Poems by Sidney Lanier

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A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master

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.

138

Sidney Lanier

The Wedding

O marriage-bells, your clamor tells

Two weddings in one breath.

SHE marries whom her love compels:

— And I wed Goodman Death!

My brain is blank, my tears are red;

Listen, O God: — "I will," he said: —

And I would that I were dead.

Come groomsman Grief and bridesmaid Pain

128

Sidney Lanier

A Song Of The Future

Sail fast, sail fast,

Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;

Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,

Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;

Sail fast, sail fast.

Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea

With news about the Future scent the sea:

My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:

190

Sidney Lanier

Nirvana

Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies,

Through seas of solitudes and vacancies,

And through my Self, the deepest of the seas,

I strive to thee, Nirvana.

Oh long ago the billow-flow of sense,

Aroused by passion's windy vehemence,

Upbore me out of depths to heights intense,

But not to thee, Nirvana.

128

Sidney Lanier

The Battle of Lexington

Now haste thee while the way is clear,

Paul Revere!

Haste, Dawes! but haste thee not, O Sun!

To Lexington.

Then Devens looked and saw the light:

He got him forth into the night,

And watched alone on the river-shore,

And marked the British ferrying o'er.

130

Sidney Lanier

Struggle

My soul is like the oar that momently

Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,

Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:

Each second I'm new-born from some new grave.

126

Sidney Lanier

A Song Of Eternity In Time

Once, at night, in the manor wood

My Love and I long silent stood,

Amazed that any heavens could

Decree to part us, bitterly repining.

My Love, in aimless love and grief,

Reached forth and drew aside a leaf

That just above us played the thief

And stole our starlight that for us was shining.

154

Sidney Lanier

The Hard Times In Elfland [A Story of Christmas Eve]

Strange that the termagant winds should scold

The Christmas Eve so bitterly!

But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,

Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew

More frontward of the mighty fire,

Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew

The heaven that Christian dogs desire —

Sidney Lanier

A Birthday Song To S G

For ever wave, for ever float and shine

Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine

Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine,

A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread

Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead,

Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o'erhead.

This vine bore many blossoms, which were years.

Their petals, red with joy, or bleached by tears,

177

Sidney Lanier

A Florida Ghost

Down mildest shores of milk-white sand,

By cape and fair Floridian bay,

Twixt billowy pines — a surf asleep on land —

And the great Gulf at play,

Past far-off palms that filmed to nought,

Or in and out the cunning keys

That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought

To edge old broideries,

115

Sidney Lanier

To Baynard Taylor

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,

O'erseeing all that man but undersees;

To loiter down lone alleys of delight,

And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,

And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white

By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,

To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,

117

Sidney Lanier

June Dreams, In January

"So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon

That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills,

In languid palpitation, half a-swoon

With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills;

"Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale

As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips

Up to the sun, that turn him passion-pale

And then as red as any virgin's lips.

128

Sidney Lanier