Moved to the window near, and see Bathed in the sacred dews of morn The world which lasts when I am dead." The closing lines of "Sunrise" express better than anything else Lanier's own confident faith as he passed behind the veil : And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge abide thee, And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, Labor, at leisure, in art - till yonder beside thee His body was taken to Baltimore, where it rests in Greenmount Cemetery in the lot of his friends, the Turnbulls, close by the son whose memory they have perpetuated by the endowment of a permanent lectureship on poetry in Johns Hopkins University. The grave is unmarked even by a slab. It divides the interest of visitors to Baltimore with the grave of Poe, which, however, is in another part of the city. So these two poets, whose lives and whose characters were so strikingly unlike, sleep in their adopted city. Shortly after Lanier's death memorial services were held at Johns Hopkins University, at which time beautiful tributes were paid to him by his colleagues and friends. A committee of the citizens of Baltimore was appointed to raise a fund for the sustenance and education of the poet's family. They were aided in this by admirers of Lanier and public-spirited citizens throughout the country. Meantime his fame was growing, the publication of his poems in 1884 giving fresh impetus thereto. Seven years after his death a bust of the poet was presented to the University by Mr. Charles Lanier of New York.1 "The hall was filled," says ex-President Gilman, "with a company of those who knew and admired him. On the pedestal which supported the bust hung his flute and a roll of his music; a garland of laurels crowned his brow, and the sweetest of flowers were strewn at his feet. Letters came from Lowell, Holmes, Gilder, Stedman; young men who never saw him, but who had come under his influence, read their tributes in verse; a former student of the University made a critical estimate of the Science of Verse;' a lady read several of Lanier's own poems; another lady sang one of his musical compositions adapted to words of Tennyson, and another song, one of his to 1 For a full record of the exercises see A Memorial of Sidney Lanier, Baltimore, 1888. which some one else wrote the music; a college president of New Jersey held up Lanier as a teacher of ethics; but the most striking figure was the trim, gaunt form of a Catholic priest, who referred to the day when they, two Confederate soldiers (the Huguenot and the Catholic), were confined in the Union prison, and with tears in his eyes said, his love for Lanier was like that of David for Jonathan. The sweetest of all the testimonials came at the very last moment, unsolicited and unexpected, from that charming poetess, Edith Thomas. She heard of the memorial assembly, and on the spur of the moment wrote the well-known lines, suggested by one of Lanier's own verses: On the Paradise side of the river of death." The aftermath of Lanier's home life is all pleasant to contemplate. His wife, although still an invalid, has, by her readings from her husband's letters and poems, and by her sympathetic help for all those who have cared to know more about him, done more than any other person to extend his fame. With tremendous obstacles in her way, she has reared to manhood the four sons, three of whom are now actively identified with publishing houses in New York city, and one of whom, bearing the name of his father, is now living upon a farm in Georgia. Charles Day Lanier is president of the Review of Reviews Company, and is associated with his youngest brother, Robert Sampson Lanier, in editing "The Country Calendar." Henry WyIsham Lanier is a member of the firm of Doubleday, Page & Company, and editor of "Country Life in America." They all inherit their father's love of music and poetry, and through their magazines are doing much to foster among Americans a taste for country life. By a striking coincidence entirely unpremeditated on their part three of the sons and their mother live at Greenwich, Connecticut. It will be remembered that the home of the English Laniers was at Greenwich, and so the story of the Lanier family begins and ends with this name, one in the Old World and one in the New. CHAPTER XIII THE ACHIEVEMENT IN CRITICISM AND IN POETRY SPECULATIONS as to what Lanier might have done with fewer limitations and with a longer span of years inevitably arise in the mind of any one who studies his life. If, like the late Theodore Thomas, he had at an early age been able to develop his talent for music in the musical circles of New York; if, like Longfellow, he had gone from a small college to a German university, or, like Mr. Howells, from the provinces to Cambridge, where he would have come in contact with a group of men of letters; if, after the Civil War, he had, like Hayne, retired to a cabin and there devoted himself entirely to literary work; if, like Lowell, he could have given attention to literary subjects and lectured in a university without teaching classes of immature students or without resorting to "potboilers," "nothings that do mar the artist's hand;" if, like Poe, he could have struck some one vein and worked it for all it was worth, if, in a word, the varied activity of his life could have given way to a certain definiteness of |