Terry Kay: The Year the Lights Came On (1976)

Some reviews have described this as a coming-of-age book, which it certainly is, although William J. Scheick's twelve-page Afterword in this Brown Thrasher Books (University of Georgia Press) edition seems to be talking about a more complex novel than is often the case in the genre.

The Year the Lights Came On (1976) was Terry Kay's first novel and is set in north-east Georgia where he was born in 1938, and Kay has obviously drawn on a few geographical elements to create this non-autobiographical work. Most of the novel takes place in 1947, and the eleven-year-old Colin Wynn is the first person narrator with the other main characters still of school age. Colin belongs to the Our Side Gang, whose homes don't have electricity, although the nearby families with children in the Highway 17 Gang do, and there is constant rivalry between them. But in 1947 Colin's community will be visited by the Rural Electricity Administration (REA) to introduce electric power, which of course will be a major change to those families whose homes have hitherto been lit by kerosene lamps.

Most of the events in the book concern the conflicts between the  young people in the 'have' and the 'have-not' gangs before REA finishes its work at the end, and this includes the superficially transgressive but sexually innocent love affair between the route-crossed lovers Colin and Megan.

The above word 'transgressive' is relevant to other areas because, as Scheick notes, boundaries are important in this novel: not just geographical or social, but there are limits transcribed by age and technology – how much time and science give, and how much they take away.

The coming of electricity to a hitherto kerosene-lit, battery-operated society brings loss as well as gain, and as the two societies homogenize, Colin realizes that greater comfort has replaced the intangible security of isolation.

But the changes experienced in a person's life aren't only technological: life itself is movement, but in which direction? The more we move into the future, the more past we have, and the less future there remains. However, there's a tendency for us to want to retain that escaping past, perhaps at the expense of living in the future. As Colin's elder brother Wesley used to say, and which becomes the final sentence of the book: 'The problem with walking backward, is that you only see where you've been'. The most interesting character in the book is Dover, an adult who seems to have resolved this paradox by refusing to grow up, and he lives in a timeless, much freer world. This is how Colin describes it:

'He was all of Yesterday, all of Today, all of Tomorrow, bits and pieces of all he had been, all he was, all he would ever be.'

Dorothy Allison: Cavedweller (1998)

Like Reynolds Price, Dorothy Allison comes from North Carolina. And like Price's first novel A Long and Happy Life, which I wrote about here, Allison's Cavedweller begins with a motorcycle, a macho guy riding with a young woman behind him. The difference, though, is that the ride in Price's novel leads to a funeral, whereas the ride in Allison's novel causes a funeral.

The state is California and the dead man is the rock singer Randall Pritchard, who - before becoming too reckless – had lived with Delia Byrd, who had run away from her abusive husband Clint in Georgia.

Delia then decides to leave Venice Beach, where she lives with Cissy – her young daughter by Randall – to return to Georgia, where Amanda and Dede, the two daughters she had by her husband – are living with her mother-in-law.

So Delia drives Cissy across America, away from a rock-and-roll lifestyle in coastal California to smalltown Cayro, which like Cairo, GA, is some way off the I–75, although this is fictional and north of Atlanta, and the nearest town is Marietta.

The novel charts Delia's painful progress through the still extant perceptions – on the part of most of the population – of psychological damage of her own making, through living with her three daughters and for a short time with Clint, whom – teeth firmly gritted – she nurses through the terminal stages of cancer.

And as the years pass, the attention shifts to the development of the daughters, all of whom are very different: Amanda, a religious fanatic, marries another religious fanatic; Dede loves Nolan, but will only ever live with him unmarried as she fears love dies after marriage; and Cissy - surely by no means the only  'cavedweller' of the title, as this must be multi-layered – has an increasingly serious interest in speology, and will return to California to try her hand at studying a related university subject.

But to return to the comparison between Reynolds and Allison: when Dede shoots Nolan in a fit of jealous madness, Delia says: 'What did I ever teach you but how dangerous love is?' The line might have come straight out of a Reynold Price novel, as a central theme in his novels is that love often kills (although in this case, Nolan survives).

And another major theme of Reynolds's is how genetic traits are passed on from generation to generation. In Cavedweller, Delia also tells Dede, in the same scene: '[I]f you want to know a man's heart, look at his mama. Look into her eyes, not his. That will show you what to expect.'

