Sidney Lanier

Poet, musician and scholar Sidney Lanier was a Virginian Civil War veteran who later served as organist at First Presbyterian Church, Montgomery, AL and went on to teach at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. His poem “A Ballad of Trees and the Master” inspired this experimental sketch using computer and drawing tablet.

A Balled of Trees and the Master

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
‘Twas on a tree they slew Him — last
When out of the woods He came.

—Sidney Lanier

(art by Israel Galindo)