There, while they stood in a green wood And marvelled still on Ill and Good, Came suddenly Minister Mind. In the heart of sin doth hell begin: "T is not below, 't is not above, It lieth within, it lieth within:' (Where?' quoth Love) 'I saw a man sit by a corse; Hell's in the murderer's breast: remorse! Thus clamored his mind to his mind: Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, Hell's not below, nor yet above, "T is fixed in the ever-damnèd soul'. Fixed?' quoth Love — 'Fixed: follow me, would'st thou but see: He weepeth under yon willow tree, 6c 70 Fast chained to his corse,' quoth Full soon they passed, for they rode fast, Hell,' quoth Love. To loiter down lone alleys of delight, Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew When each small globe doth glass the morning-star, Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through With dappled revelations read afar, Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue As all the holy eastern heavens are,— To fare thus fervid to what daily toil Employs thy spirit in that larger Land 20 Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil In nothings that do mar the artist's hand, Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, No profit out of death, going, yet still at stand, Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine: And hear the beating of the hearts of Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that trees, 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 SUNRISE 1 In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain 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: 10 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. 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 ore in thought.' (Poems, 1884.) |