leisure, in art, -- till yonder beside thee My soul shall float, friend Sun, The day being done.

____ Baltimore, December, 1880.

II. Individuality.

Sail on, sail on, fair cousin Cloud: Oh loiter hither from the sea. Still-eyed and shadow-brow'd, Steal off from yon far-drifting crowd, And come and brood upon the marsh with me.

Yon laboring low horizon-smoke, Yon stringent sail, toil not for thee Nor me; did heaven's stroke The whole deep with drown'd commerce choke, No pitiless tease of risk or bottomry

Would to thy rainy office close Thy will, or lock mine eyes from tears, Part wept for traders'-woes, Part for that ventures mean as those In issue bind such sovereign hopes and fears.

-- Lo, Cloud, thy downward countenance stares Blank on the blank-faced marsh, and thou Mindest of dark affairs; Thy substance seems a warp of cares; Like late wounds run the wrinkles on thy brow.

Well may'st thou pause, and gloom, and stare, A visible conscience: I arraign Thee, criminal Cloud, of rare Contempts on Mercy, Right, and Prayer, -- Of murders, arsons, thefts, -- of nameless stain.

(Yet though life's logic grow as gray As thou, my soul's not in eclipse.) Cold Cloud, but yesterday Thy lightning slew a child at play, And then a priest with prayers upon his lips

For his enemies, and then a bright Lady that did but ope the door Upon the storming night To let a beggar in, -- strange spite, -- And then thy sulky rain refused to pour

Till thy quick torch a barn had burned Where twelve months' store of victual lay, A widow's sons had earned; Which done, thy floods with winds returned, -- The river raped their little herd away.

What myriad righteous errands high Thy flames MIGHT run on! In that hour Thou slewest the child, oh why Not rather slay Calamity, Breeder of Pain and Doubt, infernal Power?

Or why not plunge thy blades about Some maggot politician throng Swarming to parcel out The body of a land, and rout The maw-conventicle, and ungorge Wrong?

What the cloud doeth
The Lord knoweth,
The cloud knoweth not.
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;
Knoweth the artist not?

Well-answered! -- O dear artists, ye -- Whether in forms of curve or hue Or tone your gospels be -- Say wrong `This work is not of me, But God:' it is not true, it is not true.

Awful is Art because 'tis free. The artist trembles o'er his plan Where men his Self must see. Who made a song or picture, he Did it, and not another, God nor man.

My Lord is large, my Lord is strong: Giving, He gave: my me is mine. How poor, how strange, how wrong, To dream He wrote the little song I made to Him with love's unforced design!

Oh, not as clouds dim laws have plann'd To strike down Good and fight for Ill, -- Oh, not as harps that stand In the wind and sound the wind's command: Each artist -- gift of terror! -- owns his will.

For thee, Cloud, -- if thou spend thine all Upon the South's o'er-brimming sea That needs thee not; or crawl To the dry provinces, and fall Till every convert clod shall give to thee

Green worship; if thou grow or fade, Bring on delight or misery, Fly east or west, be made Snow, hail, rain, wind, grass, rose, light, shade; What matters it to thee? There is no thee.

Pass, kinsman Cloud, now fair and mild: Discharge the will that's not thine own. I work in freedom wild, But work, as plays a little child, Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone.

____ Baltimore, 1878-9.

III. Marsh Song -- At Sunset.

Over the monstrous shambling sea, Over the Caliban sea, Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest: Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West, -- Thy Prospero I'll be.

Over the humped and fishy sea, Over the Caliban sea O cloud in the West, like a thought in the heart Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start, And do a grace for me.

Over the huge and huddling sea, Over the Caliban sea, Bring hither my brother Antonio, -- Man, -- My injurer: night breaks the ban; Brother, I pardon thee.

____ Baltimore, 1879-80.

IV. The Marshes of Glynn.

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, -- Emerald twilights, -- Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; --

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, -- Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, -- Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; --

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; 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 compass 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 space. 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.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. 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-grass, 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.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God 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-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, 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 marvellous marshes of Glynn.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

Clover.

