For the end was near at hand. Desperate illness had made it necessary
to seek relief near Asheville, N.C., where he was joined
by Mrs. Lanier and by his father and step-mother. Growing no better,
he was moved to Lynn, Polk County, N.C. Of the rest we shall hear
in the words of his wife: "We are left alone (it is August 29, 1881)
with one another. On the last night of the summer comes a change.
His love and immortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer
yet one more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls
the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to
the will of God."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier
as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters
into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."**
The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to
the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted
by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried
in Greenmount Cemetery, in the lot of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull,
two of the dearest friends that Mr. and Mrs. Lanier had in Baltimore.
--
* Ward's `Memorial', p. xxx.
** Timrod's `A Vision of Poesy', stanza xliv.
--
Mr. Lanier left a family consisting of his wife and four sons.
Mrs. Lanier, who lives at Tryon, N.C., was the inspiration
not only of those glorious tributes, `Laus Mariae' and `My Springs',
but also of the poet's whole life. The eldest son, Mr. Charles Day Lanier,
was born at Macon, Ga., September 12, 1868, and was graduated A.B.
at the Johns Hopkins University in 1888. At one time he was
Assistant Editor of `The Cosmopolitan Magazine', a position that he gave up
only to become Business Manager of `The Review of Reviews',
with which he has been connected from its beginning.
He is the author of several graceful sketches in the magazines.
The second son, Sidney, is passionately fond of music,
and would have devoted himself thereto but for life-long ill-health.
After teaching three years in West Virginia, he has started a fruit farm
at Tryon, N.C., where he hopes to build up his health.
The third son, Henry Wysham, was prevented from entering the Johns Hopkins
by a partial failure of sight, and for three years has devoted himself
to railroad engineering in Baltimore and in Jamaica. The youngest,
Robert Sampson, only fourteen, is at Tryon, N.C., with his mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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