The very poem
"Special Pleading", in which he said that he began to work out his theory,
is a failure. Alliteration, assonance, compound words, personifications,
are greatly overused. Some of the rhymes are as grotesque as Browning's.
Instead of the perfect union of sound and sense, there is often
a mere chanting of words.
It is futile to deny these tendencies in Lanier. They vitiate
more than half his poems, and are defects even in some of the best.
Sometimes, in his very highest flight, he seems to have been winged
by one of these arrows. But it is equally futile to deny
that he frequently rises above all these limitations and does work that is
absolutely unique, and original, and enduring. Distinction must be made,
as in the case of every other man who has marked qualities of style,
between his good work and his bad work. He has done enough good work
to entitle him to a place among the genuine poets of America.
No American anthology would be complete that did not contain
some dozen or more of his poems, and no study of American poetry
would be complete that did not take into consideration twice this number.
It is too soon yet to fix upon such poems, but surely
they may be found among the following: such lyrics as
"An Evening Song", "My Springs", "A Ballad of Trees and the Master",
"Betrayal", "Night and Day", "The Stirrup-Cup", and "Nirvana";
such sonnets as "The Mocking-Bird" and "The Harlequin of Dreams";
such nature poems as "The Song of the Chattahoochee",
"The Waving of the Corn", and "From the Flats"; such poems of high seriousness
as "Individuality", "Opposition", "How Love looked for Hell",
and "A Florida Sunday"; such a stirring ballad as "The Revenge of Hamish";
the opening lines and the Columbus sonnets of the "Psalm of the West";
and the longer poems, "The Symphony", "Sunrise", and "The Marshes of Glynn".
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