But despite his conception of the poet's office, Lanier himself is not often a leader and a prophet. He had ceased to be Georgia-minded and he had felt the national thrill that was making a new America, but it was not his to be the strong voice of the new era. "The Psalm of the West," which casts into poetic form certain vital episodes of American history, has no message. One searches it in vain for any interpretation of the soul of the great republic, or any forecasting of the future years, or any passages expressing what America is to stand for among the nations. It is a fragment, the introduction to what should have been the poem. In "The Symphony" more than elsewhere, perhaps, he is the poet of his period. The poem is a cry against the materialism that Lanier felt was crushing the higher things out of American life: "O Trade! O, Trade! Would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart--'t is tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. Each instrument in the orchestra joins in the argument. "A velvet flute note" followed the passion of the violins, the reeds whispered, "the bold straightforward horn" spoke out, And then the hautboy played and smiled And sang like any large-eyed child. The solution of the problem was the same that Shelley had brought. Love alone could master the evils of the time: Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords most fit. And love was to come through music: Music is love in search of a word. The poem is indeed a symphony. One feels that the poet is composing rather than writing, that he is thinking in terms of orchestration, balancing parts and instruments, and working out tone values. The same is true of "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Sunrise": they are symphonies. One must appreciate fully this musical basis of Lanier's art if one is to understand him. He thought in musical forms. The best illustration, perhaps, may be found in his Centennial Cantata. To the average man the poem meant little. One must read it and reread it and study it if one is to get any consecutive thought from it. But read after Lanier's explanation, it becomes not only clear but illuminating: The principal matter over which the United States can legitimately exult is _its present existence as a Republic_, in spite of so much opposition from Nature and from man. I therefore made the refrain of the song--about which all its train of thought moves--concern itself wholly with the _Fact of existence_: the waves cry "_It shall not be_"; the powers of nature cry "It shall not _be_"; the wars, etc., utter the same cry. This Refrain is the key to the whole poem.