Symphony," which he
said took hold of him "about four days ago like a real James River
ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night,
ever since," which is the only way that a real poem or real music or a
real picture ever can get into the world. He says that he "will be
rejoiced when it is finished, for it verily racks all the bones of my
spirit." It appeared in _Lippincott's_, June, 1875.

Lanier was at 66 Centre Street, Baltimore, when he wrote the words of
the Centennial Cantata, which he said he "tried to make as simple and
candid as a melody of Beethoven." He wrote to a friend that he was not
disturbed because a paper had said that the poem of the Cantata was
like a "communication from the spirit of Nat Lee through a Bedlamite
medium." It was "but a little grotesque episode, as when a catbird
paused in the midst of the most exquisite roulades and melodies to mew
and then take up his song again."

* * * * *

In December of that year he was compelled to seek a milder climate in
Florida, taking with him a commission to write a book about Florida
for the J.B. Lippincott Company. Upon arriving at Tampa, he wrote to a
friend:

Tampa is the most forlorn collection of little one-story frame
houses imaginable, and as May and I walked behind our landlord,
who was piloting us to Orange Grove Hotel, our hearts fell nearer
and nearer towards the sand through which we dragged. Presently
we turned a corner and were agreeably surprised to find ourselves
in front of a large three-story house with old nooks and corners,
clean and comfortable in appearance and surrounded by orange
trees in full fruit. We have a large room in the second story,
opening upon a generous balcony fifty feet long, into which
stretch the liberal arms of a fine orange tree holding out their
fruitage to our very lips. In front is a sort of open plaza
containing a pretty group of gnarled live-oaks full of moss and
mistletoe.

[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER
From a photograph owned by H.W. Lanier]

In May he made an excursion of which he wrote:

For a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The little
Ocklawaha steamboat _Marion_--a steamboat which is like nothing
in the world so much as a Pensacola gopher with a preposterously
exaggerated back--had started from Palatka some hours before
daylight, having taken on her passengers