Sidney Lanier . Org - Poet News and Stories

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Sidney Lanier's Flute

Sidney Lanier's Flute, From Montgomery Daily Advertiser, Sept. 25, 1883. [Observer]

"It was at Point Lookout [a federal prison for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War], twenty years ago, that I made the acquaintance of Sidney Lanier. We were in the Confederate service, and both, though running at different times, had been captured at sea by a blockade boat. I was the first to encounter my fate, and had been some weeks a prisoner when he was brought in.

"It was a trying time, the midsummer season, and the 'long, yellow days,' as one poor fellow termed them, made the hospitals full and death rates appalling. Late one evening I heard from our tent the clear sweet notes of a flute in the distance, and I was told that the player was a young man from Georgia, who had just come among us. I forthwith hastened to find him out, and from that hour the flute of Sidney Lanier was our daily delight. It was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and comfort us.

"Well I remember his improvisations, and how the young artist
picture sidney stood there in the twilight (it was his custom to stand while he played) breathing what seems to me now the first dream of his wonderful 'Marsh Hymns.' Many a stem eye moistened to hear him, many a homesick heart for a time forgot his captivity. The night sky clear as a dewdrop above us, the waters of the Chesapeake [Bay] far to the east, the long gray beach and the distant pines, seemed all to have found an interpreter in him....

"His music embodies the charm of his verse, the same deep, wave like passionate swell of the long full line. His 'Magic Flute' was his soul's mouthpiece for many a year before he wrote poetry. In all these dreary months of imprisonment, under the keenest privations of life, exposed to the daily manifestations of want and depravity, sickness and death, his was the clear hearted, hopeful voice that sang these words in after years:

'Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.'

"We lived as fellow prisoners for more than six months, and at the end of that time were exchanged together. The boat that brought us to Aiken's Landing was delayed for some time before reaching the wharf. While we were very impatiently waiting, a steamer from Richmond came alongside and someone called out to a man on our deck to inquire if Sidney Lanier was on board. The flute had betrayed its master again; but this time it told of a captive's release."

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