*3* `My Springs', ll. 49-50.
*4* `My Springs', ll. 55-56.
*5* It is to be hoped that these letters may yet be published.
I quote from one dated November 15, 1874.
--

If not always simple, Lanier is often forcible in the extreme,
as in `The Symphony', `The Revenge of Hamish', `Remonstrance', and `Sunrise'.
Of course, it is open to any one to see in these poems the "rage"
attributed to Lanier by Mr. Gosse, but I prefer to consider it divine wrath
in all but the last, and in it wonder unutterable, which yet is so uttered
that ears become eyes. I allude to the stanzas* describing
the break of dawn and the rising of the sun.

--
* `Sunrise', ll. 86-152.
--

Of the poet's marvelous euphony, `The Song of the Chattahoochee'
speaks clearly enough. As we have seen in our treatment of versification,
it is here a question not of too little but of too much.
But, despite an occasional too great yielding to his passion for music,
his extraordinary endowment in this direction gave Lanier a unique position
among English poets. I quote again from Professor Kent:*
"But if his sense of beauty made him a peer of our great poets,
it was the heavenly gift of music that distinguished him from them.
Milton, it is true, whom he most resembles in this respect,
had a knowledge of music, but not the same passion for it. Milton's music
was more a recreation, an accompaniment of reverie; Lanier's was a fiery zeal;
a yearning love, a chosen and adequate form of expression