Mr. Gosse, however, declares that `Corn',
`Sunrise', and `The Marshes of Glynn' "simulate poetic expression
with extraordinary skill. But of the real thing, of the genuine
traditional article, not a trace"! What do these poems show, then?
Mr. Gosse answers: "I find a painful effort, a strain and rage,
the most prominent qualities in everything he wrote;" which strikes me
as the reverse of the facts. In one of his letters*5* to Judge Bleckley,
Lanier wrote this sentence: "My head and my heart are both so full of poems
which the dreadful struggle for bread does not give me time
to put on paper, that I am often driven to headache and heartache,
purely for want of an hour or two to hold a pen." If, then,
he committed an error (and I am far from considering him faultless),
it was not that he beat and spurred on Pegasus, but that he failed
to rein him in. Still, I repeat that I prefer the embarrassment of riches
to the embarrassment of poverty. Finally, just as Milton tells us
that the music of the spheres is not to be heard by the gross, unpurged ear,
so I believe that many intelligent ears and eyes are at first
too gross to hear and see what Lanier puts before them,
whereas a bit of patient listening and looking reveals delights
hitherto undreamed of.
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