Poe knew men as little as he knew any of the other every-day facts of life.  In the depths of that ignorance he left his reputation in the hands of the only being he ever met who would tear it to shreds and throw it into the mire.

“The sunrise poet”

SIDNEY LANIER

In my memory-gallery hangs a beautiful picture of the Lanier home as I saw it years ago, on High Street in Macon, Georgia, upon a hillock with greensward sloping down on all sides.  It is a wide, roomy mansion, with hospitality written all over its broad steps that lead up to a wide veranda on which many windows look out and smile upon the visitor as he enters.  One tall dormer window, overarched with a high peak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest.  Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of the high-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting.  There are tall trees in the yard, bending a little to touch the old house lovingly.

Far away stretched the old oaks that girdled Macon with greenery, where Sidney Lanier and his brother Clifford used to spend their schoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits.  Near by flows the Ocmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the more serious aspects of life, were wont to fish.  Here Sidney cut the reed with which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods.  Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed in after life.

Macon was the “live” city of middle Georgia.  She made no effort to rival Richmond or Charleston as an educational or literary centre, but she had an admirable commercial standing, and offered a generous hospitality that kept her in fond remembrance.  In the Macon post-office Sidney Lanier had his first business experience, to offset the drowsy influence of sleepy Midway, the seat of Oglethorpe College, where he continued his studies after completing the course laid out in the “’Cademy” under the oaks and hickories of Macon.

January 6, 1857, Lanier entered the sophomore class of Oglethorpe, where it was unlawful to purvey any commodity, except Calvinism, “within a mile and a half of the University”—­a sad regulation for college boys, who, as a rule, have several tastes unconnected with religious orthodoxy.

Lanier carried with him the “small, yellow, one-keyed flute” which had superseded the musical reed provided by Nature, and practised upon it so fervently that a college-mate said that he “would play upon his flute like one inspired.”

Montvale Springs, in the mountains of Tennessee, where Sidney’s grandfather, Sterling Lanier, built a hotel in which he gave his twenty-five grandchildren a vacation one summer, still holds the memory of that wondrous flute and yet more marvellous nature among the “strong, sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins’ hearts.”  From its ferns and mosses and “reckless vines” and priestly oaks lifting yearning arms toward the stars, Lanier returned to Oglethorpe as a tutor.  Here amid hard work and haunting suggestions of a coming poem, “The Jacquerie,” he tried to work out the problem of his life’s expression.