Excerpts from "The Marshes of Glynn" by Sydney Lanier, photos by my friend Laura Ragland, used with permission

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven

With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—
Emerald twilights,—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn.

"Excerpts from the Marshes of Glynn"

^by
Sydney Lanier
Photography
^by
Laura Ragland
Compiled by
Jerry E Smith
©9/12/2018

^{These .gifs were created for me by @coquiunlimited; many thanks}