Evening Song

LOOK off, dear Love, across the shallow sands,

  And mark yon meeting of the sun and the sea,

How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.

        Ah! longer, longer we.

Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun,

  As Egypt's red pearl dissolved in rosy wine,

And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done,

        Love, lay thine hand in mine.

Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;

  Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.

O night! divorce our sun and sky apart

        Never our lips, our hands.

Sidney Lanier

The Waving of the Corn

    PLOUGHMAN, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled

Thy plough to ring this solitary tree

    With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field,

In cool green radius twice my length may be-

    Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield,

To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me,

    That here come oft together-daily I,

    Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy,

Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn

           With waving of the corn.

    Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill

Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought,

    And fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill;

The cricket tells straight on his simple thought-

    Nay, 'tis the cricket's way of being still;

The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught;

    Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove

    Times me the beating of the heart of love:

And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn,

          With waving of the corn.

    From here to where the louder passions dwell,

Green leagues of hilly separation roll:

    Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell.

Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul

    That, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell,

From out your deadly complex quarrel stole

    To company with large amiable trees,

    Suck honey summer with unjealous bees,

And take Time's strokes as softly as this morn

          Takes waving of the corn.

Sidney Lanier

The Mocking Bird

SUPERB and sole, upon a plumèd spray

    That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,

    He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew

The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay

Of languid doves when long their lovers stray,

    And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew

    At morn in brake or bosky avenue.

Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say.

Then down he shot, bounced airily along

The sward, twitched-in a grasshopper, made song

    Midflight, perched, primped, and to his art again.

    Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain:

        How may the death of that dull insect be

        The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree?

Sidney Lanier

"Song of the Chattahoochee"

OUT of the hills of Habersham,

Down the valleys of Hall,

I hurry amain to reach the plain,

Run the rapid and leap the fall,

Split at the rock and together again,

Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,

And flee from folly on every side

With a lover's pain to attain the plain

Far from the hills of Habersham,

Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,

All through the valleys of Hall,

The rushes cried, Abide, abide,

The willful waterweeds held me thrall,

The laving laurel turned my tide,

The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,

The dewberry dipped for to work delay,

And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,

Here in the hills of Habersham,

Here in the valleys of Hall.

High o'er the hills of Habersham,

Veiling the valleys of Hall,

The hickory told me manifold

Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall

Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,

The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,

Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,

Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,

These glades in the valleys of Hall.

And oft in the hills of Habersham,

And oft in the valleys of Hall,

The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone

Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,

And many a luminous jewel lone

--Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,

Ruby, garnet and amethyst--

Made lures with the lights of streaming stone

In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,

In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,

And oh, not the valleys of Hall

Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.

Downward the voices of Duty call--

Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,

The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,

And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,

And the lordly main from beyond the plain

Call o'er the hills of Habersham,

Calls through the valleys of Hall.

Sidney Lanier

From the Flats

WHAT heartache--ne'er a hill!

Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill

The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.

With one poor word they tell me all they know;

Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,

Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.

They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:

Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,

No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes

From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;

No humors, frolic forms--this mile, that mile;

No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes

Beyond the bends of roads, the distant slopes.

Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:

Ever the same, the same.

Oh, might I through these tears

But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears,

Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine,

The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine

Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade

Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade,

And down the hollow from a ferny nook

Bright leaps a living brook!

Sidney Lanier

The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson

"Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle."
"Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train."
"Let us cross the river and rest in the shade."

THE stars of Night contain the glittering Day

And rain his glory down with sweeter grace

Upon the dark World's grand, enchanted face --

All loth to turn away.

And so the Day, about to yield his breath,

Utters the stars unto the listening Night,

To stand for burning fare-thee-wells of light

Said on the verge of death.

O hero-life that lit us like the sun!

O hero-words that glittered like the stars

And stood and shone above the gloomy wars

When the hero-life was done!

The phantoms of a battle came to dwell

I' the fitful vision of his dying eyes --

Yet even in battle-dreams, he sends supplies

To those he loved so well.

His army stands in battle-line arrayed:

His couriers fly: all's done: now God decide!

-- And not till then saw he the Other Side

Or would accept the shade.

Thou Land whose sun is gone, thy stars remain!

Still shine the words that miniature his deeds.

O thrice-beloved, where'er thy great heart bleeds,

Solace hast thou for pain!

Sidney Lanier

Life and Song

IF life were caught by a clarionet,

And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,

Should thrill its joy and trill its fret

And utter its heart in every deed;

Then would this breathing clarionet

Type what the poet fain would be;

For none o' the singers ever yet

Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,

Or clearly sung his true, true thought,

Or utterly bodied forth his life,

Or out of Life and Song has wrought

The perfect one of man and wife;

Or lived and sung, that Life and Song

Might each express the other's all,

Careless if life or art were long

Since both were one, to stand or fall:

So that the wonder struck the crowd,

Who shouted it about the land:

His song was only living aloud,

His work a singing with his hand!

Sidney Lanier

Owl against Robin

FROWNING, the owl in the oak complained him

Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him

Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.

"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,

Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover,

Over and over and over and over,

Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,

Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven:

How can we sleep?

`Peep!' you whistle, and `cheep! cheep! cheep!'

Oh, peep, if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap,

And have done; for an owl must sleep.

Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first?

Each day's the same, yet the last is worst,

And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst

Of idiot red-breasts peeping and cheeping

By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping.

Lord, what a din! And so out of all reason.

Have ye not heard that each thing hath its season?

Night is to work in, night is for play-time;

Good heavens, not day-time!

A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day,

The impudent, hot, unsparing day,

That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold, --

Day the reporter, -- the gossip of old, --

Deformity's tease, -- man's common scold --

Poh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb

When day down the eastern way has come.

'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn

From Design) that the world should retire at dawn.

Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe

Death in the sun, the cities seethe,

The mortal black marshes bubble with heat

And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet

Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint

(Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint

In the lands where the villainous sun has sway

Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day.

What Eden but noon-light stares it tame,

Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame?

For the sun tells lies on the landscape, -- now

Reports me the `what', unrelieved with the `how', --

As messengers lie, with the facts alone,

Delivering the word and withholding the tone.

But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light

Of the high-fastidious night!

Oh, to awake with the wise old stars --

The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars,

That wink at the work-a-day fact of crime

And shine so rich through the ruins of time

That Baalbec is finer than London; oh,

To sit on the bough that zigzags low

             By the woodland pool,

And loudly laugh at man, the fool

That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare,

To wheel from the wood to the window where

A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care,

And perch on the sill and straightly stare

Through his visions; rare, to sail

Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, --

To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam,

Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream,

Hither, thither, to and fro,

Silent, aimless, dayless, slow

(`Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain,

But the night-philosophy hoots at pain,

Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones

In the water beneath the bough, nor moans

At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray

                     Come away, come away

To the cultus of night. Abandon the day.

Have more to think and have less to say.

And cannot you walk now? Bah! don't hop!

                             Stop!

Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard,

O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!"

Sidney Lanier
Baltimore, 1880.