-- This is about the plan
which is to run through my book: though I conceal it under
the form of a pure novel."*
--
* Quoted in part in Callaway's `Select Poems of Lanier', p. 65.
--
Lanier never finished this poem, but he was soon hard at work on another
which was based on the same idea, "The Symphony". Writing to
his newly acquired friend, Mr. Peacock, March 24, 1875, he says:
"About four days ago, a certain poem which I had vaguely ruminated
for a week before took hold of me like a real James River ague,
and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since.
I call it `The Symphony': I personify each instrument in the orchestra,
and make them discuss various deep social questions of the times,
in the progress of the music. It is now nearly finished; and I shall be
rejoiced thereat, for it verily racks all the bones of my spirit."
The poem was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", June, 1875;
and besides confirming the good opinion of Mr. Peacock,
won the praise of Bayard Taylor, George H. Calvert, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
and Charlotte Cushman, and was copied in full in Dwight's "Journal of Music".
As in his first poem Lanier had pointed out a defect in Southern life,
so in his second long poem he struck at one of the evils of national life.
In the South he felt that there was not enough of the spirit of industry;
looking at the nation as a whole, however, he exclaims: --
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The time needs heart -- 't is tired of head:
We are all for love," the violins said.
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