Sidney Lanier, born February 3rd, poet of the American South, was also a storyteller, a flautist, and a professor of literature. He fought for the South during the Civil War, was taken prisoner, contracted tuberculosis during his imprisonment, and suffered from the disease for the rest of his life. After the war, Lanier taught school, moved around, taught himself to play the flute and to read the music, and became, in a minor way, famous as a flautist.

In order to support himself and his family Lanier began to write poetry. It doesn’t sound any more lucrative than the musician gig, but he managed to make a living. Poetry was more popular back in the day. One of Lanier’s most well-known poems, The Marshes of Glynn, describes the salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. An excerpt that I like very much goes like this:

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God. I really like that.

Sidney Lanier also wrote four books of stories for boys:

The Boy’s Froissart (1878), a retelling of Jean Froissart’s Froissart’s Chronicles, which tell of adventure, battle and customs in medieval England, France and Spain;
The Boy’s King Arthur (1880), based on Sir Thomas Malory’s compilation of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table;
The Boy’s Mabinogion (1881), based on the early Welsh legends of King Arthur, as retold in the Red Book of Hergest; and
The Boy’s Percy (published posthumously in 1882), consisting of old ballads of war, adventure and love based on Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

The Boy’s King Arthur is fairly easy to find, new or used and at a reasonable price, with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. I found a an old copy of The Boy’s Percy on Amazon for $18.00; it looks good in the picture, but I would be afraid to purchase it without really knowing anything about the content or condition of the book. The Boy’s Mabinogion is rather expensive for a hardcover used book. The Boy’s Froissart is available for around $15.00. Of course all of these are available in reprint editions and online, since they were published in the late nineteenth century and are now in the public domain.

I do think it would be lovely to have a set of these four books, but the only one I do have is The Boy’s Arthur. A book of Lanier’s poetry, edited and arranged for children as in the Poetry for Young People series, would be a lovely thing to have, too. But I don’t think such a thing is available.

Another poem by Mr. Lanier:

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.