the succession of M's in Tennyson's

"The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees."

All of these phenomena are illustrated in Lanier's
`Song of the Chattahoochee', which has often been compared
to Tennyson's `The Brook', and which alone proves the author
a master in versification. To be sure, Lanier occasionally gives us
an improper rhyme, as `thwart: heart',*2* etc., but so does every poet.
No doubt, too, his love of music sometimes led him,
not "to strain for form effects", but to indulge too much therein,
or, in the words of Mr. Stedman, "to essay in language
feats that only the gamut can render possible."*3* But, as Professor Kent
admirably puts it, "Lanier was a poet as well as an artist,
and if at times his artistic temperament seemed to eclipse his poetic thought,
grant that to the poet mind the very manner of expression
may indicate the thought that lies beneath, while to the duller ear
the thought must come in completed form."*4* Moreover, as we shall see later,
this extraordinary musical endowment gave Lanier a unique position
among English poets.

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*1* See `The Science of English Verse', p. 306 ff.
*2* `In the Foam', ll. 6, 8. See, too, Kent's `Study of Lanier's Poems',
which gives an exhaustive treatment of Lanier's versification.
*3* Stedman's `Poets of America', p. 449.
*4* `Kent', p. 60.
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