SOURCE: Mims, Edwin. “The Beginning of a Literary Career.” In Sidney Lanier, pp. 152-81. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905.

In the following excerpt, Mims discusses Lanier's early poetic works, including “Corn” and “The Symphony” and uses Lanier's letters to explore his growing interest in the poetic medium.

During the winter of 1873-74, the first winter in Baltimore, Lanier had, as has been seen, given his entire time to music. The only poetry he had written had been inspired by love for his absent wife,—poems breathing of the deepest and tenderest affection. Scarcely less poetical were the letters written to her giving expression to his joy in the large new world into which he was entering, and at the same time to his sense of loneliness and pain at their separation. To her and his boys he went as soon as his engagement with the Peabody Orchestra was...