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THE 
 
 Vision of Sir Launfal 
 
 AND 
 
 Other Poems by Lowell 
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES M. STEBB1NS, A.M. 
 
 Boys' High School, Brooklyn 
 
 Brooklyn 
 
 THE ENGLISH LEAFLET COMPANY 
 1907 
 

 
 o,\0- 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 
 Two Cooy Received 
 
 NOV 13 1907 
 
 Copyri*nt Entry 
 
 I GLASS 4 KXcfoo. 
 
 COPY 8 
 
 Copyright, 1Q07, by 
 CHARLES M. STEBBINS 
 
V 
 
 >. w 
 
 o 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 3 
 
 ? Introduction. page 
 
 Biographical Sketch of Lowell i 
 
 Literary Estimates of Lowell 19 
 
 Legend of the Holy Grail 21 
 
 Poems of Culture. 
 
 The Vision of Sir Launfal 26 
 
 Rhcecus 40 
 
 A Chippewa Legend 46 
 
 Ambrose 50 
 
 A Parable 53 
 
 Poems of Nature 
 
 An Indian-Summer Reverie 55 
 
 Beaver Brook 68 
 
 To the Dandelion 7° 
 
 The Bobolink 73 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems. 
 
 The Present Crisis 77 
 
 The Fatherland 84 
 
 A Song 85 
 
 With a Pressed Flower 87 
 
 My Love 88 
 
 The Changeling ox) 
 
 Notes 93 
 
 iii 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL. 
 
 On the outskirts of the quiet, rustic village of Cam- 
 bridge of nearly a century ago, in the midst of pleasant 
 fields stood Elmwood, the birthplace of James Russell 
 Lowell. The house itself, even in those days, had inter- 
 esting associations. It had been built and first inhab- 
 ited by Peter Oliver, English stamp agent at Boston, 
 just previous to the breaking out of the Revolution. 
 A request that he resign his office was made upon him 
 by the " Boston Committee," which consisted of about 
 four thousand members. The request of the citizens 
 of Boston carried so much weight that it was not long 
 before the house on "Tory Row" was vacated. Its 
 owner deemed it consistent with his best interests to 
 return to England. The place was afterward inhabited 
 by Elbridge Gerry, notorious for the methods of polit- 
 ical districting which he devised, and which have since 
 been known by the term gerrymandering. 
 
 The Elmwood of 1819 was not the Elmwood of to- 
 day. The general characteristics, however, were much 
 the same. Many of the trees grew up with the poet 
 and became closely associated with his life. During 
 Lowell's life the house stood in the centre of an in- 
 closure of several acres, surrounded by elms — some of 
 them native, but for the most part English, planted by 
 
 I 
 
2 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 the poet's father — oaks, firs, and horse-chestnuts, in 
 addition to fruit trees of various kinds. The place was 
 a haunt for all kinds of birds. The robins plundered 
 the cherry trees ; the orioles hung their nests from the 
 elm boughs ; and the wrens, yellow-birds, and thrushes 
 built and sang among the syringa and lilac blossoms. 
 In spite of their constant depredations in the fruit 
 trees, they were welcomed by Lowell, and were "lords 
 of the earldom as much as he." In "My Garden Ac- 
 quaintance," Lowell wrote of them : "The return of 
 the robin is commonly announced by the newspapers, 
 like that of eminent or notorious people to a watering- 
 place, as the first authentic notification of spring. But 
 in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he stays with 
 us all winter. ... He feels and freely exercises his 
 right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of 
 green peas ; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine. 
 But if he gets the lion's share of the raspberries, he is 
 a great planter, and sows those wild ones in the woods 
 that solace the pedestrian and give a momentary calm 
 to the jaded victims of the White Hills. He keeps a 
 strict eve over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of 
 purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in 
 the sun. 
 
 "During the severe drought a few years ago, the 
 robins wholly vanished from my garden. I neither saw 
 nor heard one for three weeks. Meanwhile a small 
 foreign grape, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find 
 the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its 
 sweet Argos across the sea, decked itself with a score 
 or so of fair bunches. I watched them from day to 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 3 
 
 day till they should have secreted sugar enough trom 
 the sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that I 
 would celebrate my vintage the next morning. 
 
 "But the robins, too, had somehow kept note of 
 them. They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews 
 into the promised land, before I was stirring. When 
 I went with my basket at least a dozen of these winged 
 vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, and, 
 alighting en the nearest trees, interchanged some shrill 
 remarks about me of a derogatory nature. They had 
 fairly sacked the vines. Not Wellington's veterans 
 made cleaner work of a Spanish town ; not Federals or 
 Confederates were ever more impartial in the confis- 
 cation of neutral chickens. ... As for the birds, I do 
 not believe there is one of them but does more good 
 than harm ; and of how many featherless bipeds can 
 this be said?" 
 
 Lowell, like Longfellow and Holmes and Emerson, 
 was the son of a clergyman. His father, Dr. Charles 
 Lowell, was a man noted for his good sense, ideals of 
 honor, strictness to duty, and for his high but practical 
 views of life. For several generations the Lowells had 
 been prominent and influential citizens of Massa- 
 chusetts. They were descended from Percival Lowell, 
 or Lowle, who had settled at Newbury in the year 1639. 
 The city of Lowell took its name from Francis Cabot 
 Lowell, who had the foresight to perceive that the 
 future prosperity of New England lay in manufactur- 
 ing. A section of the Bill of Rights of Massachusetts, 
 by which slavery was abolished from the common- 
 wealth, was draughted by John Lowell, a judge of con- 
 
4 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 siderable reputation in his generation. Lowell Insti- 
 tute was established by a bequest of $250,000 by John 
 Lowell, Jr. Another John Lowell was for many years 
 a district judge of the United States. 
 
 The characteristic qualities of his maternal ances- 
 tors were of an entirely different nature. Harriet 
 Spence, his mother, was of a Scottish family, and tradi- 
 tion has it that she was descended from Patrick Spens 
 of old ballad fame. She was endowed with a wonder- 
 ful memory, the gift of easily acquiring languages, and 
 an ardent appreciation of poetry, especially the 
 romantic songs and ballads which became the early 
 intellectual nourishment of her children. James, the 
 youngest of five, was born on the anniversary of Wash- 
 ington's birth, in the year 1819, the year in which were 
 born George Eliot, John Ruskin, Arthur Hugh Clough, 
 Charles Kingsley, and Queen Victoria. 
 
 This diversity of attainments and tastes of the 
 parents peculiarly fitted them to nurture their children 
 into symmetrical, well-balanced men and women. 
 There were the practical conceptions of life, the intel- 
 lectual temper and attainments of the father ; there 
 were the love for the ideal, the appreciation of the 
 beautiful and romantic in the training of the mother ; 
 and there were the lofty and noble sentiments of both. 
 The manner of living was such as the people of a cen- 
 tury ago inherited from the firm and homely customs 
 of the Puritans. 
 
 The education of James began in his father's library, 
 which contained about a thousand well-selected vol- 
 umes. Here, no doubt, he yielded to the influences 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 5 
 
 which his mother's training had stimulated in him, and 
 filled his young head brimful of fanciful visions. In 
 later life he wrote in a letter to a friend : "Here I am 
 in my garret. I slept here when I was a little curly- 
 headed boy, and used to see visions between me and 
 the ceiling, and dream the so often recurring dream 
 of having the earth put into my hand like an orange. 
 In it I used to be shut up without a lamp — my mother 
 saying that none of her children should be afraid of 
 the dark — to hide my head under the pillow, and then 
 not to be able to shut out the shapeless monsters that 
 thronged around me." 
 
 The first school that he attended was one nearly 
 opposite Elmwood, kept by William Wells, an English- 
 man of the old school, with a thorough classical educa- 
 tion, with whom, it is said, the use of the cane had 
 not become a lost art. Lowell afterward attended a 
 thorough classical school in Boston. 
 
 He entered Harvard in 1835, when he was in his 
 sixteenth year, and graduated three years later in the 
 same class with several men who became famous in 
 various spheres of life. Among them were William 
 W. Story (the noted sculptor and poet), Prof. Nathan 
 Hale, Prof. H. L. Eustis, and Charles Devens, a gen- 
 eral in the Civil War, afterwards Judge of the Supreme 
 Court of Massachusetts, and Attorney-General of the 
 United States in the administration of President Hayes. 
 
 Lowell's rank as a student was far below what his 
 abilities gave promise of. He was known to remark 
 often afterward that he read everything except the 
 prescribed courses. He had an especial aversion to 
 
6 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 mathematics. What he loved most were books of 
 travel, romances, poems, and plays, particularly those 
 of the old writers ; and these he read to' the neglect of 
 his regular studies. Such food as this, however, was 
 far better suited to the producing of a poet than the 
 books prescribed by the faculty. 
 
 Despite the fact that he did not shine as a student, 
 Lowell knew how to make friends, friends whom he 
 kept. In the dedication of the Class Poem, which he 
 wrote at the time of his graduation, this fact was mani- 
 fest in his reference to the members of the c 1 ass, "some 
 of whom he loves, none of whom he hates." 
 
 Upon leaving college, Lowell entered the Law 
 School, where he took the degree of LL.B. in 1840. 
 He soon afterward opened an office in Boston, but 
 although he wrote a story for the Boston Miscellany 
 entitled "My First Client," it does not appear that he 
 ever had one, or, indeed, that he ever seriously enter- 
 tained the idea of following the profession. 
 
 The poet's first published book, a small volume of 
 verse entitled "A Year's Life," appeared just at the 
 close of his twenty-second year. The motto prefixed 
 to tins volume was the line, "Ich habe gelebt and 
 geHebet/' from the lyric sung by Theckla, in Schiller's 
 "Wallenstein." The lady of the poet's fancy in these 
 verses was Miss Maria White, "a person of delicate 
 and spiritual beauty, refined in taste, sympathetic in 
 nature, and the author of several exquisite poems." 
 
 Most of the poems of this first volume were rejected 
 by the maturer judgment of the author in preparing 
 subsequent editions of his works, as they were then 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 7 
 
 rejected by his contemporaries ; yet they contained 
 evidences of a sparkling poetic genius. Among the 
 best pieces of the collection are "The Beggar/' "Irene," 
 and "With a Pressed Flower." 
 
 The young author's next literary venture was the 
 Pioneer, a magazine which he undertook conjointly 
 with Robert Carter, the two subscribing themselves as 
 "Editors and Publishers." The new periodical was 
 beautifully printed and illustrated according to the 
 custom of the times ; the articles were of superior ex- 
 cellence, but, like many another dream of young 
 authors, it was doomed to die. Only three numbers 
 appeared, and the editors were forced to suspend busi- 
 ness on account of lack of patronage. It was of too 
 high an order to succeed in those days. Some of the 
 contributors to those three numbers, besides the ed- 
 itors, were Mrs. Browning (then Miss Barrett), Edgar 
 Allan Poe, Whittier, William W. Story (artist and 
 poet), Jones Very (Lowell's classmate and lifelong 
 friend), and T. W. Parsons. 
 
 In 1844, three years after the publication of "A 
 Year's Life," he issued a second volume of poems. 
 Many of the pieces in this little book are favorites 
 to-day, although they failed to please the staid taste of 
 the public of that period. The style of the author and 
 much of the subject matter were entirely new, qualities 
 quite certain to fail of the approval of the stern New 
 Englander of sixty-five years ago, with his fixed 
 notions and inherent dislike for innovations. Of this 
 volume Dr. Underwood says, "There was something of 
 Wordsworth's simplicity, something of Tennyson's 
 
8 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 sweetness and musical flow, and something more of 
 the manly earnestness of the Elizabethan poets; but 
 the resemblances were external; the individuality of 
 the poet is clear. The obvious characteristic of the 
 poems is their high religious spirit. It is not a wild 
 and passive morality that we perceive, but the aggres- 
 sive force of primitive Christianity. The vivid concep- 
 tion of the law of love and of the duties of brotherhood 
 suggests the time when such thoughts were new and 
 startling, before their vital power had been lost in 
 chanted creeds and iterated forms." 
 
