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Poem Outlines

Chapter 15: HOW TWELVE STAGS PLOWED FOR SAINT LEONOR
By Sidney Lanier
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Poetry

About This Book

The book gathers brief sketches, unfinished drafts, and lyrical fragments that reveal preoccupations with nature, music, and spiritual yearning. Short outlines and condensed images move from marshland observation and elemental forces to reflections on creative process, the struggles of artistic craft, and questions of faith. Occasional narrative openings and musical metaphors show an attempt to capture fleeting inspiration, while epigrammatic lines and hymnlike passages underline a blend of scientific curiosity and devotional feeling. Editorial notes situate these pieces as intimations of larger poems left in fragmentary form.

HOW TWELVE STAGS PLOWED FOR SAINT LEONOR

Ere yet to brakeward stole the feeding fawn,
While grave and lone about the greenwood lay
All soft seclusions of the dimmest dawn,
Forth from his hut, in heavenly airs to pray
Fared Father Leonor, wrapt with morn and God,
New-perfected in look and limb with sleep,
Fain of each friendly tree whereby he trod,
At dew-drop salutations smiling deep.
He paced the hollow towards his pleasant goal
Where burst from out a tall oak's roots a spring,
As prayer from priviest fibres of the soul
Leaps forth in loneliness. There stood a stalwart ring
Of twelve great oaks about that middle Oak,
Which uttered forth the fount, as erstwhile stood
The sweetest Twelve of time round Him who spoke
The words that watered life's long drought of good.
Straight fell the father Leonor on his knees
Down by the foot of that Christ-Oak, and cried,
My master, while they sleep, I pray for these,
My soul's dear sons, my sixty, that abide
About my cell since first my wandering feet
In these Armoric wilds were stayed: O Lord,[2]
. . . . . .

2.  "The Legend of St. Leonor" is given in full in Mr. Lanier's "Retrospects and Prospects."