a volume (Pacific Poems) at his own expense and comes a sensation! overnight-be His dramatic success in England is easily explained. He brought to the calm air of literary London a breath of the great winds of the plain. The more he exaggerated his crashing effects, the better the English public liked it. When he entered Victorian parlors in his velvet jacket, hip-boots and flowing hair, childhood visions of the "wild and woolly Westerner" were realized and the very bombast of his work was glorified as "typically American." From 1872 to 1886, Miller traveled about the Continent. In 1887 he returned to California, dwelling on the Heights, helping to found an experimental Greek academy for aspiring writers. He died there, after a determinedly picturesque life in sight of the Golden Gate, in 1913. BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN 1 Here room and kingly silence keep Above yon gleaming skies of gold Beneath the sunset's golden sheaves And commerce keeps her loom and weaves. The dead red men refuse to rest; Their ghosts illume my lurid West. 1 Permission to reprint this poem of Joaquin Miller was granted by the Harr Wagner Publishing Co., San Francisco, California, publishers of Joaquin Miller's Complete Poetical Works. Behind him lay the gray Azores, The good mate said: "Now must we pray, 66 66 Why, say 'Sail on! sail on! and on! My men grow mutinous day by day; 66 They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow. "Why, now not even God would know These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. 1 Permission to reprint this poem granted by Harr Wagner Publishing Co., San Francisco, publishers of Joaquin Miller's Complete Poetical Works. They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 66 He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 66 Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, A light! a light! a light! a light! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. EDWARD ROWLAND SILL Edward Rowland Sill was born at Windsor, Connecticut, in 1841. In 1861 he was graduated from Yale and shortly thereafter his poor health compelled him. West. After various unsuccessful experiments, he drifted into teaching, first in the high schools in Ohio, later in the English department of the University of California. The Hermitage, his first volume, was published in 1867, a later edition (including later poems) appearing in 1889. His two posthumous books are Poems (1887) and Hermione and Other Poems (1899). Sill died, after bringing something of the Eastern culture to the West, in 1887. OPPORTUNITY This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought," Had I a sword of keener steel — SIDNEY LANIER Sidney Lanier was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842. His was a family of musicians'(Lanier himself was a skilful performer on various instruments), and it is not surprising that his verse emphasizes even overstresses the influence of music on poetry. He attended Oglethorpe College, graduating at the age of eighteen (1860), and, a year later, volunteered as a private in the Confederate army. After several months' imprisonment (he had been captured while acting as signal officer on a blockade-runner), Lanier was released in February, 1865. After studying and abandoning the practice of law, he became a flute-player in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in 1873 in Baltimore, where he had free access to the music and literature he craved. Here he wrote all of his best poetry. In 1879, he was made lecturer on English in Johns Hopkins University, and it was for his courses there that he wrote his chief prose work, a brilliant if not conclusive study, The Science of English Verse. Besides his poetry, he wrote several books for boys, the two most popular being The Boy's Froissart (1878) and The Boy's King Arthur (1880). Lanier ranks high among our minor poets. Such a vigorous ballad as "The Song of the Chattahoochee," lyrics like "The Stirrup Cup" and parts of the symphonic "Hymns of the Marshes" are sure of a place in American literature. Lanier died, a victim of tuberculosis, in the mountains of North Carolina, September 7, 1881. SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE1 Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, All down the hills of Habersham, The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, High o'er the hills of Habersham, 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, 1 From Poems of Sidney Lanier. Copyright, 1884, 1891, 1916, by Mary D. Lanier; published by Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the publisher. |