Quotes from 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.

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.

Music means harmony, harmony means love. Love means God.

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.

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.

When I hear music, it seems to me that all the sins of my life pass slowly by me with veiled faces, lay their hands on my head, and say softly, "My child."

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.

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?'

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

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.

Sweet Sometime, fly fast for me.

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.

I am but a small-winged bird: But I will conquer the big world As the bee-martin beats the crow By attacking it always from Above.

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

The fact is, if his majesty had been a little boy, he would have been whipped and sent to bed for the sulks;

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

Music is love in search of a word.

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.

Music is love searching for a word.

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.

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

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

Out of the hills of Habersham,Down the valleys of Hall.

Into the woods my Master went,Clean forspent, forspent.Into the woods my Master came,Forspent with love and shame.