 In the same year Lowell and Maria White were 
 married, and went to live with his parents at Elmwood. 
 And it was in the following year that his first prose 
 work appeared, "Conversations with Some of the Old 
 Poets." 
 
 The thoughts and feelings of the young man, now in 
 his twenty-seventh year, were becoming settled and 
 crystallized. The mighty problems of the times — and 
 no time has seen questions of greater importance to 
 the human race, or greater changes working — shared, 
 nay, almost consumed his time and attention. His 
 sympathies were with Sumner, Garrison, and Phillips ; 
 and more than any other poet, unless it be Whittier, 
 he gave himself, heart and soul, to the cause of the 
 slave. In his "Stanzas on Freedom" he wrote: 
 
 "Men! whose boast it is that ye 
 Come of fathers brave and free, 
 If there breathe on earth a slave, 
 Are ye truly free and brave ? 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 9 
 
 If ye do not feel the chain 
 When it works a brother's pain, 
 Are ye not base slaves indeed, 
 Slaves unworthy to be freed ? 
 
 "Is true freedom but to break 
 Fetters for our own dear sake, 
 And, with leathern hearts, forget 
 That we owe mankind a debt ? 
 No ! true freedom is to share 
 All the chains our brothers wear, 
 And, with heart and hand, to be 
 Earnest to make others free I" 
 
 Already, too, he had written the prophetic lines, 
 
 "He who would be the tongue of this wide land 
 Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron," 
 
 little suspecting, perhaps, that he would be the one 
 called upon so to string his harp before another year 
 had passed bv. But when the Mexican war broke out, 
 undertaken, as many thought, for the extension of slave 
 territory, Lowell's heart flamed with indignation. What 
 could he do? He wrote a letter to the Boston 
 Courier, enclosing the first of what are now known 
 as the "Biglow Papers." The letter, containing the 
 poem of Hosea Biglow, purported to come from his 
 father, Ezekiel. The theme was the recruiting of 
 volunteers in Boston. The poem, in the Yankee dialect, 
 ran: 
 
10 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 'Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle 
 On them kittle-drums o' yourn — 
 Tain't a knowin' kind o' cattle 
 
 That is ketched with mouldy corn." 
 
 Boston, and, indeed, the whole reading public, was 
 amazed. The literary circle pronounced the poem 
 vulgar; some good gentlemen regarded it as blas- 
 phemous, some were simply amused, while others, of 
 the earnest abolition stamp, rejoiced at the debut of a 
 new champion of the cause, though some of them, like 
 Charles Sumner, wished he could have used better 
 English. Shortly afterward came "What Mr. Robin- 
 son Thinks," which tickled the people still more than 
 the previous ones had done. Then followed "A Debate 
 in the Sennit, Sot to a Nusry Rhyme." Poem fol- 
 lowed poem till the war was over and the struggle had 
 temporarily closed. 
 
 Of the "Biglow Papers" the Cornhill Magazine 
 said : "A man can hardly hope to repeat such a success 
 as that of the 'Biglow Papers.' They are vigorous 
 jests of song evolved by an excitement powerful 
 enough to fuse together many heterogeneous elements. 
 Strong sense, grotesque humor, hatred of humbug, 
 patriotic fervor, and scorn of tyranny predominate 
 alternately. It is only when an electric flash of emotion 
 is passing through a nation that such singular products 
 of spiritual chemistry are produced." 
 
 Scarcely were the "Biglow Papers" finished and 
 gathered together in book form when Lowell again 
 turned his pen to satire, and produced 'The Fable for 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL n 
 
 Critics," a poem in which he inscribed, in the midst of 
 his satire and humor — humor as bright and sparkling 
 as his Beaver Brook — an estimate of contemporary 
 writers of both prose and poetry. Of himself he 
 speaks with the same ease and discernment that he dis- 
 plays in regard to the others, and his self-criticism is 
 done unsparingly : 
 
 "There is Lowell, who is striving Parnassus to climb 
 With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme. 
 He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
 But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders ; 
 The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
 Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preach- 
 ing." 
 
 It was a distinction, however, which he never did 
 learn, and doubtless never meant to learn. 
 
 He had produced in the meantime "The Vision of 
 Sir Launfal," which has come to be regarded by many 
 not only as Lowell's best sustained flight of lyrical 
 poetry, but the best sustained piece of lyrical verse yet 
 produced in America. 
 
 During these years of Lowell's married life his 
 domestic associations had been happy in the extreme. 
 Mrs. Lowell was a beautiful and gifted woman, who 
 was a source of inspiration to the poet. But her failing 
 health had become a source of much concern to him. 
 Children had been born to them, but all except one of 
 them had died in infancy, and the parental feelings 
 mingled with a deep reverence were pathetically ex- 
 
12 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 pressed in the three poems, "She Came and Went," 
 "The Changeling," and "The First Snowfall." 
 
 In 185 1 the poet and his wife sailed for Europe, 
 where they spent most of their time in Italy, though 
 they visited England, France, and Switzerland. When 
 they returned to America in the fall of the following 
 year, Mrs. Lowell's health was still failing, and she 
 died in the autumn of 1853. It was in earlier years 
 that Lowell had written the sweet poem containing the 
 prayer : 
 
 "God, do not let my loved one die, 
 Rut rather wait until the time 
 
 That I am grown in purity 
 
 Enough to enter Thy pure clime; 
 
 Then take me, I will gladly go, 
 So that my love remain below." 
 
 Afterward, in speaking of home, he expressed the wish 
 that he might close the shutters, 
 
 "For it died that autumn morning 
 When she, its soul, was borne 
 To lie all dark on the hillside 
 
 That looks over woodland and corn." 
 
 During these years of anxiety and bereavement, 
 Lowell had been busily engaged in literary work, and 
 he still continued to be so. Much of his best work had 
 appeared in Putnam's Monthly. And now he was 
 called upon to deliver a course of lectures on the Eng- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 13 
 
 lish poets at Lowell Institute. These discourses, twelve 
 in number, w r ere highly successful both with the literary 
 people and with the younger generation in Boston. 
 The success of the undertaking was due entirely to the 
 genuine worth of the lecturer's work — the clear-cut 
 thought, the deep poetic insight, and the strength and 
 vividness of his language. 
 
 This demonstration of his ability came opportunely. 
 Longfellow, who was professor of belles-lettres at 
 Harvard, desired to retire that he might devote his 
 undivided attention to literature. Lowell was chosen 
 as his successor, and was given two years' leave of 
 absence to pursue his studies in Europe. After an 
 absence of two and a half years he returned and took 
 up his labors as a professor. Popularity came to him 
 readily. His thoroughness in scholarship, his quick 
 and keen insight, and his genuine sincerity w r on for him 
 immediate admirers among professors and students. 
 
 Two events of importance in the life of Lowell oc- 
 curred during his first year at Harvard. He was 
 married to Miss Frances Dunlop, and became editor- 
 in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly, which had just been 
 founded by prominent New England authors. One of 
 the avowed purposes of the periodical was to support 
 the cause of abolition. To the numbers of this maga- 
 zine Lowell contributed numerous articles both in prose 
 and verse, which are among the best of his works. He 
 held this place of honor and influence till 1862. 
 
 A new opportunity was coming to "string his harp 
 with chords of sturdy iron," and as the struggle of the 
 Civil War came on, again he took up the "Biglow 
 
14 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Papers," and made his fame as a satirist secure, if, 
 indeed, it still needed anything to make it so. These 
 "Papers," discussing all the leading phases of the ques- 
 tion before the people, the poet continued from the out- 
 break of the war to the days of reconstruction. In 
 summing up the merits of the "Biglow Papers," Dr. 
 Underwood says : "In this new field he is wholly with- 
 out a rival — the sole laureate of the native, unlettered 
 speech, and the exemplar of the mother-wit of New 
 England. The few characters in his dramas are com- 
 plementary, or, perhaps, as he himself suggests, 
 'humorously identical under a seeming incongruity.' " 
 
 In 1864 appeared a volume of prose, entitled "Fire- 
 side Travels," containing "Cambridge Thirty Years 
 Ago," sketches of life in the woods of Maine, and 
 notes of his travels in Italy. The pieces, most of them, 
 had been written long before, when Lowell was only 
 thirty-four years old ; but they are among the most 
 successful of his prose productions. The book is over- 
 flowing with joyfulness, thoughtfulness, and the fresh 
 feelings of a young and happy poet. It instructs while 
 it charms, and gives food for contemplation while it 
 fills with pleasure. It is a book characterized by beauty 
 and versatility. 
 
 Five years later the collection of poems called 
 "Under the Willows" appeared. The volume con- 
 tained a large portion of the work done by the poet 
 during the years that followed his appointment to the 
 editorship of the Atlantic Monthly. In the following 
 year, 1870, he published "The Cathedral." a poem sug- 
 gested by the great cathedral at Chartres ; "My Study 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 15 
 
 Windows," and "Among My Books." In "My Study 
 Windows" were some of the best known essays, notably 
 those on Lincoln, Emerson, Carlyle, and Chaucer. 
 "Among My Books" contained the essays on Dryden, 
 Shakespeare, Lessing, and Rousseau. And a second 
 volume published the year following contained the ex- 
 cellent essay on Dante and those on Milton, Words- 
 worth, and Keats. These critical estimates of the poets 
 are among the best that any literature has produced. 
 In speaking of them, the Nation, a periodical which 
 may be accredited with seldom overestimating the 
 merit of authors, said that "Among My Books" con- 
 tained the "most deliberate words of perhaps the best 
 of living English critics — his final judgments on manv 
 of the great names of literature; judgments which are 
 the result of long and wide study and reading, of mar- 
 velous acuteness of sight and delicacy of sympathy, 
 containing a poet's opinion of other poets, a wit's 
 opinion of other wits ; in short, the careful opinions of 
 a man of cultivated genius concerning other men of 
 genius who are near and dear to us all, but to all of 
 us partly unintelligible without an interpreter; this 
 book is one of the best gifts that for many years has 
 come to the world of English literature ; and to say this 
 is to say one of the best gifts that has for many years 
 come to the world of literature." 
 
 The next poetical publication of importance that 
 came from the pen of Lowell was the "Three Memorial 
 Poems." The greatest of the three, the "Commemora- 
 tion Ode," which contains the finely drawn portrait of 
 Lincoln, was dedicated "To the ever sweet and shining 
 
16 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College 
 who have died for their country in the war of nation- 
 ality !" Among them were numbered Col. Charles Rus- 
 sell Lowell, Lieut. James Jackson Lowell, and Capt. 
 William Lowell Putnam, together with five other near 
 relatives of the poet. And they were the feelings of 
 his heart that he recorded when he said : 
 
 "I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, 
 
 But the sad strings complain, 
 
 And will not please the ear : 
 I sweep them for a paean, but they wane 
 
 Again and yet again 
 Into a dirge, and die away, in pain." 
 
