God help the world
when this now-hatching brood of my Ephemerae shall take flight
and darken the air."
"I long to be steadily writing again. I am taken with a poem
pretty nearly every day, and have to content myself with making
a note of its train of thought on the back of whatever letter
is in my coat-pocket. I don't write it out, because I find my poetry now
wholly unsatisfactory in consequence of a certain haunting impatience
which has its root in the straining uncertainty of my daily affairs;
and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts
until some approach to the certainty of next week's dinner
shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose
which ought to fill the artist's firmament while he is creating."
They returned to the North in June and spent another summer at Chadd's Ford,
-- a place of great natural beauty. "As for me," says Lanier,
"all this loveliness of wood, earth, and water makes me feel as if I could do
the whole Universe into poetry; but I don't want to write anything large
for a year or so. And thus I content myself with throwing off
a sort of spray of little songs, whereof the magazines now have several."
Notwithstanding his illness, then, the year ending with September, 1877,
was one of marked productivity. He wrote "Waving of the Corn",
"Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut", "From the Flats", "The Mocking-Bird",
"Tampa Robins", "The Bee", "A Florida Sunday", "The Stirrup-Cup",
"To Beethoven", "The Dove", "The Song of the Chattahoochee",
and "An Evening Song".
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184