Raymond Andrews and Madison, Georgia

The Fall 2010 edition of The Georgia Review is almost exclusively devoted to the African American novelist Raymond Andrews (1934-91) from near Madison, Georgia, who is a neglected writer for no reason that I can understand: he's very readable, and very interesting, and is most noted for his trilogy Appalachee Red (1978), Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee (1980), and Baby Sweet's (1983).

This link to The New Georgia Encyclopedia  gives an introduction to Andrews's work, and is written by Philip Lee Williams, whose more detailed article on his friend is in The Georgia Review Fall 2010.

Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the Old South: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #23

Willard Neal's Georgia's Stone Mountain (late 1970s?) is an interesting booklet about the history of the carving on Stone Mountain, which is 90ft tall and 190ft wide, 400ft above the ground, originally conceived in 1915 and completed in 1970.

In 1915, The United Daughters of the Confederacy consulted Gutzon Borglum - who had erected a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and who became very interested in the huge block of granite - about a Confederate monument. World War I prevented any progress on the monument, and although Borglum wanted to continue with his task afterward, disagreements forced him to leave Georgia in 1925, to pursue different work on the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota. Augustus Lukeman continued work on the Stone Mountain monument in 1925.

One of the many signs proclaiming that this is Stone Mountain Park.

The block of granite from a distant viewpoint.

And the same view close up.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

General Robert E. Lee.

General Thomas J. 'Stonewall' Jackson.

Blackjack, Davis's favorite horse, is at top, and Traveller (with the British spelling), Lee's favorite horse, at the bottom.

Little Sorrel, Jackson's favorite horse.

Literary Landmarks of the Southern States: A Second Tour

The small city of Hapeville, Georgia, which is very close to Atlanta and just on the edge of Hartsfield-Jackson airport, marks the beginning of our second tour of the American South. It's a convenient place to begin such an enterprise, as the I-75 (which runs through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the non-Southern states Ohio and Michigan) is at the eastern extremity of the city. This marker shows a representation of a steam train and the date 1891 because the railroad depot was dedicated a year before Hapeville was chartered in 1891. Much literary stuff to follow in due course.

Frances Newman (1883-1928) - Southern Writer of Brilliance

Frances Newman (1883-1928) was born in Atlanta, GA, and is hardly remembered now, although she wrote two amazing novels: The Hard-Boiled Virgin (1926), and Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers (1928).

The Hard-Boiled Virgin is divided into 50 or 60 sections with only one paragraph in each, and the very long, circuitous sentences and frequent double negatives make this no easy read, I'm delighted to say. This is a by no means atypical sentence:

'She was not born a mystic, but merely human reason could hardly have been responsible for her conviction that her troublesome soul - like other people's - was the shape of a canteloupe seed and nearly the same colour, and that it was about ten inches long, and that it was made of a translucent cartilaginous substance with a small oval bone in the center.'

And how about this for an oblique description of orgasm via masturbation:

'a fountain rose and fell and dropped its electric spray through her thin brown body'.

I seem to remember Flannery O'Connor saying something about avoiding things that 'look funny on the page', but it seems to be ungooglable. O'Connor calls The Hard-Boiled Virgin 'undramatic' and hates the fact that there is no direct speech in it at all. In The Habit of Being, she writes Betty Hester (known as 'A' in the book): '[Newman] must have been a very intelligent miserable woman - but no fiction writer.'

I strongly disagree with the last part of this, although I can understand the reaction. Her second novel, Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers, is perhaps a little more accessible, but only a little: there are paragraphs in this, the sentences tend to be shorter, and there are even a few instances of direct speech, although never as separate paragraphs!

But it's still very oblique, as if resisting saying anything concrete. People don't just says things, their mouths say things, or they hear their mouths saying things, or they hear the voices of the thing they call themselves saying things, etc: layer upon layer of writing evades saying anything directly. And yet both books contain strong social criticisms, and the first sentence of Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers is like a feminist attack on convention, deliberately stating that the protagonist's name (and by implication identity) has been subsumed into that of her new husband:

'On the fifteenth morning after the bishop of Virginia and the rector of St Paul's Church had given her a legal right to open her eyes and see her very light brown hair lying against Charlton Cunningham's very dark brown hair, Charlton Cunningham's wife opened her eyes on his warm violet silk sleeve.'

