Macon poet was a man of many talents

Editor’s note: The following story is part of a feature called Home Grown in which we take a look at the people and products that have made a name for themselves well beyond our Middle Georgia borders.

Macon-native Sidney Clopton Lanier is best known for his poem “The Marshes of Glynn” in which he extols the post-Civil War beauty and constancy of Georgia’s coastal marshes.

But Lanier was more than a poet. In his lifetime he was a scholar, Confederate volunteer, blockade runner, prisoner of war in Maryland, hotel clerk, teacher, school principal in Alabama, novelist, lawyer, church organist, orchestral flutist in Baltimore and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University.

This story was originally published November 17, 2016 at 11:26 AM with the headline "Macon poet was a man of many talents."