Hell; but ever as they point it out to Love, whether in the material or the immaterial world, it vanishes; for where Love is there can be no Hell, since, in the words of Tolstoi's story, Where Love is there is God." But in one of his poems Lanier sums up the whole matter in a line:

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"When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught." 1

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It is but a short way from love to its source,God. And, as Lanier was continually in the atmosphere of the one, so, I believe, he was ever in the presence of the other; for the poet's "Love means God" is but another phrasing of the evangelist's God is love." 2 Of Lanier's grief over church broils and of his longing for freedom to worship God according to one's own intuition, we have already learned from his Remonstrance. What he thought of the Christ we learn from The Crystal, which closes with this invocation :

"But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,

O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,-
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's-
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?

"3

21. John IV. 16.

1 In Absence, 1. 42.
The Crystal, ll. 100-111.

How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen in his Ballad of Trees and the Master, a dramatic presentation of the scene in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in the Christ may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne: I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your Aëthra's.' Every day when my work is done I take him in my strong arms, and lift him up, and pore in his face. The intense repose, penetrated somehow with a thrilling mystery of potential activity, which dwells in his large, open eye, teaches me new things. I say to myself, Where are the strong arms in which I, too, might lay me and repose, and yet be full of the fire of life? And always through the twilight come answers from the other world, 'Master! Master! there is one Christ in His arms we rest!"" Perhaps, however, Lanier's notion of God, whom he declared all his roads reached, is most clearly expressed in a scrap quoted by Ward, apparently the outline for a poem: "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 to a violet. Then my heart took courage, and I said: 'I know that thou art the word of my God, dear Violet. And oh, the ladder is not long that to my heaven leads. Measure what space a violet stands above the ground. 'Tis no further climbing that my soul and

1

1 Hayne's A Poet's Letters to a Friend.
2 In A Florida Sunday, 1. 85.

our race, from

In this high spir

ituality Lanier is in line with the greatest poets of

"Cadmon, in the morn

to him

A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call
That late brought up the cattle,"

"Who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake." 3

5

Perhaps I may append here a paragraph upon Lanier's criticisms of other writers, for they seem to me acute in the extreme. Despite the elaborate essays in defence of Whitman's poetry by Dowden,* Symonds, and Whitman himself, I believe Lanier is right in declaring that "Whitman is poetry's butcher. Huge raw collops slashed from the rump of poetry and never mind gristle is what Whitman feeds our souls with. As near as I can make it out, Whitman's argument seems to be, that, because a prairie is wide, therefore debauchery is admirable, and because the Mississippi is long, there

1 Ward's Memorial, p. xxxix.

2 Lanier's The Crystal, 11. 90-93.

Browning's Asolando: Epilogue, 11. 11-15.

4 See Dowden's Studies in Literature, pp. 468-523.

See Symonds's Walt Whitman: A Study. London, 1893.

fore every American is God." 1

Notice, again, how

well the defect of Paradise Lost is pointed out:

"And I forgive

Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars
Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel,
Immortals smite immortals mortalwise

And fill all heaven with folly." 2

Few better things have been said of Langland than this,

"That with but a touch

Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top
Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now
And most adorable ; " 3

or of Emerson than this,

"Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost
Thy Self, sometimes;

4

So much for the poet's thoughts; what shall we say of their expression ? In other words, is Lanier the literary artist equal to Lanier the seer? In

The Crystal, 11. 66-70. ♦ Ibid., 11. 93-94. 5 Ibid., 11. 95-97.

1 Ward's Memorial, p. xxxviii. Ibid., ll. 87-90.

order the better to answer this question, let us begin at the beginning, with the elements of style, some of which, however, I pass by as not calling for special comment.

Of Lanier's felicitous choice of words we have already had incidental illustration; but it is desirable, perhaps, to group here a few of his happiest phrases, to show that, as Lowell 1 said, he is

1

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a man

of genius with a rare gift for the happy word." Notice this speech about the brook :

"And down the hollow from a ferny nook

Lull sings a little brook!" 2

and this of the well-bucket :

"The rattling bucket plumps

Souse down the well; 3

and this of the outburst of a bird:

"Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?" 4

Moreover, it should be observed that Lanier frequently uses significant compounds,—a habit ac

1 See Lowell in Bibliography.

From the Flats, 11. 23-24; cited by Gates.

4 Sunrise, 1. 57; cited by Gates.

Clover, 11. 29-30.

The Mocking-Bird, 1. 14.

• The Crystal, l. 1. Other illustrations may be found in the paragraph on figures of speech.