His worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar,
Within the village whence she sent him forth
Into the town to make his name and fame,
Waiting, all confident and proud and calm,
Till he should make for her his name and fame,
Waiting-O Christ, how keen this cuts!-large-eyed,
With Baby Charley till her husband make

For her and him a poet's name and fame.'

-Read me," he cried, and rose, and stamped his foot Impatiently at Heaven, "read me this," (Putting th' inquiry full in the face of God)

"Why can we poets dream us beauty, so,

But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I
Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June
Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul,
Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf
Out of this same chill matter, no, not one
For Mary though she starved upon my breast?"
And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed,
And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er

The very edge of breaking, fain to fall,

God sent him sleep.

There came his room-fellow,

Stout Dick, the painter, saw the written dream,

Read, scratched his curly pate, smiled, winked, fell on

The poem in big-hearted comic rage,

Quick folded, thrust in envelope, addressed

To him, the critic-god, that sitteth grim

And giant-grisly on the stone causeway

That leadeth to his magazine and fame.
Him, by due mail, the little Dream of June
Encountered growling, and at unawares
Stole in upon his poem-battered soul

So that he smiled,-then shook his head upon 't
-Then growled, then smiled again, till at the last,

As one that deadly sinned against his will,
He writ upon the margin of the Dream
A wondrous, wondrous word that in a day
Did turn the fleeting song to very bread,
-Whereat Dick Painter leapt, the poet wept,
And Mary slept with happy drops a-gleam
Upon long lashes of her serene eyes

From twentieth reading of her poet's news
Quick-sent, "O sweet my Sweet, to dream is power,
And I can dream thee bread and dream thee wine,
And I will dream thee robes and gems, dear Love,

To clothe thy holy loveliness withal,

And I will dream thee here to live by me,

Thee and my little man thou hold'st at breast,

-Come, Name, come, Fame, and kiss my Sweetheart's feet!'

GEORGIA, 1869.

NOTES.

NOTES.

SUNRISE, P. 3.

Sunrise, Mr. Lanier's latest completed poem, was written while his sun of life seemed fairly at the setting, and the hand which first pencilled its lines had not strength to carry nourishment to the lips.

The three Hymns of the Marshes which open this collection are the only written portions of a series of six Marsh Hymns that were designed by the author to form a separate volume.

The Song of the Marshes, At Sunset, does not belong to this group, but is inserted among the Hymns as forming a true accord with them

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN, p. 14.

The salt marshes of Glynn County, Georgia, immediately around the sea-coast city of Brunswick.

CLOVER, P. 19.

Clover is placed as the initial poem of a volume which was left in orderly arrangement among the author's papers. His own grouping in that volume has been followed as far as possible in this fuller collection.

THE MOCKING-BIRD, p. 27.

yon trim Shakespeare on the tree" leads back, almost twenty years from its writing, to the poet's college note-book where we find the boy reflecting: "A poet is the mockingbird of the spiritual universe. In him are collected all the individual songs of all individual natures.'

"

CORN, p. 53.

Corn will hold a distinct interest for those who study the gathering forces in the author's growth: for it was the first outcome of his consciously-developing art-life. This life, the musician's and poet's, he entered upon-after years of patient denial and suppression—in September, 1873, uncertain of his powers but determined to give them wing.