Like most great poets of modern times, Lanier was a sincere lover of nature. And it seems to me that with him this love was as all-embracing as with Wordsworth. Lanier found beauty in the waving corn*1* and the clover;*2* in the mocking-bird,*3* the robin,*4* and the dove;*5* in the hickory,*6* the dogwood,*6* and the live-oak;*7* in the murmuring leaves*8* and the chattering streams;*9* in the old red hills*10* and the sea;*11* in the clouds,*12* sunrise,*13* and sunset;*14* and even in the marshes,*15* which "burst into bloom" for this worshiper. Again, Lanier's love of nature was no less insistent than Wordsworth's. We all remember the latter's oft-quoted lines: "To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"*16* and beside them one may put this line of Lanier's, "The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep,"*17* because, as the context shows, he was "Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep stood wide."*18* And how naive and tender was this nature-worship! He speaks of the clover*19* and the clouds*20* as cousins, and of the leaves*21* as sisters, and in so doing reminds us of the earliest Italian poetry, especially of `The Canticle of the Sun', by St. Francis of Assisi, who brothers the wind, the fire, and the sun, and sisters the water, the stars, and the moon. Notice the tenderness in these lines of `Corn': "The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart;"*22* to which we find a beautiful parallel in a poem by Paul Hamilton Hayne, himself a reverent nature-worshiper: "Ah! Nature seems Through something sweeter than all dreams To woo me; yea, she seems to speak How closely, kindly, her fond cheek Rested on mine, her mystic blood Pulsing in tender neighborhood, And soft as any mortal maid, Half veiled in the twilight shade, Who leans above her love to tell Secrets almost ineffable!"*23* Moreover, this worship is restful: "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. . . . . . "By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn."*24* But to Lanier the ministration of nature was by no means passive; and we find him calling upon the leaves actively to minister to his need and even to intercede for him to their Maker: