A History of American Literature Since 1870

by Fred Lewis Pattee

The principal matter over which the United States can legitimately exult is its present existence as a Republic, in spite of so much opposition from Nature and from man. I therefore made the refrain of the song—about which all its train of thought moves—concern itself wholly with the Fact of existence: the waves cry "It shall not be"; the powers of nature cry "It shall not be"; the wars, etc., utter the same cry. This Refrain is the key to the whole poem.

A knowledge of the inability of music to represent any shades of meaning save those which are very intense, and very highly and sharply contrasted, led me to divide the poem into the eight paragraphs or movements which it presents, and make these vividly opposed to each other in sentiment. Thus the first movement is reflection, measured and sober: this suddenly changes into the agitato of the second: this agitato, culminating in the unison shout "No! It shall not be," yields in the third movement to the pianissimo and meager effect of the skeleton voices from Jamestown, etc.: this pianissimo in the fourth movement is turned into a climax of the wars of armies and of faiths, again ending in the shout, "No!" etc.: the fifth movement opposes this with a whispered chorus—Huguenots whispering Yea, etc.: the sixth opposes again with loud exultation, "Now praise," etc.: the seventh opposes this with the single voice singing the Angels' song; and the last concludes the series of contrasts with a broad full chorus of measured and firm sentiment.

The metrical forms were selected purely with reference to their descriptive nature: the four trochaic feet of the opening strophe measure off reflection, the next (Mayflower) strophe swings and yaws like a ship, the next I made outre and bizarre and bony simply by the device of interposing the line of two and a half trochees amongst the four trochee lines: the swift action of the Huguenot strophe of course required dactyls: and having thus kept the first part of the poem (which describes the time before we were a real nation) in meters which are as it were exotic to our tongue, I now fall into the iambic meter—which is the genius of English words—as soon as the Nation becomes secure and firm.

My business as member of the orchestra for three years having caused me to sit immediately in front of the bassoons, I had often been struck with the possibility of producing the ghostly effects of that part of the bassoon register so well known to students of Berlioz and Meyerbeer—by the use of the syllable ee sung by a chorus. With this view I filled the ghostly Jamestown stanza with ee's and would have put in more if I could have found them appropriate to the sense.[128]

No one can read this without thinking of Poe's "Philosophy of Composition." It explains much of Lanier's work.

VI

Had Lanier lived a decade longer, had he had time and strength to devote himself completely to his poetry, had his impetuous soul had time to gain patience and poise, and divest itself of florid extravagance and vague dithyramb, he might have gained a much higher place as a poet. He was gaining in power: his last poem is his greatest. He was laying plans that would, we feel sure, have worked themselves out to high poetic achievement. For at least four books of poetry he had already selected titles: Hymns of the Mountains, Hymns of the Marshes, Songs of Aldheim, and Poems on Agriculture. What they were to be we can judge only from "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise."

In these two poems we have work that is timeless and essentially placeless. There is a breadth and sweep about it that one finds only in the greater poets:

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.

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 discussions 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 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 the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

The jottings that he made in his notebooks and the fragments of poems that he noted down as the inspiration came to him remind us often of Whitman. They have sweep and range:

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 by a violet; then my heart took courage and I said:

"I know that thou art the word of God, dear violet.
And, oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads!
Measure the space a violet stands above the ground,
'Tis no farther climbing that my soul and angels have to do than that!"
I went to the church to find my Lord.
They said He is here. He lives here.
But I could not see him
For the creed-tables and bonnet flowers.