I could play passably on several instruments before I could write legibly,
and SINCE then the very deepest of my life has been filled with music,
which I have studied and cultivated far more than poetry."*4*
We have already seen incidentally that in his `Symphony'
the speakers are musical instruments; and it is in this poem that occurs
his felicitous definition,
"Music is love in search of a word."*5*
In `To Beethoven' he describes the effect of music upon himself:
"I know not how, I care not why,
Thy music brings this broil at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal cry
In satisfying symphonies.
"Yea, it forgives me all my sins,
Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme,
And tunes the task each day begins
By the last trumpet-note of Time."*6*
It was this profound knowledge of music, of course, that enabled Lanier
to write his work on `The Science of English Verse', and gave him
a technical skill in versification akin to that of Tennyson.
--
*1* See Ward's `Memorial', pp. xx, xxxi.
*2* Hayne's (P.
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