Prev | Current Page 31 | Next

Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881

"Select Poems of Sidney Lanier"


--
* Mrs. Lanier informs me that `The English Novel' will soon
be issued in an amended form and with a new sub-title,
`Studies in the Development of Personality', which indicates precisely
what Mr. Lanier intended to attempt, and relieves the book
of its seeming incompleteness as to scope.
** `Spann'.
--
Among other prose works I may mention Lanier's early extravaganza,
`Three Waterfalls'; `Bob', a happy account of a pet mocking-bird,
worthy of being placed beside Dr. Brown's `Rab and his Friends';
his books for boys: `Froissart', `King Arthur', `Mabinogion', and `Percy',
which have had, as they deserve, a large sale; and his posthumous
`From Bacon to Beethoven', a highly instructive essay on music.


III. Lanier's Poetry: Its Themes

But it is chiefly as a poet that we wish to consider Lanier,
and I turn to the posthumous edition of his `Poems' gotten out by his wife.
At the outset let us ask, How did the poet look at the world?
what problems engaged his attention and how were they solved?
A careful investigation will show, I believe, that,
despite the brevity of his life and its consuming cares,
Lanier studied the chief questions of our age, and that in his poems
he has offered us noteworthy solutions.


Pages:
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43