SOURCE: De Bellis, Jack. “Sunrise and Sunset: ‘Obedience to the Dream.’” In Sidney Lanier, pp. 126-45. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972.

In the following excerpt, De Bellis explores The Science of English Verse for Lanier's literary criticism and his discussion of the relationship between music and poetry.

In his last years Lanier matched the tuberculosis that scorched his lungs to a white-hot pen. Though he wrote in a continuous streak, he was often forced by necessity to depart from projects which might have continued the philosophical, psychological, and esthetic investigations of “The Marshes of Glynn.” In his last three years only a few poems and The Science of English Verse continued the lines of his major development. But everything he wrote still related itself directly to his dream of educating the emotions of his nation and of correcting the mistaken devaluation of feeling.

Lanier published “The Marshes of...