school, rules that taught us to count poet, and maintained that he cared syllables on Our fingers. It was She called my attention to the inter- it has the same office. even less for the external aspects of nature than did Shelley or Keats. Το him it was what Goethe calls, "the living garment of God." Shelley desired things to be especially beautiful or grand, like the Alps at sunrise, but Lanier found satisfying beauty in great and typical things. He was inspired by nature in any typical form. It did not require an unusually beautiful sunrise or sunset to inspire his enthusiasm and reverence. He was more like Wordsworth. He had local touches, but he did not depend on them to create an interest. His Song of the Chattahoochee might have been the song of any stream. My report of this conversation is very inadequate. I cannot give half the points or any of the brilliancy and glow of the speaker; but her words left me fully satisfied that she had found in Sidney Lanier an inexhaustible source of literary pleasure and instruction. I will "What critics have called poetic license,'" I still use her words, "Lanier proves to be in many cases correct verse, which can be scanned by the application of his musical notation. This is true of several of Shakespeare's sonnets and of the verses of Shelley, And in this she is far from standing Coleridge, Swinburne, and Tennyson. alone. Lanier is recognized by EngPope, the great example of the stilted lish critics as our Wordsworth, and in poetry, never loses a syllable. He would have thought it' a lame foot' that lacked one. He is the most formal of what might be called The School of Formal Poets.' Lanier holds that to do a thing instinctively and unconsciously, without understanding the principles of it, is to lose it. Froebel taught this. To understand the principle on which work is based, is to free the worker, whether teacher or poet, and leave him room to know that his work is artistic and scientific." One little thing she had never seen noticed by his critics or admirers, she said, is a certain original structure of verse which is just as distinctly a formal structure as that of the sonnet. She had found no other poem like it. It had thirteen lines and the rhythm changed twice. It is instanced in A Song of the Future. She held Lanier's passion for nature to be different from that of any other our Keats, and is constantly growing while Lowell's is a battering ram of THE GENIUS OF SIDNEY LANIER. I I the popular eye. Lanier's verse will nizing their artists to English periodbe felt by the contemplative rather than seen by the student of poetic pictures. He is like Bryant in his quality of feeling. But he is more a part of the nature he interprets than is Bryant; his verse is nature's own self icals? Some of our critics are still slow to acknowledge Lanier's genius, which we should cherish as a sacred gift. The Spectator was one of the earliest, if not the first, to assign to Lanier his rightful place among the artists of expression. As he sang of corn, so America; indeed, it places him first, may we sing of him: "As poets should, Thou hast built up thy hardihood Drawn in select proportions fair "Why is it, dear friend," writes another to me, "that our people so often leave the delightful task of recog saying that he is our greatest poet of passion and that there is no easily assignable limit to his genius. It says further that he was the finest writer of English that has lived in the last thirty years, and when I noticed the date of the paper I found that it was since the publication of In Memoriam. I regret this withholding of appreciation from the hearts that are most sensitive to the touch of their fellow "The far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.' "Lanier is eminently the prophet of the laboring people, and with all the intensity of an artist's soul he suffers in their denials and longs for a higher destiny for the poor. "And oh, if men might sometimes see If business is battle, name it so; “Then, with the prophetic eye of "I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might, "Such is the teaching of The Symphony. Its exposition of the trade problem of our country reminds one of the picture in Pilgrim's Progress of the man with the muck-rake. In this poem Lanier shows how all that is beautiful in life is in danger of being sacrificed to the commercial spirit of the people. Still there is no bitterness touching the Law that governs all things, but, with a faith in the final triumph of good which we rarely find except in Browning's philosophy, he teaches that love will at last solve all the problems of life and bring all its discords into harmony." One of the finest acknowledgments of Lanier's mission I find in a letter from a Chicago student. "Lanier has always seemed to me to be in a way the successor to Wordsworth and Shelley as the interpreter of nature in terms of spirit. The last words of "Holds, with keen, yet loving eyes, Art's realm from Cleverness apart." GEORGE WESTFELDT, THE FRIEND OF LANIER. 13 tinguished hearer, "Mrs. Lanier is Mrs. Lanier carries the poetic atmosthoroughly attuned to her work. She is perfectly consecrated to the office of transmission, and obtrudes nothing of self, yet makes a wholly unconscious revelation of devotion, faith, and enthusiasm, herself no less poetic than the poems she reads." phere, the ideal way of looking at It is an especial privilege of Mrs. Mary E. Burt. GEORGE WESTFELDT, THE FRIEND OF LANIER. F THE friendship between Sidney Lanier and Mr. George Westfeldt a few words could relate the outward facts, and the feeling is in tone with the environment of life's closing scenes: almost too sacred for any formal statement from a surviving hand. One might easily be incredulous of such knitting of soul to soul upon such slender intercourse as befell in Mr. Lanier's drawing towards Mr. Westfeldt. I place it thus, because I am not sure that the maturer, calmer man, with life so honorably and endearingly fulfilled, did perceive immediately what he was to the eager and passion ate younger heart of the poet that flung to him with instantaneous recognition in their first meeting. He did welcome this love with the large hospitality of a princely and gentle nature, and reverenced it duly; but in his self-reliance and self-unconsciousness he might not have thought of claiming it. Very near the earthly end, while waiting in Asheville, North Carolina, for the furniture of our camp on Richmond Hill, we chanced to meet Mr. and Mrs. Westfeldt, who were friends of my parents and whom I had not met for twenty years. Our unhappy The first interview that evening lasted barely a halfhour, Mr. Westfeldt firmly resisting the appeal for longer time, as he perceived the invalid's condition. Yet when he had closed the door my husband, leaning by the mantelpiece with drooping head, raised his deep eyes to mine, saying wistfully: "I have been searching all my life for the father of my spirit and I have only found him now!" This large recognitionsuch as perhaps only poets make-held the fine spiritual friendship that came too late for much outward manifestation. Mr. Westfeldt was a Swedish gentleman who came to America when a mere lad and entered commercial affairs in Mobile, residing later in New Orleans, New York, and different European cities. It was his lofty record, during a long life involved in successful business interests, continually to have fulfilled Lanier's aspiration: to have war led them to a prolonged residence Sidney "How piteous-false the poor decree "Love alone can do " "To follow Time's dying melodies through Mary Day Lanier. TIME AND LIFE. RELENTLESS time sweeps on; it cannot stay. Silas McChesney Piper. |