Lanier is essentially a poet of unfulfilled promise. He seems always about to do greater things than in reality he ever does. His lyrics like "Evening Song," and "The Trees and the Master" and "The Song of the Chattahoochee," have strains in them almost Shelley-like, but there is always the fatal defect somewhere. Nothing is perfect. It seems strange sometimes that one who could at moments go so far could not go the whole way and remain long. He must hold his place among the American poets by virtue of a few fragments. A few times was he rapt into the pure ether of poetry, but he was allowed to catch only fleeting glimpses. VII The period may be said to have produced in the South two inspired poets, Lanier and Irwin Russell, and in many ways the two were alike. Both were frail of body and sensitive of temperament, both were passionately given to music and found their poetic field by means of it, both were educated men, eager students of the older literatures, both discovered the negro as poetic material, and both died when their work was just beginning, Russell, like Keats, at the boyish age of twenty-six. But Russell added what Lanier had no trace of, a waywardness of character and a genius for goodfellowship that wrecked him even earlier than it did Burns. The life of Russell is associated with four cities: Port Gibson, Mississippi, where he was born in 1853; St. Louis, where he spent the earlier years of his life and where later he completed the course at the Jesuit University; Port Gibson again, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar; New York City, of which he was a resident from January until July, 1879; and New Orleans, where he died in December of the same year. His life was fitful and restless. He did little with his profession, turning from it to learn the printer's trade, and then after a few listless months, drifting into other things. He had dreams of California and wandered on foot in its direction as far as Texas; he attempted to run away to sea, and he spent much time on the river boats making jovial friends of the captains and the pilots. His banjo assured him of a welcome wherever he might go.