Chapter Poetry, South and North of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Other Poems, in 1875. A complete edition of his Poems appeared in 1882. Hayne was essentially a poet of romance, and succeeded admirably in his longer narrative poems and his ballads. Yet he, too, wrote, like a true nature-lover, of the pines, and the mockingbirds, and the warmth of the Southland. In spite of loneliness and poverty, his poems contain none of the sadness or melancholy so characteristic of Poe; they were tender and cheerful to the last.

Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881.

More successful than any other Southern poet except Poe in the impression of his genius on readers of verse, Sidney Lanier is gradually coming to be recognized as entitled to a place with our chief American poets. The story of his life is as pathetic as those just rehearsed, for his life, too, was colored by the shadows of ill-health and straitened circumstances which followed in the wake of war. Born in Macon, Georgia, February 3, 1842, Lanier had just completed his college course in Oglethorpe when the war broke. He flung himself into the struggle with the same ardor that sent Timrod and Hayne to the support of the Southern cause. Sidney and his brother Clifford -- two slender, gray-eyed youths, inseparable in their service of danger and hardship -- extracted all the romance to be derived from their experience. In 1863, they were on scout duty along the James; Lanier wrote later with enthusiasm of this period in their army life:--

"We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hair-breadth escapes from the roving bands of Federals. Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy."

In 1864, the brothers were transferred to Wilmington and placed as signal officers upon the blockade- runners. Here Sidney Lanier was captured and for five months was confined in the Federal prison at Camp Lookout; it well-nigh became his tomb. With emaciated frame and shattered physique the young soldier finally went home, like so many other youthful veterans, south and north, to fight for life in the coming years. With Lanier, the struggle was for both life and livelihood. He was twenty-three years old, unsettled as to his future, and under the gloom of those "raven days" of the desolated and demoralized South.

"Our hearths are gone out and our hearts are broken,"

he sang plaintively; yet he turned the plaint into a song of cheer; and he still found the romance. In 1867, he was married to Miss Mary Day, of Macon, and the poems of his wooing-time and of his wedded life are as graceful and tender as the lyrics Lowell sang to Maria White.

The Musician.

For five years Lanier tried to follow the law, and then, in 1873, gave himself to art. He went to Baltimore alone, except for his flute. Lanier's flute is as famous as Lanier; it is a part of his personality. Its mellow notes had cheered the soldier and his comrades by camp-fire and in prison; it had been softly played in many a surreptitious serenade. And it was widely known; for Lanier was a remarkable musician, and was called by many the finest flute-player in America if not in the world. Lanier's musical genius must be taken in account by the student of his verse.

So far as he could trace his ancestry, it disclosed this talent as a family possession. In the Restoration period, there were five Laniers in England who were musicians; in Charles I's time, Nicholas Lanier, who was painted by Van Dyck, wrote music for the masques of Jonson and the lyrics of Herrick; the father of this Nicholas was a musician in the household of Queen Elizabeth. Thus Sidney Lanier came naturally by his gift. In Baltimore, his flute secured him a position in the Peabody Orchestra, and furnished the means of living for several years. Theodore Thomas is said to have been on the point of making the artist first flute-player in his orchestra, when Lanier's health finally failed and he was compelled to give up the struggle.