for the open sea." This was a service of keen excitement and constant danger,
demanding a clear head and iron nerves. In the latter part of 1864
it became more and more difficult for the blockade-runners to make their way
to Bermuda. On November 2, a stormy night, Lanier was a signal officer
on the Lucy, which made its way out of the harbor, but fourteen hours later
was captured in the Gulf Stream by the Federal cruiser Santiago-de-Cuba.
He was taken to Point Lookout prison, where he spent four months
of dreary and distressing life. To this prison life Lanier always attributed
his breakdown in health. In "Tiger Lilies" he afterwards attempted
to give a description of the prison and the life led by prisoners, but turned
with disgust from the harrowing memories. The few pages he did write
serve as a counterpart to Walt Whitman's strictures on Southern prisons
in his "Specimen Days in America".

And yet, under these loathsome conditions he read German poetry,
translating Heine's "The Palm and the Pine" and Herder's "Spring Greeting".
Here, too, he found comfort for himself and his companions
in the flute which he had carried with him during the entire war.
One of his comrades gives the following account of Lanier's playing:
"Late one evening I heard from our tent the clear sweet notes of a flute
in the distance, and I was told that the player was a young man from Georgia
who had just come among us. I forthwith hastened to find him out,
and from that hour the flute of Sidney Lanier was our daily delight.
It was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and console us. Well I remember
his improvisations, and how the young artist stood there in the twilight.
(It was his custom to stand while he played.) Many a stern eye
moistened to hear him, many a homesick heart for a time forgot its captivity.
The night sky, clear as a dewdrop above us, the waters of the Chesapeake
far to the east, the long gray beach and the distant pines,
seemed all to have found an interpreter in him.