It is futile to deny these tendencies in Lanier. They vitiate more than half his poems, and are defects even in some of the best. Sometimes, in his very highest flight, he seems to have been winged by one of these arrows. But it is equally futile to deny that he frequently rises above all these limitations and does work that is absolutely unique, and original, and enduring. Distinction must be made, as in the case of every other man who has marked qualities of style, between his good work and his bad work. He has done enough good work to entitle him to a place among the genuine poets of America. No American anthology would be complete that did not contain some dozen or more of his poems, and no study of American poetry would be complete that did not take into consideration twice this number. It is too soon yet to fix upon such poems, but surely they may be found among the following: such lyrics as "An Evening Song", "My Springs", "A Ballad of Trees and the Master", "Betrayal", "Night and Day", "The Stirrup-Cup", and "Nirvana"; such sonnets as "The Mocking-Bird" and "The Harlequin of Dreams"; such nature poems as "The Song of the Chattahoochee", "The Waving of the Corn", and "From the Flats"; such poems of high seriousness as "Individuality", "Opposition", "How Love looked for Hell", and "A Florida Sunday"; such a stirring ballad as "The Revenge of Hamish"; the opening lines and the Columbus sonnets of the "Psalm of the West"; and the longer poems, "The Symphony", "Sunrise", and "The Marshes of Glynn".

The first may be quoted as an illustration of Lanier's lyric quality. Those who have heard it sung to the music of Mr. Dudley Buck can realize to some extent Lanier's idea of the union of music and poetry: --

    Look off, dear Love, across the shallow sands,
     And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
    How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
            Ah! longer, longer, we.

    Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,
     As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
    And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'T is done,
            Love, lay thine hand in mine.

    Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
     Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
    O night! divorce our sun and sky apart,
            Never our lips, our hands.

Throughout his poems -- some of them imperfect enough as wholes -- there are lines that come from the innermost soul of poetry: --

    But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill.

    The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.

              Happy-valley hopes
    Beyond the bend of roads.

    I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
    Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
    For contemplation.

    Sweet visages of all the souls of time
    Whose loving service to the world has been
    In the artist's way expressed.

    A perfect life in perfect labor wrought.

    The artist's market is the heart of man;
    The artist's price, some little good of man.

    He summ'd the words in song.

    The whole sweet round
    Of littles that large life compound!

    My brain is beating like the heart of Haste.

    Where an artist plays, the sky is low.

    Thou 'rt only a gray and sober dove,
    But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.

    Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history,
    I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!

    Music is love in search of a word.

    His song was only living aloud,
    His work, a singing with his hand!

    And Science be known as the sense making love to the All,
    And Art be known as the soul making love to the All,
    And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All.

Indeed, if one had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame of Lanier, he could single out "The Marshes of Glynn" with assurance that there is something so individual and original about it, and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and range of verse in it, that it will surely live not only in American poetry but in English. Here the imagination has taken the place of fancy, the effort to do great things ends in victory, and the melody of the poem corresponds to the exalted thought. It has all the strong points of "Sunrise", with but few of its limitations. There is something of Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spirituality combined with the haunting melody of Poe's best work. Written in 1878, when Lanier was in the full exercise of all his powers, it is the best expression of his genius and one of the few great American poems.

The background of the poem -- as of "Sunrise" -- is the forest, the coast and the marshes near Brunswick, Georgia. Early in life Lanier had been thrilled by this wonderful natural scenery, and later visits had the more powerfully impressed his imagination. He is the poet of the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests, or Wordsworth of the mountains.

The poet represents himself as having spent the day in the forest and coming at sunset into full view of the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the live-oaks and the emerald twilights of the "dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods," have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that, in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known the passionate pleasure of prayer and the joy of elevated thought. His spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, -- he is ready for what Wordsworth calls a "god-like hour": --

    But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
    And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
    And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
    Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, --
    Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak
    And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
     Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
     And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
     And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
    That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
    Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
    When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
    And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
    Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, --
    Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
     The vast sweet visage of space.
    To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
    Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
        For a mete and a mark
        To the forest-dark: --
                So:
    Affable live-oak, leaning low, --
    Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand
    (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
    Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
    On the firm-packed sand,
                Free
    By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

         . . . . .

    And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
    The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
    A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
    Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
    Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
    To the terminal blue of the main.

    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.

         . . . . .

    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:
    Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
    The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

    And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
    Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
    Look how the grace of the sea doth go
    About and about through the intricate channels that flow
            Here and there,
                    Everywhere,
    Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
    And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
    That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
     In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
                    Farewell, my lord Sun!
    The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run
    'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
    Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
    Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
    And the sea and the marsh are one.

    How still the plains of the waters be!
    The tide is in his ecstasy.
    The tide is at his highest height:
    And it is night.

    And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
    Roll in on the souls of men,
    But who will reveal to our waking ken
    The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
    Under the waters of sleep?
    And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
    On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn.

In the light of such a poem Lanier's poetry and his life take on a new significance. The struggles through which he passed and the victory he achieved are summed up in a passage which may well be the last word of this biography. For Sidney Lanier was

    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 a stain.