He summ'd the words in song.
The whole sweet round
Of littles that large life compound!
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste.
Where an artist plays, the sky is low.
Thou 'rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history,
I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!
Music is love in search of a word.
His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand!
And Science be known as the sense making love to the All,
And Art be known as the soul making love to the All,
And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All.
Indeed, if one had to rely upon one poem to keep alive the fame of Lanier,
he could single out "The Marshes of Glynn" with assurance
that there is something so individual and original about it,
and that, at the same time, there is such a roll and range of verse in it,
that it will surely live not only in American poetry but in English.
Here the imagination has taken the place of fancy, the effort
to do great things ends in victory, and the melody of the poem corresponds
to the exalted thought. It has all the strong points of "Sunrise",
with but few of its limitations. There is something of
Whitman's virile imagination and Emerson's high spirituality
combined with the haunting melody of Poe's best work. Written in 1878,
when Lanier was in the full exercise of all his powers,
it is the best expression of his genius and one of the few
great American poems.
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