Sidney Lanier Sidney Clopton Lanier ( February 3 , 1842 – September 7 , 1881 ) was an American musician and poet . Biography . Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3 , 1842 , in Macon , Georgia , to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson ; he was mostly of English ancestry . His distant French Huguenot ancestors immigrated to England in the 16th century fleeing religious persecution . He began playing the flute at an early age , and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life . He attended Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville , Georgia , where 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 . He fought in the Civil War , primarily in the tidewater region of Virginia , where he served in the Confederate signal corps . Later , he and his brother Clifford served as pilots aboard English blockade runner s . On one of these voyages , his ship was boarded . 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 . He was incarcerated in a military prison at Point Lookout in Maryland , where he contracted tuberculosis ( generally known as " consumption " at the time ) . He suffered greatly from this disease , then incurable and usually fatal , for the rest of his life . Shortly after the war , he taught school briefly , then moved to Montgomery , Alabama , where he worked as a desk clerk at The Exchange Hotel and also performed as a musician . He was the regular organist at The First Presbyterian Church in nearby Prattville . He wrote his only novel , " Tiger Lilies " ( 1867 ) while in Alabama . In 1867 , he moved to Prattville , at that time a small town just north of Montgomery , where he taught and served as principal of a school . He married Mary Day of Macon in 1867 and moved back to his hometown , where he began working in his father ' s law office . After taking and passing the Georgia bar , Lanier practiced as a lawyer for several years . During this period he wrote a number of poems , using the " cracker " and " negro " dialects of his day , about poor white and black farmers in the 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 , Philadelphia , or Boston , he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore , Maryland , 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 ) , " The Marshes of Glynn " ( 1878 ) , and " Sunrise " ( 1881 ) . The latter two poems are generally considered his greatest works . They 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 on the coast of Georgia . There is a historical marker in Brunswick commemorating the writing of " The Marshes of Glynn " . The largest bridge in Georgia ( as of 2005 ) , a short distance from the marker , is named The Sidney Lanier Bridge . Later life . Late in his 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 , Shakespeare , the Elizabethan sonneteers , Chaucer , and the Anglo - Saxon poets . He published a series of lectures entitled " The English Novel " ( published posthumously in 1883 ) and 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 . Lanier finally succumbed to complications caused by his tuberculosis on September 7 , 1881 , while convalescing with his family near Lynn , North Carolina . He was 39 . Lanier is buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore . Writing style and literary theory . With his theory connecting musical notation with poetic meter , and also being described as a deft metrical technical , in his own words ' daring with his poem ' Special Pleading ' to give myself such freedom as I desired , in my own style ' and also by developing a unique style of poetry written in logaoedic dactyl s , which was strongly influenced by the works of his beloved Anglo - Saxon poets . He wrote several of his greatest poems in this meter , including " Revenge of Hamish " ( 1878 ) , " The Marshes of Glynn " and " Sunrise " . In Lanier ' s hands , the logaoedic dactylic meter led to a free - form , almost prose - like style of poetry that was greatly admired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Bayard Taylor , Charlotte Cushman , and other leading poets and critics of the day . A similar poetical meter was independently developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins at about the same time ( there is no evidence that they knew each other or that either of them had read any of the other ' s works ) . Lanier also published essays on other literary and musical topics and a notable series of four redactions of literary works about knightly combat and chivalry in modernized language more appealing to the boys of his day : He also wrote two travelogues that were widely read at the time , entitled " Florida : Its Scenery , Climate and History " ( 1875 ) and " Sketches of India " ( 1876 ) ( although he never visited India ) . Legacy and honors . Baltimore honored Lanier with a large and elaborate bronze and granite sculptural monument , created by Hans K . Schuler and located on the campus of the Johns Hopkins University . In addition to the monument at Johns Hopkins , Lanier was also later memorialized on the campus of Duke University in Durham , North Carolina . Upon the construction of the iconic Duke Chapel between 1930 and 1935 on the university ' s West Campus , a statue of Lanier was included alongside two fellow prominent Southerners , Thomas Jefferson and Robert E . Lee . This statue , which appears to show a Lanier older than the 39 years he actually lived , is situated on the right side of the portico leading into the Chapel narthex . It is prominently featured on the cover of the 2010 autobiographical memoir " Hannah ' s Child " , by Stanley Hauerwas , a Methodist theologian teaching at Duke Divinity School . Lanier ' s poem " The Marshes of Glynn " is the inspiration for a cantata by the same name that was created by the modern English composer Andrew Downes to celebrate the Royal Opening of the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham , England , in 1986 . Several places have been named for Sidney Lanier ( in order of type , then state , then city ) : Other . Piers Anthony used Lanier , his life , and his poetry in his science - fiction novel " Macroscope " ( 1969 ) . He quotes from " The Marshes of Glynn " and other references appear throughout the novel .