Perhaps there was never a time when drudgery
so weighed upon him, although his usual playfulness is seen in the remark:
"There is but one man in my school who could lick me in a fair fight,
and he thinks me at once a Samson and a Solomon." He worked for people
who thought that he was defrauding them if he did not work
from "sun up to sun down", as one of his patrons expressed it.
It was here, too, that he suffered from his first hemorrhages.
His poetry written at this time was an expression of the despair
which prevailed throughout the South. He whom the Civil War had not
inspired to speech, and who had kept silent under the suffering of the days
after the war, now gave expression to his disgust and his indignation.
It is not great poetry, for Lanier was not adapted to that kind of poetry,
and consequently neither he nor his wife ever collected all the poems.
"Laughter in the Senate", published in the "Round Table",
is typical of a group, several of which he left in an old ledger: --
Comes now the Peace, so long delayed?
Is it the cheerful voice of aid?
Begins the time, his heart has prayed,
When men may reap and sow?
Ah, God! back to the cold earth's breast!
The sages chuckle o'er their jest!
Must they, to give a people rest,
Their dainty wit forego?
The tyrants sit in a stately hall;
They gibe at a wretched people's fall;
The tyrants forget how fresh is the pall
Over their dead and ours.
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