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To Wilhelmina.

By Sidney Lanier

Topics: classic

A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:     A tube-rose that with heavy petal curves     Her stem: a foam-bell on a wave that swerves     Back from the undulating vessel's deck.     From out the whitest cloud of summer steals     The wildest lightning: from this face of thine     Thy soul, a fire-of-heaven, warm and fine,     In marvellous flashes its fair self reveals.     As when one gazes from the summer sea     On some far gossamer cloud, with straining eye,     Fearing to see it vanish in the sky,     So, floating, wandering Cloud-Soul, I watch thee.     Montgomery, Alabama, 1866.

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"A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:..."

"To Wilhelmina." is a quintessential example of Sidney Lanier's signature style... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

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Author:Sidney Lanier

"A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:..." 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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