 In the early seventies Lowell, with his wife, visited 
 Europe, and while there received the appointment as 
 Minister to Spain by President Hayes. The ministry 
 to Austria had previously been offered to him, but he 
 had declined. The romantic associations of Spain, 
 however, were more inviting to the tastes of a poet, 
 and Lowell gladly accepted this time. His duties here 
 were fulfilled with such diplomacy and rare good sense 
 that he was transferred, on the retirement of Mr. 
 Welsh, to London, in 1880. He received a most enthu- 
 siastic welcome to the metropolis of the English people, 
 and his manly worth and rare scholarship won for him 
 friends and applause everywhere. To him were ac- 
 corded honors which were given to no other American. 
 He was called upon to give the addresses at the unveil- 
 ing of the bust of Fielding, in Taunton, Somersetshire ; 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LOWELL 17 
 
 at the unveiling of the bust of Coleridge, in West- 
 minster Abbey, which address the London Press pro- 
 nounced to be the "finest eulogium on Coleridge yet 
 written" ; at the unveiling of a bust of Gray, at Pem- 
 broke College ; and on several other notable occasions. 
 Always he was accorded sympathetic welcome and 
 hearty approval by all who heard him. 
 
 He left England to return home in 1885 amidst the 
 universal regret of the English people. The Spec- 
 tator voiced the general feeling. "Mr. Lowell is going 
 back to America," it said; "and though to him this 
 means going home, to us it seems as though an honored 
 countryman were leaving us. American ministers not 
 a few have lived among us for a time, as though they 
 were part and parcel of ourselves. But Mr. Lowell has 
 done this in a sense and in a degree that has been 
 reached by none of his predecessors. He is at once 
 the most and the least English, and the most and the 
 least American of all who write our common tongue, 
 and it is this that fits him so pre-eminently to be the 
 link that he has been between the two countries." 
 
 Besides the social and public honors that were show- 
 ered upon him, and the degrees that the great universi- 
 ties conferred upon him out of recognition of his 
 scholarship, he was offered a professorship at the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. But Lowell was eager to see 
 America once more. 
 
 His return was greeted by the ablest authors of this 
 country with articles in prose and verse. The number 
 of the Literary World published June 27th was de- 
 voted to his welcoming. From this time forth he was 
 
18 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 called upon in America, as he had been in England, to 
 deliver addresses on notable occasions. Perhaps the 
 most important of these was the address he delivered 
 on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 founding of Harvard College. 
 
 Lowell's health had been steadily declining since his 
 return from England. His labors were greatly cur- 
 tailed, and they ceased altogether some time before his 
 death. During these last years he spent much of his 
 time with his daughter. The end came at Elmwood, 
 on August 12, 1891. He was buried in Mount Auburn 
 Cemetery two days later. Among the pall-bearers were 
 President Eliot, of Harvard; Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 George William Curtis, Charles Eliot Norton, and 
 William Dean I lowells. 
 
 Lowell was a man of medium height, inclining to be 
 slender, but strong and active, full of energy. In his 
 movements he was deliberate and sustained. The color 
 of his hair was chestnut, before it became gray, his 
 beard being of a slightly lighter tint. The most expres- 
 sive part of his features probably was his eyes, which 
 were gray. They partook of his mood always, becom- 
 ing grave or bright, penetrating or sparkling with 
 mirth, according to the temper of his mind. 
 
 In point of wit the man was unsurpassed, either in 
 writing or speaking. His supply was inexhaustible. 
 Tt was in his power to give utterance to sustained 
 flights of poetic imagery or to pour out a stream of 
 mirth overflowing with frolicsome humor. 
 
 In habits, like many another pcet, Lowell was far 
 from regular. Everything — exercise, reading, writing. 
 
LITERARY ESTIMATES OF LOWELL 
 
 19 
 
 and even eating — came from impulse more than system. 
 But he always had an impulse, and one for something 
 good ; hence the measure of his attainment. 
 
 LITERARY ESTIMATES OF LOWELL. 
 
 "With such a genius for comedy, — greater, I believe, 
 than any English poet ever had, — with such wit. droll- 
 ery, Yankee sense and spirit, I wonder he does not see 
 his 'best hold,' and stick to it." 
 
 Thackeray. 
 
 "If we look at certain grave, sweet pages of Thack- 
 eray, Newman, Martineau, Matthew Arnold, and the 
 Ruskin of thirty years ago, we feel that we have in 
 them specimens of ideal English. Something of the 
 calm dignity, the seemingly artless perfection, and the 
 limpid movement, characteristic of those writers, may 
 sometimes be seen in passages of . Lowell ; but his 
 felicity in figures, and the irrepressible rush of his 
 double stream of thought, often lead him into a style 
 of writing that is both poetry and prose, and is not 
 purely either. . . . 
 
 "If the soul of poetry is energy, its garment beauty, 
 its effect emotion ; if, according to Landor, 'philosophy 
 should run through poetry as veins do through the 
 body' ; if that is a poem which is inspired with original 
 thought, graced by unborrowed pictures and figures, 
 and which suggests continually more than meets the 
 eve, — then it will be impossible to deny Lowell a high 
 rank among poets. . . . 
 
20 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 "Poems with such a range, such vivid conceptions, 
 such high purpose, such keen insight, such tender sym- 
 pathy, and such flashing lights of imagery, have never 
 been very common." 
 
 Francis H. Underwood, LL.D. 
 
 "The style of Mr. Lowell is emphatically his own, 
 and yet no man reports so habitually — half sympathet- 
 ically, half whimsically — the ring of other writers. 
 Homer Wilbur is especially redolent or resonant of the 
 old Elizabethan masters. 
 
 "We hear the grave Verulam Lord Bacon, or the 
 judicious Hooker. . . . Sometimes we get an odd 
 flavor of Swift, right humor being substituted for ma- 
 lignant satire ; at others, the flowing and tender style of 
 Jeremy Taylor comes back to us as we read. . . . 
 
 "Yet is he as voluminous and many-sided in poetry 
 as in prose; 'he sings to one clear harp in divers 
 tones.' " • H. R. Haweis. 
 
 "As often as the first eight lines of this poem (The 
 Vision of Sir Launfal) come to mind, I feel a 
 poetic breath not borne to me again from our home 
 hills and fields, and rarely wafted from the old lands 
 beyond the sea ; and passing on to the thirty-third line 
 beginning, 
 
 'And what is so rare as a day in June ?' 
 
 I say each time, '.Here and in certain passages of the 
 later odes are the purest, the sweetest, and at the same 
 time the freshest strains from any singer of our soil.' v 
 
 John Vance Cheney. 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL." 
 
 The legends of the Holy Grail are so numerous and 
 so varied that it is impossible to give an account that 
 will not in many points be in conflict with other ver- 
 sions. But any one of the renderings given by the 
 various poets or chroniclers will convey an idea of the 
 importance of the story in mediaeval life and literature. 
 
 It is said by some authorities that the legend of the 
 Holy Grail was introduced into Europe by the Moors 
 in Spain, and that the Spaniards transmitted it to the 
 French, where it was moulded into two lengthy poems 
 by Chrestien de Troves and Robert de Borron. It soon 
 found its way into England through the hand of Arch- 
 deacon Walter Map, of Oxford, who interwove it with 
 the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round 
 Table. It early became very popular in Germany, 
 where it attracted the genius of Wolfram von Eschen- 
 bach and Gottfried von Strassburg. Upon the "Parzi- 
 val" of von Eschenbach, Wagner based his famous 
 opera. 
 
 The story runs that, when Lucifer was cast out of 
 heaven, one precious stone of great size and beauty 
 fell from his crown to earth. From this jewel was 
 carved a cup of marvelous beauty, which was held in 
 high reverence for many centuries, when it descended 
 to Joseph of Arimathea. 
 
 21 
 
22 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 At the Crucifixion, Joseph held the cup beneath the 
 bleeding side of the Saviour and caught a few drops of 
 the Redeemer's blood. Thereafter it was believed to 
 be endowed with the power of healing anyone soever 
 who looked upon it. 
 
 Annually a snow-white dove brought a fresh host 
 down from heaven, placing it upon the cup, which was 
 held by a band of angels or immaculate virgins. The 
 vessel, however, remained in the possession of Joseph 
 of Arimathea, who, on account of persecution by the 
 Jews, left Palestine, carrying the sacred vessel with 
 him. Lie landed at Marseilles, and, after many ad- 
 ventures, arrived at Glastonbury, where the Sangreal 
 remained for a long time in the possession of his 
 descendants. But one of the conditions of its remain- 
 ing was that its guardian lead a spotlessly pure life, 
 and in course of time it came into the hands of one who 
 failed to keep himself unsullied ; accordingly the cup 
 disappeared. Men became so degenerate that for many 
 years the cup was beheld by no one, and it became a 
 favorite quest of the knights to seek the marvelous 
 vessel. 
 
 One day there entered the hall of knights in Arthur's 
 palace a "good old man" bringing with him a young 
 knight, whom he proclaimed to be of the king's lineage 
 and a descendant of Joseph of Arimathea. This young 
 knight was Sir Galahad. The hermit led him to the 
 Siege Perilous, meaning the dangerous seat, because 
 whoever sat there unworthily was punished by heaven 
 with death. When the veil that covered the Siege 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL 23 
 
 Perilous was lifted the knights beheld the words, "This 
 is the seat of Sir Galahad, the good knight." 
 
 Already Sir Gawain had taken oath to seek for the 
 Sangreal for twelve months and a day, and all the 
 knights had followed his example. So Arthur said : 
 "Now, at this quest of the Sangreal shall all ye of the 
 Round Table depart, and never shall I see you again 
 all together; therefore I will that ye all repair to the 
 meadow of Camelot, for to joust and tourney yet once 
 more before ye depart." But his desire was to test 
 Sir Galahad. That day Sir Galahad overthrew all the 
 other knights except Sir Launcelot and Sir Perceval. 
 After that they went to the minster to service, and 
 then all departed, singly or by twos, in fulfillment of 
 their vows. 
 
 The months passed by and they met many and mani- 
 fold adventures, delivering maidens from men and 
 beasts, fighting for the sake of glory, encountering 
 witches, magicians, and demons ; but they succeeded 
 not in their quest of the Holy Grail. 
 
 It happened that as Sir Launcelot was riding aim- 
 lessly in a wild forest he chanced upon a cross that 
 designated the way, beyond which he saw a chapel. 
 He "tied his horse till a tree" and went to the broken 
 door, but could not enter ; no one was within, though 
 he saw through the chinks in the door "a fair altar 
 full richly arrayed with cloth of clean silk, and there 
 stood a fair, clean candlestick which bare six great 
 candles, and the candlestick was of silver." He re- 
 turned to his horse, and, lying down upon his shield, 
 fell asleep. 
 
24 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 In a vision he saw two white palfreys approach bear- 
 ing a wounded knight in a litter. And Sir Launcelot 
 heard the wounded man cry, "O sweet Lord, when 
 shall this sorrow leave me, and when shall the holy 
 vessel come by me whereby I shall be healed?" And 
 as he spoke, the candlestick and the tapers moved be- 
 fore the cross, and after them came a salver of silver 
 with the Holy Grail. Then the sick man was healed 
 and went away praising God and marveling at Launce- 
 lot, who was so sluggish as to sleep when the sacred 
 relic was passing by. 
 
 Then Launcelot awaked, grieving, for he knew that 
 it was because of his sin he had not been allowed 
 to behold the Holy Grail except in a dream. He arose 
 and went to a hermitage and confessed all his sins, 
 and, having taken new vows of faithfulness, he set out 
 again on his quest. 
 
 Finally one evening he came before a. great castle 
 by the sea, and he heard a voice say, " Launcelot, enter 
 into the castle, where thou shalt see a great part of 
 thy desire." So he went in, and all the doors were 
 open before him, until he came to the last chamber, the 
 door of which was shut, and he was unable to open it. 
 He kneeled down before the door and prayed ; then it 
 was opened, and in the midst of the chamber he saw 
 a table of silver and upon it a sacred vessel. Launce- 
 lot, forgetting a prohibition to enter, advanced into the 
 chamber. A breath that seemed of fire threw him into 
 a swoon from which he did not recover until after 
 twenty-four days. Then he knew that the quest of the 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL 
 
 25 
 
 Sangreal was achieved as far as it ever would be by 
 him, and he returned to the country of Arthur. 
 
