Corn (2)

`Corn' will hold a distinct interest for those who study
the gathering forces in the author's growth: for it was the first outcome
of his consciously-developing art-life. This life, the musician's and poet's,
he entered upon -- after years of patient denial and suppression --
in September, 1873, uncertain of his powers but determined to give them wing.
His "fieldward-faring eyes took harvest" "among the stately corn-ranks",
in a portion of middle Georgia sixty miles to the north of Macon.
It is a high tract of country from which one looks across the lower reaches
to the distant Blue Ridge mountains, whose wholesome breath, all unobstructed,
here blends with the woods-odors of the beech, the hickory and the muscadine:
a part of a range recalled elsewhere by Mr. Lanier, as "that ample stretch
of generous soil, where the Appalachian ruggednesses calm themselves
into pleasant hills before dying quite away into the sea-board levels" --
where "a man can find such temperances of heaven and earth --
enough of struggle with nature to draw out manhood, with enough of bounty
to sanction the struggle -- that a more exquisite co-adaptation
of all blessed circumstances for man's life need not be sought."