Sidney Lanier Quotes

His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand!

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?'

Leap through the Mystery of death as the circus-rider leaps through the papered hoop ... find Life ambling along beneath us on the Other Side.

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.

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.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.

Sweet Sometime, fly fast for me.

Death lieth still in the way of life, Like as a stone in the way of a brook; I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does, I will make thee into music which does not die.

Look out, Death: I am coming.-Art thou not glad? what talks we'll have.-What memories of old battles.-Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.

As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree.

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry. I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation.

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.

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.

The sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West.

My priciple is, the artist shall put forth, humbly & lovingly, without bitterness, the very best & highest that is within him,utterly regardless of contemporary criticism.

Well: Love and Pain
Be kinfolks twain;
Yet would, Oh would I could Love again.