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:

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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Strange Jokes

Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad
Grim squatting on a twilight road.
He catcheth all that Circumstance
Hath tossed to him.
He curseth all who upward glance
As lost to him.

Once in a whimsey mood he sat
And talked of life, in proverbs pat,
To Eve in Eden, -- "Death, on Life" --
As if he knew!
And so he toadied Adam's wife
There, in the dew.

O dainty dew, O morning dew
That gleamed in the world's first dawn, did you
And the sweet grass and manful oaks
Give lair and rest
To him who toadwise sits and croaks
His death-behest?

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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To

The Day was dying; his breath
Wavered away in a hectic gleam;
And I said, if Life's a dream, and Death
And Love and all are dreams -- I'll dream.

A mist came over the bay
Like as a dream would over an eye.
The mist was white and the dream was grey
And both contained a human cry,

The burthen whereof was "Love",
And it filled both mist and dream with pain,
And the hills below and the skies above
Were touched and uttered it back again.

The mist broke: down the rift
A kind ray shot from a holy star.
Then my dream did waver and break and lift --
Through it, O Love, shone thy face, afar.

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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Nilsson

A rose of perfect red, embossed
With silver sheens of crystal frost,
Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost.

High passion throbbing in a sphere
That Art hath wrought of diamond clear,
-- A great heart beating in a tear.

The listening soul is full of dreams
That shape the wondrous-varying themes
As cries of men or plash of streams.

Or noise of summer rain-drops round
That patter daintily a-ground
With hints of heaven in the sound.

Or noble wind-tones chanting free
Through morning-skies across the sea
Wild hymns to some strange majesty.

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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The Dove

If haply thou, O Desdemona Morn,
Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain,
Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!"
With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain; --

Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark,
'Gainst proud supplanting Summer sing thy plea,
And move the mighty woods through mailed bark
Till mortal heart-break throbbed in every tree; --

Or (grievous `if' that may be `yea' o'er-soon!),
If thou, my Heart, long holden from thy Sweet,
Shouldst knock Death's door with mellow shocks of tune,
Sad inquiry to make -- `When may we meet?'

Nay, if ye three, O Morn! O Spring! O Heart!
Should chant grave unisons of grief and love;
Ye could not mourn with more melodious art
Than daily doth yon dim sequestered dove.

poem by Sidney Lanier
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Rose-Morals

I. -- Red.

Would that my songs might be
What roses make by day and night --
Distillments of my clod of misery
Into delight.

Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast
As yon red rose, and dare the day,
All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
Say yea -- say yea!

Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye;
The wind is up; so; drift away.
That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly,
I strive, I pray.

II. -- White.

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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Opposition

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,
Complain no more; for these, O heart,
Direct the random of the will
As rhymes direct the rage of art.

The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart
The strain and purpose of the string,
For governance and nice consort
Doth bar his wilful wavering.

The dark hath many dear avails;
The dark distils divinest dews;
The dark is rich with nightingales,
With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.

Bleeding with thorns of petty strife,
I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart
With sonnets to my lady Life
Writ red in issues from the heart.

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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Laughter In The Senate

In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land;
He huddles his rags with a cripple's hand;
He mutters, prone on the barren sand,
What time his heart is breaking.

He lifts his bare head from the ground;
He listens through the gloom around:
The winds have brought him a strange sound
Of distant merrymaking.

Comes now the Peace so long delayed?
Is it the cheerful voice of Aid?
Begins the time his heart has prayed,
When men may reap and sow?

Ah, God! Back to the cold earth's breast!
The sages chuckle o'er their jest;
Must they, to give a people rest,
Their dainty wit forego?

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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Tampa Robins

The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
"Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me
-- Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.

Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears)
And thrid the heavenly orange-tree
With orbits bright of minstrelsy.

If that I hate wild winter's spite --
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave --
Why should I ache, the season's slave?
I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree
`Gramercy, winter's tyranny.'

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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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 bend 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,

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poem by Sidney Lanier
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