Prefatory Note 



• HE poet Sidney Lanier loved to swing in 

 full-muscled walks through the fields and 

 woods; to take the biggest how and quiver 

 out of the archery implements provided for 

 himself and his hrood of hoys, and with them trail- 

 ing at his heels, to tramp and shoot at rovers ; to he- 

 stride a springy horse and ride through themountaitis 

 and the valleys, noting what they were pleased to 

 show of tree and bird and heast life. He could feel 

 the honest savage instin^ of the hunter fand lose it 

 in his first sight of a stag's death-eyes J. A rare 

 bird's nest with eggs produced in him the rapture 

 vouchsafed to barbarian Boy, along zuith the divine 

 suggestions vouchsafed to the Poet. 'This may he 

 worth while to say to those of Lanier's readers who 

 may think of him as a sensitive, delicate man of 

 letters, and who ?nust see in most of his writing 

 evidences of extreme sensibility. It was this habit of 

 a practical, face-to-face conversation with nature 

 which, joined with the artist's instinrf, makes the 



