SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE (PAGE 32)

This is the most musical of Lanier's poems and one of the most musical in the whole range of English poetry. The remarkable effect of the poem is chiefly produced by skillful alliteration, or by repetition of words or of similar vowel sounds sometimes in the same line, sometimes in neighboring lines. The student should read, for purposes of comparison, Southey's Cataract of Lodore and Tennyson's Brook.

1, 2.-Habersham, Hall. Counties in the northeastern part of Georgia.

14.-thrall. Captive. The thrall was in early England a serf or bondman.

THE MOCKING-BIRD (PAGE 34)

3.-summ'd the woods in song. This may mean that he summed up in himself the musical life of the woods, or that he imitated in his songs all the birds of the woods.

3-7.-or typic drew, etc. Representing different types of birds, he imitated the cry made by hungry watching hawks, the notes of lonely, languid doves, etc.

7.-bosky. Bushy, wooded.

TAMPA ROBINS (PAGE 35)

18.-Gramercy. Thanks; from the French grand merci.

THE REVENGE OF HAMISH (PAGE 36)

Lanier got the plot of this poem from William Black's novel MacLeod of Dare. In Chapter III MacLeod tells the story to his London host.

9.-he stood as if Death had the form of a deer. He stood still as death.

16. quarry. Game.

17.-waxed wild. Grown very angry. 22.—henchman. Follower, attendant. 23.-burn. Brook.

28.-nether. Lower.

41.-kern. In Shakespeare this word is used of light-armed or irregular soldiers. See Macbeth, I, ii, 13; and V, vii, 17. Here used in the sense of mean or wretched fellow.

55.-Lazarus. The young man raised from the dead by Jesus. See John xi.

60.-gillie. In the Scotch Highlands, a servant or male attendant.

63.-fee. In the old feudal sense of a piece of landed property; explained in the next line "Yon castle and lands."

82.-bonny. The usual meaning is handsome, fine; here rather a term of endearment, "dear." bairn. Scottish for child.

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN (PAGE 43)

39.-mete.

Boundary.

MARSH SONG AT SUNSET (PAGE 53)

2.-Caliban. The huge misshapen half-man half-beast of Shakespeare's Tempest.

3.-Ariel-cloud. Ariel was the airy spirit of the Tempest who did the bidding of Prospero, the banished duke and worker of magic.

5.-Prospero. See above.

13.-Antonio. Brother of Prospero who usurps from him the dukedom and sets him and his daughter Miranda adrift on the sea.

OWL AGAINST ROBIN (PAGE 53)

48.-Chesterfield stars. The Earl of Chesterfield (16741773) was celebrated for his fine manners. His Letters to his son, containing advice as to manners and conduct, are famous. 49.-wink at. Fail to see, ignore.

51.-Baalbec. A famous ancient city of Syria about 35 miles northwest of Damascus. The center of worship of Baal, the sun-god.

71.-cultus. Cult; used of the worship of, or devotion to, a god or system of religion or philosophy.

SUNRISE (PAGE 58)

This was Lanier's last poem. It was written in Baltimore in December, 1880, when he was in an extremely weakened

condition. Mrs. Lanier says of the circumstances of its composition:

66

The lines of Sunrise were so silently traced that for successive days I removed the little bedside desk and replaced in its sliding drawer the pale-blue leaves faintly penciled, with no leisure for even mental conjecture of them. That hand 'too weak to sustain the effort of carrying food to the lips,' I had propped to the level of the adjustable writing desk.

"After New Year the perfect manuscript was put into my hand, and I was bidden to read it."

17.—gospelling. Teaching truths, preaching.

26-28.-This is a very difficult passage to explain. The general drift of it is as follows:

Oh, you cunning green leaves! Just as you light up the darkness and bring some meaning out of it, just as you throw light on the mystery of man's existence, so you have lighted up the darkness of my mind and taught me that really we know more than we appear to know about the great questions of the universe.

32.-purfling. Embroidering, decorating.

