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Life And Song.

By Sidney Lanier

Topics: classic

"If life were caught by a clarionet,     And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,     Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,     And utter its heart in every deed,     "Then would this breathing clarionet     Type what the poet fain would be;     For none o' the singers ever yet     Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,     "Or clearly sung his true, true thought,     Or utterly bodied forth his life,     Or out of life and song has wrought     The perfect one of man and wife;     "Or lived and sung, that Life and Song     Might each express the other's all,     Careless if life or art were long     Since both were one, to stand or fall:     "So that the wonder struck the crowd,     Who shouted it about the land:     `His song was only living aloud,     His work, a singing with his hand!'"     1868.

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""If life were caught by a clarionet,..."

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Author:Sidney Lanier

""If life were caught by a clarionet,..." by Sidney Lanier

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Sidney Lanier

About Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) was an American poet and musician whose poems—including "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Song of the Chattahoochee"—are known for their musical quality and celebration of the Southern landscape.

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