Select Poems of Sidney Lanier [2]
Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand to various projects for making a living: clerking in a hotel in Montgomery, Ala., for two years; writing* and publishing his novel, `Tiger-lilies'; teaching at Prattville, Ala., one year, during which time** he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga.; studying and then practising law with his father at Macon, Ga., for five years; now, in the winter of 1872-73, trying to recuperate at San Antonio, Texas, for hemorrhages had begun in 1868, and a cough had set in two years later; and, finally, settling in Baltimore, December, 1873, to devote himself to music and literature.
-- * April, 1867. ** December 19, 1867. --
Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for 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 discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances 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 to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son, who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature. Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work, this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867, and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York. `Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia) for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice, and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor. To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata', which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure, some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems', which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2* previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore, Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879. During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order. On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse', which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness, this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts. The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing (`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees) and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him can be gathered from the following words of
-- * April, 1867. ** December 19, 1867. --
Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for 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 discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances 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 to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son, who henceforth devoted every energy to music and literature. Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work, this began with the publication of his novel, `Tiger-lilies', in 1867, and in the same year, of occasional poems in `The Round Table' of New York. `Corn', published in `Lippincott's Magazine' (Philadelphia) for February, 1875, is the first of his poems that attracted general notice, and the one that gained him the friendship of Bayard Taylor. To Taylor he owed his selection to write the `Centennial Cantata', which gave him still greater notoriety, though, to be sure, some of it was not very grateful to him. In 1876 the Lippincotts published his `Florida', and in 1877 his first volume of `Poems', which contained ninety-four pages and consisted chiefly of pieces*2* previously published in the magazines. Soon after settling in Baltimore, Lanier made a careful study of Old and Middle English, the fruits of which he partially embodied in courses of lectures given to his private class and to the public, the latter at the Peabody Institute, in 1879. During these years, too, he had been steadily turning out poems of high order. On his birthday, February 3, in 1879, he received notice of his appointment as Lecturer on English Literature at the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore for the ensuing scholastic year, with a fixed salary, the first since his marriage. In the summer of 1879 he wrote his `Science of English Verse', which constituted the basis of his first course of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. Notwithstanding serious illness, this same winter, 1879-80, he lectured at three private schools and kept up his musical engagement at the Peabody Concerts. The next winter, 1880-81, he came near dying, but still kept writing (`Sunrise' was written with a fever temperature of 104 Degrees) and went through his twelve lectures at the Hopkins, afterwards embodied in `The English Novel'. How trying this must have been to him can be gathered from the following words of