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Select Poems of Sidney Lanier-Part1_Sidney Lanier(1842-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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its corporate existence. In the spring of 1862 Lanier was joined

by his young brother, Clifford; and throughout the war



each seemed to vie with the other in brotherly love;

for, while both were offered promotion, neither would accept it,



since to do so would have entailed separation from the other.

The leisure time of his first year's service Sidney spent



in the study of music and the modern languages. He was engaged

in several battles in Virginia, but afterward was transferred,



with Clifford, to the Signal Service, with head-quarters at Petersburg.

Here he had access to a small library, of which he made sedulous use.



In 1863 his company was mounted, and served in Virginia and North Carolina.

In the spring of 1864 both brothers were transferred to Wilmington,



the head-quarters of the Marine Signal Service, in which they remained

to the end of the war. Finally the two brothers were separated,



each becoming signal officer* of a blockade-runner. Sidney's vessel

was captured, and for five months he was a prisoner at Point Lookout, Md.,



with nothing but his flute to solace him. It was the exposure of prison-life,

no doubt, that first led to decline of health by developing



the seeds of consumption, a disease that was to carry off his mother

and that he was to struggle with the last fifteen years of his life.



Released from prison in February, 1865, he returned to Georgia,

for the most part afoot, and reached home March 15th.



An account of his war-life is given in his novel, `Tiger-lilies',

treated below.



--

* It is sometimes erroneously stated that each was put in charge



of a blockade-runner.

--



During the succeeding nine years (1865-73) his life was checkered indeed.

Seriously ill for six weeks, he arose from his bed to see



his mother carried off by consumption and to find himself suffering

with congestion of the lungs. Slightly relieved, Lanier turned his hand



to various projects for making a living: clerking in a hotel

in Montgomery, Ala., for two years; writing* and publishing his novel,



`Tiger-lilies'; teaching at Prattville, Ala., one year, during which time**

he married Miss Mary Day, of Macon, Ga.; studying and then practising law



with his father at Macon, Ga., for five years; now, in the winter of 1872-73,

trying to recuperate at San Antonio, Texas, for hemorrhages had begun in 1868,



and a cough had set in two years later; and, finally, settling in Baltimore,

December, 1873, to devote himself to music and literature.



--

* April, 1867.



** December 19, 1867.

--



Against the son's devotion of his life to music and literature

the father protested, chiefly on business grounds, and begged him



to rejoin himself in the practice of the law. Thanking his father

for his thoughtfulness, Lanier justified his own course



in these earnest words: "My dear father, think how, for twenty years,

through poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness,



through the uncongenial atmosphere of a farcical college

and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life,



through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted

with literary people and literary ways -- I say, think how,



in spite of all these depressing circumstances and of a thousand more

which I could enumerate, these two figures of music and poetry



have steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them.

Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to have the right



to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts,

after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through



so much bitterness?"*1* Of course, the father yielded and did all

that his slender means would allow toward keeping up his son,



who henceforthdevoted every energy to music and literature.

Despite continued ill-health, which now and again necessitated



visits of months' duration to Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia,

Lanier did a vast amount of work. He was engaged as first flute



for the Peabody Symphony Concerts, a position that he filled

with rare distinction for six years. As to his literary work,






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