Select Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 1

Select Poems of Sidney Lanier.

Edited by Morgan Callaway.

Preface

This edition of the 'Select Poems of Sidney Lanier' is issued in the hope of making his poetry known to wider circles than hitherto, especially among the students of our high-schools and colleges.

To these as to older people, the poems will, it is believed, prove an inspiration from the stand-point both of literature and of life.

The biographical section of the Introduction rests in the main upon Dr. Ward's admirable 'Memorial' prefixed to the 'Poems of Sidney Lanier'

edited by his wife, though a few additional facts have been gleaned here and there. For most* of the Bibliography down to 1888 I am indebted to my Hopkins comrade, Dr. Richard E. Burton, now of Hartford, Conn., who compiled one for the 'Memorial of Sidney Lanier', published by President Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins University, in 1888.

Obligations to other publications about Lanier are in every instance acknowledged in the appropriate place.

-- * I say 'most of the Bibliography down to 1888', because Dr. Burton's different purpose led him to exclude items that could not be omitted in a Bibliography that, like mine, tries to be complete.

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As to the selections made, I wished to include 'The Marshes of Glynn'

and yet not to exclude 'Sunrise'. But both could not be put in, and I finally gave the preference to 'Sunrise', chiefly on the ground of its being Lanier's latest complete poem.* I believe all will admit that the poems selected fairly exemplify the genius of the poet.

The poems are arranged, not as in the complete edition, but in their chronological order, the only proper one, I think, for a text-book. Of course, they are all given complete.

-- * Later opinion generally agrees that "The Marshes of Glynn"

is Lanier's greatest poem, and as this edition has no limitations of s.p.a.ce, it would be inappropriate to exclude it. Therefore it has been inserted more or less in chronological order (in accordance with Callaway's plan), with some comments. -- Alan Light, 1998.

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In the Notes I have made rather copious quotations from poems familiar to English scholars, because I hope that this book will go into the hands of many to whom they are not familiar, and to whom the original texts are not easily accessible.

And yet, if they at all attain their end, the Notes must lead one to wish to know more of English poetry, of which Lanier's is but a part.

Among the friends that have helped me by counsel or otherwise I gratefully name Mr. Clifford Lanier, brother of the poet; Professor Wm. Hand Browne, of the Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Charles H. Ross, of the Alabama Polytechnic Inst.i.tute; and my colleagues in the School of English in the University of Texas, Mr. L. R. Hamberlin and Professor Leslie Waggener.

Chief-justice Logan E. Bleckley, of Georgia, a man of letters as well as of law, very kindly put at my use his correspondence with the poet, the original draft of 'Corn', and his criticisms upon the same.

My chief indebtedness, however, is to Mrs. Sidney Lanier, who has been most generous with her time and her husband's papers.

Morgan Callaway, Jr.

University of Texas, October 1, 1894.

Introduction

I. A Brief Sketch of Lanier's Life

(1842-1881)

Sidney Lanier has so recently pa.s.sed from us that it seems desirable briefly to recount the chief incidents of his life. This task is much lightened by Dr. Wm. Hayes Ward's 'Memorial',* upon which, as stated in the Preface, is based this section of my essay.

Born at Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842, Sidney Lanier came of a family noted for their love and cultivation of the fine arts.

From the time of Queen Elizabeth to the Restoration, several of his paternal ancestors were connected with the English court as musical composers and as painters. The father of the poet, however, Robert S. Lanier, was a most industrious lawyer, who, after a lingering illness of three years, recently** answered 'Adsum'

to the summons of the supreme tribunal. The poet's mother, Mary Anderson, a Virginian of Scotch descent, likewise sprang from a family distinguished for their love of oratory, music, and poetry.

-- * For the full t.i.tle of works cited see 'Bibliography'.

** October 20, 1893, at Macon, Ga.

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With such an ancestry we are not surprised to learn that Sidney's earliest pa.s.sion was for music, and that in boyhood he could, although untutored, play on almost every kind of instrument. He preferred the violin, in playing which he sometimes sank into a deep trance, but in deference to his father's view gave it up for the flute, his power over which we shall hear of farther on. At first, strange to say, he considered music unworthy of one's sole attention, but later he came to rank it as his fullest expression of worship.

At fourteen Sidney entered the Soph.o.m.ore Cla.s.s of Oglethorpe College, near Macon, Ga., and, with a year's intermission, graduated with first honor in 1860, when just eighteen. To Professor James Woodrow, of Oglethorpe, now President of South Carolina College, Lanier declared that he owed "the strongest and most valuable stimulus of his youth."