 Two other knights there were, besides Sir Galahad 
 and Sir Launcelot, to whom it was vouchsafed to be- 
 hold the Holy Grail — Sir Perceval and Sir Bohort. 
 After months spent in the quest, it happened that Sir 
 Galahad found Perceval hard set by some twenty 
 knights ; putting spurs to his horse, he rushed into the 
 midst and put to flight those who escaped the weight 
 of his sword. In his pursuit of the fugitives, Sir Per- 
 ceval was left behind, and at night Sir Galahad stopped 
 at a hermitage in the forest. Ere long a maiden 
 knocked at the door and desired to speak with the 
 knight. "Sir Galahad," she said, "I will that ye arm 
 and mount your horse and follow me, for I will show 
 you the highest adventure that ever knight saw." 
 
 So Galahad went out and followed her till they came 
 to the sea, where they saw a ship waiting. Then Gala- 
 had and the damsel, who was Sir Perceval's sister, left 
 their horses and entered the ship, where they found 
 Sir Bohort, or Bors, and Sir Perceval. 
 
 All that day and the next the wind and sea drove the 
 ship swiftly along, until they came between two rocks, 
 and they found it impossible to proceed. They beheld 
 another ship, however, and the damsel bade them enter 
 it ; so Galahad went over to it, and after him came the 
 maiden, and then Sir Perceval and Bohort. On board 
 they found the table of silver and the Holy Grail, which 
 was covered with red samite. After doing reverence 
 to the Sangreal, they sailed away in the new ship, 
 which carried them to the city of Serras. 
 
26 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 In this city of the Paynims they were imprisoned for 
 a year, at the end of which time the tyrant of the city 
 died and Sir Galahad was chosen king. After he had 
 worn the crown for a year and a day, the three young 
 knights went to the chapel one morning, according to 
 their custom, and as they entered the place where the 
 Grail was to be, lo ! they beheld one in the likeness of 
 Christ, who bade Sir Galahad stand forth and look 
 upon the Sangreal as he uncovered it. Then, accord- 
 ing to the promise that had been given him, Sir Gala- 
 had desired to depart this life, as he had accomplished 
 his mission, and his prayer was granted. 
 
 After this, Sir Perceval retired to a hermitage to 
 lead a holy life, but Sir Bohort retained his secular 
 garb, for he desired to return to his friends of the 
 Round Table. After a year and two months more, 
 Perceval died, and Sir Bohort set out for the palace of 
 Arthur. When he came to the Table Round, he found 
 the other knights returned, and he told them all that 
 had befallen him and his companions. Thus ended the 
 quest of the Holy Grail. 
 
 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. 
 Prelude to Part First, 
 i. 
 Over his keys the musing organist, 
 
 Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
 First lets his fingers wander as they list, 
 
 And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay ; 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 27 
 
 Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 
 
 Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
 
 First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 
 Along the wavering vista of his dream. 
 
 II. 
 
 Not only around our infancy 
 
 Doth heaven with all its splendors lie ; 10 
 
 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
 
 We Sinais climb and know it not. 
 
 ill. 
 
 Over our manhood bend the skies ; 
 
 Against our fallen and traitor Jives 
 The great winds utter prophecies ; 
 
 With our faint hearts the mountain strives ; 
 Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 
 
 Waits with its benedicite ; 
 And to our age's drowsy blood 
 
 Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20 
 
 IV. 
 
 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ; 
 
 The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
 The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 
 
 We bargain for the graves we lie in ; 
 At the devil's booth are all things sold, 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ; 
 
 For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
 Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 
 
2& LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 
 'Tis only God may be had for the asking; 30 
 
 No price is set on the lavish summer ; 
 June may be had by the poorest comer. 
 
 v. 
 
 And what is so rare as a day in June ? 
 
 Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
 Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
 
 And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
 Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
 We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
 Every clod feels a stir of might, 
 
 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 
 And, groping blindly above it for light, 
 
 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; 
 The flush of life may well be seen 
 
 Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
 The cowslip startles in meadows green, 
 
 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
 And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 
 
 To be some happy creature's palace ; 
 The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
 
 Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 
 
 And lets his illumined being o'errun 
 
 With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
 His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
 And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
 He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
 In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 29 
 
 VI. 
 
 Now is the high-tide of the year, 
 
 And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
 Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer 
 
 Into every bare inlet and creek and bay ; 60 
 
 Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
 We are happy now because God wills it ; 
 No matter how barren the past may have been, 
 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green ; 
 We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
 How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; 
 We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
 That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 
 The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
 That dandelions are blossoming near, 7° 
 
 That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
 That the river is bluer than the sky, 
 That the robin is plastering his house hard by ; 
 And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
 For other couriers we should not lack ; 
 
 We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — > 
 And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
 Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
 
 Tells all in his lusty crowing! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 
 Everything is happy now, 
 
 Everything is upward striving ; 
 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
 As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 
 
 80 
 
30 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Tis the natural way of living : 
 Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 
 
 In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 
 And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 
 
 The heart forgets its sorrow and ache ; 
 The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 
 
 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
 Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
 
 Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
 What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
 Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 
 
 Part First. 
 
 'My golden spurs now bring to me, 
 
 And bring to me my richest mail, 
 For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
 
 In search of the Holy Grail ; 
 Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 
 
 Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
 Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
 Here on the rushes will I sleep. 
 And perchance there n ay come a vision true 
 Ere day create the world anew." 
 
 Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
 
 Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
 And into his soul the vision flew. 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 31 
 
 11. 
 
 The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
 
 In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 110 
 
 The little birds sang as if it were 
 
 The one day of summer in all the year, - 
 And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees : 
 The castle alone in the landscape lay 
 Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray ; 
 'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, 
 And never its gates might opened be, 
 Save to lord or lady of high degree ; 
 Summer besieged it on every side, 
 But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 120 
 
 She could not scale the chilly wall, 
 Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall 
 Stretched left and right, 
 Over the hills and out of sight ; 
 
 Green and broad was every tent, 
 
 And out of each a murmur went 
 Till the breeze fell off at night. 
 
 in. 
 
 The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
 And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 
 Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 13 ° 
 
 In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
 It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
 Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 
 
 In his siege of three hundred summers long, 
 And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 
 
32 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Had cast them forth : so, young and strong, 
 And lightsome as a locust-leaf, 
 Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, 
 To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was morning on hill and stream and tree, 140 
 
 And morning in the young knight's heart ; 
 
 Only the castle moodily 
 
 Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 
 And gloomed by itself apart ; 
 
 The season brimmed all other things up 
 
 Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 
 
 v. 
 As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, 
 
 He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, 
 Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate ; 
 
 And a loathing over Sir Launfal came ; 150 
 
 The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 
 
 The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, 
 And midway its leap his heart stood still 
 
 Like a frozen waterfall ; 
 For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
 And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
 So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The leper raised not the gold from the dust : 
 
 "Better to me the poor man's crust, ieo 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 33 
 
 Better the blessing of the poor, 
 Though I turn me empty from his door ; 
 That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; 
 He gives only the worthless gold 
 
 Who gives from a sense of duty ; 
 But he who gives but a slender mite, 
 And gives to that which is out of sight, 
 
 That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
 Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
 The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms. 170 
 
 The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
 For a god goes with it and makes it store 
 To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 
 
 Prelude to Part Second. 
 
 Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
 From the snow five thousand summers old ; 
 
 On open wold and hill-top bleak 
 It had gathered all the cold, 
 
 And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek ; 
 
 It carried a shiver everywhere 
 
 From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; 18 ° 
 
 The little brook heard it and built a roof 
 
 'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof ; 
 
 All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
 
 He groined his arches and matched his beams ; 
 
 Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
 
 As the lashes of light that trim the stars : 
 
34 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 He sculpture every summer delight 
 
 In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
 
 Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
 
 Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 
 
 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
 
 Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; 
 
 Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
 
 But silvery mosses that downward grew ; 
 
 Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
 
 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 
 
 Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
 
 For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here 
 
 He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
 
 And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 20 ° 
 
 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
 
 And made a star of every one : 
 
 No mortal builder's most rare device 
 
 Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 
 
 'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay 
 
 In his depths serene through the summer day, 
 
 Each Meeting shadow of earth and sky, 
 
 Lest the happy model should be lost, 
 Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
 
 By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 
 
 it. 
 Within the hall are song and laughter, 
 
 The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
 And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 
 
 With lightsome green of ivy and holly ; 
 Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 35 
 
 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; 
 The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 
 
 And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
 Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 
 
 Hunted to death in its galleries blind ; 220 
 
 And swift little troops of silent sparks, 
 
 Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, 
 Go threading the soot- forest's tangled darks 
 
 Like herds of startled deer. 
 
 in. 
 
 Rut the wind without was eager and sharp, 
 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
 And rattles and wrings 
 The icy strings, 
 
 Singing, in dreary monotone, 
 
 A Christmas carol of its own, 230 
 
 Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
 
 Was — ''Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 
 The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
 As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
 And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
 
 The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
 
 Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
 Build out. its piers of ruddy light 
 
 Against the drift of the cold. 
 
36 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Part Second. 
 
 i. 
 There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 2 ^° 
 
 The bare boughs rattled shudcleringly ; 
 The river was dumb and could not speak, 
 
 For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun ; 
 A single crow on the tree-top bleak 
 
 From its shining feathers shed off the cold sun ; 
 Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
 As if her veins were sapless and old, 
 And she rose up decrepitly 
 For a last dim look at earth and sea. 
 
 n. 
 
 Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 250 
 
 For another heir in his earldom sate ; 
 
 An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
 
 He came back from seeking the Holy Grail ; 
 
 Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 
 
 No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 
 
 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
 
 The badge of the suffering and the poor. 
 
 in. 
 
 Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 
 Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 
 For it was just at the Christmas time; 
 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 
 
 260 
 
 And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
 
 37 
 
 In the light and warmth of long-ago; 
 
 He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 
 
 O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 
 
 Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 
 
 He can count the camels in the sun, 
 
 As over the red-hot sands they pass 
 
 To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 
 
 The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 270 
 
 And with its own self like an infant played, 
 
 And waved its signal of palms. 
 
 IV. 
 
 "For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms !" — 
 The happy camels may reach the spring, 
 But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 
 The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
 That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
 And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas, 
 In the desolate horror of his disease. 
 
 v. 
 
 And Sir Launfal said — "I behold in thee 230 
 
 An image of Him who died on the tree ; 
 
 Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, — 
 
 Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, — 
 
 And to thy life were not denied 
 
 The wounds in the hands and feet and side : 
 
 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me ; 
 
 Behold, through him, I give to thee !" 
 
38 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 VI. 
 
 Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 
 
 And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
 Remembered in what a haughtier guise 29 ° 
 
 He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
 When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 
 And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
 The heart within him was ashes and dust ; 
 He parted in twain his single crust, 
 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
 And gave the leper to eat and drink, 
 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 
 
 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl, — 
 Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 
 
 And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 
 
 VII. 
 
 As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 
 
 A light shone round about the place ; 
 
 The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
 
 But stood before him glorified, 
 
 Shining and tall and fair and straight 
 
 As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, — 
 
 Himself the Gate whereby men can 
 
 Enter the temple of God in Man. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 
 And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, 310 
 That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
 With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; 
 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 39 
 
 And the voice that was softer than silence said, 
 
 "Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 
 
 In many climes, without avail, 
 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; 
 
 Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now ; 
 
 This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 
 
 This water his blood that died on the tree ; 
 
 The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 
 In whatso we share with another's need ; 
 
 Not what we give, but what we share, 
 
 For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 
 
 IX. 
 
 Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : 
 
 "The Grail in my castle here is found; 
 
 Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 
 
 Let it be the spider's banquet-hall ; 
 
 He must be fenced with stronger mail 
 
 Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 
 
 x. 
 
 The castle gate stands open now, 
 
 And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
 
 As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough ; 
 No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
 
 The Summer's long siege at last is o'er ; 
 
 When the first poor outcast went in at the door, 
 
 $he entered with hjm in disguise, 340 
 
40 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 And mastered the fortress by surprise ; 
 
 There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 
 
 She lingers and smiles there the whole year round 
 
 The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
 
 Has hall and bower at his command ; 
 
 And there's no poor man in the North Countree 
 
 But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 
 
 RHCECUS. 
 
 God sends his teachers unto every age, 
 To every clime, and every race of men, 
 With revelations fitted to their growth 
 And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of Truth 
 Into the selfish rule of one sole race : 
 Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed 
 The life of man, and given it to grasp 
 The master-key of knowledge, reverence, 
 Enfolds some germs of goodness and of right ; 
 Else never had the eager soul, which loathes 10 
 
 The slothful down of pampered ignorance, 
 Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 
 
 There is an instinct in the human heart 
 Which makes that all the fables it hath coined 
 To justify the reign of its belief 
 And strengthen it by beauty's right divine, 
 Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
 Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful hands, 
 Points surely to the hidden springs of truth. 
 
RHCECUS 41 
 
 For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 20 
 
 But all things have within their hull of use 
 
 A wisdom and a meaning which may speak 
 
 Of spiritual secrets to the ear 
 
 Of spirit ; so, in whatsoe'er the heart 
 
 Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, 
 
 To make its inspirations suit its creed, 
 
 And from the niggard hands of falsehood wring 
 
 Its needful food of truth, there ever is 
 
 A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, 
 
 Not less than her own works, pure gleams of light 30 
 
 And earnest parables of inward lore. 
 
 Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
 
 As full of freedom, youth, and beauty still 
 
 As the immortal freshness of that grace 
 
 Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. 
 
 A youth named Rhoecus, wandering in the wood, 
 Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
 And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, 
 He propped its gray trunk with admiring care, 
 And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. 40 
 
 But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 
 That murmured ''Rhoecus!" Twas as if the leaves, 
 Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it. 
 And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 
 It murmured "Rhcecus !" softer than a breeze. 
 He started, and beheld with dizzy eyes 
 What seemed the substance of a happy dream 
 Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow 
 Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak. 
 
42 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 50 
 
 It seemed a woman's shape, yet all too fair 
 
 To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 
 
 For any that were wont to mate with gods. 
 
 All naked like a goddess stood she there, 
 
 And like a goddess all too beautiful 
 
 To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 
 
 "Rhoecus, I am the Dryad of this tree," 
 
 Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words 
 
 Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 
 
 "And with it I am doomed to live and die ; 
 
 The rain and sunshine are my caterers, ^0 
 
 Nor have I other bliss than simple life ; 
 
 Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give, 
 
 And with a thankful joy it shall be thine." 
 
 Then Rhcecus, with a flutter at the heart, 
 Yet, by the prompting of such beauty, bold, 
 Answered: "What is there that can satisfy 
 The endless craving of the soul but love ? 
 Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
 Which must be evermore my spirit's goal." 
 After a little pause she said again, 70 
 
 But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
 "I give it, Rhoecus, though a perilous gift; 
 An hour before the sunset meet me here." 
 And straightway there was nothing he could se5 
 But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak, 
 And not a sound came to his straining ears 
 But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, 
 And far away upon an emerald slope 
 The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 
 
RHCECUS 43 
 
 Now, in those days of simpleness and faith, 
 Men did not think that happy things were dreams 
 Because they overstepped the narrow bourne 
 Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 
 Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 
 To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 
 So Rhoecus made no doubt that he was blest, 
 And all along unto the city's gate 
 Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked 
 The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont, 
 And he could scarce believe he had not wings, 
 Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins 
 Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange. 
 
 Young Rhoecus had a faithful heart enough, 
 But one that in the present dwelt too much 
 And, taking with blithe welcome whatsoe'er 
 Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in that, 
 Like the contented peasant of a vale, 
 Deemed it the world, and never looked beyond. 
 So, haply meeting in the afternoon 
 Some comrades who were playing at the dice, 
 He joined them and forgot all else beside. 
 
 The dice were rattling at the merriest, 
 And Rhoecus, who had met. but sorry luck, 
 Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 
 When through the room there hummed a yellow bee 
 That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped legs 
 As if to light. And Rhoecus laughed and said, 
 Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 
 
 80 
 
 90 
 
 100 
 
44 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 "By Venus ! does he take me for a rose ?" 
 
 And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand. n0 
 
 But still the bee came back, and thrice again 
 
 Rhoecus did beat him off with growing wrath. 
 
 Then through the window flew the wounded bee, 
 
 And Rhoecus, tracking him with angry eyes, 
 
 Saw a sharp mountain peak of Thessaly 
 
 Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 
 
 And instantly the blood sank from his heart, 
 
 As if its very walls had caved away. 
 
 Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth, 
 
 Ran madly through the city and the gate, 120 
 
 And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long shade, 
 
 By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim. 
 
 Darkened well-nigh unto the city's wall. 
 
 Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree, 
 And, listening fearfully, he heard once more 
 The low voice murmur "Rhoecus !" close at hand : 
 Whereat he looked around him, but could see 
 Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak. 
 Then sighed the voice, "O Rhoecus ! nevermore 
 Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 13 ° 
 
 Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love 
 More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 
 Filled up with nectar any mortal heart : 
 But thou didst scorn my humble messenger, 
 And send'st him back to me with bruised wings. 
 We spirits only show to gentle eyes. 
 We ever ask an undivided love, 
 And he who scorns the least of nature's works 
 
RHCECUS 45 
 
 Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
 
 Farewell ! for thou canst never see me more." 140 
 
 Then Rhcecus beat his breast, and groaned aloud, 
 And cried, "Be pitiful ! forgive me yet 
 This once, and I shall never need it more !" 
 "Alas!" the voice returned, "'tis thou are blind, 
 Not I unmerciful ; I can forgive, 
 But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes ; 
 Only the soul hath power o'er itself." 
 With that again there murmured "Nevermore !" 
 And Rhcecus after heard no other sound, 
 Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 150 
 
 Like the long surf upon a distant shore, 
 Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 
 The night had gathered round him : o'er the plain 
 The city sparkled with its thousand lights, 
 And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 
 Harshly and like a curse ; above, the sky, 
 With all its bright sublimity of stars, 
 Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze : 
 Beauty was all around him and delight, 
 But from that eve he was alone on earth. 160 
 
46 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 A CHIPPEWA LEGEND. 
 
 T. 
 
 The old Chief, feeling now well-nigh his end, 
 Called his two eldest children to his side, 
 And gave them, in few words, his parting charge ! 
 "My son and daughter, me ye see no more; 
 The happy hunting-grounds await me, green 
 With change of spring and summer through the year : 
 But, for remembrance, after I am gone, 
 Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake : 
 Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet 
 To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow ; 10 
 
 Therefore of both your loves he hath more need, 
 And he, who needeth love, to love hath right ; 
 It is not like our furs and stores of corn, 
 Wliereto we claim sole title by our toil, 
 But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts, 
 And waters it, and gives it sun, to be 
 The common stock and heritage of all : 
 Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselves 
 May not be left deserted in your need." 
 
 ii. 
 Alone, beside a lake, their wigwam stood, 20 
 
 Far from the other dwellings of their tribe, 
 And, after many moons, the loneliness 
 Wearied the elder brother, and he said, 
 "Why should I dwell here far from men, shut out 
 From the free, natural joys that fit my age? 
 
A CHIPPEWA LEGEND 47 
 
 Lo, I am tall and strong, well skilled to hunt, 
 
 Patient of toil and hunger, and not yet 
 
 Have seen the danger which I dared not look 
 
 Full in the face ; what hinders me to be 
 
 A mighty Brave and Chief among my kin ?" 
 
 So, taking up his arrows and his bow, 
 
 As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly on, 
 
 Until he gained the wigwams of his tribe. 
 
 Where, choosing out a bride, he soon forgot, 
 
 In all the fret and bustle of new life, 
 
 The little Sheemah and his father's charge. 
 
 30 
 
 in. 
 
 Now, when the sister found her brother gone, 
 And that, for many days, he came not back, 
 She wept for Sheemah more than for herself ; 
 For Love bides longest in a woman's heart, 40 
 
 And flutters many times before he flies, 
 And then doth perch so nearly, that a word 
 May lure hiin back to his accustomed nest; 
 And Duty lingers even when Love is gone, 
 Oft looking out in hope of his return ; 
 And, after Duty hath been driven forth, 
 Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, 
 Warming her lean hands at the lonely hearth, 
 And crouching o'er the embers, to shut out 
 Whatever paltry warmth and light are left, 50 
 
 With avaricious greed, from all beside. 
 So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, 
 And cared for little Sheemah tenderly ; 
 But, daily more and more, the loneliness 
 
4 8 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Grew wearisome, and to herself she sighed, 
 
 "Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool, 
 
 That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so ; 
 
 But, O, how flat and meaningless the tale, 
 
 L T nless it tremble on a lover's tongue ! 
 
 Beauty hath no true glass, except it be 60 
 
 In the sweet privacy of loving eyes." 
 
 Thus deemed she idly, and forgot the lore 
 
 Which she had learned of nature and the woods, 
 
 That beauty's chief reward is to itself, 
 
 And that Love's mirror holds no image long 
 
 Save of the inward fairness, blurred and lost 
 
 Unless kept clear and white by Duty's care. 
 
 So she went forth and sought the haunts of men, 
 
 And, being wedded, in her household cares, 
 
 Soon, like the elder brother, quite forgot 
 
 The little Sheemah and her father's charge. 
 
 70 
 
 IV. 
 
 But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, 
 Waited and waited, with a shrinking heart, 
 Thinking each rustle was his sister's step. 
 Till hope grew less and less, and then went out, 
 And every sound was changed from hope to fear. 
 Few sounds there were : — the dropping of a nut, 
 The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, 
 Autumn's sad remnants of blithe Summer's cheer, 
 Heard at long intervals, seemed but to make 80 
 
 The dreadful void of silence silenter. 
 Soon what small store his sister left was gone, 
 And, through the Autumn, he made shift to live 
 
A CHIPPEWA LEGEND 
 
 49 
 
 On roots and berries, gathered in much fear 
 
 Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he heard ofttimes, 
 
 Hollow and hungry, at the dead of night. 
 
 But Winter came at last, and when the snow, 
 
 Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues o'er hill and plain, 
 
 Spread its unbroken silence over all, 
 
 Made bold by hunger, he was fain to glean 90 
 
 (More sick at heart than Ruth, and all alone) 
 
 After the harvest of the merciless wolf, 
 
 Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and gaunt, yet feared 
 
 A thing more wild and starving than himself ; 
 
 Till, by degrees, the wolf and he grew friends, 
 
 And shared together all the winter through. 
 
 v. 
 Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone, 
 The elder brother, fishing in the lake, 
 Upon whose edge his father's wigwam stood, 
 Heard a low murmuring noise upon the shore: 
 Half like a child it seemed, half like a wolf, 
 And straightway there was something in his heart 
 That said, "It is thy brother Sheemah's voice." 
 So, paddling swiftly to the bank, he saw, 
 Within a little thicket close at hand, 
 A child that seemed fast changing to a wolf. 
 From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair, 
 That still crept on and upward as he looked. 
 The face was turned away, but well he knew 
 That it was Sheemah's, even his brother's face. 110 
 Then with his trembling hands he hid his eyes, 
 And bowed his head, so that he might not see 
 
5o 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 The first look of his brother's eyes, and cried, 
 
 "O Sheemah ! O my brother, speak to me ! 
 
