of his soul's deepest feeling. Combined with this passion for music
was his technical knowledge of the art, and these combined formed at once
the foundation and the framework of his poetry. He seems literally
to have sung his poems; they are essentially musical, tuneful, and melodious.
Surcharged with music, he overflows in mellifluous numbers. Here, then,
Lanier stands out differentiated in the choir of poets, and here we find
that distinctive quality which is the very flavor of his writing."

--
* P. 62.
--

While most of Lanier's poems are in a serious strain,
several disclose no mean sense of humor. I refer to his dialect poems,
such as `Jones's Private Argyment', `Uncle Jim's Baptist Revival Hymn',
and `The Power of Prayer', especially the last, written in conjunction
with his brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier.

There are passages in the poems no less pathetic than the poet's life.
In discussing his love of nature we have seen that he was a pantheist
in the best sense of the term. So delicate was his sensibility
that we do not wonder when we hear him declaring,

"And I am one with all the kinsmen things
That e'er my Father fathered,"*

a saying as felicitous as the Roman's "I am a man, and, therefore,
nothing human is stranger to me." The tenderness of
the `Ballad of Trees and the Master' must touch all readers.
Few passages are more pathetic, I think, than that, in `June Dreams