"
And, for my part, I am as grateful for his noble private life
as for his distinguished public work.
--
* `The Symphony', l. 302.
--
And yet I will not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose
is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years,
by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps,
by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind,
indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;*
in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley;
in the love of nature, to Wordsworth; and in spirituality, to Ruskin,
the gist of whose teaching is that we are souls temporarily having bodies;
to Milton, "God-gifted organ-voice of England"; and to Browning,
"subtlest assertor of the soul in song". To be sure, Lanier's genius
is not equal to that of any one of the poets mentioned,
but I venture to believe that it is of the same order, and, therefore,
deserving of lasting remembrance.
--
* Mr. Thayer puts it stronger: "As a master of melodious metre
only Tennyson, and he not often, has equalled Lanier.
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