The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poem Outlines, by Sidney Lanier

BOY'S LIBRARY OF LEGEND AND
CHIVALRY

It requires but little intimacy with the true artist to see that, whether his medium of expression be words or music or the brush, much of his finest achievement can never be given to his fellows bearing the stamp of perfect craftsmanship. As when the painter, with hand momentarily inspired by the fervor of the eye, fixes in a sketch some miracle of color or line, which vanishes with each succeeding stroke of the brush laboring to embody it in a finished picture—so the poet may transcribe one note of his own tense heart strings; may find fluttering words that zigzag aerially beside the elusive new-born thought; may strike out in the rough some heaven-scaling conception—to discover too often that these priceless fragments cannot be fused again, cannot be joined with commoner metals into a conventional quatrain or sonnet.

At such moments, by some subtle necromancy of quivering genius, the poet in his exaltation weaves sinuous words into a magic net with which he snares at one cast the elfin woods fancies, the shy butterfly ideas that flit across secluded glades of the imagination, viinvisible even to him at other times; and there these delicate creatures lie, flashing forth from the meshes glimpses of an unearthly brilliance—for all time, if he be wise enough not to attempt to open the net and spread out their wings for the world to see them better. Or it may be that his mood is interrupted by the necessity for giving to the world that which it will receive in exchange for a living, and his next vision is of a far distant corner of the Enchanted Land. Yet these records are what they are; they bear star dust upon their wings; they give, perhaps, his most intimate revelation, his highest utterance.

So the following outlines and fragments left by Sidney Lanier are presented, in the belief that they contain the essence of poetry. His mind budded into poems as naturally and inevitably as a tree puts forth green leaves—and it was always spring-time there. These poem-sketches were jotted in pencil on the backs of envelopes, on the margins of musical programmes, on little torn scraps of paper, amid all sorts of surroundings, whenever the dream came to him. Some are mere flashes of simile in unrhymed couplets; others are definite rounded outlines, instinct with the beauty of idea, but not yet hewn to the line of perfect form; one, at least, is the beginning of quite a long narrative in verse. There viiare indications of more than one projected volume of poems, as mentioned in foot-notes. All have been selected from his papers as containing something worthy of preservation; and, while the thought sometimes parallels that in his published work, all are essentially new.

1Are ye so sharp set for the centre of the earth, are ye so hungry for the centre of things,

O rains and springs and rivers of the mountains?

Towards the centre of the earth, towards the very Middle of things, ye will fall, ye will run, the Centre will draw ye, Gravity will drive you and draw you in one:

But the Centre ye will not reach, ye will come as near as the plains—watering them in coming so near—and ye will come as near as the bottom of the Ocean—seeing and working many marvels as ye come so near.

But the Centre of Things ye will not reach,

O my rivers and rains and springs of the mountains.

Provision is made that ye shall not: ye would be merged, ye could not return.

Nor shall my Soul be merged in God, though tending, though tending.

2To believe in God would be much less hard if it were not for the wind. Pray hold one little minute, I cry: O spare this once to bite yonder poor old shivering soul in the bare house, let the rags have but a little chance to warm yon woman round the city corner. Stop, stop, wind: but I might as well talk to the wind: and lo, the proverb paralyzes prayer, and I am ready to say: Good God, is it possible thou canst stop this wind which at this moment is mocking ten thousand babies and thin-clad mothers with the unimaginable anguish of cold—is it possible thou canst stop this, and wilt not? Do you know what cold is? Story of the Prisoner, &c., &c., and the stone.

3The courses of the wind, and the shifts thereof, as also what way the clouds go; and that which is happening a long way off; and the full face of the sun; and the bow of the Milky Way from end to end; as also the small, the life of the fiddler-crab, and the household of the marsh-hen; and more, the translation of black ooze into green blade of marsh-grass, which is as if filth bred heaven:

This a man seeth upon the marsh.

8One of your cold jelly-fish poets that find themselves cast up by some wave upon a sandy subject, and so wrinkle themselves about a pebble of a theme and let us see it through their substance—as if that were a great feat.

11I have great trouble in behavior. I know what to do, I know what I at heart desire to do; but the doing of it, that is work, that labor is. I construct in my lonesome meditations the fairest scheme of my relations to my fellow-men, and to fellow-events; but when I go to set the words of solitary thought to the music of much-crowded action, I find ten thousand difficulties never suspected: difficulties of race, temperament, mood, tradition, custom, passion, unreason and other difficulties which I do not understand, as, for instance, the failure of contemporary men to recognize genius and great art.

