The Chattahoochee
is about five hundred miles long, and small steamboats can ascend it
to Columbus, Ga. Hon. Henry R. Jackson, of Savannah, Ga.,
late Minister to Mexico, has an interesting poem `To the Chattahoochee River',
in his `Tallulah and Other Poems' (Savannah, Ga., 1850);
and Mr. M. V. Moore, in his poem, `Southern Rivers' (`Harper', 66. 464,
February, 1883), has a paragraph on the rivers of Georgia,
in which he speaks of "the sandy Chattahoochee".
In the `Introduction' (pp. xxxi [Part III], xliv, xlvii [Part IV])
I have spoken of this `Song' as Lanier's most finished nature poem,
as the most musical of his productions. "The music of a song
easily eludes all analysis and may be dissipated by a critic's breath,
but let us try to catch the means by which the effect is in part produced.
In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs in all
save twelve lines. In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs,
sometimes joining the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines.
Syzygy is used for the same purpose. Of the letters occurring in the poem
about one-fifth are liquids and about one-twelfth are sibilants.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143