Selected Poems of Sidney Lanier | Page 9

and die;?And so do we, and the world's a sty;?Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry??"Swinehood hath no remedy"?Say many men, and hasten by,?Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.?But who said once, in the lordly tone,?"Man shall not live by bread alone?But all that cometh from the throne"??Hath God said so??But Trade saith "No":?And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go:?There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know.?Move out, if you think you're underpaid.?The poor are prolific; we're not afraid;?Trade is Trade."'
"Thereat this passionate protesting?Meekly changed, and softened till?It sank to sad requesting?And suggesting sadder still:?`And oh, if men might some time see?How piteous-false the poor decree?That trade no more than trade must be!?Does business mean, "Die, you -- live, I"??Then "Trade is trade" but sings a lie:?'Tis only war grown miserly.?If business is battle, name it so.'"**
--?* `The Symphony', ll. 1-2.?** `The Symphony', ll. 31-61.?--
Of even wider sweep than mercantilism is the spirit of intolerance; for, while the diffusion of knowledge and of grace has in a measure repressed this spirit, it lacks much of being subdued. I do not wonder that Lanier "fled in tears from men's ungodly quarrel about God," and that, in his poem entitled `Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance with all the vehemence of a prophet of old.
But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills. To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early passion for the violin and his substitution of the flute therefor,?we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher. With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages with fine tributes thereto. In `Tiger-lilies', for instance, he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found?some nations that had no god, he knows of none that had no music, and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony; harmony means love; and love means -- God!"*3* Even more explicit is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL; poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES. I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly, and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music, which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4* We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony'?the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs his felicitous definition,
"Music is love in search of a word."*5*
In `To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself:
"I know not how, I care not why,?Thy music brings this broil at ease,?And melts my passion's mortal cry?In satisfying symphonies.
"Yea, it forgives me all my sins,?Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme,?And tunes the task each day begins?By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6*
It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier to write his work on `The Science of English Verse', and gave him a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson.
--?*1* See Ward's `Memorial', pp. xx, xxxi.?*2* Hayne's (P. H.) `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'.?*3* `Tiger-lilies', p. 32.?*4* Hayne's `A Poet's Letters to a Friend'. After settling in Baltimore
Lanier devoted more time to poetry than to music, as we may see from this sentence to Judge Bleckley, in his letter of March 20, 1876: "As for me, life has resolved simply into a time during which I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems?with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket." *5* `The Symphony', l. 368.?*6* `To Beethoven', ll. 61-68.?--
Like most great poets of modern times, Lanier was a sincere lover of nature. And it seems to me that with him this love was as all-embracing as with Wordsworth. Lanier found beauty in the waving corn*1* and the clover;*2* in the mocking-bird,*3* the robin,*4* and the dove;*5*?in the hickory,*6* the dogwood,*6* and the live-oak;*7*?in the murmuring leaves*8* and the chattering streams;*9*?in the old red hills*10* and the sea;*11* in the clouds,*12* sunrise,*13* and sunset;*14* and even in the marshes,*15*?which "burst into bloom" for this worshiper. Again, Lanier's love of nature was no less insistent than Wordsworth's. We all remember the latter's oft-quoted lines:
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give?Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"*16*
and beside them one may put this line of Lanier's,
"The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep,"*17*
because, as the context shows, he was
"Shaken with happiness:?The gates of sleep stood wide."*18*
And how naive and