It is futile to deny these tendencies in Lanier. They vitiate more than half his poems, and are defects even in some of the best. Sometimes, in his very highest flight, he seems to have been winged by one of these arrows. But it is equally futile to deny that he frequently rises above all these limitations and does work that is absolutely unique, and original, and enduring. Distinction must be made, as in the case of every other man who has marked qualities of style, between his good work and his bad work. He has done enough good work to entitle him to a place among the genuine poets of America. No American anthology would be complete that did not contain some dozen or more of his poems, and no study of American poetry would be complete that did not take into consideration twice this number. It is too soon yet to fix upon such poems, but surely they may be found among the following: such lyrics as "An Evening Song", "My Springs", "A Ballad of Trees and the Master", "Betrayal", "Night and Day", "The Stirrup-Cup", and "Nirvana"; such sonnets as "The Mocking-Bird" and "The Harlequin of Dreams"; such nature poems as "The Song of the Chattahoochee", "The Waving of the Corn", and "From the Flats"; such poems of high seriousness as "Individuality", "Opposition", "How Love looked for Hell", and "A Florida Sunday"; such a stirring ballad as "The Revenge of Hamish"; the opening lines and the Columbus sonnets of the "Psalm of the West"; and the longer poems, "The Symphony", "Sunrise", and "The Marshes of Glynn".
The first may be quoted as an illustration of Lanier's lyric quality. Those who have heard it sung to the music of Mr. Dudley Buck can realize to some extent Lanier's idea of the union of music and poetry: —
Look off, dear Love, across the shallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
Ah! longer, longer, we.
Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'T is done,
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart,
Never our lips, our hands.
Throughout his poems — some of them imperfect enough as wholes — there are lines that come from the innermost soul of poetry: —
But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.
Happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.