" And yet one feels that if Lanier had had time and health
to work out all these diverse interests and all his varied experiences
into a unity, if scholarship and music and poetry could have been
developed simultaneously over a long stretch of time,
there would have resulted, perhaps, a more many-sided man and a finer poetry
than we have yet had in America.
So at last the speculation reduces itself to one of time. Lycidas was dead
ere his prime. From 1876 till the fatal illness took hold of him
he made great strides in poetry. Up to the very last he was making plans
for the future. His letters to friends outlining the volumes
that he hoped to publish, -- work demanding decades instead of years, --
the memoranda jotted down on bits of paper or backs of envelopes
as the rough drafts of essays or poems, would be pathetic,
if one did not believe with Lanier that death is a mere incident
in an eternal life, or with Browning, that what a man would do exalts him.
The lines of Robert Browning's poems in which he sets forth the glory
of the life of aspiration -- aspiration independent of any achievement --
ring in one's ears, as he reads the story of Lanier's life.
This low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
The imperfect poems, the unfinished poems, the sheaves unharvested,
not like Coleridge's for lack of will, but for lack of time,
are suggestive of one of the finest aspects of romantic art.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303