Dialects, archaic. Adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Lawyer, musician, teacher, poet. Deft metrical technical.

Free-form, almost prose-like style of poetry (similar poetical meter was independently developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Regional affection for Georgia`s first "national" poet tends on occasion to reduce Sidney Lanier`s Civil War-torn career to a tragic metaphor for the antebellum South. Generations of Georgians probably know Lanier best for his poems set in the natural surroundings of the state, such as The Marshes of Glynn and Song of the Chattahoochee. Ultimately, these much-anthologized gems of Lanier`s fitful and tragically short poetic career make up only part of an intense literary life. 

Driven by forces of circumstance and intellect, he also produced notable redactions of Froissart`s Chronicles, Malory`s tales of King Arthur, a Florida travel guide sparkling from insight and first-hand research, three provocative collections of essays on English verse, the English novel, and the theoretical identity of music and poetry. 

Born and reared in a middle-class Macon home, where he was exposed to and encouraged in the studies of literature and music, Lanier graduated from Oglethorpe University near Milledgeville. A precocious musical talent, Lanier was drawn to philosophy and Romantic poetry, but he postponed his intentions for further study to volunteer for Confederate Civil War duty. In the years that followed, Lanier worked in Georgia, Alabama and Texas as a tutor, teacher, and law clerk while writing poetry and Tiger-Lillies, his novel of the war. 

In 1873 he moved to Baltimore and there found work as a flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra and as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins. 

Later, Lippincott`s Magazine published a number of Lanier`s poems to favorable critical reception, establishing his reputation as a poet of national importance. 

Towards the end of his life, Lanier suffered from a crippling case of tuberculosis that eventually killed him at the age of 39.