 Dost thou not know me, that I am thy brother? 
 
 Come to me, little Sheemah, thou shalt dwell 
 
 With me henceforth, and know no care or want !" 
 
 Sheemah was silent for a space, as if 
 
 'Twere hard to summon up a human voice, 
 
 And, when he spake, the voice was as a wolf's : 120 
 
 "I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st ; 
 
 I have none other brethren than the wolves, 
 
 And, till thy heart be changed from what it is, 
 
 Thou art not worthy to be called their kin." 
 
 Then groaned the other, with a choking tongue, 
 
 "Alas ! my heart is changed right bitterly ; 
 
 'Tis shrunk and parched within me even now !" 
 
 And, looking upward fearfully, he saw 
 
 Only a wolf that shrank away and ran, 
 
 Ugly and fierce, to hide among the woods. 13 ° 
 
 AMBROSE. 
 
 Never, surely, was holier man 
 
 Than Ambrose, since the world began ; 
 
 With diet spare and raiment thin 
 
 He shielded himself from the father of sin ; 
 
 With bed of iron and scourgings oft, 
 
 His heart to God's hand as wax made soft. 
 
AMBROSE 51 
 
 II. 
 
 Through earnest prayer and watchings long 
 
 He sought to know 'tween right and wrong, 
 
 Much wrestling with the blessed Word 
 
 To make it yield the sense of the Lord, 10 
 
 That he might build a storm-proof creed 
 
 To fold the flock in at their need. 
 
 in. 
 At last he builded a perfect faith, 
 Fenced round about with The Lord thus saith; 
 To himself he fitted the doorway's size, 
 Meted the light to the need of his eyes, 
 And knew, by a sure and inward sign, 
 That the work of his fingers was divine. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die 
 
 The eternal death who believe not as I." 20 
 
 And some were boiled, some burned in fire, 
 
 Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire, 
 
 For the good of men's souls, might be satisfied 
 
 By the drawing of all to the righteous side. 
 
 v. 
 Que day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth 
 In his lonely walk, he saw a youth 
 Resting himself in the shade of a tree ; 
 It had never been granted him to see 
 So shining a face, and the good man thought 
 'Twere pity he should not believe as he ought, 30 
 
52 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 VI. 
 
 So he set himself by the young man's side, 
 And the state of his soul with questions tried ; 
 But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed, 
 Nor received the stamp of the one true creed ; 
 And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find 
 Such features the porch of so narrow a mind. 
 
 VII. 
 
 "As each beholds in cloud and fire 
 
 The shape that answers his own desire, 
 
 So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall find 
 
 The figure and fashion of his mind ; 40 
 
 And to each in his mercy God has allowed 
 
 His several pillar of fire and cloud." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal 
 And holy wrath for the young man's weal : 
 "Believest thou then, most wretched youth/' 
 Cried he, " a dividual essence in Truth ? 
 1 fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin 
 To take the Lord in his glory in." 
 
 IX. 
 
 Now there bubbled beside them where they stood 
 A fountain of waters sweet and good ; 50 
 
 The youth to the streamlet's brink drew near 
 Saying, "Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here !" 
 Six vases of crystal then he took, 
 And set them along the edge of the brook. 
 
A PARABLE 53 
 
 X. 
 
 "As into these vessels the water I pour, 
 
 There shall one hold less, another more, 
 
 And the water unchanged, in every case, 
 
 Shall put on the figure of the vase ; 
 
 O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife. 
 
 Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?" c0 
 
 XI. 
 
 When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone, 
 
 The youth and the stream and the vases were gone ; 
 
 But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, 
 
 He had talked with an angel face to face, 
 
 And felt his heart change inwardly, 
 
 As he fell on his knees beneath the tree. 
 
 A PARABLE. 
 
 Worn and footsore was the Prophet 
 When he reached the holy hill ; 
 
 "God has left the earth," he murmured, 
 "Here his presence lingers still. 
 
 "God of all the olden prophets, 
 Wilt thou talk with me no more ? 
 
 Have I not as truly loved thee 
 As thy chosen ones of yore? 
 
10 
 
 20 
 
 54 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 "Hear me, guider of my fathers, 
 Lo, an humble heart is mine ; 
 
 By thy mercy I beseech thee, 
 Grant thy servant but a sign!" 
 
 Bowing then his head, he listened 
 For an answer to his prayer ; 
 
 No loud burst of thunder followed, 
 Not a murmur stirred the air : 
 
 But the tuft of moss before him 
 Opened while he waited yet, 
 
 And from out the rock's hard bosom 
 Sprang a tender violet. 
 
 "God ! I thank thee," said the Prophet, 
 "Hard of heart and blind was I, 
 Looking to the holy mountain 
 For the gift of prophecy. 
 
 "Still thou speakest with thy children 
 
 Freely as in Eld sublime, 
 Humbleness and love and patience 
 
 Give dominion over Time. 
 
 "Had I trusted in my nature, 
 
 And bad faith in lowly things, 30 
 
 Thou thyself would st then have sought me, 
 
 And set free my spirit's wings. 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 55 
 
 "But I looked for signs and wonders 
 That o'er men should give me sway ; 
 
 Thirsting to be more than mortal, 
 I was even less than clay. 
 
 "Ere I entered on my journey, 
 
 As I girt my loins to start, 
 Ran to me my little daughter, 
 
 The beloved of my heart ; 40 
 
 "In her hand she held a flower, 
 
 Like to this as like may be, 
 Which beside my very threshold 
 
 She had plucked and brought to me." 
 
 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE. 
 
 1. 
 
 What visionary tints the year puts on, 
 When falling leaves falter through motionless air 
 
 Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone ! 
 How shimmer the low fiats and pastures bare, 
 As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 
 The bowl between me and those distant hills, 
 And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous 
 hair! 
 
 11. 
 No more the landscape holds its wealth apart, 
 Making me poorer in my poverty, 
 
56 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 But mingles with my senses and my heart ; 10 
 
 My own projected spirit seems to me 
 In her own reverie the world to steep ; 
 Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep, 
 Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree. 
 
 in. 
 
 How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees, 
 Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, 
 
 Each into each, the hazy distances ! 
 The softened season all the landscape charms ; 
 
 Those hills, my native village that embay, 
 
 In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 
 
 20 
 
 And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee 
 Close at my side ; far distant sound the leaves ; 
 
 The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory 
 Wanders like gleaning Ruth ; and as the sheaves 
 Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye 
 Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, 
 So tremble and seem remote all things the sense 
 receives. 
 
 v. 
 
 The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn, 
 Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates, 30 
 
 Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne, 
 Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits ; 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 57 
 
 Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails ; 
 Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, 
 With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry 
 waits. 
 
 VI. 
 The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, 
 Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer ; 
 
 The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's bough, 
 Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, 
 Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound 40 
 Whisks to his winding fastness underground ; 
 The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 VII. 
 
 O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows 
 Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's 
 call 
 Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed 
 meadows ; 
 The single crow a single caw lets fall ; 
 And all around me every bush and tree 
 Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, 
 Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees 50 
 
 Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, 
 
 And hints at her foregone gentilities 
 With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves ; 
 
 The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, 
 
 Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 
 As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves. 
 
58 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 IX. 
 
 He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, 
 Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed white 
 
 Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, 
 With distant eye broods over other sights, 60 
 
 Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, 
 The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace. 
 And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. 
 
 x. 
 
 The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, 
 And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, 
 
 After the first betrayal of the frost 
 Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky ; 
 
 The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, 
 To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, 
 Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring 
 eye. 70 
 
 XI. 
 
 The ash her purple drops forgivingly 
 And sadly, breaking not the general hush ; 
 
 The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, 
 Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush ; 
 
 All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting 
 
 blaze 
 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, 
 Ere the rain fall, the cautious farmer burns his brush. 
 
 XII. 
 
 O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt 
 zone. 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 59 
 
 Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine 
 Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant 
 stone 
 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, 
 
 The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, 
 
 weaves 
 A prickly network of ensanguined leaves ; 
 Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, 
 Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's 
 foot, 
 Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, 
 Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, 
 The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, 
 Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires ; 
 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Below, the Charles— a stripe of nether sky, 
 Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, 
 
 Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, 
 Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 
 Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, 
 A silver circle like an inland pond — 
 Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and 
 green. 
 
 xv. 
 Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
 Who cannot in their various incomes share, 
 
60 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 From every season drawn, of shade and light, 
 Who sees in them but levels brown and bare ; 
 Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free 
 On them its largess of variety, 
 For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders 
 rare. 
 
 xvi. 
 In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, 
 O'er which the light winds run with glimmering 
 feet: 
 Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, 
 There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet ; 
 And purpler stains show where the blossoms 
 
 crowd, 
 As if the silent shadow of a cloud no 
 
 Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 All round, upon the river's slippery edge, 
 Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, 
 
 Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; 
 Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, 
 
 Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, 
 
 And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run 
 Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see, 120 
 
 As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass, 
 
 The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, 
 Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass ; 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 61 
 
 Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, 
 Their nooning take, while one begins to sing 
 A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close sky of 
 brass. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, 
 Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 
 
 Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, 
 And 'twixt the windrows most demurely drops, 130 
 
 A decorous bird of business, who provides 
 
 For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, 
 And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid his crops. 
 
 xx. 
 
 Another change subdues them in the Fall, 
 But saddens not ; they still show merrier tints, 
 
 Though sober russet seems to cover all ; 
 When the first sunshine through their dew-drops 
 glints, 
 Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, 
 Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, 
 As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy 
 • , 140 
 
 prints. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, 
 Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, 
 
 While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, 
 Glow opposite ;— the marshes drink their fill 
 
 And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade 
 
 Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the 
 shade, 
 
62 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Lengthening with stealthy creep, of SimoncTs darken- 
 ing hill. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, 150 
 
 Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, 
 
 And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, 
 While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, 
 
 Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, 
 And until bedtime plays with his desire, 
 Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought 
 skates ; — 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright, 
 With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, 
 
 By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, 
 'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, 
 Giving a pretty emblem of the day 
 When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, 160 
 And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war's 
 cramping mail. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 And now those waterfalls the ebbing river 
 Twice every day creates on either side 
 
 Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they 
 shiver 
 In grass-arched channels to the sun denied ; 
 High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, 
 The silvered fiats gleam frostily below, 
 Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 63 
 
 XXV. 
 
 But crowned in turn by vying seasons three, 
 Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 170 
 
 This glory seems to rest immovably, — 
 The others were too fleet and vanishing ; 
 When the hid tide is at its highest flow, 
 O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of 
 snow 
 With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. 
 
 xxvi. 
 
 The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, 
 As pale as formal candles lit by day ; 
 
 Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind ; 
 The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in 
 play, 
 Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, 180 
 White crests as of some just enchanted sea, 
 Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised mid- 
 way. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, 
 From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling plains 
 
 Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, 
 And the roused Charles remembers in his veins 
 
 Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, 
 
 That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost 
 In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns, 
 
6 4 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 
 
 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, 
 
 The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice ; 
 No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, 
 Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff 
 Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 
 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and 
 there. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes 
 To that whose pastoral calm before me lies : 
 Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes ; 
 The early evening with her misty dyes 200 
 
 Smooths off the raveled edges of the nigh. 
 Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, 
 And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied 
 eyes. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 There gleams my native village, dear to me, 
 Though higher change's waves each day are seen, 
 
 Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, 
 Sanding with houses the diminished green ; 
 
 There, in red brick, which softening time defies, 
 Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories ; — 
 How with my life knit up is every well-known scene ! 
 
