and tried to found an experimental Greek Academy for aspiring writers. He died there, after a determinedly picturesque life, in sight of the Golden Gate in 1913. BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN Here room and kingly silence keep Above yon gleaming skies of gold Beneath the sunset's golden sheaves CROSSING THE PLAINS What great yoked brutes with briskets low, Two sullen bullocks led the line, FROM "BYRON" In men whom men condemn as ill I do not dare to draw a line THE ARCTIC MOON (from "The Yukon") The moon resumed all heaven now, Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared How loud the silence! Oh, how loud! The moon E Edward Rowland Sill dward rowland sILL was born at Windsor, Connecticut, in 1841. In 1861 he was graduated from Yale and shortly thereafter his poor health compelled him to go West. After various unsuccessful experiments, he drifted into teaching, first in the high schools in Ohio, later in the English department of the University of California. His uncertain physical condition added to his mental insecurity. Unable to ally himself either with the conservative forces whom he hated or with the radicals whom he distrusted, Sill became an uncomfortable solitary; half rebellious, half resigned. During the last decade of his life, his brooding seriousness was less pronounced, a lighter irony took the place of dark reflections. Although Sill remains among the minor poets both in scope and style, a few of his poems (such as “The Fool's Prayer” and “Opportunity”) have established themselves securely. The Hermitage, his first volume, was published in 1867, a later edition (including later poems) appearing in 1889. His two posthumous books are Poems (1887) and Hermione and Other Poems (1899). A volume of his prose "essays in literature and education" was published in 1900. His later and little known work deserved-and deserves a wider audience. It established a serenity that was not without flashes of spirit, a gravity compounded with quiet wit. Sill died, after bringing something of the Eastern culture and "finish" to the West, in 1887. OPPORTUNITY This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:- And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel- THE FOOL'S PRAYER The royal feast was done; the King And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool, Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!" The jester doffed his cap and bells, He bowed his head, and bent his knee ""Tis not by guilt the onward sweep We hold the earth from heaven away. "These clumsy feet, still in the mire, "The ill-timed truth we might have kept Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? Who knows how grandly it had rung? "Our faults no tenderness should ask, The chastening stripes must cleanse them all; Before the eyes of heaven we fall. "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool Be merciful to me, a fool!" The room was hushed; in silence rose And walked apart, and murmured low, Sidney Lanier IDNEY LANIER was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His was a family S of was a on of musicians (Lanier himself was a skillful performer on various instruments), and it is not surprising that his verse emphasizes-even overstresses-the influence of music on poetry. He attended Oglethorpe College, graduating at the age of eighteen (1860), and, a year later, volunteered as a private in the Confederate army. After several months' imprisonment (he had been captured while acting as signal officer on a blockade-runner), Lanier was released in February, 1865, returning from Point Lookout to Georgia on foot, accompanied only by his flute. His physical health, never the most robust, had been further impaired by his incarceration, and he was already suffering from tuberculosis. The rest of his life was spent in an unequal struggle against it. He was now only twenty-three years old and the problem of choosing a vocation. was complicated by his marriage in 1867. He spent five years in the study and practice of law, during which time he wrote comparatively little verse. But the law could not hold him; he felt premonitions of death and realized he must devote his talents to art before it was too late. He was fortunate enough to obtain a position as flautist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in 1873 in Baltimore, where he had free access to the music and literature he craved. Here he wrote all his best poetry. In 1879, he was made lecturer on English in Johns Hopkins University, and it was for his courses there that he wrote his chief prose work, a brilliant if inconclusive study, The Science of English Verse. Besides his poetry, he wrote several books for boys, the two most popular being The Boys' Froissart (1878) and The Boys' King Arthur (1880). Lanier's poetry suffers from his all too frequent theorizing, his too-conscious effort to bring verse over into the province of pure music. He thought almost entirely in terms of musical form. His main theory that English verse has for its essential basis not accent but a strict musical quantity is a wholly erroneous conclusion, possible only to one who could write "whatever turn I have for art is purely musical-poetry being with me a mere tangent into which I shoot." Lanier is at his best in his ballads, although a few of his lyrics have a similar spontaneity. In spite of novel schemes of rhythm and stanza-structure, much of his work is marred by strained effects, literary conceits (especially his use of pseudo-Shakespearean images) and a kind of verse that approaches mere pattern-making. But such a ballad as the "Song of the Chattahoochee," lyrics like "Night and Day," and parts of the symphonic "Hymns of the Marshes" have won a place in American literature. His triumphs over the exigencies of disease and his accomplishments in two arts were the result of undefeated spirit, a bravery that dazzled his commentators, who confused the attainments of courage with those of creation. A comprehensive collection of Lanier's verse was first issued in 1906: Collected Poems of Sidney Lanier, edited by his wife, with a memorial by William Hayes Ward. It includes not only the poet's well-known musical experiments, but the rarely printed dialect verses and all that remains of "The Jacquerie." Lanier died, a victim of his disease, in the mountains of North Carolina, September 7, 1881. SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE Out of the hills of Habersham, I hurry amain to reach the plain, With a lover's pain to attain the plain All down the hills of Habersham, FROM "THE MARSHES OF GLYNN" Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, To the terminal blue of the main. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free |