Poets of the South / A Series of Biographical and Critical Studies with Typical Poems, Annotated

by F. V. N. Painter

SUNRISE [33]

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 gospeling glooms,[34]—to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.
Tell me, sweet burly-barked, 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,[35]
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.[36]

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 fellowed, 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'erblown in a dream,—
Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night,
Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light,
Oversated 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 nicker 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 lapfuls 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 withdrawn:
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 beehive, 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.[37]
Yet now the dewdrop, 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 dewdrop 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 [38]
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.

For a general introduction to Lanier's poetry, see Chapter V.

[Footnote 1: This poem was first published in Scott's Magazine, Atlanta, Georgia, from which it is here taken. It at once became popular, and was copied in many newspapers throughout the South. It was subsequently revised, and the changes, which are pointed out below, are interesting as showing the development of the poet's artistic sense.

The singularly rapid and musical lilt of this poem may be readily traced to its sources. It is due to the skillful use of short vowels, liquid consonants, internal rhyme, and constant alliteration. These are matters of technique which Lanier studiously employed throughout his poetry.

This poem abounds in seeming irregularities of meter. The fundamental measure is iambic tetrameter, as in the line—

"The rushes cried, Abide, abide";

but trochees, dactyls, or anapests are introduced in almost every line, yet without interfering with the time element of the verse. These irregularities were no doubt introduced in order to increase the musical effects.]

[Footnote 2: As may be seen by reference to a map, the Chattahoochee rises in Habersham County, in northeastern Georgia, and in its south- westerly course passes through the adjoining county of Hall. Its entire length is about five hundred miles.]

[Footnote 3: Changed in the revision to "I hurry amain," with the present tense of the following verbs. The pronoun "his" in line 6 becomes "my.">[

[Footnote 4: This line was changed to—

"The laving laurel turned my tide.">[

[Footnote 5: In this line the use of a needless antiquated form may be fairly questioned. In the revised form "win" is changed to "work.">[

[Footnote 6: "Barred" is changed to "did bar" in the revision—a doubtful gain.]

[Footnote 7: The preceding four lines show a decided poetic gain in the revised form:—

"And many a luminous jewel lone—
Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, and amethyst—
Made lures with the lightnings of streaming stone.">[

[Footnote 8: The revised form, with an awkward pause after the first foot, and also a useless antiquated phrase, reads—

"Avail! I am fain for to water the plain.">[

[Footnote 9: Changed to "myriad of flowers.">[

[Footnote 10: "Final" was changed to "lordly" with fine effect. This poem challenges comparison with other pieces of similar theme. It lacks the exquisite workmanship of Tennyson's The Brook, with its incomparable onomatopoeic effects:—

"I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles;
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles."

It should be compared with Hayne's The River and also with his The
Meadow Brook:—

"Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
Hark! the tiny swell;
Of wavelets softly, silverly
Toned like a fairy bell,
Whose every note, dropped sweetly
In mellow glamour round,
Echo hath caught and harvested
In airy sheaves of sound!"

But The Song of the Chattahoochee has what the other poems lack, —a lofty moral purpose. The noble stream consciously resists the allurements of pleasure to heed "the voices of duty," and this spirit imparts to it a greater dignity and weight.]

[Footnote 11: This poem appeared in The Independent, July 15, 1880, from which it is taken. It illustrates the intellectual rather than the musical side of Lanier's genius. It is purely didactic, and thought rather than melody guides the poet's pen. The meter is quite regular,—an unusual thing in our author's most characteristic work.

It shows Lanier's use of pentameter blank verse,—a use that is somewhat lacking in ease and clearness. The first sentence is longer than that of Paradise Lost, without Milton's unity and force. Such ponderous sentences are all too frequent in Lanier, and as a result he is sometimes obscure. Repeated readings are necessary to take in the full meaning of his best work.

This poem, though not bearing the distinctive marks of his genius, is peculiarly interesting for two reasons,—it gives us an insight into his wide range of reading and study, and it exhibits his penetration and sanity as a critic. In the long list of great names he never fails to put his finger on the vulnerable spot. Frequently he is exceedingly felicitous, as when he speaks of "rapt Behmen, rapt too far," or of "Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self sometimes.">[

[Footnote 12: It will be remembered that Lanier was a careful student of
Shakespeare, on whom he lectured to private classes in Baltimore.]

[Footnote 13: See second part of King Henry IV, iii. I. The passage which the poet had in mind begins:—

"How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!">[

[Footnote 14: See The Two Gentlemen of Verona.]

[Footnote 15: These characters are found as follows: Viola in Twelfth
Night; Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Portia in The
Merchant of Venice; and Rosalind in As You Like It.]

