How implicit was his trust in the Christ
may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne:
"I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your `Aethra's'. Every day
when my work is done I take him in my strong arms, and lift him up,
and pore in his face. The intense repose, penetrated somehow
with a thrilling mystery of `potential activity', which dwells
in his large, open eye, teaches me new things. I say to myself,
Where are the strong arms in which I, too, might lay me and repose,
and yet be full of the fire of life? And always through the twilight
come answers from the other world, `Master! Master! there is one -- Christ --
in His arms we rest!'"*3* Perhaps, however, Lanier's notion of God,
whom he declared*4* all his roads reached, is most clearly expressed
in a scrap quoted by Ward, apparently the outline for a poem:
"I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God.
I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth.
Then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground;
and I looked and my cheek lay close to a violet.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58