Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/354

 338 The New South was able to fill Lanier's time with hackwork. The whole summer was spent in preparing "a sort of spiritualized guide- book" to Florida. Yet he was happy. He wrote of himself as one who, after many days and nights of tribulation and bloody sweat, has finally emerged from all doubt into the quiet and yet joyful activity of one who knows exactly what his Great Passion is and what his God desires him to do. As for me, life has resolved simply into a time during which I must get upon paper as many as possible of the poems with which my heart is stuffed like a schoolboy's pocket. When at the instance of Bayard Taylor he was appointed to write the cantata for the Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia, he was jubilant. His patriotic fervour pro- duced also The Psalm of the West. A place among American poets he challenged by bringing out a slender volume of poems late in the same year. Because of a severe Ulness he was ordered South for the winter of 1876-7, but there he continued to throw off "a sort of spray of little songs" and to hope for "that repose which ought to fill the artist's firmament while he is creating. " The four remaining years of his life were spent in an unavail- ing search for that repose. He endeavoured to make sure where next week's dinners were coming from before carrying out his ambitions for creative work. He continued his con- nection with the Peabody Orchestra, but his chief endeavour turned him aside, this time into the field of scholarship. He wandered about in Old and Middle English, and ranged far in the Elizabethan period. These enthusiastic studies resulted in lectures at the Peabody Institute, and in 1879 in his appoint- ment as lecturer in Johns Hopkins University. The Science oj English Verse and The English Novel are the products of those two years, besides some books for boys and many poems. But consumption had made such advances that it was feared that he would not live to complete his last series of lectures. Indeed, those who listened to him momentarily feared that he would not survive to the end of the hour. In May, 1881, he was taken to the mountains of North Carolina, where he died 7 September.