Elia Peattie, an Uncommon Woman

 

Omaha World-Herald | Short Stories of the West | Ghost Stories | Short Novels | Children's Stories | Miscellaneous

Lanier in the Valley

BY ELIA W. PEATTIE

[Sidney Lanier died at Lynn in the Valley of the Pacolet, N. C.]

BECAUSE Lanier looked down the purple valley,
Its beauty wears for me a deeper glow;
From the sweet gloom of shadowy recesses
Some essence of his spirit seems to flow.
Sleeping he dreamed of his beloved marshes,
Fancied he heard the ocean's organ tones,
Then waked to hear the whispering mimosas,
The laughing Pacolet among its stones.
The flute he loved to play lay idle by him,
But for his comforting the hermit thrush
Flung once his liquid song upon the silence
And left to stars and night the perfumed hush.
Night slipped to dawn, and pain merged into beauty,
Bright grew the road his weary feet had trod,
He gave his salutation to the morning,
And found himself before the face of God.
Scribner's Monthly, Nov. 1922, 72

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