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.

Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields, My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -- A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all, Fair tilth and fruitful seasons! Lo, how still! The midmorn empties you of men, save me; Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear. I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine, Holding the hills and heavens in my heart For contemplation. 'Tis a perfect hour. From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked, And rounds into a silver pool of morn, Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell, That speak the hour so inward-voiced, meseems Time's conscience has but whispered him eight hints Of revolution. Reigns that mild surcease That stills the middle of each rural morn -- When nimble noises that with sunrise ran About the farms have sunk again to rest; When Tom no more across the horse-lot calls To sleepy Dick, nor Dick husk-voiced upbraids The sway-back'd roan for stamping on his foot With sulphurous oath and kick in flank, what time The cart-chain clinks across the slanting shaft, And, kitchenward, the rattling bucket plumps Souse down the well, where quivering ducks quack loud, And Susan Cook is singing. Up the sky The hesitating moon slow trembles on, Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up From out a buried body. Far about, A hundred slopes in hundred fantasies Most ravishingly run, so smooth of curve That I but seem to see the fluent plain Rise toward a rain of clover-blooms, as lakes Pout gentle mounds of plashment up to meet Big shower-drops. Now the little winds, as bees, Bowing the blooms come wandering where I lie Mixt soul and body with the clover-tufts, Light on my spirit, give from wing and thigh Rich pollens and divine sweet irritants To every nerve, and freshly make report Of inmost Nature's secret autumn-thought Unto some soul of sense within my frame That owns each cognizance of the outlying five, And sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, all in one.

Tell me, dear Clover (since my soul is thine, Since I am fain give study all the day, To make thy ways my ways, thy service mine, To seek me out thy God, my God to be, And die from out myself to live in thee) -- Now, Cousin Clover, tell me in mine ear: Go'st thou to market with thy pink and green? Of what avail, this color and this grace? Wert thou but squat of stem and brindle-brown, Still careless herds would feed. A poet, thou: What worth, what worth, the whole of all thine art? Three-Leaves, instruct me! I am sick of price. Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, afar, The spacious fields from me to Heaven take on Tremors of change and new significance To th' eye, as to the ear a simple tale Begins to hint a parable's sense beneath. The prospect widens, cuts all bounds of blue Where horizontal limits bend, and spreads Into a curious-hill'd and curious-valley'd Vast, Endless before, behind, around; which seems Th' incalculable Up-and-Down of Time Made plain before mine eyes. The clover-stems Still cover all the space; but now they bear, For clover-blooms, fair, stately heads of men With poets' faces heartsome, dear and pale -- Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed and bodied. Oh, In arms' reach, here be Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha (sweetest masters! Let me lay These arms this once, this humble once, about Your reverend necks -- the most containing clasp, For all in all, this world e'er saw!) and there, Yet further on, bright throngs unnamable Of workers worshipful, nobilities In the Court of Gentle Service, silent men, Dwellers in woods, brooders on helpful art, And all the press of them, the fair, the large, That wrought with beauty. Lo, what bulk is here? Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an Ox, Slow browsing, o'er my hillside, ponderously -- The huge-brawned, tame, and workful Course-of-things, That hath his grass, if earth be round or flat, And hath his grass, if empires plunge in pain Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time, And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp, And sicklewise, about my poets' heads, And twists them in, all -- Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha, in one sheaf -- and champs and chews, With slantly-churning jaws, and swallows down; Then slowly plants a mighty forefoot out, And makes advance to futureward, one inch. So: they have played their part. And to this end? This, God? This, troublous-breeding Earth? This, Sun Of hot, quick pains? To this no-end that ends, These Masters wrought, and wept, and sweated blood, And burned, and loved, and ached with public shame, And found no friends to breathe their loves to, save Woods and wet pillows? This was all? This Ox? "Nay," quoth a sum of voices in mine ear, "God's clover, we, and feed His Course-of-things; The pasture is God's pasture; systems strange Of food and fiberment He hath, whereby The general brawn is built for plans of His To quality precise. Kinsman, learn this: The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man. Tease not thy vision with vain search for ends. The End of Means is art that works by love. The End of Ends . . . in God's Beginning's lost."

