Editing Sidney Lanier (section)

==Biography==
Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in [[Macon, Georgia|Macon]], Georgia,<ref>Anderson, Charles Robert. ''Sidney Lanier: Poems and Letters''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969: 90.</ref> to parents [[Robert S. Lanier|Robert Sampson Lanier]] and Mary Jane Anderson. On his father's side he was descended of French [[Huguenot]]s.<ref>Starke 8.</ref> His middle name, "Clopton", was in honor of [[David Clopton]], a former classmate of his father's.<ref>Starke 10.</ref> He began playing the flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended [[Oglethorpe University]], which at the time was near [[Milledgeville, Georgia]], and he was a member of the [[Sigma Alpha Epsilon]] fraternity. He graduated first in his class shortly before the outbreak of the [[American Civil War]].<ref>Starke 33.</ref> He returned to Oglethorpe the next year, as a tutor, and befriended Milton Harlow Northrup, a New York native, who was a conductor at the school.<ref>Starke 38.</ref>

During the war, he served in the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] signal corps, primarily in the [[Tidewater (region)|tidewater region]] of [[Virginia]]. Later, he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English [[blockade runner]]s,<ref name="NA" /> and Lanier's ship, the ''Lucy'', was captured by the [[USS Santiago de Cuba (1861)|USS ''Santiago de Cuba'']], on November 3, 1864.<!-- Refusing to take the advice of the British officers on board to don one of their uniforms and pretend to be one of them, he was captured. --><ref>Starke 65</ref> He was incarcerated in a military prison at [[Point Lookout State Park|Point Lookout]] in [[Maryland]], where he contracted [[tuberculosis]]<ref name=hmdb >{{cite web|title=Sidney Lanier/Prattville Male and Female Academy Site|url=http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=70802|website=Historical Marker Database|access-date=24 September 2015|archive-date=March 15, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160315214757/http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=70802|url-status=dead}}</ref> (generally known as "consumption" at the time).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/lanier.html |first=Christopher T. |last=George |title=Sidney Lanier—Baltimore's Southern Poet-Musician}}</ref> He suffered greatly from this disease, then incurable and usually fatal, for the rest of his life.

[[File:Sidney Lanier.jpg|thumb|left|Sidney Lanier]]
Shortly after the war, he taught school briefly,<ref name=hmdb /> then moved to [[Montgomery, Alabama]], where he worked as a night clerk at the [[Exchange Hotel, Montgomery|Exchange Hotel]] (a hotel partly owned by his grandfather; his brother Clifford also worked there and became a part owner after the war<ref>{{cite book|last1=Blue|first1=Matthew Powers|last2=Neeley|first2=Mary Ann|title=The Works of Matthew Blue: Montgomery's First Historian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GlPUCLma3JoC&pg=PA208|year=2010|publisher=NewSouth Books|isbn=9781588380319 |page=64}}</ref>), and also performed as a musician.  He was the regular organist at the First Presbyterian Church in nearby [[Prattville, Alabama|Prattville]]. He wrote his only novel, ''Tiger Lilies'' (1867), while in Alabama.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2907 |title=Sidney Lanier |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Alabama |first=Serena |last=Blount |date=June 26, 2013 |access-date=January 25, 2017}}</ref>

This novel was partly autobiographical, describing a stay in 1860 at his grandfather's [[Montvale Springs]] resort hotel near [[Knoxville, Tennessee]].<ref>{{cite book|page=45 |last=Martin|first=C. Brenden|title=Tourism in the Mountain South: A Double-edged Sword|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jC3ag3FT0e4C&pg=PA45|access-date=2013-12-22 |year=2007|publisher=Univ. of Tennessee Press|isbn=978-1-57233-575-2}}</ref> In 1867, he moved to Prattville, at that time a small town just north of Montgomery, where he taught at a small school. He married Mary Day of Macon in 1867<ref name=hmdb /> and moved back to his hometown, where he began working in his father's law office.

After passing the Georgia bar, Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years.<ref name=hmdb /> During this period he wrote a number of lesser poems, using the "[[white cracker|cracker]]" and "[[negro]]" dialects of his day, about poor white and black farmers in the [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] South. He traveled extensively through southern and eastern portions of the United States in search of a cure for his tuberculosis.

While on one such journey in [[Texas]], he rediscovered his native and untutored talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast in hopes of finding employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to find work in New York City, [[Philadelphia]], or [[Boston]], he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in [[Baltimore, Maryland]],<ref name=hmdb /> shortly after its organization. He taught himself [[musical notation]] and quickly rose to the position of first flautist. He was famous in his day for his performances of a personal composition for the flute called "Black Birds", which mimics the song of that species.

In an effort to support Mary and their three sons, he also wrote poetry for magazines. His most famous poems were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877),<ref name=hmdb /> "[[The Marshes of Glynn]]", (1878)<ref name=hmdb /> "[[A Sunrise Song]]" (1881), and "[[Evening Song (poem)|Evening Song]]" (1884).<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Evening song {{!}} Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands {{!}} LiederNet |url=https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=21080 |access-date=2024-02-10 |website=www.lieder.net}}</ref> These poems are generally considered his greatest works, and have been set to music by many composers, including [[Charles Tomlinson Griffes]] and [[Grace W. Root]].<ref name=":0" /> "The Marshes of Glynn" and "A Sunrise Song" are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the "Hymns of the Marshes", which describe the vast, open [[salt marshes]] of [[Glynn County, Georgia|Glynn County]] on the coast of Georgia. (The [[Sidney Lanier Bridge|longest bridge in Georgia]] is in Glynn County and is named for Lanier.)

===Later life===
Later in his short 39-year life, he became a student, lecturer, and, finally, a faculty member at the [[Johns Hopkins University]] in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists,<ref name=hmdb /> [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], the [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] [[Sonnet#English (Shakespearean) sonnet|sonneteers]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]], and the [[Old English literature#Poetry|Old English poets]]. He published a book entitled ''The Science of English Verse'' (1880) in which he developed a novel theory exploring the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry. In 1883, a posthumous collection of lectures, entitled ''The English Novel and Its Principle of Development'' was published.

[[File:Death house of Sidney Lanier.jpg|thumb|right|The house in which Lanier died.]]
[[File:Grave of Sidney Lanier.jpg|thumb|Memorial stone for Lanier.]]
Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis<ref name=hmdb /> on September 7, 1881, while convalescing with his family near [[Lynn, North Carolina]]. He was 39. He is buried in [[Green Mount Cemetery]] in Baltimore.