13I fled in tears from the men's ungodly quarrel about God: I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me down on the earth; then somewhat like the beating of many hearts came up to me out of the ground, and I looked and my cheek lay close by a violet; then my heart took courage and I said:

17A man does not reach any stature of manhood until like Moses he kills an Egyptian (i. e., murders some oppressive prejudice of the all-crushing Tyrant Society or Custom or Orthodoxy) and flies into the desert of his own soul, where among the rocks and sands, over which at any rate the sun rises dear each day, he slowly and with great agony settles his relation with men and manners and powers outside, and begins to look with his own eyes, and first knows the unspeakable joy of the outcast's kiss upon the hand of sweet, naked Truth.

But let not the young man go to killing his Egyptian too soon: wait till you know all the Egyptians can teach you: wait till you are master of the technics of the time; then grave, and resolute, and aware of consequences, shape your course.

18Thought, too, is carnivorous. It lives on meat. We never have an idea whose existence has not been purchased by the death of some atom of our fleshy tissue.

O little poem, thou goest from this brain chargeable with the death of tissue that perished in order that thou mightst live: nourish some soul, thou that hast been nourished on a human body.

19Do you think the 19th century is past? It is but two years since Boston burnt me for witchcraft. I wrote a poem which was not orthodox: that is, not like Mr. Longfellow's.

You are servants. Your thoughts are the thoughts of cooks curious to skim perquisites from every pan, your quarrels are the quarrels of scullions who fight for the privilege of cleaning the pot with most leavings in it, your committees sit upon the landings of backstairs, and your quarrels are the quarrels of kitchens.

23"The Earth?" quoth a Dandelion to my Oak, "what earth? where is any? I float, and find none!"

At that moment the wind blew.

"Nevertheless, it is here," quoth my oak, with pleasure in all his roots, what time the dandelion was blown out of hearing.

25Every rule is a sign of weakness. A man needs no rules to make him eat, when he is hungry: and a law is a badge of disgrace. Yet we are able to console ourselves, from points of view which terminate in duty, order, and the like advantages.

I went into the Church to look for a poor man.

For the Lord has said that the Poor are his children, and I thought His children would live in His house.

But in the pews sat only Kings and Lords: at least all that sat there were dressed like Kings and Lords; and I could not find the man I looked for, who was in rags;—presently I saw the sexton refuse admission to a man; lo, it was my poor man, he had on rags, and the sexton said, "No ragged allowed."

28O World, I wish there was room for a poet. In the time of David and of Isaiah, in the time of John and of Homer, there was room for a poet. In the time of Hyvernion and of Herve and of Omar Khayyam: in the time of Shakspere, was room in the world for a poet.

29In the lily, the sunset, the mountain, the rosy hues of all life, it is easy to trace God. But it is in the dust that goes up from the unending Battle of Things that we lose Him. Forever thro' the ferocities of storms, the malice of the never-glutted oceans, the savagery of human wars, the inexorable barbarities of accident, of earthquake and mysterious Disease, one hears the voice of man crying, where art thou, my dear Lord and Master?

30But oh, how can ye trifle away your time at trades and waste yourself in men's commerce, when ye might be here in the woods at commerce with great angels, all heaven at purchase for a song.

34The United States in two hundred years has made Emerson out of a witch-burner.

38A poet is a perpetual Adam: events pass before him, like the animals in the creation, and he names them.

39"The Improvement of the Ground is the most Natural Obtaining of Riches: For it is our Great Mother's Blessing, the Earth: But it is slow."

41Lo, he that hath helped me to do right (save by mere information upon which I act or not, as I please) he hath not done me a favor: he hath covertly hurt me: he hath insidiously deflowered the virginity of my will; I am thenceforth not a pure Me: I am partly another.

Each union of self and self is, once for all, incest and adultery and every other crime. Let me alone. God made me so, a man, individual, unit, whole, fully-appointed in myself. Again I cry to thee, O friend, let me alone.

42The church having become fashionable is now grown crowded, and the Age will have to get up from its pew and go outside soon, if only for a little fresh air.

43You wish me to argue whether Paul had a revelation: I do not care greatly; I have had none, but roses, trees, music, and a running stream, and Sirius.

44The sleep of each night is a confession of God. By whose will is it that my heart beat, my lung rose and fell, my blood went with freight and returned empty these eight hours?

Not mine, not mine.

47Says Epictetus, at the close of his Chapter on Præcognitions: "I must speak in this way; excuse me, as you would excuse lovers: I am not my own master: I am mad."

Tear me, I pray thee, this Flower of Sweetness-of-Life petal from petal, number me the pistils, and above all, above all, dear Science, find me the ovary thereof, and the seeds in the ovary, and save me these.

