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.
The Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature honors significant career contribution to southern writing in drama, fiction, or poetry. The prize takes its name from Sidney Lanier, the nineteenth-century southern poet born in Macon who wrote "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and "The Marshes of Glynn." Using his name recognizes Middle Georgia's literary heritage and the long, often complicated, tradition of writing about the South. The prize is awarded to writers who have engaged and extended that tradition.
Sidney Lanier was 25 years old and living in Alabama when he wrote Tiger Lilies, his 
only novel. He was living in Macon, Georgia, when he reported to a friend on December 16, 1867:
'Tiger Lilies' is just out, and has succeeded finely in Macon. I have seen some highly complimentary criticisms in a few New York papers on the book, and what was written in illustration of a very elaborate and deliberate theory of mine about plots of novels has been mistaken for the 'carelessness of a dreamy' writer; I would I knew some channel through which to put forth this same theory.
Though better known as a poet, Lanier had yet to publish a book of poetry by this time. In his preface, the author likens a new book to a baby. Unlike a newborn child, however, the book must enter the world fully mature, ready to "grasp swordhilt with chubby fingers" to defend its very existence. "A man has seventy years in which to explain his life," he wrote, "but a book must accomplish its birth and its excuse for birth in the same instant."
Written by James Callaway for the Macon Telegraph.
Lanier is so interwoven with thoughts of music and poetry that one ceases to remember he was a Confederate soldier, suffering the hardships of war and, more than that, the horrors and sufferings of prison life at Point Lookout, Maryland.
Just graduating from Oglethorpe University, near Milledgeville, he heard the tocsin of war calling him to the front and joined the Macon Volunteers, which became a part of the 2d Georgia Battalion, serving first at Norfolk. Lanier was a gifted flutist, and in those early picnic days, "gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sallies on the James," Lanier with his flute was the joy of the occasions.
Read the complete story...Imprisonment of Sidney Lanier
The Man
Thursday, October 21, 2010 | by Emily Savage, Staff Writer | Jweekly.com
Berkeley resident is a musician, a Web guru and the father of virtual reality
In his home studio, surrounded by hundreds of exotic woodwind instruments, Jaron Lanier could be any other eccentric Berkeley musician. With fuzzy blond dreadlocks hanging down to the small of his back, the 50-year-old picks up a Middle Eastern oud and carefully plucks.
Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, on February 3, 1842, son of Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson Lanier. He attended Oglethorpe University located in Midway, Georgia, gradu- ated at age 17 and taught several years at that university, volunteered in the Confederate Army, was in the 2nd Georgia Bat- talion which included the Macon Volunteers, served on a blockade runner as a signal officer, and was captured in 1864.
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.
Lake Lanier Northeast Atlanta
Lanier County Georgia
Sidney Lanier Cottage
Lanier Elementary School, Gainesville, GA
Lake Lanier, Tryon, NC
Sidney Lanier Bridge, Brunswick, GA
Sidney Lanier Building, Glynn Academy, Brunswick, GA
Lanier's Oak, Brunswick, GA
Lanier Middle School Houston, TX
Lanier Middle School Buford, GA
Lanier Middle School Fairfax, VA
Sidney Lanier High School Montgomery, AL
Lanier High School Macon, GA (lost in fire 1967)
Lanier High School Austin, TX
Lanier High School San Antonio, TX
Sidney Lanier Elementary School, Tulsa, OK
Sidney Lanier School, Gainesville, FL
Sidney Clopton Lanier was a poet and musician born and raised in Macon, Georgia, in the decades preceding the Civil War. He was one of three children born to Robert Sampson and Mary Jane Lanier on Thursday, February 3, 1842. He had a younger brother Clifford and a sister Gertrude. Sidney was raised, as most boys were in the South at that time with a strong sense of honor and duty to his heritage in antebellum. He was a self-taught musician who learned to play a wide range of musical instruments including the guitar, flute, organ, and piano. It was his passion for music and literature that would later define his life.
Nestled in the foothills of the Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains is Lake Lanier. It was named in honor of the tribute Sidney Lanier gave to the Chattahoochee River in his poetry. In 1972 Sidney Lanier was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with an 8-cent commemorative stamp .
A postcard with an artist depiction of Sidney Lanier's birthplace in Macon, Georgia. Lanier is a favorite celebrity from Georgia. Lakes, Schools, and various monuments commemorate his name throughout the southern states. His poetry is taught in schools and discussed in literary circles still today.