Sidney Lanier

American musician and poet (1842–1881)

Died in Lynn

poet, writer, hymnwriter, organist, flautist, prose writer

Quotations with a citation

'Daring with my poem 'Special Pleading' to give myself such freedom as I desired, in my own style'

On Whitman - His poetry refreshed me like harsh salt spray.

But who will reveal to our waiting ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvelous Marches of Glynn.

Music means harmony, harmony means love. Love means God.

Sweet Sometime, fly fast for me.

O Trade, O Trade! Would thou wert dead! The time needs heart — 'tis tired of head.

And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word.

My principle is, the artist shall put forth, humbly & lovingly, without bitterness, the very best & highest that is within him,utterly regardless of contemporary criticism.

Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn.

The sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

Verse is a set of specially related sounds, repeated aloud.

The incalculable Up-and-Down of Time.

In the libraries

Open Library Knightly legends of Wales · 1881 View library record ↗ Open Library Music and poetry: essays upon some aspects and inter-relations of the two arts · 1898 View library record ↗ Open Library Poems of Sidney Lanier · 1884 View library record ↗ Open Library The Boy's King Arthur · 1880 View library record ↗ Open Library The Boy’s Froissart · 1879 View library record ↗ Open Library The Science of English Verse · 1880 View library record ↗

Read Sidney Lanier

The Boy's King Arthur 1880 Find a copy Poems of Sidney Lanier 1884 Find a copy The Science of English Verse 1880 Find a copy Music and poetry: essays upon some aspects and inter-relations of the two arts 1898 Find a copy The Boy’s Froissart 1879 Find a copy Knightly legends of Wales 1881 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

On Poe - I esteem Poe more highly than my countrymen are wont to do . The trouble with him (Poe) was, he did not KNOW enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet.

On Swinburne - He invited me to eat; the service was silver and gold, but no food therein save pepper and salt.

On William Morris - He caught a crystal cupful of the yellow light of sunset, and persuading himself to dream it wine, drank it with a sort of smile.