Poet Sidney Lanier and the Lost Cause

As I began to write the manuscript that became my historical novel Brookhaven, I knew I would use a 19^th century poet as a kind of infusion into the story. three poets in particularly were closely associated with the Civil War – Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Sidney Lanier. A fourth – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – was a possibility. 

Whitman is the poet today we connect to the war, but he wasn’t by the people who lived the war. Herman Melville was considered by the North to be THE poet of war during the time it raged, but he would be problematic for my novel, because it was largely set in the South. In the South, Sidney Lanier only became “the Civil War poet” years after the war, and particularly after his death in 1881, and his poems were less about the war and more about the postwar period. But to use Lanier’s poems was tempting.

 

In the end, I went for Longfellow, and for several reasons. He was hugely popular before the war. His oldest son enlisted and was seriously wounded. His wife died from a tragic accident during the war. And while he had been an ardent abolitionist, Longfellow was among the few who were horrified at the human devastation wrought by the war, so much so that he regretted the role he had played in advancing radical abolition. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Poet Sidney Lanier about 1870.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Do you love me? – poem by Sarah Crowley Chestnt at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“The Combe,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: The Verdant Respite of Portugal + New Poet Laura Introduction – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Three One-Liners from Three Poets – James Sale at The Epoch Times.

The Kindness of the Trees in the Garden

This is an updated and revised version of the article that originally was published at The Master’s Artist.

We don’t read or teach much about poet Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) today, but he ranks with Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville for the poets who contributed significantly to the making of 19^th century American poetry. A native of Georgia, he fought for the South in the Civil War, and landed in a Union prison camp as a result – where he contracted the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him.

He’s known for a number of poems, including “The Symphony,” in which he wrote a part for each instrument. He loved music; it had been a major part of his childhood and music was a major influence on his poems. The year before he died, he published a study entitled The Science of English Verse, which “explored the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry.”

In his last days, he was a lecturer and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonnets, Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxon poets. A series of lectures entitled The English Novel was published posthumously. He died at age 39, and was buried in Baltimore.

This poem, “A Ballad of Trees and the Master,” was published after his death. It is the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, alone, about to be betrayed, about to be forsaken. It seems especially appropriate for the Lenten season and the upcoming Holy Week.

A Ballad of Trees and the Master

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- last
When out of the woods He came.

The Poetry Foundation has a critical essay about Lanier, and Poetry Reincarnations has published ananimated version of this poem.

Photograph: Scene from the movie “The Passion.”

The Kindness of the Trees in the Garden

He fought for the losing side in the Civil War; he spent part of the war in a Union prison camp where he contracted the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. But poet Sidney Lanier is considered by scholars to be of similar importance to 19^th century American poetry as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson and Herman Melville.

And one of the poem he write is appropriate for Holy Week. To continue reading, please see my post at The Master’s Artist.