Sidney Lanier (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician and poet.

Early life and war
Lanier was natural around Macon, Georgia. He began swimming a flute at an early age, and his love of that musical instrument continued throughout his life. He attended Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville, Georgia, graduating first within his class shortly prior to a eruption of the American Civil War.

He fought in the Civil War, primarily in the tidewater of Virginia, where he served in the Confederate signal corps. Late, he & his brother Clifford served when pilots aboard English blockade runners. In one of these voyages, his ship was boarded. Refusing to choose a advice of the British officers in board to don one of their uniforms & pretend to exist as one of the two, he was captured. He was incarcerated inside the military prison around Maryland, where he contracted tuberculosis (generally called "consumption" at the instance). He suffered greatly from either this condition for the rest of his life.

Shortly fallowing a war, he finished writing his lone novel, Tiger Lilies (1867), and married Mary Day. It took higher home inside his hometown of Macon, & he began working within his father's legal team. Fallowing ingesting & passing a Georgia bar, he good as a attorney for many years. When you took this cycle he wrote the total of verse form in the "cracker" and "negro" dialects of his day about poor white trash & blacken farmers in the Reconstruction South. He traveled extensively across southern & eastern portions of the United States in search of the remedy for his tuberculosis.

Musician
Spell on a single such journeying within Texas, he rediscovered his indigen & untaught talent for the flute and decided to travel to the northeast inside hopes of locating employment as a musician in an orchestra. Unable to call for even functiin within Future York, Philadelphia or Boston, he signed on to play flute for the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland shortly after its organization. He taught himself musical notation and quickly rose to the position of first flute player. He was famed around his day for his performances of the household composition for the flute known as "Black Birds," which mimics a song of that mintage.

Poet and scholar
Around an effort to trend lines Mary & their deuce-ace sons, he as well wrote poetry for magazines. His best known verse form were "Corn" (1875), "The Symphony" (1875), "Centennial Meditation" (1876), "The Song of the Chattahoochee" (1877), "The Marshes of Glynn" (1878) and "Sunrise" (1881). A latter deuce verse form come typically considered his greatest works. It is a portion of an bare placed of lyrical nature and severity verse form called a "Hymns of the Marshes," which describe a immense, open salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. There is a historical marker around Brunswick, Georgia commemorating the writing of his verse form A Lakes of Glynn. A big bridge within Georgia (when of 2005) occurs as short few feet away from either that location, & is known as a Sidney Lanier Bridge.

Late around his life, he became a student, lecturer &, eventually, the academician at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, specializing in the works of the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonneteers, Chaucer and the Anglo-Saxon poets. He published the series of lectures entitled A English Novel (published posthumously within 1883) and the book entitled A Science of English Verse (1880), inside which he developed a novel theory researching the modems between musical notation & meter in poetry.

Later life
Putting these theories into practice, he developed the unique style of poetry written around logaoedic dactyls, which was strongly influenced by the works of his dear Anglo-Saxon poets. He wrote many of his greatest verse form therein meter, including "The Revenge of Hamish" (1878), "The Marshes of Glynn" & "Sunrise." Around Lanier's paws, the logaoedic dactylic meter led to a yours free!-form, near prose-prefer style of poetry that was greatly admired by Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, Charlotte Cushman & other leading poets and critics of the day. The similar poetic meter was independently developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins at about a equivalent instance (no grounds to believe that it knew both more or even that either of the babies got understand any of the more's works).

Lanier likewise published essays around thomas more literary & musical topics & the notable series of quaternity redactions of literary works just about knightly combat & chivalry in modernised language more appealing to the boys of his day. ''A Son's Froissart'' (1878), the retelling of Jean Froissart's ''Froissart's Chronicles, which tell of adventure, battle and custom in medieval England, France and Spain A Son's King Arthur'' (1880), based on Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table ''A Son's Mabinogion (1881), based on a early Welsh legends of King Arthur, as retold in the Red Book of Hergest. A Son's Percy'' (published posthumously inside 1882), consisting of old ballads of war, adventure & love according to Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

He too wrote 2 travelog that were widely see at a instance, entitled Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History 1875 and Sketches of India 1876 (although he never visited India).

Lanier eventually succumbed to complications from either his tuberculosis on September 7, 1881, while convalescing sustaining his personal touching Tryon, North Carolina. He was just 39. He is buried within Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Lanier's verse form "The Marshes of Glynn" is the inspiration for the cantata per same title that was created by the modern English composer Andrew Downes to celebrate the Royal Opening of the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, England in 1986.

Lake Lanier, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers northeast of Atlanta, is named in his honor as is Lanier County, Georgia.