The Poems of Sidney Lanier | Page 5

to settle is merely, by what method shall
I ascertain what I am fit for, as preliminary to ascertaining God's will
with reference to me; or what my inclinations are, as preliminary to
ascertaining what my capacities are, that is, what I am fit for. I am more
than all perplexed by this fact, that the prime inclination, that is, natural
bent (which I have checked, though) of my nature is to music; and for
that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it me,
I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that
I could rise as high as any composer. But I cannot bring myself to
believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a
business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might
do. Question here, What is the province of music in the economy of the
world?"
==
Similar aspirations he felt at this early age, probably eighteen, for grand
literary labor, as the same note-book would bear witness. We see here
the boy talking to himself, a boy who had found in himself a standard
above anything in his fellows.
The breaking out of the war summoned Sidney Lanier from books to
arms. In April, 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army,
with the
Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion,
the first military
organization which left Georgia for Virginia. From his childhood he
had had a military taste. Even as a small boy he had raised a company
of boys armed with bows and arrows, and so well did he drill them that
an honored place was granted them in the military parades of their
elders. Having volunteered as a private at the age of nineteen, he
remained a private till the last year of the war. Three times he was
offered promotion and refused it because it would separate him from
his younger brother, who was his companion in arms, as their
singularly tender devotion would not allow them to be parted. The first
year of service in Virginia was easy and pleasant, and he spent his
abundant leisure in music and the study of German, French, and
Spanish. He was in the battles of Seven Pines, Drewry's Bluffs, and the
seven days' fighting about Richmond, culminating in the terrible
struggle of Malvern Hill. After this campaign he was transferred, with
his brother, to the signal service, the joke among his less fortunate

companions being that he was selected because he could play the flute.
His headquarters were now for a short period at Petersburg, where he
had the advantage of a small local library, but where he began to feel
the premonitions of that fatal disease, consumption, against which he
battled for fifteen years. The regular full inspirations required by the
flute probably prolonged his life. In 1863 his detachment was mounted
and did service in Virginia and North Carolina. At last the two brothers
were separated, it coming in the duty of each to take charge of a vessel
which was to run the blockade. Sidney's vessel was captured, and he
was for five months in Point Lookout prison, until he was exchanged
(with his flute, for he never lost it), near the close of the war. Those
were very hard days for him, and a picture of them is given in his
"Tiger Lilies", the novel which he wrote two years afterward. It is a
luxuriant, unpruned work, written in haste for the press within the
space of three weeks, but one which gave rich promise of the poet. A
chapter in the middle of the book, introducing the scenes of those four
years of struggle, is wholly devoted to a remarkable metaphor, which
becomes an allegory and a sermon, in which war is pictured as "a
strange, enormous, terrible flower," which "the early spring of 1861
brought to bloom besides innumerable violets and jessamines." He tells
how the plant is grown; what arguments the horticulturists give for
cultivating it; how Christ inveighed against it,
and how its shades are
damp and its odors unhealthy;
and what a fine specimen was grown
the other day in North America by "two wealthy landed proprietors,
who combined all their resources of money, of blood, of bones, of tears,
of sulphur, and what not, to make this the grandest specimen of modern
horticulture." "It is supposed by some," says he, "that seed of this
American specimen (now dead) yet remains in the land; but as for this
author
(who, with many friends, suffered from the unhealthy odors of
the plant), he could find it in his heart to wish fervently that this seed, if
there be verily any, might perish in the germ, utterly out of sight and
life and memory, and out