The current Prattville Primary School was built in 1927, replacing the former Prattville Male and Female Academy. Sidney Lanier was principal and teacher at that school in 1867-1868. There is no indication when the plaque was placed, but it appears to have been there for many years. The Prattville Primary School is located on Wetumpka Road near the corner of North Washington Street.
Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842. During the Civil War he contracted tuberculosis in a Federal prison and it led to his death at 39 in 1882.
The following excerpt from the biography on the poets.org site tells of the poetry for which he is remembered:
November 20, 2012 | by Bartee Haile
This Week in Texas History: A column by BARTEE HAILE
A sick southern artist came to Texas on Nov. 27, 1873 to clear his lungs and his head.
Restored in body and soul after a long rest in San Antonio, Sidney Lanier went home to make the most of his talents.
Genius was in the Georgian’s genes. Generations of Laniers entertained the English monarchy as court composers and musicians before emigrating to America in the early 1700’s.
Almost a century and a half later, Sidney inherited the remarkable family flair for music. At the age of seven he mimicked song birds with a riverbank reed and easily mastered his first real instrument, a tiny flute.
by Sidney Lanier
To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song;
Through that vague wafture, expirations strong
Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long
With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring
And ecstasy of burgeoning.
Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry,
Forth venture odors of more quality
And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry,
Long muscadines
Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines,
And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines.
I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy
That hide like gentle nuns from human eye
To lift adoring perfumes to the sky.
I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green
Dying to silent hints of kisses keen
As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen.
I start at fragmentary whispers, blown
From undertalks of leafy souls unknown,
Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.
Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between
Old companies of oaks that inward lean
To join their radiant amplitudes of green
I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass
Up from the matted miracles of grass
Into yon veined complex of space
Where sky and leafage interlace
So close, the heaven of blue is seen
Inwoven with a heaven of green.
by Sidney Lanier
How tall among her sisters, and how fair, -- How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands! In four brief cycles round the punctual sun Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
AJC - Friday, February 3, 2012, 4:20 pm
By Michael BishopI work in one of Atlanta’s tall buildings, looking out every day at this sprawling, new city. From up here, Atlanta doesn’t look like it has much of a visible past. Not that I’m surprised. Atlantans are used to the idea that our city is about “now,” not “then.” Our civic ethos values newness, bigness and the leading edge. Dating back to the 19th century, we’ve considered ourselves an unsentimental, brash city on the move.
The scale of Atlanta’s landmarks puts this in perspective. Other cities count their sports stadiums as an ultimate mark of status. We build stadiums, for sure, but we build them for the Olympics; we build subway networks and cavernous new water systems and grand, looping beltlines. We think big.
It’s a relief, then, occasionally to consider the small public places that offer peace and calm amid the vastness of this great, striving city. And it’s a particularly satisfying moment when it’s a spot that has been reclaimed as a part of Atlanta’s once-lost past.
Today in Piedmont Park, a group of Atlantans will gather at a modestly scaled classical pedestal to mark one small monument’s happy homecoming. A 100-year odyssey has come full circle. After decades of neglect, disregard and vandalism, three prankish thefts and recoveries, and a peaceful 30 years in the custody of Oglethorpe University, Sidney Lanier’s bronze bust is being returned — bolted tightly — back into its original beaux-arts niche.
In 1914, when the monument was first dedicated to the South’s great Romantic poet, it was a welcome grace note in the city’s fresh landscape: an understated ornament that nevertheless reflected a forming ambition to create a more beautiful community and more consciously “civic” city. It was, in its way, an expression of Atlanta’s pride and prospects. But it was not big.
My, how times change. These days, our civic improvements seem automatically to bring out a line of rumbling earthmovers. Bonds are issued and the enormous work unfolds. Somewhere in this relentless narrative of supersized progress, though, there must be room for preserving our past.
Small historic monuments are a paradox. They often mark large and supremely admirable things: a great life, a momentous event, a noble idea whose time has come. They tell a history of the things we’ve esteemed over time and they give our city an infrastructure of memory and identity. They are worth reclaiming and celebrating.
I once read a story about a large project that was admiringly remarked as being, like the Great Wall of China, “visible from space.” Atlanta has plenty of these, and they serve their purposes. Yet, in our day-to-day lives, it’s the stuff that’s “visible from 10 feet” that has more meaning. These are the small places where remembrance and landscape unite to create the soul and scale of a great community: modest landmarks of our history that surprise and delight us in the big city. Maybe not from 40 stories up, but certainly at people level, where the ordinary senses can supply their own heights.
Michael Bishop, a lawyer, is a trustee of the Atlanta Preservation Center.