The background of the poem -- as of "Sunrise" -- is the forest,
the coast and the marshes near Brunswick, Georgia. Early in life
Lanier had been thrilled by this wonderful natural scenery,
and later visits had the more powerfully impressed his imagination.
He is the poet of the marshes as surely as Bryant is of the forests,
or Wordsworth of the mountains.
The poet represents himself as having spent the day in the forest
and coming at sunset into full view of the length and the breadth
and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the live-oaks
and the emerald twilights of the "dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,"
have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that,
in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known
the passionate pleasure of prayer and the joy of elevated thought.
His spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, -- he is ready
for what Wordsworth calls a "god-like hour": --
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, --
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, --
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
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