[Footnote 16: Referring to the well-known catalogue of ships in the
Second Book of the Illiad:—

"My song to fame shall give
The chieftains, and enumerate their ships."

It is in this passage in particular that Homer is supposed to nod.]

[Footnote 17: It will be recalled that Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy,
persuaded Helen, the fairest of women and wife of King Menelaus of
Greece, to elope with him to Troy. This incident gave rise to the famous
Trojan War.]

[Footnote 18: Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was an Athenian philosopher, of whom Cicero said that he "brought down philosophy from the heavens to the earth." His teachings are preserved in Xenophon's Memorabilia and Plato's Dialogues.]

[Footnote 19: That is to say, his needless austerity was as much affected as the dandy's excessive and ostentatious refinement.]

[Footnote 20: Buddha, meaning the enlightened one, was Prince Siddhartha of Hindustan, who died about 477 B.C. He was the founder of the Buddhist religion, which teaches that the supreme attainment of mankind is Nirvana or extinction. This doctrine naturally follows from the Buddhist assumption that life is hopelessly evil. Many of the moral precepts of Buddhism are closely akin to those of Christianity.]

[Footnote 21: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a native of Florence, is the greatest poet of Italy and one of the greatest poets of the world. His immortal poem, The Divine Comedy, is divided into three parts —"Hell," "Purgatory," and "Paradise.">[

[Footnote 22: This is a reference to the wars among the angels, which ended with the expulsion of Satan and his hosts from heaven, as related in the sixth book of Paradise Lost. This criticism of Milton is as just as it is felicitous.]

[Footnote 23: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was the father of Greek tragedy. He presents destiny in its sternest aspects. His Prometheus Bound has been translated by Mrs. Browning, and his Agamemnon by Robert Browning—two dramas that exhibit his grandeur and power at their best.]

[Footnote 24: Lucretius (about 95-51 B.C.) was the author of a didactic poem in six books entitled De Rerum Natura. It is Epicurean in morals and atheistic in philosophy. At the same time, as a work of art, it is one of the most perfect poems that have descended to us from antiquity.]

[Footnote 25: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.), one of the best emperors of Rome, was a noble Stoic philosopher. His Meditations is regarded by John Stuart Mill as almost equal to the Sermon on the Mount in moral elevation.]

[Footnote 26: Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) was the author of the famous Imitation of Christ in which, as Dean Milman says, "is gathered and concentered all that is elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics." No other book, except the Bible, has been so often translated and printed.]

[Footnote 27: Epictetus (born about 50 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher, many of whose moral teachings resemble those of Christianity. But he unduly emphasized renunciation, and wished to restrict human aspiration to the narrow limits of the attainable.]

[Footnote 28: Jacob Behmen, or Böhme (1575-1624), was a devout mystic philosopher, whose speculations, containing much that was beautiful and profound, sometimes passed the bounds of intelligibility.]

[Footnote 29: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish philosopher and theologian. His principal work, Arcana Caelestia, is made up of profound speculations and spiritualistic extravagance. He often oversteps the bounds of sanity.]

[Footnote 30: William Langland, or Langley (about 1332-1400), a disciple of Wycliffe, was a poet, whose Vision of Piers Plowman, written in strong, alliterative verse, describes, in a series of nine visions, the manifold corruptions of society, church, and state in England.]

[Footnote 31: Caedmon (lived about 670) was a cowherd attached to the monastery of Whitby in England. Later he became a poet, and wrote on Scripture themes in his native Anglo-Saxon. His Paraphrase, is, next to Beowulf, the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem in existence.]

[Footnote 32: Lanier was deeply religious, but his beliefs were broader than any creed. In Remonstrance he exclaims,—

"Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.
Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear
To feature me my Lord by rule and line."

Yet, as shown in the conclusion of The Crystal he had an exalted sense of the unapproachable beauty of the life and teachings of Christ. His tenderest poem is A Ballad of Trees and the Master:—

"Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him,
When into the woods He came.

"Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him—last
When out of the woods He came.">[

[Footnote 33: This poem was first published in The Independent, December 14, 1882, from which it is here taken. The editor said, "This poem, we do not hesitate to say, is one of the few great poems that have been written on this side of the ocean." With this judgment there will be general agreement on the part of appreciative readers. On the emotional side, it may be said to reach the high-water mark of poetic achievement in this country. Its emotion at times reaches the summits of poetic rapture; a little more, and it would have passed into the boundary of hysterical ecstasy.

