Sidney Lanier was not really a Georgia poet
in the truest sense of the word. He traveled widely and happened
through Georgia a few times. His most famous poem, at least around
here, is The Marshes of Glynn, which is featured at the bottom of the
page after Souls and Raindrops. The legend of the poem is that Lanier
sat underneath a live oak tree and wrote the poem while overlooking
the marsh between the mainland and St. Simon's and Jekyll Islands.
The old oak tree that is named Lanier's Oak on US
Highway 17 leading into Brunswick, GA in Glynn County is the one Sidney Lanier is supposed to have sat beneath and wrote the poem. That oak is
among others in the median. Although once a tourist spot, the area is
now populated and features the usual shops with McDonald's and other
modern stores and restaurants. The picture I chose for the background
is the view of St. Simon's from the part of Jekyll Island known as
Driftwood Beach. There are pieces of driftwood in the water and a
shrimp boat in the right third of the picture (look close). Had I not used such a
wide angle lens, I would've been able to capture the St. Simon's pier
and the lighthouse. Both are featured among my aerial pictures in the
My Proposal2 section. Enjoy the poetry.
aig
Souls and Raindrops
Light raindrops fall and
wrinkle the sea,
Then vanish, and die
utterly.
One would not know that
raindrops fell
If the round sea wrinkles
did not tell.
So souls come down and
wrinkle life
And vanish in the
flesh-sea strife.
One might not know that
souls had place
Were 't not for the
wrinkles in life's face.
The Marshes of
Glynn.
Glooms of the live-oaks,
beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of
the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the
multiform boughs, --
Emerald
twilights, --
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; --
Beautiful glooms, soft
dusks in the noon-day fire, --
Wildwood privacies,
closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber
parted with wavering arras of leaves, --
Cells for the passionate
pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the
passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful
weighing of ill with good; --
O braided dusks of the oak
and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day
sun of the June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your
heart and I held you fast in mine;
But now when the noon is
no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at
the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam
down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven
that leads from a dream, --
Ay, now, when my soul all
day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease
from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and
the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters
doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to
a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the
breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like
the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue,
and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and
shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the
merciless miles of the plain, --
Oh, now, unafraid, I am
fain to face
The vast sweet visage of
space.
To the edge of the wood I
am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach
glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a
mark
To the forest-dark:
--
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning
low, --
Thus -- with your favor --
soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your
person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside,
with a step I stand
On the firm-packed
sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that
borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and
sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens
the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to
northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought
garment that clings to and follows
the firm sweet limbs of
a girl.
Vanishing, swerving,
evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach
wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to
westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how
ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of
marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a
height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in
a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of
the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the
marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems
suddenly free
From the weighing of fate
and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the
breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
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.
As the marsh-hen secretly
builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a
nest on the greatness of God:
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:
By so many roots as the
marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me
a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness
of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes,
the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large,
as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the
time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the
sea doth go
About and about through
the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have
flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed
with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and
silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver
evening glow.
Farewell, my
lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a
thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the
sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound
of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still;
and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh
are one.
How still the plains of
the waters be!
The tide is in his
ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest
height:
And it is
night.
And now from the Vast of
the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of
men,
But who will reveal to our
waking ken
The forms that swim and
the shapes that creep
Under the
waters of sleep?
And I would I could know
what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the
breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.