--
On account of ill health Lanier frequently had to leave Macon and go to places
better suited to his physical temperament. At Brunswick, Georgia,
-- the scene of the Marsh poems, -- at Alleghany Springs in Virginia,
and at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, he spent successive summers.
In all of these places he reveled in the beauty and grandeur of the scenery.
His letters written to his wife and his father during his absences from Macon
are evidence that he was at this time developing steadily
in that subtle appreciation of nature which was afterwards to play
such an important part in his poetry. In fact, the letters themselves,
when published, as they will be some time, show artistic growth
when compared with the writings already noted. He was all his life
a prolific letter-writer -- and a great one. Writing from Alleghany Springs,
July 12, 1872, he says to his wife: --
"How necessary is it that one should occasionally place oneself
in the midst of those more striking forms of nature in which God has indulged
His fantasy! It is very true that the flat land, the bare hillside,
the muddy stream comes also directly from the creative hand:
but these do not bring one into the sweetness of the heartier moods of God;
in the midst of them it is as if one were transacting the business of life
with God: whereas, when one has but to lift one's eyes in order to receive
the exquisite shocks of thrilling form and color and motion
that leap invisibly from mountain and groves and stream,
then one feels as if one had surprised the Father in his tender, sportive,
and loving moments.
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