The old South : $b A monograph

John Stuart Mill · en
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    Still there’s a sense of blossoms yet unborn
          In the sweet airs of morn;
    One almost looks to see the very street
          Grow purple at his feet.
    At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
          And brings—you know not why—
    A feeling as when eager crowds await
          Before a palace gate
    Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
          If from a beech’s heart
    A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say:
          “Behold me! I am May!”

Sidney Lanier was of the Old South, though fame came to him from the
New. It was fitting that the latest of the progeny of genius of the
Old South should become the foremost of those who were to gild it
with a fame imperishable. Born in Georgia, less than a score of years
before the tragedy of the Old South began, writing his earliest poems
as a boy in Confederate camp and Federal prison, his music tinged
with the somberness of the time, Lanier’s genius was like the last of
the Southern flowers that burst into bloom just before the coming of
chilling frost and wintry wind. It was like the bright-red flower of
war which he describes: “The early spring of 1861 brought to bloom,
besides innumerable violets and jessamines, a strange, enormous, and
terrible flower, the blood-red flower of war, which grows amid the
thunders.” Why it is that the price of genius must always be paid in
blood, I do not know; but not all the transmitted genius and culture
and spirit of the Old South, which crystallized in this last and
greatest of her literary children, could absolve Lanier from the
pangs which Southern genius seems peculiarly called upon to suffer.
As the holiest and bravest lives spring out of darkness and storm
and sorrow, it may be that only such baptism of tears and blood which
we as a people have received could fit our sons and daughters for
their high vocation.

Lanier was easily the greatest of the poets of the South. Perhaps his
final place is yet to be fixed among the greater singers of America,
but it is comforting to know that the clear light of dispassionate
judgment of the receding years dispels the first-formed prejudices,
and lifts the singer into nobler and yet nobler place.

Broken with pain and poverty, yearning unutterably for the peace
and quiet of an opportunity to pour out his divine genius in great
and holy song, could anything be more utterly pitiful than this
passionate cry for help, which lay among his papers after his death?

    O Lord, if thou wert needy as I,
    If thou shouldst come to my door as I to thine;
    If thou hungered so much as I
    For that which belongs to the spirit,
    For that which is fine and good,
    Ah, friend, for that which is fine and good,
    I would give it to thee if I had power.

“A thousand songs are singing in my heart,” he declares, “that will
certainly kill me if I do not utter them soon.”