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Sidney Lanier
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I lived from 1842-1881.
I was from the USA, and am in the Americas category.
I influenced poet John Bannister Tabb.
Regional affection for Georgia's first "national" poet tends on occasion to reduce Sidney Lanier's Civil War-torn career to a tragic metaphor for the antebellum South. Generations of Georgians probably know Lanier best for his poems set in the natural surroundings of the state, such as The Marshes of Glynn and Song of the Chattahoochee. Ultimately, these much-anthologized gems of Lanier's fitful and tragically short poetic career make up only part of an intense literary life.
Read full description by libs.uga.edu...
Driven by forces of circumstance and intellect, he also produced notable redactions of Froissart's Chronicles, Malory's tales of King Arthur, a Florida travel guide sparkling from insight and first-hand research, three provocative collections of essays on English verse, the English novel, and the theoretical identity of music and poetry.
Born and reared in a middle-class Macon home, where he was exposed to and encouraged in the studies of literature and music, Lanier graduated from Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville. A precocious musical talent, Lanier was drawn to philosophy and Romantic poetry, but he postponed his intentions for further study to volunteer for Confederate Civil War duty. In the years that followed, Lanier worked in Georgia, Alabama and Texas as a tutor, teacher, and law clerk while writing poetry and Tiger-Lillies, his novel of the war.
In 1873 he moved to Baltimore and there found work as a flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra and as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins.
Later, Lippincott's Magazine published a number of Lanier's poems to favorable critical reception, establishing his reputation as a poet of national importance.
Towards the end of his life, Lanier suffered from a crippling case of tuberculosis that eventually killed him at the age of 39.
Popular poetry
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
18 lines
Sail fast, sail fast,
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
13 lines
O marriage-bells, your clamor tells
Two weddings in one breath.
15 lines, 1 comment
Once, at night, in the manor wood
My Love and I long silent stood,
16 lines, 1 comment
Now haste thee while the way is clear,
Paul Revere!
80 lines
Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies,
Through seas of solitudes and vacancies,
73 lines, 3 comments
My soul is like the oar that momently
Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,
5 lines, 1 comment
For ever wave, for ever float and shine
Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine
44 lines
Down mildest shores of milk-white sand,
By cape and fair Floridian bay,
84 lines
Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
237 lines
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