Sidney Lanier Quotes

“On Whitman - His poetry refreshed me like harsh salt spray.”

“Sweet Sometime, fly fast for me.”

“Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn.”

“On Swinburne - He invited me to eat; the service was silver and gold, but no food therein save pepper and salt.”

“Music means harmony, harmony means love. Love means God.”

“O Trade, O Trade! Would thou wert dead!
The time needs heart — 'tis tired of head.”

“Verse is a set of specially related sounds, repeated aloud.”

“Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.”

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

“The incalculable Up-and-Down of Time.”

“Daring with my poem 'Special Pleading' to give myself such freedom as I desired, in my own style”

“On Poe - I esteem Poe more highly than my countrymen are won't to do. The trouble with him (Poe) was, he did not KNOW enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet.”

“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.”