Milton has somewhere said that in order to be a great poet one must himself be a true poem, a dictum none the less trustworthy because of its inapplicability to its author along with several other great poets. Now of all English poets, I know of none that came nearer being a true poem than did Lanier. He was as spotless as "the Lady of Christ's", and infinitely more lovable. Indeed, he seems to me to have realized the ideal of his own knightly Horn, who hopes that some day men will be "maids in purity".* I will not recall his gentle yet heroic life amid drawbacks almost unparalleled; for it is even sadder than it is beautiful. It is my deliberate judgment that, while, as the poet says in his `Life and Song', no singer has ever wholly lived his minstrelsy, Lanier came so near it that we may fairly say, in the closing lines of the poem,
"His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand."
And, for my part, I am as grateful for his noble private life as for his distinguished public work.
— * `The Symphony', l. 302. —
And yet I will not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years, by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps, by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind, indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;* in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley; in the love of nature, to Wordsworth; and in spirituality, to Ruskin, the gist of whose teaching is that we are souls temporarily having bodies; to Milton, "God-gifted organ-voice of England"; and to Browning, "subtlest assertor of the soul in song". To be sure, Lanier's genius is not equal to that of any one of the poets mentioned, but I venture to believe that it is of the same order, and, therefore, deserving of lasting remembrance.
—
* Mr. Thayer puts it stronger: "As a master of melodious metre
only Tennyson, and he not often, has equalled Lanier." Mr. F. F. Browne,
Editor of `The Dial' (Chicago), compares the two poets in another aspect:
"`The Symphony' of Lanier may recall some parts of `Maud';
but the younger poet's treatment is as much his own
as the elder's is his own. The comparison of Lanier with Tennyson will,
indeed, only deepen the impression of his originality,
which is his most striking quality. It may be doubted
if any English poet of our time, except Tennyson, has cast his work
in an ampler mould, or wrought with more of freedom, or stamped his product
with the impress of a stronger personality. His thought, his stand-point,
his expression, his form, his treatment, are his alone; and through them all
he justifies his right to the title of poet."
—
Poems
Life and Song
If life were caught by a clarionet, [1]
And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,
And utter its heart in every deed,
Then would this breathing clarionet
Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o' the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,