"The Marshes of Glynn" is a personal utterance of Lanier in its form, in its sensuous opulence, in its social sympathies, and in its religion; but in these latter respects it is emphatically the utterance also of the period that produced Lanier. It was written in 1878, the year of Bryant's death; it was written in the structural sequence of Bryant's "Thanatopsis"; and in its applications it indicates the changes that had taken place in religious thought since Bryant's youth. In the earlier poem the various language that Nature speaks is expounded in general terms, before "Thoughts of the last bitter hour" lead to the monody on death and the resolve so to live that death shall have no fears. The latter poem differentiates the tones of Nature, lingering first in the cloistral depths of the woods during the heat of a June day. In the cool and quiet the poet's ... heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt. So, toward sunset, he leaves the protected green colonnades and goes out unafraid to face the expanse of "a world of marsh that borders a world of sea." Here Nature, who has consoled him in the forest, fills him with a great exhilaration. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. From the marshes he learns a lesson of life rather than of death--the spiritual value of aspiration and the emancipating gift of a broad faith. "Thanatopsis" ends with a nobly stated but restraining admonition; "The Marshes" with a song of liberty: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold of the greatness of God. This is written in the positive mood--and in the measure, too--of Browning's "Saul." Both poems record the throwing off of paralyzing restraint and the substitution of hope for dread that resulted from the religious struggles of the nineteenth century. Lanier went far toward representing the South by the best of all methods, which is to write as a citizen of the world and not as a sectionalist. He was not at the height of his maturity, and he wrote at times with the exuberance and at times with the self-consciousness that he would in all likelihood have outgrown in the fullness of years. He was an aggressive thinker. Only the indifference of his generation to poetry can account for the fact that he was not persecuted for the courage of many utterances. And he was essentially the poet in artistry as well as in vision. BOOK LIST =_General References_= =Collections=