The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-05-29

Ici5lOuo WIItCIs Ldulcl . large dHu
deep thought took him to deepest
spiritual faiths and the vastness of
nature drew him to trust in the In
finite above us. How naturally his
great faith In God finds expression
in his Marshes of Glynn:"
"Ye lisperers, whisperers, singers in
storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths un-
der forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion
that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly. sweetheart leaves,
Oh, rain me down from your darks
that contain me
VISIONS We winnow from winds that
pain me,
sift down tremors Of sweet-within-
sweet
That advise me of more than they
bring-repeat
Me the wood smell that swiftly but
now brought breath
From the heaven-side bank of the
river of death;
Teach me the terms Of silence
preach me
The passion of patience-sift me, i'm
peach me
And there, o there,
AS We hang with your myriad palms
upturned in the air,
Pray me a myriad prayer"
With such words upon his lips Sid
ney Lanier would embrace his great
man-bodied oak in the Marshes, which
is known today as Lanier's Oak, and
with these feelings in his breast he
would worship God through nature.
Some years ago a band of pilgrims
journeyed to the holy land. Sitting
upon the Mount of Olives they dis
cussed what in all secular literature
was the supreme expression of Cal
vary. Of the forty-four pilgrims all
but two wrote Sidney Lanier's BAL
lad of 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-three had a mind to Him,
When into the woods He came.
"Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was we'll 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 ION a tree they slew him, last,
When out of the woods He came"
"His life at this time reminds up OF
Robert Louis Stevenson. Both Lanier
and Stevenson did their greatest lit
erary work while making pit'fully
brave fight for life. Each realized
they had a message for the world, and
they equally realized how short was
their time. To some of the elect OF
the earth is given the means of ex-
pressing the beautiful through the
medium of one art, but to Sidney La
nier was given the power to express
himself equally we'll in music and in
literature.
Death came all too soon, and in
1881, in North Carolina, where he
had gone in his endless search for
health, Lanier ceased to be and be-
came a beautiful memory.
How short was his day and how
slender his opportunity! From the
time he was of age he waged a con-
slant, courageous fight against physi-
cal weakness and misfortune for free
dom to live and write. Much very
dear and sweet and sympathetic help
fulness, he met in the city of his adop-
ton and from friends elsewhere, but
he could not command the time and
leisure which might have heightened
his life, and given him opportunity to
write the music and verses with
which his soul was teeming. Yet
short as was his literary life and him
dered though it was, its fruit will fill
large space in the garnering of the
poetic art of his country
The elimination of Lanier's art and
thought and spiritual force is found
in the Hymns of the Marshes" two
of which Sunrise" and 1.-THE Marshes
of Glynn" are magnificent organ
chants of dying man, never so
strong of soul as when his body hung
by thread to life. The finest of this
great series, majestic swan-song, his
Sunrise" was written when Lanier
lay so weak that he could scarcely lift
hic hand.