Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Person.....Lanier, Sidney ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 August 29, 2007, 3:33 pm Source: Sesquicentennial- Ledger-Enquirer Name: Sidney Lanier Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/lanier13958gph.jpg Image file size: 168.0 Kb Sidney Lanier Life Was Difficult For Sidney Lanier By James M. Gifford Guest Columnist Against the backdrop of Civil War and Reconstruction, Sidney Lanier, a native of Macon, Georgia, emerged as one of nineteenth century America's eminent Poets. He was a novelist, critic, musician, lecturer, university professor, soldier, and lawyer during his short lifetime. When the late Edd Winfield Parks delivered the Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar Lecture Series at Wesleyan College in 1968, he concluded that Sidney Lanier was one of America's "most vital and most interesting minor poets." Sidney, the son of Robert Sampson and Mary Anderson Lanier, was born February 3, 1842 in Macon, Georgia. His father was a lawyer, and his grandfather, Sterling Lanier, was a successful businessman. Sidney and his brother Clifford and sister Gertrude grew up in a serious Presbyterian household where family life and education were stressed. As a child, he showed precocious musical abilities while gaining a more general education in a local academy. He entered the sophomore class at Oglethorpe University, a staunch Presbyterian school near the state capital of Milledgeville, on January 6,1857. While enjoying his student days, Sidney belonged to the Thalian Literary Society, played the flute to entertain his classmates, and had a series of platonic romances. He matured intellectually under the influence of one of his teachers, James Woodrow, a fine young scholar who had studied under Louis Agassiz at Harvard and later graduated summa cum laude from his doctoral work at Heidelberg. Sidney graduated from Oglethorpe in the sprlng of 1860 first in his class and accepted an appointment there as tutor. That fall he decided to eventually take a doctoral degree at Heidelberg and prepare himself for life as a university professor, but Georgia seceded from the Union on January 19, 1861, and his plans were disrupted by Civil War. In July 1861 Lanier joined the Macon volunteers and, was soon transferred to Virginia, where he witnessed the famous battle between the "Merrimac" and the "Monitor." After participating In the seven days fight at Chickahominy and the battle of Malvern Hill, he and his brother transferred to the Mounted Signai Corps. He experienced more of the grim realities of war in North Carolina, and on November 2, 1864 he was captured by Union troops. Lanier spent four months as a P.O.W. in the "hell-hole" prison' at Point Lookout, Maryland, where fifteen to twenty men died daily from the deploraple conditions. The tuberculosis he inherited from both parents became worse, and he probably would have died in prison had he not made his escape through bribery. He reached Macon on March 15, 1865 exhausted, near death and delirious for parts of the next three months. The unexaggerated trauma of war and prison life pours forth in his only novel, "Tiger-Lilies." The rest of Lanier's life was a struggle for survival, yet he managed to write a number of enduring works. Following a number of tangled wartime romances, he married Mary Day on December 21, 1867. For the next seven years Lanier tried to balance his need for creativity and the pressing necessity of providing for a wife and four sons during the "dark raven days" of Reconstruction. Often he awoke hemorrhaging with his mouth full of blood, and his illnesses forced long separations from his family. His wife suffered from malaria, but in. spite of numerous problems they had an excellent marriage. Between 1867 and 1873 Lanier tried a variety of jobs. He taught in Prattvllle, Alabama. He clerked in a hotel. In July 1869 he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law. He gave several flute concerts. Most importantly, he continued to write. In addition to the strong support of his family, Lanier was reinforced by the praise of literary people like Joel Chandler Harris and Paul Hamilton Hayne. By 1873 the frustrations of being a part-time writer had taken their toll. Lanier decided not to be a "third rate struggling lawyer" for the rest of his life when he could do "other things so much better." As he told his father, he had suffered 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 discouragements of being born on the wrong side of Mason and Dixon's line and of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways" (quoted in Parks, 25-6). Lanier resolved to devote the rest of his life to literature and music. Still, much of his remaining years were spent writing "potboilers," like "Florida" and "The Boy's Froissart," to support his family. Sadly he confessed to a friend that his "head and heart" were "full of poems," but "the dreadful struggle for bread" did not give him ample time to write (quoted in Baskervill. 211). Yet he did the best he could under the circumstances and began to receive some national recognition. "Corn" and "The Symphony" were published in "Lippincott's Magazine" in 1875. He published a volume of his poetry in 1877. Two years later he was appointed lecturer in English literature at Johns Hopkins University, where he made some very interesting scientific analyses of English verse. "The Marshes of Glynn" (1878), reflecting on his native Georgia, may be his best work. In all, he wrote more than 100 poems; nature and religion were two of the dominant themes of his work. Throughout the years 1873-81 his health had been getting worse. In June 1881 he took his family to a mountain retreat in North Carolina. He was jotting down outlines for future poems and dictating to his wife until his death on September 7, 1881. Today on the Duke University campus three statues guard the southern past: Thomas Jefferson, "Statesman of the South;" Robert E. Lee. "Soldier of the South;" and Sidney Lanier, "Poet of the South." Had the circumstances of his life been more favorable, Lanier might have been a poet of the world. Song Of The Chattahoochee Out of the hills of Habersham. Down the valleys of Hall I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried Abide, abide, The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall. High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak. the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall. And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone. and the smooth brooks tone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone -Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet, and amethyst- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. Sidney Lanier Special Sesquicentennial Supplement 1 Ledger-Enquirer, Sunday, April 16, 1978 Page S-3 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/lanier13958gph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 9.2 Kb