SIDNEY LANIER [The poems from Lanier are printed by the kind permission of Mrs. Sidney Lanier, and of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, the authorized publishers of Lanier's Works.] nicked, (AU.) Oo-hoo-o, howled the hound. 1 One of Lanier's early plans was for a long poem i heroic couplets, with lyric interludes, on the insurre tion of the French peasantry in the fourteenth centur Although,' says Mrs. Lanier, "The Jacquerie" remained a fragment for thirteen years, Mr. Lanier's interest in the subject never abated. Far on in this interval he is found planning for leisure to work out in romance the story of that savage insurrection of the French peasantry, which the Chronicles of Froissart had impressed upon his boyish imagination.' 'It was the first time,' says Lanier himself, in a letter of November 15, 1874, that the big hungers of the People appear in our modern civilization; and it is full of significance.' Five chapters of the story, and three lyrics, were completed. See the Poems, pp. 191-214. His mouth he always open kept (AU.) U-lu-lo, howled the hound. A star upon his kennel shone That showed the hound a meat-bare bone. (AU.) O hungry was the hound! The hound had but a churlish wit. He seized the bone, he crunched, he bit. Thy throat with a huge wound,' We're all for love,' the violins said.1 All the mightier strings assembling As when the bridegroom leads the bride, 20 "Each day, all day" (these poor folks say), "In the same old year-long, drear-long ments and re-distilled them into the clear liquid of that wondrous eleventh - Love God utterly, and thy neighbor as thyself-so I think the time will come when music, rightly developed to its now-little-foreseen grandeur, will be found to be a later revelation of all gospels in one. (LANTER, in a letter of March 12, 1875. The Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 113.) 1 Music is utterly unconscious of aught but Love. (LANIER, in a letter of October, 1866. The Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 66.) 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. Thereat this passionate protesting And suggesting sadder still: 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. 50 60 If business is battle, name it so: Full powers from Nature manifold. All modesties of mountain-fawns 130 140 150 All piquancies of prickly burs, 160 I heard, when "All for love" the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, 170 Give me thy love, O man, so long denied. Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain; Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 180 Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: "All men are neighbors," so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; |