Nature

In "Song of the Chattahoochee," the Chattahoochee River in Georgia describes for readers its journey, from its headspring in Habersham county to its end in Georgia's East Gulf coastal plains, where, in Lanier's time, it fed into another river that led to the Gulf of Mexico. Lanier's style in this poem copies the rushing, shifting, gurgling motion of a true river, giving readers a little bit of the experience of following the water on its journey. He gives the river a human personality, ascribing to it human motivation. This helps to make this natural phenomenon more understandable to people who are not familiar with it and to make readers who are familiar with rivers experience the feeling of them anew.

The river is introduced as being on a mission, to water the dry fields of Georgia and to turn the water wheels that power the grain mills. Similarly...