 210 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Flow on, dear river ! not alone you flow 
 To outward sight, and through your marshes wind ; 
 Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 65 
 
 Your twin flows silent through my world of mind: 
 Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray ! 
 Before my inner sight ye stretch away, 
 And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell, 
 Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, 
 
 Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, 23 ° 
 Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, 
 
 Where dust and mud the equal year divide, 
 
 There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died, 
 Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Virgiliiim vidi tan turn, — I have seen 
 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, 
 
 That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien, 
 Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call ; — 
 Ah, dear old homestead ! count it to thy fame 
 That hither many times the Painter came ; — 23 ° 
 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow, — 
 Our only sure possession is the past ; 
 
 The village blacksmith died a month ago, 
 And dim to me the forge's roaring blast ; 
 Soon fire-new medirevals we shall see 
 Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, 
 And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive green and 
 vast. 
 
66 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 How many times, prouder than king on throne, 
 Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 
 
 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, 24 ° 
 
 And watched the pent volcano's red increase, 
 
 Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought 
 
 down 
 By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 
 From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Dear native town ! whose choking elms each year 
 With eddying dust before their time turn gray, 
 
 Pining for rain, — to me thy dust is dear; 
 It glorifies the eve of summer day, 250 
 
 And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 
 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, 
 The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold 
 away, 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, 
 The six old willows at the causey's end 
 
 (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), 
 Through this dry mist their checkering shadows 
 send, 
 Striped here and there, with many a long-drawn 
 
 thread, 
 Where streamed through leafy chinks the trem- 
 bling red, 
 Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes 
 blend, 
 
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 67 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, 260 
 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, 
 
 Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer ; 
 Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments 
 three, 
 Yet collcgisse juvat, I am glad 
 That here what colleging was mine I had, — 
 It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Nearer art thou than simply native earth. 
 My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie ; 
 
 A closer claim thy soil may well put forth. 
 Something of kindred more than sympathy ; 270 
 
 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away 
 
 That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, 
 That title I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky, 
 
 XL. 
 
 That portion of my life more choice to me 
 (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) 
 
 Than all the imperfect residue can be ; — 
 The Artist saw his statue of the soul 
 
 Was perfect ; so, with one regretful stroke 
 
 The earthen model into fragments broke, 
 And without her the impoverished seasons roll. 280 
 
68 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 BEAVER BROOK. 
 
 Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 
 
 And minuting the long day's loss, 
 The cedar's shadow, slow and still, 
 
 Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. 
 
 Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
 
 The aspen's leaves are scarce astir, 
 Only the little mill sends up 
 
 Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 
 
 Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems 
 
 The road along the mill pond's brink. 10 
 
 From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, 
 My footstep scares the shy chewink. 
 
 Beneath a bony buttonwood 
 
 The mill's red door lets forth the din ; 
 
 The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 
 Flits past, the square of dark within. 
 
 No mountain torrent's strength is here ; 
 
 Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, 
 Heaps its small pitcher to the ear 
 
 And gently waits the miller's will. 20 
 
 Swift slips Undine along the race 
 
 Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, 
 
 Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, 
 And laughing, hunts the loath drudge round, 
 
BEAVER BROOK 69 
 
 The miller dreams not at what cost 
 
 The quavering millstones hum and whirl, 
 
 Nor how, for every turn are tost 
 Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. 
 
 30 
 
 But Summer cleared my happier eyes 
 With drops of some celestial juice, 
 
 To see how Beauty underlies 
 Forevermore each form of Use. 
 
 And more : methought I saw that flood, 
 Which now so dull and darkling steals, 
 
 Thick, here and there, with human blood, 
 To turn the world's laborious wheels. 
 
 No more than doth the miller there, 
 Shut in our several cells, do we 
 
 Know with what waste of beauty rare 
 Moves every day's machinery. 
 
 Surely the wiser time shall come 
 When this fine overplus of might, 
 
 No longer sullen, slow and dumb, 
 Shall leap to music and to light. 
 
 In that new childhood of the Earth 
 Life of itself shall dance and play, 
 
 Fresh blood through Time's shrunk veins 
 make mirth, 
 And labor meet delight half-way. 
 
 40 
 
70 , LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 TO THE DANDELION. 
 
 i. 
 
 Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
 Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 
 
 First pledge of blithesome May, 
 Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, 
 High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they 
 An Eldorado in the grass have found, 
 
 Which not the rich earth's ample round 
 May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me 
 Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow 
 
 Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 10 
 
 Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
 Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 
 
 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now 
 To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
 Though most hearts never understand 
 To take it at God's value, but pass by 
 The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 
 
 in. 
 Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
 To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 20 
 
 The eyes thou givest me 
 Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 
 Not in mid- Tune the <rolden-cuirassed bee 
 
TO THE DANDELION 71 
 
 Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
 In the white lily's breezy tent, 
 His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
 From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, 
 Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 
 
 Where, as the breezes pass, 30 
 
 The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
 Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
 Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 
 
 That from the distance sparkle through 
 Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 
 Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. 
 
 v. 
 My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with 
 thee ; 
 The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 
 
 Who, from the dark old tree 
 Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 40 
 
 And I, secure in childish piety, 
 Listened as if I heard an angel sing 
 
 With news from heaven, which he could bring 
 Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
 When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thou art the type of those meek charities 
 W 7 hich make up half the nobleness of life, 
 
72 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Those cheap delights the wise 
 Pluck from the dusty wayside of earth's strife: 
 
 Words of frank cheer, glances of friendly eyes, 
 Love's smallest coin, which yet to some may give 
 The morsel that may keep alive 
 A starving heart, and teach it to behold 
 Some glimpse of God where all before was cold. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Thy winged seeds, whereof the winds take care, 
 Are like the words of poet and of sage 
 
 Which through the free heaven fare, 
 And, now unheeded, in another age 
 
 Take root, and to the gladdened future bear 
 That witness which the present would not heed, 
 Bringing forth many a thought and deed, 
 And, planted safely in the eternal sky, 
 Bloom into stars which earth is guided by. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Full of deep love thou art, yet not more full 
 Than all thy common brethren of the ground. 
 
 Wherein, were we not dull, 
 Some words of highest wisdom might be found ; 
 
 Yet earnest faith from day to day may cull 
 Some syllables, which, rightly joined, can make 
 A spell to soothe life's bitterest ache, 
 And ope Heaven's portals, which are near us still. 
 Yea, nearer ever than the gates of 111, 
 
 50 
 
 00 
 
 70 
 
THE BOBOLINK 
 
 73 
 
 IX. 
 
 How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
 When thou, for all thy gold, so common art ! 
 
 Thou teachest me to deem 
 More sacredly of every human heart. 
 
 Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
 Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show 
 Did we but pay the love we owe, 
 And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 80 
 
 On all these living pages of God's book. 
 
 x. 
 
 But let me read thy lesson right or no, 
 Of one good gift from thee my heart is sure ; 
 
 Old I shall never grow 
 While thou each year dost come to keep me pure 
 
 With legends of my childhood ; ah, we owe 
 Well more than half life's holiness to these 
 Nature's first lowly influences, 
 At thought of which the heart's glad doors burst 
 
 ope, 
 In dreariest days, to welcome peace and hope. 90 
 
 THE BOBOLINK. 
 
 Anacreon of the meadow, 
 Drunk with the joy of Spring ! 
 Beneath the tall pine's voiceful shadow 
 I lie and drink thy jargoning; 
 
74 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 My soul is full with melodies, 
 
 One drop would overflow it 
 
 And send the tears into mine eyes — 
 
 But what car'st thou to know it ? 
 
 Thy heart is free as mountain air, 
 
 And of thy lays thou hast no care, 10 
 
 Scattering them gayly everywhere, 
 
 Happy, unconscious poet ! 
 
 L T pon a tuft of meadow grass, 
 While thy loved one tends the nest, 
 Thou swayest as the breezes pass, 
 Unburthening thine o'erfull breast 
 Of the crowded songs that fill it, 
 Just as joy may choose to will it. 
 Lord of thy love and liberty. 
 
 The blithest bird of merry May, 20 
 
 Thou turnest thy bright eyes on me, 
 That say as plain as eye can say: 
 "Here sit we, here in the summer weather, 
 I and my modest mate together ; 
 Whatever your wise thoughts may be, 
 Under that gloomy old pine tree, 
 We do not value them a feather. 
 
 Now, leaving earth and me behind, 
 Thou beatest up against the wind, 
 Or, floating slowly down before it, 30 
 
 Above thy grass-hid nest thou flutterest 
 And thy bridal love-song utterest, 
 Raining showers of music o'er it, 
 
THE BOBOLINK 75 
 
 Weary never, still thou trillest 
 
 Spring-gladsome lays, 
 
 As of moss-rimmed water-brooks 
 
 Murmuring through pebbly nooks 
 
 In quiet summer days. 
 
 Myheart with happiness thou fillest; ^ 
 
 I seem again to be a boy 
 
 Watching thee, gay, blithesome lover, 
 
 O'er the bending grass-tops hover, 
 
 Quivering thy wings for joy. 
 
 There's something in the apple-blossom, 
 
 The greening grass and bobolink's song, 
 
 That wakes again within my bosom 
 
 Feelings which have slumbered long. 
 
 As long, long years ago I wandered, 
 
 I seem to wander even yet, 
 
 The hours the idle schoolboy squandered, 
 
 The man would die ere he'd forget. 
 
 hours that frosty eld deemed wasted, 
 Nodding his gray head toward my books, 
 
 1 dearer prize the lore I tasted 
 
 With you, among the trees and brooks, 
 
 Than all that I have gained since then 
 
 From learned books or study-withered men! 
 
 Nature, thy soul was one with mine, 
 
 And, as a sister by a younger brother ^ 
 
 Is loved, each flowing to the other, 
 
 Such love for me was thine. 
 
 Or wert thou not more like a loving mother 
 
 With sympathy and loving power to heal, 
 
 Against whose heart my throbbing heart I'd lay 
 
76 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Till calm and holiness would o'er me steal ? 
 
 Was not the golden sunset a dear friend? 
 
 Found I no kindness in the silent moon, 
 
 And the green trees, whose tops did sway and bend, 
 
 Low singing evermore their pleasant tune ? 
 
 Felt I no heart in dim and solemn woods, 70 
 
 No loved one's voice in lonely solitudes ? 
 
 Yes ! yes ! unhoodwinked then my spirit's eyes, 
 
 Blind leaders had not taught me to be wise. 
 
 Dear hours ! which now again I over-live, 
 Hearing and seeing with the ears and eyes 
 Of childhood, ye were bees, that to the hive 
 Of my young heart came laden with rich prize, 
 Gathered in fields and woods and sunny dells, to be 
 My spirit's food in days more wintery. 
 Yea, yet again ye come ! ye come ! 80 
 
 And, like a child once more at home 
 After long sojourning in alien climes, 
 I lie upon my mother's breast, 
 Feeling the blessedness of rest, 
 And dwelling in the light of other times. 
 
 O ye whose living is not Life, 
 Whose dying is but death, 
 Song, empty toil, and petty strife, 
 Rounded with loss of breath ! 
 Go, look on Nature's countenance, 
 Drink in the blessing of her glance ; 
 Look on the sunset, hear the wind, 
 The cataract, the awful thunder ; 
 
 90 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS yy 
 
 Go, worship by the sea ; 
 
 Then, and then only, shall ye find, 
 
 With ever-growing wonder, 
 
 Man is not all in all to ye ; 
 
 Go with a meek and humble soul, 
 
 Then shall the scales of self unroll 
 
 From off your eyes ; the weary packs 
 
 Drop from your heavy-laden backs ; 
 
 And ye shall see, 
 
 With reverent and hopeful eyes, 
 
 Glowing with new-born energies, 
 
 How great a thing it is to be. 
 
