On the other hand, Lanier never gives voice to anything that is merely trivial or pretty. He is always in earnest, and the feeling most often aroused by him is a passionate exaltation. He is a nature poet. The color, the sunshine, the cornfields, the hills, and the marshes of the South are found in his work. But more than their outer aspect, he likes to interpret their spirit,--the peace of the marsh, the joy of the bird, the mystery of the forest, and the evidences of love everywhere. The music of his lines varies with his subjects. It is light and delicate in _Tampa Robins_, rippling and gurgling in _The Song of the Chattahoochee_, and deeply sonorous in _The Marshes of Glynn_. Few surpass him in the long, swinging, grave harmonies of his most highly inspired verse. In individual lines, in selected stanzas, Lanier has few rivals in America. His poetical endowment was rich, his passion for music was a rare gift, his love of beauty was intense, and his soul was on fire with ideals. FATHER RYAN, 1839-1886 [Illustration: FATHER RYAN] Another poet who will long be remembered for at least one poem is Abram Joseph Ryan (1839-1886), better known as "Father Ryan." He was a Roman Catholic priest who served as chaplain in the Confederate army, and though longing and waiting only for death in order to go to the land that held joy for him, he wrote and worked for his fellow-man with a gentleness and sympathy that left regret in many hearts when he died in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1886. He loved the South and pitied her plight, and in his pathetic poem, _The Conquered Banner_, voiced the woe of a heart-broken people:-- "Furl that Banner, softly, slowly! Treat it gently--it is holy-- For it droops above the dead. Touch it not--unfold it never-- Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are dead." JOHN BANNISTER TABB, 1845-1909 [Illustration: JOHN BANNISTER TABB] John Bannister Tabb was born in 1845 on the family estate in Amelia County, Virginia. He was a strong adherent of the southern cause, and during the war he served as clerk on one of the boats carrying military stores. He was taken prisoner, and placed in Point Lookout Prison, where Lanier also was confined. After the war, Tabb devoted some time to music and taught school. His studies led him toward the church, and at the age of thirty-nine he received the priest's orders in the Roman Catholic church. When he died in 1909, he was a teacher in St. Charles College, Ellicott City, Maryland. He had been blind for two years. Tabb's poems are preeminently "short swallow-flights of song," for most of them are only from four to eight lines long. Some of these verses are comic, while others are grave and full of religious ardor. The most beautiful of all his poems are those of nature. The one called _The Brook_ is among the brightest and most fanciful:--