Even with their oblique references to birth control, menstruation, and sex, her books shocked many: the New Woman was attacking the stronghold that the Southern lady had defended for so long.

At times though, I confess that I wonder if I'm reading the mind of a schizophrenic, such is the dislocation. But far more often, I feel this is the work of a brilliant writer, someone deliberately writing against the artificiality of representations of reality that we find in so many other writers. Newman is struggling to express how her characters feel to be living, how they actually think. The comparisons with Virginia Woolf are inevitable, but although she's in the same ballpark, the game Newman plays is unique.

This link contains brief information on Frances Newman.

But for much more in-depth criticism, this is a fascinating piece on her from The Southern Belle in the American Novel, by Kathryn Lee Seidel.

Olive Ann Burns: Cold Sassy Tree (1984)

Olive Ann Burns (1924-90) was brought up in Commerce, Georgia, educated in Macon, Georgia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and spent a number of years working for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was during her fight with cancer that she decided to write a novel, Cold Sassy Tree, a book set in 1906 and 1907, modeled on Commerce, and published in 1984.
　
How does a person react to a book like this that has all the attributes of a popular novel: it's frequently on school syllabuses, and - horror of horrors - the cover calls it a 'national bestseller': just the kind of thing I normally eschew. But then I began to apply to it what I believe are the special preoccupations of the Southern novel: race, religion, gender, and sexuality. It's rare that all attributes fit, but they do in this case, and this is in fact a fascinating, and in some respects brilliant, Southern novel.
　
It's a coming-of-age novel about the observations of a 14-year-old boy, narrated by the same person some years later. The story concerns E. Rucker Blakeslee, the owner of the general store and a 59-year-old widower of just three weeks who has decided to re-marry. The knowledge that Rucker is marrying again when the general opinion is that he should still be in mourning is enough to cause considerable anger in small town Cold Sassy, but the fact that this is a May-December relationship (Love Simpson is almost half his age), added to the fact that she comes from Baltimore, Maryland, and is therefore almost a Yankee in the eyes of those in the Deep South - the novel is set only some 40 years after the South lost to the Yankess, of course - makes matters far worse.
　
The narrator Will Tweedy is Rucker's nephew and he's very close to his grandfather. He often visits the couple and not only likes Love but also finds her sexually attractive, although that is as far as it, er, will go. But his rapid friendship with Love is, by various and unintentional means, the cause of Will's gaining access to privileged information about the couple. He learns, for instance, that this is a marriage of convenience, and that Rucker isn't sleeping with his wife but is in effect employing her as a housekeeper in return for deeding his house and furniture to her on his death. When Rucker's daughters become aware of this arrangement, they are understandably far from happy with the prospect of being largely disinherited.
　
But Rucker's death has not yet come, and both the reader and Love have to learn a lot more of Rucker, who is by appearances a mean, old-fashioned man, and of course a person whose property still has an earth closet and no electricity. After a visit to New York - and this is set during an era when a trip from Commerce to Atlanta and back, just 140 miles, was seen as an event - Love and Rucker not only become a little more friendly, but Rucker returns with the information that he is expanding his business into the nascent car sales trade: he is developiing from something of a Luddite to a modern man, such is the influence that Love (both capitalized and otherwise) is exerting on him. In the end, Rucker dies after just a year of marriage, but leaves Love pregnant.
　
So in what way is this novel particularly Southern, apart from the obligatory patterns of speech, the occasional mention of scuppernongs or grits, and the white trash from the mountains come down to be town lintheads? As the novel closes, we learn that the old sassafras tree - which gave the town its original name - has been felled to widen the road, and the town is to be renamed Progressive City. Although the narrator doesn't comment on the new name, the reader is no doubt expected to disapprove of it, but not to disapprove of progress itself. Rucker said that Cold Sassy would change its name over his dead body, which it does, but then he is a complex character anyway: he loved the 'Yankee' Love from afar almost from when he saw her, he is completely without racial prejudice, and he hates the violent Old Testament god that everyone around him worships. Love Simpson didn't really have to do so much to change Rucker, but in many ways she represents the New South transforming the Old South, and the marriage - consumated by the life growing within Love's womb - symbolizes a profound change. The future will not be easy, but at least there is room for considerable growth.
　
Very, very glad I read Cold Sassy Tree.

