The skies
Shine scant with one forked galaxy, --
The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie."*7*
Later, as the ebb-tide flows from marsh to sea, we are parenthetically treated
to these two lines:
"Run home, little streams,
With your lapfuls of stars and dreams."*8*
Finally, the heaven itself is thus pictured:
"Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew
The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue
Big dew-drop of all heaven;"*9*
beside which must be hung this exquisite picture:
"The dew-drop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky."*10*
--
*1* In `Clover'.
*2* `Corn', ll. 185-187.
*3* See on this point the remarks of Professor Trent
in his admirable life of `Simms' (Boston, 1892), p. 149.
*4* `June Dreams', l. 21 ff.
*5* `Psalm of the West', l. 183 ff.
*6* `Sunrise', ll. 80-81.
*7* Ibid., ll. 82-85.
*8* Ibid., ll. 114-115.
*9* Ibid., ll. 134-136.
*10* `The Ship of Earth', l. 5.
--
As to versification, Lanier uses almost all the types of verse
-- iambic, trochaic, blank, the sonnet, etc.
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