Thou canst not.

54Thou that in thy beautiful Church this morning art reading thy beautiful service with a breaking heart—for that thou knowest thou art reading folly to fools, and for that thou lovest these same folk and canst not abide to think of losing thy friends, and knowest not how to tell them the truth and findest them with no appetite to it nor strength for it—thou fine young clergyman, on this spring morning, there, in the pulpit, front of the dainty ladies with their breathing clouds of dresses and the fans gently waving in the still air—and thou, there, betwixt the pauses while the choir and the heavenly organ tear thy soul with music, peering down with thine eyes in a dream upon the men in the pews, the importers, the jobbers, the stockbrokers, the great drygoods house, some at a nod, some calculating with pencils on the fly-leaf of the Prayer-book, some wondering how it will be with 4's and sixes to-morrow, some vacant, three with Christ thoughts, one out of two hundred earnest—thou that turnest despairing away from the men back to the women whereof several regard thee with soft and rich eyes, with yearning after the unknown whatever-there-may-be-of-better-than-this,

55I have a word for thee.

Thou seest and wilt not cover thine eyes; thou dost stand at the casement on a dewy morning, and sentimentalize over the birds that flit by: for thou knowest a worm died in pain at each bird song, and death sitteth in the dew; thou lookest through the rich lawn dresses of the witch women, thou lookest through the ledger-revelries of the merchant, thou seest quasi-religion which is hell-in-trifles before thee, thou seest superstition black about thee,—I have a word for thee.

Come out and declare.

Youth, the circus-rider, fares gaily round the ring, standing with one foot on the bare-backed horse—the Ideal. Presently, at the moment of manhood, Life (exacting ring-master) causes another horse to be brought in who passes under the rider's legs, and ambles on. This is the Real. The young man takes up the reins, places a foot on each animal, and the business now becomes serious.

For it is a differing pace, of these two, the Real and the Ideal.

And yet no man can be said to make the least success in life who does not contrive to make them go well together.

59The Age is an Adonis that pursues the boar Wealth: yet shall the rude tusk of trade wound this blue-veined thigh,—if Love come not to the rescue; Adon despises Love.

60Sometimes Providence seems to have a bee in his bonnet. Else why should hell, the greatest risk, be the most improvable fact, and himself, the only light, be the most completely undiscoverable? If the angels are good company, why shut us out from them? I look for good boys for my children. Hide not your light under a bushel, is His own command: and yet He is completely obscured under the inexorable quid pro quo of Nature and the hateful measure of Evil.

67To stand with quietude in the midst of the prodigious Unknown which we call the World, also to look with tranquil eyes upon the unfathomable blackness which limits our view to the little space enclosed betwixt birth and death.

69It may be that the world can get along without God: but I can not. The universe-finity is to me like the chord of the dominant seventh, always leading towards, always inviting onwards, a Chord of Progress; God is the tonic Triad, a chord of Repose.

The mocking-bird hanging over the street sings, though robbery, murder, fire, &c., go on.

75It is the easiest thing in the world to make one falsehood out of two truths.

77Come with me, Science; let us go into the Church here (say in Georgia); let alone the youth here, they have roses in their cheeks, they know that life is delicious, what need have they of thee? But fix thy keen eye on these grave-faced and mostly sallow married women who make at least half this congregation—these women who are the people that carry around the subscription cards, and feed the preacher and keep him in heart always. See, there is Mrs. S.: her husband and son were killed in the war; Mrs. B.—her husband has been a thriftless fellow, and she has finally found out the damnable fact that she is both stronger and purer than he is, which she is, however, yet sweetly endeavoring to hide from herself and all people; Mrs. C. D. and the rest of the alphabet in the same condition;—Science, I grasp thee by the throat and ask thee with vehement passion, wilt thou take away the Christ (who is to each Deficiency in this house the Completion and Hoped Perfectness) from these women?

80The old Obligation of goodness has now advanced into the Delight of goodness; the old Curse of Labor into the Delight of Labor; the old Agony of blood-shedding sacrifice into the tranquil Delight of Unselfishness. The Curse of the Jew of Genesis is the Blessing of the modern Gentile. It is as if an avalanche, in the very moment of crushing the kneeling villagers, should turn to a gentle and fruitful rain, and be minister not of death but of life.