Atlanta, Georgia: Margaret Mitchell: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #32

Our last literary stop in the four full weeks of our tour, which involved visiting Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana (well, just!), Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. We had visited many literary landmarks, and 14 literary museums. This was the 15th, and by far the worst. To begin with, an unhelpful leaflet had suggested that the small museum car park would probably be full – yes, this is where we felt like tourists for the first time, and it wasn't a pleasant experience at all – so it would be better to park near Piedmont Park. Beyond Piedmont Park, we parked in the paying car park outside the Botanical Gardens: at $15 to see extensive gardens as opposed to the $12 at the small Margaret Mitchell House, the gardens would have been by far the better option to anyone remotely interested in cultivated plants – which we aren't, and would far prefer to look at rampant kudzu. The one-mile walk to the house in Midtown Atlanta from the Botanical Gardens is a pleasant one though, and Piedmont Park is worth a view.

When we arrived at the museum car park we found it nearly empty, although quite a number of people were waiting to enter the house, where we were overcharged by an indifferent member of staff who didn't seem too clear about what he was doing on his computer. The guide to the flat – Mitchell didn't live in the whole house, but only in a small part of it – autopiloted us through a few rooms and then left us to look at a few interpretation panels. After that, there's a small building with a television across a lawn, and that's it.

Clearly, we were encountering something we hadn't been used to in the whole of our stay: staff with a lack of any enthusiasm, and tourists (in silly broad-brimmed hats) who were 'doing the sights': it felt a bit like the San Francisco cable cars, where people clutch small booklets permitting them to see multiple sights they're probably not interested in anyway. The calm of our tour was shattered, and the wonderful friendliness of the many helpful, genuinely interested Americans – very often working in museums on a voluntary basis – had been replaced by tourist-hardened automatons.

But back to the television. In the 2009's Southern Literature issue of the University of Central Arkansas's Oxford American, the book Gone with the Wind is listed as an 'underrated' publication. Initially, this may seem a bizarre thing to say about such a huge-selling book, but the author of the very brief piece – Michael Kreyling – states that 'I think she wrote a much more complex second half of the novel than she knew'. That may well be true, but isn't it also true that the huge tome Gone With the Wind, though much bought, is very little read? Don't many more people know the story through the film rather than the book? This is why much of the emphasis in the museum is on the film, and why the television in the building at the side shows an old, 90-minute film of the making of the film.

To be fair, interpretation panels do deal, for instance, with the differences between book and film, and it's interesting to learn about the toning down of racist matters on transition from paper to celluloid.

All the same, this was one museum tour we could have forgone, although it would have been a bitter disappontment if we had gone to Midtown Atlanta during our first day, as opposed to – it also has to be said – the rather disappointing Downtown Atlanta. Just to end this long rant on a plus note: another leaflet strongly criticised the streets in central Atlanta, claiming that it was very difficult to find your way around. Happily, I found very few problems, and also the drive from Buckhead in the north right through the centre of Atlanta via the interstate, to the airport in the south, went like a dream.

The front entrance to the house. Margaret Mitchell's flat was on the ground (first in American English) floor on the left.

Plaque on the front of the house.

The south elevation of the house seen from the, er, audio-visual center.

And the back of the house.

Decatur, Georgia: Mary Gay: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #31

Mary Ann Harris Gay (1828-1918) was born in Milledgeville and was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause. On the early death of her father, she moved with her mother to Decatur, where her mother re-married but her husband died, and as heavy investments were made in Confederate bonds, they were in a desperate financial situation after the Civil War.

Gay re-published her book Prose and Poetry by a Southern Lady (1858) as The Pastor's Story, and sold it from door to door. Twain mocked the book in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but Gay managed to support her family during Reconstruction on the proceeds of many sales. The Baptist church in Decatur was rebuilt as a result of her fundraising skills, and the church appointed her as a fundraising agent, and she spent thirty years traveling the South in this capacity.

She is mainly remembered for her book Life in Dixie During the War (1892), in which she tells of smuggling food and information to the Confederate army. On 22 July 1864, the date of the Union Seige of Atlanta, the family hid in the cellar.

The house was moved from its original site in Marshall Street, and has been extended and considerably altered.

