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His "fieldward-faring eyes took harvest" "among the stately cornranks," in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon. It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches to the distant Blue Ridge mountains, whose wholesome breath, all unobstructed, here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory and the muscadine: a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier, as "that ample stretch of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses calm themselves into pleasant hills before dying quite away into the sea-board levels "-where "a man can find such temperances of heaven and earth-enough of struggle with nature to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty to sanction the struggle --that a more exquisite co-a laptation of all blessed circumstances for man's life need not be sought."

MY SPRINGS, p. 71.

Of this newly-written poem Mr. Lanier says in a letter of March, 1374: "Of course, since I have written it to print I cannot make it such as I desire in artistic design: for the forms of to-day require a certain trim smugness and clean-shaven propriety in the face and dress of a poem, and I must win a hearing by conforming in some degree to these tyrannies, with a view to overturning them in the future. Written so, it is not nearly so beautiful as I would have it; and I therefore have another still in my heart, which I will some day write for myself."

A SONG OF LOVE, p. 97.

A Song of Love, like Betrayal, belongs to the early plan of The Jacquerie. It was written for one of the Fool's songs and, after several recastings, took its present shape in 1879.

TO NANNETTE FALK-AUERBACH, p. 102.

This sonnet was originally written in the German and published in a German daily of Baltimore, while the author's translation appeared at the same time in the Baltimore GAZETTE.

TO OUR MOCKING-BIRD, p. 103.

The history of this bird's life is given at length under the title of Bob," in THE INDEPENDENT of August 3, 1882, and will show that he deserved to be immortal-as we hope he is.

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ODE TO THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, p. 108.

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the soaring genius'd Sylvester

That earlier loosed the knot great Newton tied,"

An algebraic theorem announced by Newton was demonstrated and extended by Sylvester.-SIDNEY LANIER.

A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER, p. 141.

A Ballad of Trees and the Master was conceived as an interlude of the latest Hymn of the Marshes, Sunrise, although written earlier. In the author's first copy and first revision of that Hymn, the Ballad was incorporated, following the invocation to the trees which closes with : And there, oh there

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As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,

Pray me a myriad prayer."

In Mr. Lanier's final copy the Ballad is omitted.

It was one of sev

eral interludes which he at first designed, but, for some reason, afterwards abandoned.

TO MY CLASS, p. 146.

A class in English Literature, composed of young girls who had been studying with Mr. Lanier The Knighte's Tale of Chaucer.

The sonnet On Violet's Wafers was addressed to a member of the same class, and is similarly conceived.

UNDER THE CEDARCROFT CHESTNUT, p. 149.

"This chestnut-tree (at Cedarcroft, the estate of Mr. Bayard Taylor, in Pennsylvania), is estimated to be more than eight hundred years old."-SIDNEY LANIER, 1877.

Hard by stood its mate, apparently somewhat younger. It is related in a letter of 1882, from Mrs. Taylor, that in 1880, a year after Mr. Taylor's death, one of these majestic trees gave the first signs of decay while his comrade lingered two years longer-to follow as closely the footsteps of Mr. Lanier: the two, faithful-hearted " to their master and to him who sang of them."

A FLORIDA GHOST, p. 163.

The incidents recorded of this storm are matter of history in and around Tampa.

NINE FROM EIGHT, p. 169.

The local expression "under the hack" is kindly explained by an authority in middle Georgia dialect, Richard Malcolm Johnston, author of The Dukesborough Tales and other Georgia stories. He says:

"Under the hack' is a well-known phrase among the country-people, and is applied, generally in a humorous sense, to those who have been cowed by any accident. A man who is overruled by his wife, I have often heard described as 'under the hack': 'She's got him under the hack. So, when a man has lost spirit from any cause, he said to be under the hack.' The phrase is possibly derived from 'hackle,' an instrument used in the breaking of flax."

"THAR'S MORE IN THE MAN," ETC., p. 172.

"Jones" designates Jones County, Ga., one of the counties adjoining Bibb County, in which Macon is located.

THE JACQUERIE, p. 183.

Although 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.

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The era of verse-writing with Mr. Lanier reopens in this dream of the Virginia bay where poet's reveries and war's awakenings continually alternated.

He presents it for a friend's criticism-at the age of twenty-one-in these words: "I send you a little poem which sang itself through me the other day. "Tis the first I've written in many years."

NIGHT, p. 236.

This poem was not published by the writer and the simile of the second verse was appropriated to An Evening Song. This partial repetition-like that of portions of The Tournament and of A Dream of June, which occur in the Psalm of the West-will be pardoned as affording a favorable opportunity to observe Mr. Lanier's growth in artistic form.

THE CENTENNIAL CANTATA.

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