Southern Sketches

Southern Sketches By Charles F. Steele

II. —Sidney Lanier, a Dixie Poet As Whittier paints in vivid colors the rocky wastes of New England, with their fogs and snow storm, so does Sidney Lanier with equal faithfulness unfold to us the luxuriance of the southern forests, the serenity of southern skies, and the sweet- ness of southern song birds. In his short life of thirty-nine years, hemmed in by poverty, discouragement and ill-health, Sidney Lanier, by unquenchable courage, won an immortal place in the literature of the South. But his field does not end there. Wherever English is read, the work of Sidney Lanier has won favor. As a boy in school I read a few stray verses by Lanier. I enjoyed their music then and sought for more. My search about the village where I lived was fruitless, and so I parted company with the gifted southerner until my visit to the South, in 1917. For two "years I lived in Lanier's own state, Georgia, where I learned to love with much fervor the work of this poet. I soon perceived that he had more truthfully recorded the beauties of the South and with a more delicately attuned art, than any other of her singers. His work fascinates me. Although Sidney Lanier suffered much in his later life, his poetry betrays no trace of pessimism. Adversity failed to provoke morbidity or gloom. On the contrary, one of the out- standing characteristics of his poetry is its healthy outlook upon life, its robustness and freshness of spirit. His ideals were lofty and his art was consecrated to God and his fellowmen. Lanier's

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passion for the pure and good, his exalted estimate of the ties that hind man and woman in holy wedlock, and his devotion to the beautiful in Nature, are all reflected freely in his verse. His was a soul attuned to the infinite. A born musician, his poetry flows with that grace, delicacy, and smoothness which ever mark the work of a truly great artist. His remarkable sensitiveness to rhythmic effect, early in his life gave promise of a musical future. Without tuition, young Lanier learned to play the guitar, piano, flute, and violin. In his later life, when he became first flute in the Peabody Symphony orchestra, in Baltimore, a critic said of him:

"In his hands the flute was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration." His passion for music is expressed in the following extracts from letters written to his wife (Letters of Sidney Lanier, Chas. Scribner's Sons) It was written in 1871: :

And tonight I came out of what might have been heaven. 'Twas open- ing night of Theodore Thomas's orchestra, at Central Park Gardens, and I could not resist the temptation to go and bathe in the sweet amber seas of the music of this fine orchestra, and so I went, and tugged me through a vast crowd, and, after standing some while, found a seat, and the baton tapped and waved, and I plunged into the sea, and lay and floated. Ah! The dear flutes and oboes and horns drifted me hither and thither, and the great violins and small violins swayed me upon waves, and overflowed me with strong lavations, and sprinkled glistening foam in my face, and in among the clarinetti, as among waving water-lilies with flexible stems, 1 pushed my easy way, and so, even lying in the music-waters, I floated and floated, my soul utterly bent and prostrate.

How plainly, yet often unwittingly, we disclose our char- acters in our letters. Note the tenderness, the modesty, the heart-longing for artistic atmosphere and the determination to find it, in the following words addressed to his father, announc- ing his intention of devoting himself to literature and music:

"I have given your last letter the fullest and most careful considera- tion. After doing so I feel sure that Macon is no place for me. If you could taste the delicious crystalline air, and the charapaigne breeze that I've been rushing about in, I am equally sure that in point of climate you would agree with me that my chances for life are ten times as great here as in Macon. Then as to business, why should I, nay, how can I, settle myself down to be a third-rate struggling lawyer for the balance

of my life, as long as there is a certainty almost absolute that I can do some other things so much better? * * * My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through poverty, through pain, tfirough weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical col- lege and of a bare army, and then of an exacting business life, through all the discouragements of being wholly unacquainted with literary people — and literary ways, I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing cir- cumstances, 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

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to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees ot these two sub- lime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much bitterness" (From Letters of Sidney Lanier, Pub. by Charles Scribner's Sons).

The poetry of Sidney Lanier is prized chiefly for the new meaning it gave to southern scenery. He lived in the very heart of Nature. Even the minutest details of sound and color are described with utmost care. In striving for perfection in his poetry, Lanier thought nothing of the labor attached to its at- tainment. His description is seasoned with the warmth of his imagination, which is always of a rare order. Of the southern forests he says: "Our forests of live oak, beautifully braided and woven with intricate shades of the vine; to our broad- fronded fern and keen-leaved canes." While Lanier lived in the

Birthplace'of Sidney Lanier, Georgia's Foet Macon Ga

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Birthplace of Sidney Lanier, Macon, Ga.

South there is no excess of color or heat in his poetry. The lazy, langorous atmosphere of the tropics is wholly lacking. Lanier's love for his wife, who was Miss Mary Day, of Ma- con, and whom he married in 1867, is one of his many noble qualities. He was ever a true and affectionate husband. Lanier fortunately married a woman who had faith in his genius, and together they shared the hardships of the struggle. She never once faltered. Willingly, his wife endured every kind of trial, discomfort and discouragement that came into their lives. Their love was forged on the anvil of affliction. Much of Sidney Lanier's success, in the teeth of overwhelming odds, is due to his faithful wife, who looked, with undimmed and confident

: —

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vision, beyond the shadows, seeing beyond, the light of a better day. In his "Evening Song," (Poems by Sidney Lanier, Pub. by Chas. Scribner's Sons) Lanier tells of his love for his wife. It is an extremely beautiful poem, and is a fair sample of his short verse Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah, longer, longer, we.

Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra night drinks all. Tis done, Love, lay thy hand in mine.

Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart; Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands. O night! divorce our sun and sky apart, Never our lips, our hands.

Lanier came from a family noted for its love of music. An ancestor, Lerome Lanier, a Huguenot refugee, was well-known in Queen Elizabeth's court as a composer; another ancestor, Nicho- las Lanier, was the musical director at the court of James I, and became first marshal of the Society of Musicians incorporated at the Restoration. Lanier's mother, Mary Anderson, belonged to a famous Virginia family also noted for its tastes for music and literature. Thus by birth he inherited talents along those lines. At the time of his death Lanier was lecturer in English at Johns Hopkins University. While with that institution he wrote two recognized works. Science of English Verse, and The Eng- lish Novel. Among his poems, "The Song of Chattahoochee," is perhaps the most widely known. It displays the ripened magic of the poet's musical genius. Sidney Lanier was one of America's greatest poets. Some place him first in the ranks of southern poets. His heroic fight against a dread disease came to an end when the spirit of the poet passed to its well-earned rest, in 1881, in the mountains of North Carolina, whither he had gone to combat the disease. His poetry is still a source of endless joy; his life a source of end- less inspiration. Raymond, Canada

Canst thou be he that Yester-Sunset warm, Purple with Panim rage and wrack-desire, Dashed ravening out of a dusty lair cf storm, Hurried West, and set the world on fire? From aA Sunrise Song" Lanier.