The Mary Gay House is now chiefly used for weddings.

Atlanta, Georgia: Joel Chandler Harris: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #30

The Wren's Nest, the final home of Joel Chandler Harris, is on 1050 Ralph David Abernathy SW, in the West End of Atlanta. He lived here from 1881 to 1908, and bought the home from the Atlanta Constitution, which employed him. Soon after his transformation of the old farmhouse, wrens nested in the mailbox and the house was nicknamed 'The Wrens Nest'. The museum was established in 1913.

'The Wrens Nest Home of Joel Chandler Harris. Creator of the Uncle Remus stories and proponent of the New South, Joel Chandler Harris was born December 9, 1848 in Eatonton. After serving an apprenticeship on a plantation newspaper The Counrtyman near Eatonton and working on several Georgia dailies, he joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution in 1876. His prolific pen has immortalized the folklore of the Old South. In 1880, he purchased this house for his home, calling it "Snap-Bean Farm". When a wren built her nest in the mailbox, he changed the name to "Wren's Nest".

Soon after his death, July 3, 1908, the Uncle Remus Memorial Assocation was organized. On January 10, 1913. it purchased the "Wren's Nest". That same year the Uncle Remus Library was organized and remained there for 17 years. The Uncle Remus Memorial Assocation was rechartered August 23, 1937, as the Joel Chandler Harris Memorial Association. The "Wren's Nest" is owned and operated by the association.'

'The Path of Authors' consists of a number of stones dedicated to local authors at the front of the house on either side of the steps leading up to the verandah.

Eatonton, Georgia: Joel Chandler Harris: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #28

Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908), the man who created Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus among many other characters, was born in poverty in Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia. As a teenager with a keen thirst for knowledge, he would often go to the local post office to read discarded papers and magazines, and it was there that he learned of an advert for a printer's apprentice. A plaque we didn't see but have since found on the internet can serve to continue the story:

'Turnwold Plantation. Here, from 1862 to 1866, Joel Chandler Harris [...] worked as a printer's apprentice on what was probably the only newspaper ever published on a Southern plantation. "The Countryman", a weekly newspaper edited and published by Joseph Addison Turner, owner of "Turnwold". Mr. Addison, planter, lawyer, scholar and writer, encouraged his youuthful apprentice in writing and the use of the large plantation library. In the slave quarters, the boy heard African animal legends and the true Negro folklore of the old South, which he immortalised in his "Uncle Remus" stories.'

Brer Rabbit appears as the logo of Eatonton's Chamber of Commerce.

The small town of Eatonton is also noted in having another writer born here: Alice Walker.

Brer Rabbit greets visitors at the entrance to the museum.

'Uncle Remus Museum. This memorial to Joel Chandler Harris, born Dec. 9th. 1848, was constructed from three slave cabins found in Putnam County. uncle Remus Museum Inc., a local non-profit organization of dedicated citizens has established and maintained its operation continuously form the opening on April 26, 1963.

'Turner Park is a part of the home place of Joseph Sidney Turner, the "little boy" to whom the world famous stories of the "critters" were told by "Uncle "Remus", Harris' unique creation. Turner grew up at "Turnwold", nine miles east of Eatonton, home of his father, Joseph Addison Turner, where Harris had his first job assisting in printing The Countryman'.

The museum created from a slave cabin.


And the other two slave cabins.

And who can resist a photo of a butterfly in the museum flowers? This monarch may be common in the South and the southern Midwest to name but a few areas where I've noticed it, but in England it is virtually extinct.

Macon, Georgia: Sidney Lanier, and Francis Robert Goulding: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #27

The birthplace of Sidney Lanier (pronounced 'Luh-KNEE-er') is tucked out of the way from downtown Macon on 935 High Street, a very quiet part of town.

'Birthplace of Sidney Lanier. Sidney Lanier, poet, linguist, musician, mathematician & lawyer, was born in this cottage, Feb. 3, 1842. He graduated form Oglethorpe Univ. then Millegeville, served as a private in the Confederate Army and was captured while commanding a blocade runner. Lanier was married in 1967 to Mary Day of Macon where he practised law with his father. Moving to Maryland he lectured at John Hopkins while carrying on his writing. He died at Lynn, N.C. Sept. 7. 1881. Among his best known works are 'The Marshes of Glynn' & 'Song of the Chattahoochee'.

