THE MARSHES OF GLYNN

SIDNEY LANIER

NOTE. This poem, which was published anonymously, attracted immediate attention by its exquisite word painting, its beautiful imagery, and by its musical quality. Notice such lines as " While the riotous noonday sun of the June day long did shine," "The vast, sweet visage of space," 5 "Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight," and "Tolerant plains, that suffer the seas and the rain and the sun."

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noonday sun of the June day long did

shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; 10 But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,

And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,-
Aye, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of
the oak,

15 And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me

of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,

And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain

Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

The vast, sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,

For a mete and a mark

To the forest dark :

So:

Affable live oak, leaning low,

Thus

with your favor soft, with a reverent hand,

(Not lightly touching your person, lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand

On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh, that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band

Of the sand beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the

folds of the land.

10

15

10

Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

The world lies east: how ample the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a

shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,

To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free

From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

15 Tolerant plains, that suffer the seas and the rain and the

sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God!
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh
and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea

Pours fast full soon the time of the flood tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go

About and about through the intricate channels that flow

Here and there,
Everywhere,

Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the

low-lying lanes,

And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,

That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.

Farewell, my lord Sun!

The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run

"Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh grass

stir;

Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one.

5 How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy;

The tide is at its highest height:

And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep 10 Roll in on the souls of men,

But who will reveal to our waking ken

The forms that swim and the shapes that creep

Under the waters of sleep?

And I would I could know what swimmeth below when

the tide comes in

15 On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes

of Glynn.

Glynn: a county of Georgia bordering on the ocean.

live oak: a species

of oak found near the Atlantic coasts of the Southern states and along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. It is a valuable timber tree, having tough, close-grained wood, which is extremely durable. Live oaks often attain a great size, and when draped with Spanish moss have a truly venerable aspect. catholic man: a liberal, broad-minded man.