to worship God according to one's own intuition, we have already learned
from his `Remonstrance'. What he thought of the Christ we learn
from `The Crystal', which closes with this invocation:

"But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, --
What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's --
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2*

How tenderly Lanier was touched by the life of our Lord may be seen
in his `Ballad of Trees and the Master', a dramatic presentation of the scene
in Gethsemane and on Calvary. How implicit was his trust in the Christ
may be gathered from this paragraph in a letter to the elder Hayne:
"I have a boy whose eyes are blue as your `Aethra's'. Every day
when my work is done I take him in my strong arms, and lift him up,
and pore in his face. The intense repose, penetrated somehow
with a thrilling mystery of `potential activity', which dwells
in his large, open eye, teaches me new things. I say to myself,
Where are the strong arms in which I, too, might lay me and repose,
and yet be full of the fire of life? And always through the twilight
come answers from the other world, `Master! Master! there is one -- Christ --
in His arms we rest!'"*3* Perhaps, however, Lanier's notion of God,