In November, 1872, Lanier went to San Antonio in quest of health, which he did not find.  Incidentally, he found hitherto unrevealed depths of feeling in his “poor old flute” which caused the old leader of the Maennerchor, who knew the whole world of music, to cry out with enthusiasm that he had “never heard de flude accompany itself pefore.”

That part of his musical life which Sidney Lanier gave to the world was for the most part spent in Baltimore, where he played in the Peabody Orchestra, the Germania Maennerchor, and other music societies.  An old German musician who used to play with him in the Orchestra told me that Lanier was the finest flutist he had ever heard.

It was in Baltimore, too, that he gave the lectures which resulted in his most important prose-writings, “The Science of English Verse,” “The English Novel,” “Shakespeare and His Forerunners.”

In August, 1874, at Sunnyside, Georgia, amid the loneliness of abandoned farms, the glory of cornfields, and the mysterious beauty of forest, he wrote “Corn,” the first of his poems to attract the attention of the country.  It was published in Lippincott’s in 1875.  Charlotte Cushman was so charmed by it that she sought out the author in Baltimore, and the two became good friends.

At 64 Centre Street, Baltimore, Lanier wrote “The Symphony,” which he said took hold of him “about four days ago like a real James River ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, ever since,” which is the only way that a real poem or real music or a real picture ever can get into the world.  He says that he “will be rejoiced when it is finished, for it verily racks all the bones of my spirit.”  It appeared in Lippincott’s, June, 1875.

Lanier was at 66 Centre Street, Baltimore, when he wrote the words of the Centennial Cantata, which he said he “tried to make as simple and candid as a melody of Beethoven.”  He wrote to a friend that he was not disturbed because a paper had said that the poem of the Cantata was like a “communication from the spirit of Nat Lee through a Bedlamite medium.”  It was “but a little grotesque episode, as when a catbird paused in the midst of the most exquisite roulades and melodies to mew and then take up his song again.”

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In December of that year he was compelled to seek a milder climate in Florida, taking with him a commission to write a book about Florida for the J.B.  Lippincott Company.  Upon arriving at Tampa, he wrote to a friend: 

Tampa is the most forlorn collection of little one-story frame houses imaginable, and as May and I walked behind our landlord, who was piloting us to Orange Grove Hotel, our hearts fell nearer and nearer towards the sand through which we dragged.  Presently we turned a corner and were agreeably surprised to find ourselves in front of a large three-story house with old nooks and