dowed with poetic than with musical gifts, and shortly after his removal to Baltimore he began to evince a greater mastery of the poetic art. There was observable a quick and positive gain both in poetic conception and expression. "Industrious and select reading, steady observation and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs," strengthened doubtless "by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge," greatly enlarged the man and fortified his resolution. Using yet the methods of the older poets, he enriched our literature with such genuine, original, and individual poems as "My Springs," "The Song of the Chattahoochee," "The Revenge of Hamish,” “A Ballad of the Trees and the Master," "The Stirrup Cup," "Tampa Robins," etc., and the delightful sonnets, "The Mocking Bird," "Laus Mariæ," "A Harlequin of

Dreams," etc. Seldom did he produce so perfect a piece of work as "The Song of the Chattahoochee." In "My Springs," which is altogether a finer poem, "there is here and there a hint of the desire to say in a striking way what would best have been said in a subdued way," as the Spectator has said; "and again we cannot say that we like at all the

high glory-loves

And science-loves and story-loves.

But nothing could be more perfect than

the whole sweet round

Of littles that large life compound;

and the touch of wonder in the last two lines of the poem is as simple and exquisite as any touch of tenderness in our literature.”

But simpler and more spontaneous is the "Song of the Chattahoochee," with its descriptive beauty and on-swaying rush, and highly

musical withal-not with the babybustle of the eager little brook which chatters, chatters as it flows to join the brimming river, but with the more stately harmony of the manly river which is fain for to water the plain, to toil and to be mixed with main. Popular ballads, it is true, rarely touch the highest point of poetic achievement, but their very freedom and directness, the way in which they can be called up at will by the lively imagination of people not given to meditation and introspection, compensate for all a more elaborate art can supply, though no one can complain of a lack of art in this bewitching stream-song:

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,

I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and reach the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side

With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,

All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,

The willful water weeds held me thrall,
The loving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said,

Stay,

The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds cried Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham,

Here in the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of duty callDownward to toil and be mixed with the

main,

The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,

And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain

Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. The mystical yearning and sense

of duty in this poetic interpretation of the voices of nature are intensified to a mystic exaltation of the power of poetic sympathy in "The Ballad of the Trees and the Master:

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to

him,

The little gray leaves were kind to him:
The thorn tree had a mind to him,
When into the woods he came.

Out of the woods my master went,
And he was well content.

Out of the woods my Master came,

Content with death and shame.

When death and shame would woo him

last,

From under the trees they drew him—

last:

'Twas on a tree they slew him-last

When out of the woods he came.

Lanier is a versatile poet in both manner and thought, and likes to