"'I'll south with the sun and keep my clime; My wing is king of the summer-time; My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; And I'll call down through the green and gold, _Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, Bestir thee under the orange-tree_.'" The music of the bird, the sparkle of the sunlight, and the pure joy of living are in this poem, which is one of Lanier's finest lyrical outbursts. _The Song of the Chattahoochee_ is another of his great successes in pure melody. The rhymes, the rhythm, the alliteration beautifully express the flowing of the river. His noblest and most characteristic poem, however, is _The Marshes of Glynn_. It seems to breathe the very spirit of the broad open marshes and to interpret their meaning to the heart of man, while the long, sweeping, melodious lines of the verse convey a rich volume of music, of which he was at times a wonderful master. "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." This poem, original and beautiful, both in subject and form, expresses Lanier's strong faith in God. He says:-- "As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 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." No Puritan could show a truer faith than Lanier's, nor a faith more poetically and devoutly expressed. In his _Sunrise_ he attains at times the beauty of _The Marshes of Glynn_, and voices in some of the lines a veritable rhapsody of faith. Yet for sustained elevation of feeling and for unbroken musical harmonies, _Sunrise_ cannot equal _The Marshes of Glynn_, which alone would suffice to keep Lanier's name on the scroll of the greater American poets. General Characteristics.--Lanier is an ambitious poet. He attempts to voice the unutterable, to feel the intangible, to describe the indescribable, and to clothe this ecstasy in language that will be a harmonious accompaniment to the thought. This striving after practically impossible effects sometimes gives the feeling of artificiality and strain to his verse. It is not always simple, and sometimes one overcharged stanza will mar an otherwise exquisite poem.