____ West Chester, Pa., Summer of 1876.

The Waving of the Corn.

Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled Thy plough to ring this solitary tree With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field, In cool green radius twice my length may be -- Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield, To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me, That here come oft together -- daily I, Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy, Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn With waving of the corn.

Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought, And fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill; The cricket tells straight on his simple thought -- Nay, 'tis the cricket's way of being still; The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught; Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove Times me the beating of the heart of love: And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn, With waving of the corn.

From here to where the louder passions dwell, Green leagues of hilly separation roll: Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell. Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul That, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell, From out your deadly complex quarrel stole To company with large amiable trees, Suck honey summer with unjealous bees, And take Time's strokes as softly as this morn Takes waving of the corn.

____ West Chester, Pa., 1876.

The Song of the Chattahoochee.

Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried `Abide, abide,' The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,' The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall.'

High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall.'

And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone -- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet and amethyst -- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call -- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall.

____ 1877.

From the Flats.

What heartache -- ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name: Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise, No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; No humors, frolic forms -- this mile, that mile; No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame: Ever the same, the same.

Oh might I through these tears But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears, Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine, The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade, And down the hollow from a ferny nook Bright leaps a living brook!

____ Tampa, Florida, 1877.

The Mocking-Bird.

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue. Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakespeare on the tree?

Tampa Robins.

The robin laughed in the orange-tree: "Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me -- Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, My orange-planets: crimson I Will shine and shoot among the spheres (Blithe meteor that no mortal fears) And thrid the heavenly orange-tree With orbits bright of minstrelsy.

If that I hate wild winter's spite -- The gibbet trees, the world in white, The sky but gray wind over a grave -- Why should I ache, the season's slave? I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree `Gramercy, winter's tyranny.'

I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime; My wing is king of the summer-time; My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; And I'll call down through the green and gold `Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, Bestir thee under the orange-tree.'"

____ Tampa, Florida, 1877.

The Crystal.

At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time, When far within the spirit's hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things -- A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, -- When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, -- 'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total lustre blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give, We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet Your largesse so with love, and interplight Your geniuses with our mortalities.

Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakespeare sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise -- Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind; Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain; Last I forgive (with more delight, because 'Tis more to do) the labored-lewd discourse That e'en thy young invention's youngest heir Besmirched the world with.

Father Homer, thee, Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues That tease the patience of the centuries, Thy sleazy scrap of story, -- but a rogue's Rape of a light-o'-love, -- too soiled a patch To broider with the gods.

Thee, Socrates, Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies That were but dandy upside-down, thy words Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought.

So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was But not to be.

Worn Dante, I forgive The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed By death, nor time, nor love.

And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise And fill all heaven with folly.

Also thee, Brave Aeschylus, thee I forgive, for that Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love Stands shining.

So, unto thee, Lucretius mine (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this That's now complaining?), freely I forgive Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth Whose graves eat souls and all.

Yea, all you hearts Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large: Aurelius fine, oft superfine; mild Saint A Kempis, overmild; Epictetus, Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct; Rapt Behmen, rapt too far; high Swedenborg, O'ertoppling; Langley, that with but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; -- all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship seals to man.

But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What `if' or `yet', what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?"

____ Baltimore, 1880.

The Revenge of Hamish.

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound, The hounds swept after with never a sound, But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild, And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds: "I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child."

So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand; But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," -- Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn, Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand."

Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height of the hill, Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, And that place of the lashing is live with men, And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold. They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! -- Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep, And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead?

Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband, the lashing will heal; But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel

With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer -- And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face -- In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree --

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine, And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

To Bayard Taylor.

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, O'erseeing all that man but undersees; To loiter down lone alleys of delight, And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul, To pace, in mighty meditations drawn, From out the forest to the open knoll Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,