I do not wonder
that Lanier "fled in tears from men's ungodly quarrel about God,"
and that, in his poem entitled `Remonstrance', he denounces intolerance
with all the vehemence of a prophet of old.
But Lanier had an eye for life's beauties as well as its ills.
To him music was one of earth's chief blessings. Of his early passion
for the violin and his substitution of the flute therefor,
we have already learned. According to competent critics he was possibly
the greatest flute-player*1* in the world, a fact all the more interesting
when we remember that, as he himself tells us,*2* he never had a teacher.
With such a talent for music the poet has naturally strewn his pages
with fine tributes thereto. In `Tiger-lilies', for instance,
he tells us that, while explorers say that they have found
some nations that had no god, he knows of none that had no music,
and then sums up the matter in this sentence: "Music means harmony;
harmony means love; and love means -- God!"*3* Even more explicit
is this declaration in a letter of May, 1873, to Hayne: "I don't know
that I've told you that whatever turn I may have for art is purely MUSICAL;
poetry being with me A MERE TANGENT INTO WHICH I SHOOT SOMETIMES.
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