tlest pleasure. The poet has achieved the triumph of sharing with others that "inward thrill in the air, or in the sunshine, one knows not which, half like the thrill of the passion of love, half like the thrill of the passion of friendship" which he experienced on a "divine day." "Do you like, as I do," he asks Paul H. Hayne, "on such a day to go out into the sunlight and stop thinking? -lie fallow, like a field, and absorb those certain liberal potentialities which will in after days reappear, duly formulated, duly grown, duly perfected, as poems?" Knowledge of facts and sensibility to charms, we have been told, are the two elements in a perfectly poetical appreciation of nature, and Lanier possessed both to an eminent degree. In his communion with nature mind and soul seemed to be divested of their outer garment, so delicate was his organism, so observant was he of minutest particulars, so exqui

man

sitely attuned was his ear. His knowledge of nature was that of a friend and lover, who was at the same time a naturalist. But unlike Wordsworth, from whose "noblest utterances is absent," says Lowell, "except as the antithesis. that gives a sharper emphasis to nature," man is everywhere the central figure or controlling influence in Lanier's most beautiful nature poems. His personifications, always bold, are often powerful, though the affectations, "cousin Clover," "cousin Cloud," "sweetheart leaves," have been greatly overpraised. The tense imagination observable here and there also mars their beauty and power. But his infinite tenderness, pliancy of fancy, and susceptibility to nature's charms were happily combined with the power of transporting us into the midst of the "gospeling glooms," into the very presence of the marsh and the sea. With him we can catch

The wood smells that swiftly but now brought breath

From the heaven-side bank of the river

of death;

and we can feel that

The slant yellow beam down the wood aisle doth seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream.

He teaches us "to company with large, amiable trees," and

To loiter down lone alleys of delight,

And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,

And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white

By greenwood pools and pleasant pas sages.

And in his company, too, we may experience the various ministrations of nature,

For love, the dear wood's sympathies, For grief, the wise wood's peace.

Nature affects him like music:

Shaken with happiness:
The gates of sleep stood wide.

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain

Of the live oaks, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.

An oft-quoted touch of tenderness and fancy is taken from "Corn:

The leaves that wave against my cheek

caress

Like women's hands; the embracing

bows express

A subtlety of mighty tenderness;

The copse depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.

The "Hymns of the Marshes " afford abundant examples of his larger, more thoughtful manner. Peculiarly characteristic of his tolerant, worshipful nature is this:

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

And sight out of blindness and purity out of stain.

As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod,

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

O, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.