59.-alchemy. The false science of the Middle Ages, which aimed at transmuting the baser metals into gold, finding a universal cure for disease and indefinitely prolonging human life. 62.—menstruum. Anything that will dissolve another body, a solvent.

72–79.—Oh, if thy soul's, etc. If your soul feels stifled from trying to live in a close spiritual atmosphere just because you craved the companionship of other men, when you have found no man wise or liberal enough to accept the new message you bring, then here in the free wide spaces of the marsh you can open your heart freely.

90.-diaphanous. Transparent.

96.-If a bound of degree to this grace be laid. If any attempt is made to measure or define its limits.

143.-dateless Olympian leisure. The leisure of the Olympian gods.

153.-born in the purple. Of imperial rank. Purple was the official color worn by the Roman emperors, hence, born in the purple or in the royal palace came to mean of unquestioned imperial birth or rank.

155.-innermost Guest At the marriage of elements. An allusion to the chemical action of the sun in the world of matter.

156.-fellow of publicans. One who associates with everybody, a thorough democrat. The publicans, or tax collectors, in the time of the Roman empire were a despised class.

POEM OUTLINES (PAGE 67)

The poem outlines which appear in the text are only a few out of a large number which Lanier left among his papers. "These poem sketches were jotted in pencil on the backs of envelopes, on the margins of musical programmes, on little torn scraps of paper, amid all sorts of surroundings, whenever the dream came to him. Some are mere flashes of simile in unrhymed couplets; others are definite rounded outlines, instinct with the beauty of idea, but not yet hewn to the line of perfect form; one, at least, is the beginning of quite a long narrative in verse.'

These fragments are here given to show the student something of the way the poet's mind worked. From some such suggestions as these probably developed most of his finished

poems.

THE WAR FLOWER (PAGE 70)

The War Flower is an interlude of nearly two chapters midway of Lanier's novel, Tiger Lilies, which was written and published in 1867. The subject has a special significance at the present time because of the great European war now in progress and the discussions that have grown out of a consideration of its many aspects.

THE CHARGE OF CAIN SMALLIN (PAGE 76)

This episode was based on a personal experience of Lanier's during the war.

98.-Herr von Hardenberg. George Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg (1772-1801), whose pen-name was Novalis, was a noted German poet and prose writer.

102-105.-Hans Dietrich, etc. This allusion has not been

identified.

105.-A fortiori. With the greater force.

136.-modus agendi. Mode of procedure, the thing to do.

143.-jigote. Mixture; usually spelled "gigot."

186.-caballero. Horseman, cavalier; a Spanish word used here humorously.

THE OCKLAWAHA RIVER (PAGE 90)

This selection was part of a book on Florida written during the early summer of 1875. The present chapter first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in November of that year; the book itself was published the following year.

26.—wry-trussed. Carelessly dressed.

126.—in faucibus. In [his] jaws.

156.—Elysian tranquillity. A tranquillity like that of the Elysian fields which, according to the mythology of the ancient Greeks, was the abode of the blessed after death.

187.-Saurian. A lizard-like reptile.

228.-coign of vantage. Corner or point, an echo from Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act I, sc. vi, ll. 6–8:

"No jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle."

239.-fauteuils. A French word for easy chair.

244.-machicolated towers. Towers having openings at the top through which the defenders may throw down missiles on their assailants.

246.-Una. A character in Spenser's Faerie Queene, supposed to be a personification of truth. Angelo's Moses. The celebrated statue of Moses by the great Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564).

247.—the Laocoon group. The celebrated group of statuary representing Laocoon and his two sons being devoured by serpents. According to the story in Virgil's Eneid the priest Laocoön incurred the wrath of Athena when he attempted to dissuade the Trojans from taking into Troy the wooden horse which the Greeks had built and filled with armed men. In anger Athena sent three huge serpents which devoured Laocoön and his sons.

248.-Arthur and Lancelot. Characters in certain mediæval romances; the former a legendary king of Britain, the latter his bravest knight.

252.—columbiads. A kind of heavy, old-fashioned muzzleloading cannon.