without practice, and guiltless of instruction--for I had never had a
teacher. To go under these circumstances among old professional players,
and assume a leading part in a large orchestra which was organized
expressly to play the most difficult works of the great masters, was (now
that it's all over) a piece of temerity that I don't remember ever to
have equaled before. But I trusted in love, pure and simple, and was not
disappointed; for, as if by miracle, difficulties and discouragements
melted away before the fire of a passion for music which grows ever
stronger within my heart; and I came out with results more gratifying
than it is becoming in me to specify." His playing possessed an exquisite
charm. "In his hands the flute," to quote from the tribute paid him by
his director, "no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was
transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its
tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable
poetry; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it
were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights
which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees."

Henceforth Baltimore was to be Lanier's home. In addition to music, he
gave himself seriously to literature. Before this period he had written a
number of poems, limited in range and somewhat labored in manner. The
current of his life still set to music, and his poetic efforts seem to
have been less a matter of inspiration than of deliberate choice. In
literary form the influence of Poe is discernible; but in subject-matter
the sounds and colors of Nature, as in the poetry of his later years,
occupy a prominent place. Of the poems of this early period the songs for
_The Jacquerie_ are the best. Here is a stanza of _Betrayal_:--

"The sun has kissed the violet sea,
And burned the violet to a rose.