Author:Sidney Lanier

Sidney Clopton Lanier
(1842–1881)

Sidney Clopton Lanier

Works

Poems

Marsh Hymns

The set of poems for which Lanier is most known.

• Hymns of the Marshes
  • I. Sunrise (1880)
  • II. Individuality (1878–79)
  • III. Marsh Song—At Sunset (1879–80)
  • IV. The Marshes of Glynn (1878)

Standard works

Listed by date when they were composed.

• The Tournament (1865)
• The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson (1865)
• To J. D. H. (1866)
• Barnacles (1867)
• The Raven Days (1868)
• Corn (1874)
• My Springs (1874)
• In Absence (1874)
• On Huntingdon’s “Miranda” (1874)
• Laus Mariae (1874–75)
• Acknowledgment (1874–75)
• The Symphony (1875)
• Special Pleading (1875)
• To Charlotte Cushman (1875)
• At First. To Charlotte Cushman (1876)
• A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman (1876)
• Clover (1876)
• The Waving of the Corn (1876)
• To Beethoven (1876–77)
• The Bee (1877)
• The Stirrup-Cup (1877)
• Tampa Robins (1877)
• Song of the Chattahoochee (1877)
• From the Flats (1877)
• The Mockingbird (1877)
• The Revenge of Hamish (1878)
• To Our Mocking-Bird (1878)
• The Crystal (1880)
• To Bayard Taylor (1879)
• Rose-Morals (1875)
• Martha Washington (1875)
• To ——, with a Rose (1876)
• Psalm of the West (1876)
• An Evening Song (1876)
• The Dove (1877)
• A Florida Sunday (1877)
• Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut (1877)
• A Song of the Future (1878)
• The Harlequin of Dreams (1878)
• An Frau Nannette Falk-Auerbach (1878)
• A Song of Eternity in Time (1867, revised 1879)
• Opposition (1879–80)
• Owl against Robin (1880)
• Ode to the Johns Hopkins University (1880)
• To Dr. Thomas Shearer (1880)
• Ireland (1880)
• A Ballad of Trees and the Master (1880–81)
• To My Class: On Certain Fruits and Flowers Sent Me in Sickness (1880)
• On Violet’s Wafers, Sent Me When I Was Ill (1881)
• On a Palmetto (1880)
• A Sunrise Song (1881)
• Thou and I (1881)
• Struggle (late, undated)
• Control (late, undated)
• Marsh Hymns—Between Dawn and Sunrise (late, undated)
• The Hard Times in Elfland (1877)

The Dialect Poems

These poems were written in various dialects of the rural 19th-century South.

• Thar’s more in the Man than thar is in the Land (1869)
• Nine from Eight (1870)
• Jones’s Private Argyment (1870)
• The Power of Prayer (1875)
  • “or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama”
• Uncle Jim’s Baptist Revival Hymn (1876)
• A Florida Ghost (1877)

Street Cries

• Street Cries (1867–79)
  • Introductory stanzas (undated)
  • I. Remonstrance (1878–79)
  • II. The Ship of Earth (1868)
  • III. How Love Looked for Hell (1878–18)79
  • IV. Tyranny (1867)
  • V. Life and Song (1868)
  • VI. To Richard Wagner (1877)
  • VII. A Song of Love (undated)

Unrevised Early Poems

Some of these poems were published only posthumously.

• To —— (1863)
• The Palm and the Pine (1864)
• Spring Greeting (1864)
• The Wedding (1865)
• Wedding-Hymn (1865)
• A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. (1866) (with Clifford Lanier)
• Night and Day (1866)
• A Birthday Song. To S. G. (1866)
• To Wilhelmina (1866)
• Night (1866)
• Strange Jokes (1867)
• In the Foam (1867)
• The Jacquerie. A Fragment (1868)
• The Golden Wedding of Sterling and Sarah Lanier, September 27, 1868 (1868)
• Nirvana (1869)
• The Raven Days (1868)
• Our Hills (undated)
• Laughter in the Senate (1868)
• Baby Charley (1869)
• June Dreams, in January (1869)
• Souls and Rain-Drops (undated)
• Nilsson (1871)
• Resurrection (undated)

Derivative works

• May, the Maiden

Works about Lanier

• "Memorial" by William Hayes Ward, in Poems of Sidney Lanier (1884), edited by Mary Day Lanier
• "Lanier, Sidney," in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, by John William Cousin, London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1910)
• "Lanier, Sidney," by William Peterfield Trent in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)
• Memorial in General William Booth enters into Heaven, and other poems by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1913)
• "Lanier, Sidney," by Emilie W. McVea in The Encyclopedia Americana, New York: The Encyclopedia Americana Corporation (1920)