Invitation brought by the wind, and sent by the rose and the oak. I sat on the steps—warm summer noon—in a garden, and half cloudy with low clouds, sun hot, rich mocking bird singing, bee brushing down a big raindrop from a flower, where it hung tremulous. The bird's music is echoed from the breasts of roses, and reflex sound comes doubly back with grace of odor.—First came the lizard, dandiest of reptiles; then the bee, then small strange insects that wear flap-wings and spider-web legs, and crawl up the slim green stalks of grass; the catbirds, the flowers, with each a soul—this is the company I like; the talk, the gossip anent the last news of the spirit, the marriage of man and nature, the betrothal of Science and Art, the failure of the great house of Buy and Sell (see following note^[1]), a rumor out of the sun, and many messages concerning the stars.

86All men are pearl-divers, and we have but plunged down into this straggling salt-sea of Life—to find a pearl. This Pearl, like all others, comes from a wound: it is the Pearl of Love after Grief.

87It is always sunrise and always sunset somewhere on the earth. And so, with a silver sunrise before him and a golden sunset behind him, the Royal Sun fares through Heaven, like a king with a herald and a retinue.

88Night's a black-haired poet, and he's in love with Day. But he never meets her save at early morn and late eve, when they fall into each other's arms and draw out a lingering kiss: so folded together at such times that we cannot distinguish bright maid from dark lover; and so we call it Dawn and Twilight—it being

90Hunger and a whip: with these we tame wild beasts. So, to tame us, God continually keeps our hearts hungry for love, and continually lashes our souls with the thongs of relentless circumstance.

92The earth, a grain of pollen dropped in the vast calyx of Heaven.

93Our beliefs needed pruning, that they might bring forth more fruit: and so Science came.

94I, the artist, fought with a Knight that was cased in a mail of gold; and my weapon, with all my art, would not penetrate his armor. Gold is a soft metal, but makes the hardest hauberk of all. What shall I do to pierce this covering? For I am hungry for this man, this business man of stocks and drygoods, and now it seems as if there were no pleasure nor hope nor life for me until I win him to my side.

96I am startled at the gigantic suggestions in this old story of the Serpent who introduces knowledge to man in Eden. How could the Jew who wrote Genesis have known the sadness that ever comes with learning—as if wisdom were still the protégé of the Devil.

97On the advantage of reducing facts—like fractions—to a common denominator.

We explain: but only in terms of x and y, which are themselves symbols of we know not what, graphs of mystery. We establish relations betwixt this and that mystery. We reduce x and y to a common denominator, so that we can add them together, and make a scientific generalization, or subtract them, and make a scientific analysis: but more we can not do. The mystery is still a mystery, and this is all the material out of which we must weave our life.

102Cut the Cord, Doctor! quoth the baby, man, in the nineteenth century. I am ready to draw my own breath.

103Whether one is an optimist or an orthodox religionist or what not, it would seem that faith must centre upon Christ.

104The Church is too hot, and Nothing is too cold. I find my proper Temperature in Art. Art offers to me a method of adoring the sweet master Jesus Christ, the beautiful souled One, without the straitness of a Creed which confines my genuflexions, a Church which confines my limbs, and without the vacuity of the doubt which numbs them. An unspeakable gain has come to me in simply turning a certain phrase the other way: the beauty of holiness becomes a new and wonderful saying to me when I figure it to myself in reverse as the holiness of beauty. This is like opening a window of dark stained glass, and letting in a flood of white light. I thus keep upon the walls of my soul a church-wall rubric which has been somewhat clouded by the expiring breaths of creeds dying their natural death. For in art there is no doubt. My heart beat all last night without my supervision: for I was asleep; my heart did not doubt a throb; I left it beating when I slept, I found it beating when I woke; it is thus with art: it beats in my sleep. A holy tune was in my soul when I fell asleep: it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. 105If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the thoughts which occupy the front of the stage, the dramatis personæ of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear.

106It is now time that one should arise in the world and cry out that Art is made for man and not man for art: that government is made for man and not man for government: that religion is made for man and not man for religion: that trade is made for man and not man for trade. This is essentially the utterance of Christ in declaring that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

107Like the forest whose edges near man's dwellings are embroidered with birds, while its inner recesses are the unbroken solid color of solitude.

I knew a saint that said he never went among men without returning home less a man than he was before he went forth. But it is not so with you: I am always more a man when I converse with you. Who is so manly and so manifold sweet as a tree? There is none that can talk like a tree: for a tree says always to me exactly that which I wish him to say. A man is apt to say what I did not desire to hear, or what I had no need to know at that time. A tree knows always my necessity.

And "Here is some news," quoth Midnight. "What is this word 'news' whereof we hear?" begged the Balsams: "What mean you by news? what thing is there which is not very old? Two neighbors in a cabin talking yesterday I heard giving and taking news; and one, for news, saith William is dead; and 'tother for news gave that a child is born at Anne's house. But what manner of people be these that call birth and death new? Birth and death were before aught else that we know was."