Sidney Lanier Quotes & Sayings

Well: Love and Pain
Be kinfolks twain;
Yet would, Oh would I could Love again. — Sidney Lanier

Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry. I am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation. — Sidney Lanier

His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand! — Sidney Lanier

Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him
last
When out of the woods He came. — Sidney Lanier

Into the woods, my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent, Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him, When into the woods He came. — Sidney Lanier

As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree. — Sidney Lanier

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself. — Sidney Lanier

The sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West. — Sidney Lanier

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk. — Sidney Lanier

Music is love searching for a word. — Sidney Lanier

Death lieth still in the way of life, Like as a stone in the way of a brook; I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does, I will make thee into music which does not die. — Sidney Lanier

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea. — Sidney Lanier

Sweet Sometime, fly fast for me. — Sidney Lanier

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants. — Sidney Lanier

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. — Sidney Lanier

Through the seas of dreams and the seas of fantasies, through the seas of solitudes and vacancies, and through myself, the deepest of the seas, I strive to thee, Nirvana. — Sidney Lanier

O Trade, O Trade! Would thou wert dead!The time needs heart - 'tis tired of head. — Sidney Lanier

If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks. — Sidney Lanier

Leap through the Mystery of death as the circus-rider leaps through the papered hoop ... find Life ambling along beneath us on the Other Side. — Sidney Lanier

Music means harmony, harmony means love. Love means God. — Sidney Lanier

Look out, Death: I am coming.-Art thou not glad? what talks we'll have.-What memories of old battles.-Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty. — Sidney Lanier

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies,
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies. — Sidney Lanier

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?' — Sidney Lanier

Let my name perish,
the poetry is good poetry and the music is good music,
and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it. — Sidney Lanier

Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain; Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock, and together again Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain, Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. — Sidney Lanier

And yet shall Love himself be heard,Though long deferred, though long deferred:O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:Music is Love in search of a word. — Sidney Lanier