All this a man of Lanier's breadth understood fully,
for he had a large capacity and he sought a full equipment.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his gifts was their complete symmetry.
It is hard to tell what register of perception, or sensibility,
or wit, or will was lacking. The constructive and the critical faculties,
the imaginative and the practical, balanced each other. His wit and humor
played upon the soberer background of his more recognized qualities.
The artist's withdrawn vision was at any need promptly exchanged
for the exercise of that scrupulous exactitude called for in the routine
of the law-office or the post-office clerkship or other business relations,
or for the play of those energies exerted in camp or field. There,
so his comrades testify, the most wearing drudgeries of a soldier's life
were always undertaken with notable alacrity and were thoroughly discharged,
when he would as invariably return, the task being done, to the gentle region
of his own high thoughts and the artist's realm of beauty.
But how short was his day, and how slender his opportunity!
From the time he was of age he waged a constant, courageous, hopeless fight
against adverse circumstance for room to live and write.
Much very dear, and sweet, and most sympathetic helpfulness
he met in the city of his adoption, and from friends elsewhere,
but he could not command the time and leisure which might have
lengthened his life and given him opportunity to write the music and the verse
with which his soul was teeming. Yet short as was his literary life,
and hindered though it were, its fruit will fill a large space
in the garnering of the poetic art of our country.
William Hayes Ward.
Mr. Lanier's published works, previous to the present volume,
and exclusive of poems and essays published in literary journals,
are the following:
Tiger Lilies: A novel. 16 mo, pp. v, 252. Hurd & Houghton, New York, 1867.
Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History. 12 mo, pp. 336.
J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1876.
Poems. Pp. 94. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1877.
The Boy's Froissart. Being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure,
Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain, etc. Edited for Boys.
Crown 8vo, pp. xxviii, 422. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1878.
The Science of English Verse. Crown 8vo, pp. xv, 315.
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.
The Boy's King Arthur. Being Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arthur
and his Knights of the Round Table. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo,
pp. xlviii, 404. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1880.
The Boy's Mabinogion. Being the Earliest Welsh Tales of King Arthur
in the famous Red Book of Hergest. Edited for Boys. Crown 8vo,
pp. xxiv, 378. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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