This poem, published in `Lippincott's Magazine',
was much copied, and made him known to many admirers.
No one of these was of so much value to him as Bayard Taylor,
at whose suggestion he was chosen to write the cantata
for the opening of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia,
and with whom he carried on a correspondence so long as Mr. Taylor lived.
To Mr. Taylor he owed introductions of value to other writers,
and for his sympathy and aid his letters prove that he felt very grateful.
In his first letter to Mr. Taylor, written August 7, 1875, he says:
==
"I could never describe to you what a mere drought and famine
my life has been, as regards that multitude of matters which I fancy
one absorbs when one is in an atmosphere of art, or when one
is in conversational relation with men of letters, with travellers,
with persons who have either seen, or written, or done large things.
Perhaps you know that, with us of the younger generation in the South
since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying."
==
The selection of Mr. Lanier to write the Centennial Cantata
first brought his name into general notice; but its publication,
in advance of the music by Dudley Buck, was the occasion
of an immense amount of ridicule, more or less good-humored. It was written
by a musician to go with music under the new relations of poetry to music
brought about by the great modern development of the orchestra,
and was not to be judged without its orchestral accompaniment.
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