To loiter down lone alleys of delight,

In curves that come but by another way Back to the start, - a thriftless thrift of

Whose winter wastes their summer; O my

Friend,

1 On Lanier's friendship with Bayard Taylor, see Professor Mims's Lanier and the Letters of Sidney Lanier, pp. 117-215.

Lanier's beautiful picture of the Elysium of the Poets should be compared with Richard Hovey's, in Seaward: a Threnody on the Death of Thomas William Parsons.'

bend

Unstained by Helen's beauty o'er the

brine

Tow'rds some clean Troy no Hector need defend

Nor flame devour; or, in some mild moon's shine,

Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.

The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;

Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,

Interwoven with waftures of wild sealiberties, drifting,

Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,

Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep

Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep,

Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling:

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From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?

They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.

Reason 's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies

1 'Sunrise,' Mr. Lanier's latest completed poem, was written while his sun of life seemed fairly at the setting, and the hand which first pencilled its lines had not strength to carry nourishment to the lips. .

Sunrise,' the culminating poem, the highest vision

of Sidney Lanier, was dedicated through his latest request to that friend who indeed came into his life only near its close, yet was at first meeting recognized by the poet as the father of his spirit,' George Westfeldt. When words were very few and the poem was unread, even by any friend, the earnest bidding came: 'Send him my "Sunrise," that he may know how entirely we are one in thought.' (Poems, 1884.)

With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man,

So, with your silences purfling this silence of man

While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban,

Under the ban,

So, ye have wrought me

Designs on the night of our knowledge, yea, ye have taught me,

So,

And there, oh there As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,

Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl, — is it thou That out of the leaves of the low-hanging

bough,

Will break as a bubblo o'er-blown in a dream,

Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night,

Over-weighted with stars, over-freighted with light,

Over-sated with beauty and silence, will

seem

But a bubble that broke in a dream, If a bound of degree to this grace be laid,

Or a sound or a motion made.

But no: it is made: list! somewhere, mystery, where?

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In the leaves? in the air? In my heart? is a motion made: 'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade.

In the leaves 't is palpable: low multitudinous stirring

Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring,

Have settled my lord's to be looked for; so; they are still;

But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill,

And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river,

And look where a passionate shiver
Expectant is bending the blades

Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades,

And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting,

Are beating

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160

Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea 's all news,

With his inshore greens and manifold midsea blues,

Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues

Ever shaming the maidens, lily and rose Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows

In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine,

It is thine, it is thine:

Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl

Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl

In the magnet earth, yea, thou with a storm for a heart,

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Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part

From part oft sundered, yet ever a globèd

light,

Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright

Than the eye of a man may avail of: manifold One,

I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the Sun:

Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown;

The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town:

But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done;

I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun:

How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run,

I am lit with the Sun.

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas

Of traffic shall hide thee,

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