the rich notes of violin, flute, and piano blend with the beauty of nature;
the future of music is the theme and poetry the comment.
The various characters of that immature romance quote from Emerson, Carlyle,
and Richter. As they talk upon the theme so dear to their imagination
twilight comes. "And so the last note floated out over the rock,
over the river, over the twilight to the west."

With something of the power of Charles Egbert Craddock,
Lanier writes in the same book of the mountain scenery of that region:
"Here grow the strong sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts.
Here wave the ferns, and cling the mosses and clamber the reckless vines.
Here, one's soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see one's land of peace,
seeing Christ who made all these beautiful things."
Again, it is "the trees that ever lifted their arms toward heaven,
obeying the injunction of the Apostle, `praying always', --
the great uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives,
since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beautiful."
He describes a moonlight night on the mountains: "All this time
the grace of moonlight lay tenderly upon the rugged majesty of the mountains,
as if Desdemona placed a dainty white hand upon Othello's brow.
All this time the old priestly oaks lifted yearning arms toward the stars,
and a mighty company of leaf-chapleted followers, with silent reverence,
joined this most pathetic prayer of these dumb ministers of the hills."

After this enchanting and inspiring experience, he returned to Oglethorpe
as tutor: it was to be a year of hard work, especially in Greek.
He described himself at this period as "a spare-built boy,
of average height and underweight, mostly addicted to hard study,
long reveries, and exhausting smokes with a German pipe."
He did much miscellaneous reading and was busy with "hints and fragments