There is no threshing over of dead issues.
The spirit of the address is more like that seen in the letters
of Robert E. Lee than any other thing written by Southerners
during this period. Lanier is not yet national in his point of view,
but he represents the best attitude of mind that could be held
by the most liberal of Southerners at that time. Standing in the cemetery
at Macon, -- one of the most beautiful in the Southern States, --
he begins: "In the unbroken silence of the dead soldierly forms
that lie beneath our feet; in the winding processions of these stately trees;
in the large tranquillity of this vast and benignant heaven
that overspreads us; in the quiet ripple of yonder patient river,
flowing down to his death in the sea; in the manifold melodies
drawn from these green leaves by wandering airs that go like Troubadours
singing in all the lands; in the many-voiced memories that flock
into this day, and fill it as swallows fill the summer, -- in all these,
there is to me so voluble an eloquence to-day that I cannot but shrink
from the harsher sounds of my own human voice." Taking these as a text,
he comments first on the necessity for silence in an age
when "trade is the most boisterous god of all the false gods under heaven."
The clatter of factories, the clank of mills, the groaning of forges,
the sputtering and laboring of his water power, are all lost sight of
in contemplating the august presence of the dead, who speak not.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108