Song of the Chattahoochee

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried `Abide, abide,'
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,'
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.'

High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.'

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone
– Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet and amethyst –
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of Duty call –
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.

The Marshes of Glynn

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, –
Emerald twilights, –
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; –

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, –
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, –
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; –

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, –
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, –

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark: –
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low,–
Thus – with your favor – soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows
the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

My Springs

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
– Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
– Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love
Is hid by storms that rage above,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress
Of grief hath died in bitterness,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and Hope,
In darkness bounden, feebly grope,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Light that sets my captives free.

Always, when Art on perverse wing
Flies where I cannot hear him sing,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A charm that brings him back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails,
And coy Reward in sighs exhales,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they,
– My springs from out whose shining gray
Issue the sweet celestial streams
That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and passion-pure
And gray and wise and honor-sure;
Soft as a dying violet-breath
Yet calmly unafraid of death;

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves,
With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves,
And home-loves and high glory-loves
And science-loves and story-loves,

And loves for all that God and man
In art and nature make or plan,
And lady-loves for spidery lace
And broideries and supple grace

And diamonds and the whole sweet round
Of littles that large life compound,
And loves for God and God's bare truth,
And loves for Magdalen and Ruth,

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete –
Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet,
– I marvel that God made you mine,
For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!

This postage stamp was issued on 3 February 1972 to commemorate the 130th year of Lanier's birth, and was designed by William A. Smith of Pineville, Pennsylvania from a Cummins photograph taken in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sidney Lanier's birthplace, open for viewing most days.


As this plaque states, Sidney Lanier was a member of this church, which is more towards downtown Macon, and where there is a plaque dedicated to him in the church vestibule.

This plaque also reveals that Francis R. Goulding preached to 'the Negro members' in the 1860s. The plaque mentions Goulding's novel, Young Marooners on the Florida Coast; or Robert and Harold (1866), which appears to have been targeted at young adults. An obituary of Goulding, originally published on 25 August 1881 by the Enquirer–Sun of Columbus, Georgia, was reprinted in The New York Times several days later:

'The Rev. F. R. Goulding [who was born in 1810] died at his home in Rosewell [sic], Ga., Tuesday night. Nowhere in the State was this talented gentleman better known or more beloved than in Columbus. He was the son of the Rev. Thomas R. Goulding, who for many years was Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of our city. Mrs. Dr. Terry and Mrs. Dr. Pond, of our city, are sisters of the deceased. He was an old and highly esteened minister, and author of "Young Marooners," "Marooners Island," and other works. There are few boys who have not spent many a pleasant hour in the perusal of his works. For some time past he has been in bad health and unable to preach or follow literary pursuits. On one occasion, near Marietta, a gentleman heard the doctor was in straitened circumstances owing to the failure of publishers to pay the royalty on his books and remarked: "I would ike to help a man who by his works so interested my boys." he accordingly wrote a check for $50, which he requested be given the Doctor with his compliments. The gentleman only knew of the Doctor by his works'.

At the time of out brief stay in Macon, we knew nothing of Goulding, although we have since discovered that there is a plaque outside his former house in Roswell, which states:

'Francis Robert Goulding, author, clergyman, inventor, lived in this house at the time of his death, August 22, 1881, and is buried in the Roswell Presbyterian Cemetery. The son of Rev. Thomas Goulding, founder and first president of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C., Goulding was born near Midway Church in Liberty County, September 28, 1810. Graduated from the University of Georgia in 1830, he was licensed to preach in 1833.

'Best Known as the author of the popular juvenile novel, “The Young Marooners” and similar books, Francis R. Goulding like his father achieved eminence in the pulpit, filling many pastorates. In 1842, while visiting near Eatonton, he conceived the idea for a machine for sewing. While pastor of the Bath Presbyterian Church in Augusta, aided and encouraged by a friend, Judge Schley, he perfected his model, Meantime, Elias Howe of Massachusetts had secured a patent on a similar machine.

His first wife, Mary Wallace Howard of Savannah, was the first to sing Bishop Reginald Heber’s famous hymn, “`From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.” It was set to music by Dr. Lowell Mason, pastor of Savannah’s Independent Presbyterian Church, and dedicated to her. There were three Goulding children, Robert, Mary, and Frank.'