[225] the impression soon passed away. But into his description of sunrise in the first of his Hymns of the marshes, he puts not merely such a wealth of outdoor observation as makes even Thoreau seem thin and arid, but combines with it a roll and range of rhythm such as Lowell's Commemoration Ode cannot equal, and only some of Browning's early ocean cadences can surpass. There are inequalities in the poem, little spasmodic phrases here and there, or fancies pressed too hard,--he wrote it, poor fellow, when far gone in his last illness, with his pulse at one hundred and four degrees, and then unable to raise his food to his mouth,--but much the same is true of Keats's great fragments, and there are lines and phrases of Lanier's that are not excelled in Endymion, and perhaps not in Hyperion. A passage from those “hymns” must be quoted. It is called simply Dawn:--
But no; it is made; list! somewhere,--mystery,
where?
In the leaves? in the air?
In my heart? is a motion made;
'T is a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade.
In the leaves 't is palpable; low multitudinous stirring
Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring,
