And now it is bed-time. Let me tell you how to sleep on an Ocklawaha steamer in May. With a small bribe persuade Jim, the steward, to take the mattress out of your berth and lay it slanting just along the railing that encloses the lower part of the deck in front and to the left of the pilot-house. Lie flat on your back down on the mattress, draw your blanket over you, put your cap on your head, on account of the night air, fold your arms, say some little prayer or other, and fall asleep with a star looking right down on your eye. When you wake in the morning you will feel as new as Adam.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) was a native of Georgia. When a mere lad, just out of college, he entered the Confederate army and faithfully devoted the most precious years of his life to that service. While in a military prison he contracted the dread “White Plague,” and during his few remaining years he struggled constantly with disease and poverty. He was a talented musician and often found it necessary to supplement the earnings of his pen by playing in an orchestra. His thorough knowledge and fine sense of music also appear in his masterly treatise on the “Science of English Verse.” During his last years he held a lectureship on English Literature in Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore. He has often been compared with Poe in the exquisite melody of his verse, while in unaffected simplicity and in truthfulness to nature he is not surpassed by Bryant or Whittier. His prose as well as his poetry breathes the very spirit of his sunny southland. In the “Song of the Chattahoochee”, “The Marshes of Glynn,” and “On a Florida River,” one scents the balsam of the Georgia pines among which he lived, and the odor of magnolia groves, jessamine, and wild honey-suckle.

Discussion. 1. From this selection what do you think of the author’s power of description? 2. Mention instances in which he makes use of humor to add to his descriptive power. 3. Quote his words describing the Ocklawaha. 4. What does the author mean by saying, “We find it a river without banks”? 5. In your own words, give a description of the alligator’s home. 6. Make a list of things Lanier saw on this trip that he would not see on a trip down a river in New England. 7. What gives melody to this piece of prose? 8. What comparison do you find in lines 31 and 32, page 475? 9. Point out some examples of alliteration; for what purpose does the author use alliteration? 10. Pronounce the following: palms; leisurely; infinite.

Phrases

I SIGH FOR THE LAND OF THE CYPRESS AND PINE

SAMUEL HENRY DICKSON

I sigh for the land of the cypress and pine;