He still kept before himself first his ideal
and his mission, and he longed to live that he might accomplish them.
It must have been in such a mood that, soon after coming to Baltimore,
he wrote to his wife, who was detained in the South:
==
"So many great ideas for Art are born to me each day, I am swept away
into the land of All-Delight by their strenuous sweet whirlwind;
and I find within myself such entire, yet humble, confidence
of possessing every single element of power to carry them all out,
save the little paltry sum of money that would suffice to keep us
clothed and fed in the meantime.
"I do not understand this."
==
Lanier's was an unknown name, and he would write only in obedience
to his own sense of art, and he did not fit his wares
to the taste of those who buy verse. It was to comfort his wife,
in this period of greatest uncertainty whether he had not erred
in launching in the sea of literature, that he wrote again
a letter of frankest confession:
==
"I will make to thee a little confession of faith, telling thee,
my dearer self, in words, what I do not say to my not-so-dear-self
except in more modest feeling.
"Know, then, that disappointments were inevitable, and will still come
until I have fought the battle which every great artist has had to fight
since time began. This -- dimly felt while I was doubtful
of my own vocation and powers -- is clear as the sun to me now that I KNOW,
through the fiercest tests of life, that I am in soul, and shall be
in life and utterance, a great poet.
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