The circumstances of its composition possess a melancholy interest. It was Lanier's last and greatest poem. He penciled it a few months before his death when he was too feeble to raise his food to his mouth and when a burning fever was consuming him. Had he not made this supreme effort, American literature would be the poorer. This poem exhibits, in a high degree, the poet's love for Nature. Indeed, most of his great pieces— The Marshes of Glynn, Clover, Corn, and others—are inspired by the sights and sounds of Nature. Sunrise, in general tone and style, closely resembles The Marshes of Glynn.

The musical theories of Lanier in relation to poetry find their highest exemplification in Sunrise. It is made up of all the poetic feet —iambics, trochees, dactyls, anapests—so that it almost defies any attempt at scansion. But the melody of the verse never fails; equality of time is observed, along with a rich use of alliteration and assonance.

The poem may be easily analyzed; and a distinct notation of its successive themes may be helpful to the young reader. Its divisions are marked by its irregular stanzas. It consists of fifteen parts as follows: 1. The call of the marshes to the poet in his slumbers, and his awaking. 2. He comes as a lover to the live-oaks and marshes. 3. His address to the "man-bodied tree," and the "cunning green leaves." 4. His petition for wisdom and for a prayer of intercession. 5. The stirring of the owl. 6. Address to the "reverend marsh, distilling silence." 7. Description of the full tide. 8. "The bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence." 9. The motion of dawn. 10. The golden flush of the eastern sky. 11. The sacramental marsh at worship. 12. The slow rising of the sun above the sea horizon. 13. Apostrophe to heat. 14. The worker must pass from the contemplation of this splendor to his toil. 15. The poet's inextinguishable adoration of the sun.]

[Footnote 34: "Gospeling glooms" means glooms that convey to the sensitive spirit sweet messages of good news.]

[Footnote 35: Lanier continually attributes personality to the objects of Nature, and places them in tender relations to man. Here the little leaves become—

"Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,"

as a few lines before they were "little masters." In Individuality we read,—

"Sail on, sail on, fair cousin Cloud."

And in Corn there is a passage of great tenderness:—

"The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.">[

[Footnote 36: This passage is Wordsworthian in spirit. Nature is regarded as a teacher who suggests or reveals ineffable things. Lanier might have said, as did Wordsworth,—

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.">[

[Footnote 37: Lanier had a lively and vigorous imagination, which is seen in his use of personification and metaphor. In this poem almost every object—trees, leaves, marsh, streams, sun, heat—is personified. This same fondness for personification may be observed in his other characteristic poems.

In the use of metaphor it may be doubted whether the poet is always so happy. There is sometimes inaptness or remoteness in his resemblances. To liken the naming heavens to a beehive, and the rising sun to a bee issuing from the "hive-hole," can hardly be said to add dignity to the description.

In Clover men are clover heads, which the Course-of-things, as an ox, browses upon:—

"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….
and champs and chews,
With slantly-churning jaws and swallows down.">[

[Footnote 38: The deities of Olympus, being immortal, have no need of strenuous haste. They may well move from pleasure to pleasure with stately leisure.]

* * * * *

SELECTIONS FROM FATHER RYAN

SONG OF THE MYSTIC [1]

I walk down the Valley of Silence—[2]
Down the dim, voiceless valley—alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human—and sin.[3]

I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said: "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;
I sought 'mid the Human for Heaven,
But caught a mere glimpse of its Blue;
And I wept when the clouds of the Mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.

And I toiled on, heart-tired of the Human,
And I moaned 'mid the mazes of men,
Till I knelt, long ago, at an altar,
And I heard a voice call me. Since then
I walked down the Valley of Silence
That lies far beyond mortal ken.

Do you ask what I found in the Valley?
'Tis my Trysting Place with the Divine.
And I fell at the feet of the Holy,
And above me a voice said: "Be Mine."
And there arose from the depths of my spirit
An echo—"My heart shall be thine."

Do you ask how I live in the Valley?
I weep—and I dream—and I pray.
But my tears are as sweet as the dewdrops
That fall on the roses in May;
And my prayer like a perfume from censers,
Ascendeth to God night and day.

In the hush of the Valley of Silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;[4]
And the music floats down the dim Valley,
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the dove of the deluge
A message of peace they may bring.

But far on the deep there are billows
That never shall break on the beach;
And I have heard songs in the Silence
That never shall float into speech;
And I have had dreams in the Valley
Too lofty for language to reach.

And I have seen thoughts in the Valley—
Ah me! how my spirit was stirred!
And they wear holy veils on their faces,
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard:
They pass through the Valley like virgins,
Too pure for the touch of a word![5]

Do you ask me the place of the Valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed by care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and His angels are there:
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of Prayer.