On graduating he was given a tutorship in his Alma Mater, a position that he held until the outbreak of the Civil War.

The lecture-room was now exchanged for the battle-field; in April, 1861, Lanier entered the Confederate Army as a private in the Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion, an organization among the first to reach Norfolk and that still keeps up its corporate existence. In the spring of 1862 Lanier was joined by his young brother, Clifford; and throughout the war each seemed to vie with the other in brotherly love; for, while both were offered promotion, neither would accept it, since to do so would have entailed separation from the other.

The leisure time of his first year's service Sidney spent in the study of music and the modern languages. He was engaged in several battles in Virginia, but afterward was transferred, with Clifford, to the Signal Service, with head-quarters at Petersburg.

Here he had access to a small library, of which he made sedulous use.

In 1863 his company was mounted, and served in Virginia and North Carolina.

In the spring of 1864 both brothers were transferred to Wilmington, the head-quarters of the Marine Signal Service, in which they remained to the end of the war. Finally the two brothers were separated, each becoming signal officer* of a blockade-runner. Sidney's vessel was captured, and for five months he was a prisoner at Point Lookout, Md., with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison-life, no doubt, that first led to decline of health by developing the seeds of consumption, a disease that was to carry off his mother and that he was to struggle with the last fifteen years of his life.

Released from prison in February, 1865, he returned to Georgia, for the most part afoot, and reached home March 15th.

An account of his war-life is given in his novel, 'Tiger-lilies', treated below.

-- * It is sometimes erroneously stated that each was put in charge of a blockade-runner.

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During the succeeding nine years (1865-73) his life was checkered indeed.

Seriously ill for six weeks, he arose from his bed to see his mother carried off by consumption and to find himself suffering with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand to various projects for making a living: clerking in a hotel in Montgomery, Ala., for two years; writing* and publishing his novel, 'Tiger-lilies'; teaching at Prattville, Ala., one year, during which time**

he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga.; studying and then practising law with his father at Macon, Ga., for five years; now, in the winter of 1872-73, trying to recuperate at San Antonio, Texas, for hemorrhages had begun in 1868, and a cough had set in two years later; and, finally, settling in Baltimore, December, 1873, to devote himself to music and literature.

-- * April, 1867.

** December 19, 1867.

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Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life, through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circ.u.mstances and of a thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures of music and poetry have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them.

Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son, who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature.

Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work, this began with the publication of his novel, 'Tiger-lilies', in 1867, and in the same year, of occasional poems in 'The Round Table' of New York.

'Corn', published in 'Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia) for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice, and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor.

To Taylor he owed his selection to write the 'Centennial Cantata', which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure, some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published his 'Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of 'Poems', which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2*

previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore, Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private cla.s.s and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Inst.i.tute, in 1879.

During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order.

On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his 'Science of English Verse', which const.i.tuted the basis of his first course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness, this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts.

The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing ('Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees) and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied in 'The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him can be gathered from the following words of Mr. Ward: "A few of the earlier lectures he penned himself; the rest he was obliged to dictate to his wife. With the utmost care of himself, going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture, his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath in the carriage on his return seemed each time to threaten the end.

Those who heard him listened in a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt whether the h.o.a.rded breath would suffice to the end of the hour."*3*

After this a trip was made to New York to arrange for issuing some books for boys, and four were issued, two posthumously: 'Boy's Froissart' (1878), 'Boy's King Arthur' (1880), 'Boy's Mabinogion' (1881), and 'Boy's Percy' (1882). Another work, an account of North Carolina similar to that of Florida, was contracted for and was definitely planned, but, owing to aggravating infirmities, could not be completed.

-- *1* Ward's 'Memorial', p. xx. f.

*2* They are named in the 'Bibliography'.

*3* Ward's 'Memorial', p. xxviii.

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For the end was near at hand. Desperate illness had made it necessary to seek relief near Asheville, N.C., where he was joined by Mrs. Lanier and by his father and step-mother. Growing no better, he was moved to Lynn, Polk County, N.C. Of the rest we shall hear in the words of his wife: "We are left alone (it is August 29, 1881) with one another. On the last night of the summer comes a change.

His love and immortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to the will of G.o.d."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."**

The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried in Greenmount Cemetery, in the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull, two of the dearest friends that Mr. and Mrs. Lanier had in Baltimore.