I have spoken of this `Song' as Lanier's most finished nature poem,
as the most musical of his productions. "The music of a song
easily eludes all analysis and may be dissipated by a critic's breath,
but let us try to catch the means by which the effect is in part produced.
In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs in all
save twelve lines. In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs,
sometimes joining the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines.
Syzygy is used for the same purpose. Of the letters occurring in the poem
about one-fifth are liquids and about one-twelfth are sibilants.
The effect of the whole is musical beyond description.
It sings itself and yet nowhere sacrifices the thought" (Kent).

Another way to test the beauty of `The Song of the Chattahoochee'
is to compare it with other kindred poems. There are many stream-songs
in English, several of which are very pretty, but there is, I think,
but one rival to our `Song', and that is Tennyson's `The Brook'.
Even so careful a critic as Mr. Ward says that `The Song of the Chattahoochee'
"strikes a higher key, and is scarcely less musical." It will be instructive,
too, to compare Lanier's poem with Southey's `The Cataract of Lodore'
(see `Gates', p. 25), which exhibits considerable talent, if not inspiration;
with P. H. Hayne's `The Meadow Brook', which is simple and sweet;
and with Wordsworth's `Brook! whose society the Poet seeks',
which is grave and elevated. Professor Kent suggests as interesting analogues
Poe's `Ulalume' and Buchanan Read's `Bay of Naples'; and, if the student
cares to extend his list, he should read the stream-songs by Bryant,
Mary Ainge De Vere (`Century', 21. 283, December, 1891),
Longfellow, Weir Mitchell (`Atlantic', 65. 629, May, 1890),
Clinton Scollard (`Lippincott', 50. 226, August, 1892), etc., etc.