 100 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 When a deed is done- for Freedom, through the broad 
 earth's aching breast 
 
 Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east 
 to west, 
 
 And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within 
 him climb 
 
 To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
 
 Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem 
 of Time. 
 
 II. 
 
 Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instan- 
 taneous throe, 
 
 When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to 
 and fro ; 
 
yS LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, 
 Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips 
 
 apart, 
 And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath 
 
 the Future's heart. 10 
 
 in. 
 
 So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a 
 
 chill, 
 Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill, 
 And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies 
 
 with God 
 In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by 
 
 the sod, 
 Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the 
 
 nobler clod. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears 
 
 along, 
 Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right 
 
 or wrong; 
 Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's 
 
 vast frame 
 Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy 
 
 or shame; — 
 In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 
 
 claim. 20 
 
 v. 
 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to 
 decide, 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS 79 
 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or 
 
 evil side ; 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each 
 
 the bloom or blight, 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon 
 
 the right, 
 And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness 
 
 and that light. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou 
 
 shalt stand, 
 Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust 
 
 against our land ? 
 Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone 
 
 is strong, 
 And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her 
 
 throng- 
 Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all 
 
 wrong. 30 
 
 VII. 
 
 Backward look across the ages and the beacon-mo- 
 ments see, 
 
 That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through 
 Oblivion's sea; 
 
 Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding 
 cry 
 
 Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose 
 feet earth's chaff must fly ; 
 
 Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment 
 hath passed by. 
 
80 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but 
 
 record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems 
 
 and the Word : 
 Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 
 
 throne, — 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim 
 
 unknown, 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 
 
 his own. !0 
 
 IX. 
 
 We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is 
 great, 
 
 Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron 
 helm of fate, 
 
 But the soul is still oracular ; amid the market's din, 
 
 List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave 
 within, — 
 
 "They enslave their children's children who make com- 
 promise with sin." 
 
 x. 
 
 Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant 
 
 brood, 
 Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have 
 
 drenched the earth with blood, 
 Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our 
 
 purer day, 
 Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable 
 
 prey ;— 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS 8l 
 
 Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless chil- 
 dren play? 50 
 
 XI. 
 
 Then to side with Truth is noble, when we share her 
 wretched crust. 
 
 Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosper- 
 ous to be just ; 
 
 Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward 
 stands aside, 
 
 Doubting, in his abject spirit, till his Lord is cruci- 
 fied, 
 
 And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had 
 denied. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls 
 that stood alone, 
 
 While the men they agonized for hurled the contume- 
 lious stone, 
 
 Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden 
 beam incline 
 
 To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith 
 divine. 
 
 By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's 
 supreme design. 60 
 
 XIII. 
 
 By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet 
 
 I track, 
 Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns 
 
 not back, 
 
82 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 And these mounts of anguish number how each genera- 
 tion learned 
 
 One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet- 
 hearts hath burned 
 
 Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face 
 to heaven upturned. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the 
 
 martyr stands. 
 On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his 
 
 hands ; 
 Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling 
 
 fagots burn, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 
 
 return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden 
 
 urn. 70 
 
 xv. 
 
 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 
 
 Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, 
 
 Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light 
 
 a crime ; — 
 Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by 
 
 men behind their time? 
 Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make 
 
 Plvmouth Rock sublime? 
 
THE PRESENT CRISIS 83 
 
 XVI. 
 
 They were men of present valor, stalwart old icono- 
 clasts, 
 
 Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the 
 Past's ; 
 
 But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that 
 hath made us free, 
 
 Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender 
 spirits flee 
 
 The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove 
 them across the sea. 80 
 
 XVII. 
 
 They have rights who dare maintain them; we are 
 
 traitors to our sires, 
 Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar 
 
 fires ; 
 Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our 
 
 haste to slay, 
 From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral 
 
 lamps away 
 To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of 
 
 to-day ? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient 
 
 good uncouth ; 
 They must upward still, and onward, who would keep 
 
 abreast of Truth ; 
 Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must 
 
 Pilgrims be, 
 
84 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the 
 desperate winter sea, 
 
 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood- 
 rusted key. W 
 
 THE FATHERLAND. 
 
 i. 
 
 Where is the true man's fatherland? 
 
 Is it where he by chance is born? 
 
 Doth not the yearning spirit scorn 
 In such scant borders to be spanned? 
 O yes ! his fatherland must be 
 As the blue heaven wide and free ! 
 
 ii. 
 Is it alone where freedom is, 
 
 Where God is God and man is man? 
 
 Doth he not claim a broader span 
 For the soul's love of home than this? 10 
 
 O yes ! his fatherland must be 
 As the blue heaven wide and free ! 
 
 in. 
 Where'er a human heart doth wear 
 
 Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves, 
 
 Where'er a human spirit strives 
 After a life more true and fair, 
 There is the true man's birthplace grand.. 
 His is a world-wide fatherland ! 
 
A SONG 85 
 
 IV. 
 
 Where'er a single slave doth pine, 
 
 Where'er one man may help another, — 
 Thank God for such a birthright, brother,— 
 
 That spot of earth is thine and mine ! 
 
 There is the true man's birthplace grand, 
 
 His is a world-wide fatherland. 
 
 20 
 
 A SONG. 
 
 Violet! sweet violet! 
 Thine eyes are full of tears ! 
 Are they wet 
 Even yet 
 With the thought of other years? 
 Or with gladness are they full, 
 For the night so beautiful, 
 And longing for those far-off spheres? 
 
 11. 
 
 Loved one of my youth thou wast, 
 Of my merry youth, 
 And I see, 
 Tearfully, 
 All the fair and sunny past, 
 All its cpenness and truth, 
 Ever fresh and green in thee _ 
 As the moss is in the sea. 
 
86 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 III. 
 
 Thy little heart, that hath with love 
 Grown colored like the sky above, 
 On which thon lookest ever, — 
 
 Can it know 20 
 
 All the woe 
 Of hope for what returneth never, 
 All the sorrow and the longing 
 To these hearts of ours belonging ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Out on it ! no foolish pining 
 
 For the sky 
 
 Dims thine eye, 
 Or for the stars so calmly shining; 
 Like thee let this soul of mine 
 Take hue from that wherefor I long, 30 
 
 Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, 
 Not satisfied with hoping — but divine. 
 
 v. 
 
 Violet ! dear violet ! 
 
 Thy blue eyes are only wet 
 With joy and love of Him who sent thee, 
 And for the fulfilling sense 
 Of that glad obedience 
 Which made thee all that Nature meant thee ' 
 
WITH A PRESSED FLOWER 87 
 
 WITH A PRESSED FLOWER. 
 
 This little flower from afar 
 Hath come from other lands to thine ; 
 For, once, its white and drooping star 
 Could see its shadow in the Rhine. 
 
 Perchance some fair-haired German maid 
 Hath plucked one from the self-same stalk, 
 And numbered over, half afraid, 
 Its petals in her evening walk. 
 
 "He loves me, loves me not," she cries ; 
 
 "He loves me more than earth or Heaven," 10 
 
 And then glad tears have filled her eyes 
 
 To find the number was uneven. 
 
 So, Love, my heart doth wander forth 
 To farthest lands beyond the sea, 
 And search the fairest spots of earth 
 To find sweet flowers of thought for thee. 
 
 A type this tiny blossom is 
 Of what my heart doth every day, 
 Seeking for pleasant fantasies 
 To brood upon when thou 'rt away. 
 
 20 
 
 And thou must count its petals well 
 Because it is a gift from me ; 
 And the last one of all shall tell 
 Something I've often told to thee. 
 
LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 But here at home, where we were born, 
 Thou wilt find flowers just as true, 
 Down bending every summer morn 
 With freshness of New England dew. 
 
 For Nature, ever right in love, 
 Hath given them the same sweet tongue, 3 & 
 
 Whether with German skies above, 
 Or here our granite rocks among. 
 
 MY LOVE, 
 i. 
 Not as all other women are 
 Is she that to my soul is dear; 
 Her glorious fancies come from far 
 Beneath the silver evening-star, 
 And yet her heart is ever near. 
 
 n. 
 Great feelings hath she of her own 
 Which lesser souls may never know ; 
 God giveth them to her alone, 
 And sweet they are as any tone 
 Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 10 
 
 in. 
 Yet in herself she dwelleth not, 
 Although no home were half so fair 
 No simplest duty is forgot, 
 Life hath no dim and lowly spot 
 That doth not in her sunshina share. 
 
20 
 
 MY LOVE 89 
 
 IV. 
 
 She doeth little kindnesses, 
 Which most leave undone, or despise, 
 For naught that sets one heart at ease, 
 And giveth happiness or peace, 
 Is low-esteemed in her eyes. 
 
 She hath no scorn of common things, 
 
 And, though she seem of other birth, 
 Round us her heart entwines and clings, 
 And patiently she folds her wings 
 To tread the humble paths of earth. 
 
 Blessing she is : God made her so, 
 And deeds of weekday holiness 
 Fall from her noiseless as the snow, 
 Nor hath she ever chanced to know 
 That aught were easier than to bless. 
 
 She is most fair, and thereunto 
 
 Her life doth rightly harmonize ; 
 Feeling or thought that was not true 
 Ne'er made less beautiful the blue 
 Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 
 
 30 
 
 She is a woman : one in whom 
 
 The springtime of her childish years 
 Hath never lost its fresh perfume, 
 Though knowing well that life hath room 
 
 For many blights and many tears. ^ 
 
90 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 I love her with a love as still 
 
 As a broad river's peaceful might, 
 
 Which, by high tower and lowly mill, 
 
 Goes wandering at its own will, 
 And yet doth ever flow aright. 
 
 And. on its full, deep breast serene, 
 
 Like quiet isles my duties lie ; 
 It flows around them and between, 
 And makes them fresh and fair and green, 
 
 Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 50 
 
 THE CHANGELING. 
 
 I had a little daughter, 
 
 And she was given to me 
 To lead me gently backward 
 
 To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
 That I, by the force of nature. 
 
 Might in some dim wise divine 
 The depth of His infinite patience 
 
 To this wayward soul of mine. 
 
 I know not how others saw her, 
 
 But to me she was wholly fair, 10 
 
 And the light of the heaven she came from 
 
 Still lingered and gleamed in her hair ; 
 For it was as wavy and golden, 
 
 And as many changes took, 
 As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 
 
 On the yellow bed of a brook. 
 
THE CHANGELING 91 
 
 To what can I liken her smiling 
 
 Upon me, her kneeling lover, 
 How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids 
 
 And dimpled her wholly over, 20 
 
 Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 
 
 And I almost seemed to see 
 The very heart of her mother 
 
 Sending sun through her veins to me ! 
 
 She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 
 
 And it hardly seemed a day, 
 When a troop of wandering angels 
 
 Stole my darling daughter away ; 
 Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 
 
 But loosed the hampering strings, 30 
 
 And when they had opened the cage-door, 
 
 My little bird used her wings. 
 
 But they left in her stead a changeling, 
 
 A little angel child, 
 That seems like her bud in full blossom, 
 
 And smiles as she never smiled ; 
 When I wake in the morning I see it 
 
 Where she always used to lie, 
 And I feel as weak as a violet 
 
 Alone 'neath the awful sky. 
 
 40 
 
 As weak, yet as trustful also ; 
 
 For the whole year long I see 
 All the wonders of faithful Nature 
 
 Still worked for the love of me ; 
 
£2 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 Winds wander and dews drip earthward, 
 
 Rains fall, suns rise and set, 
 Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 
 
 A poor little violet. 
 
 This child is not mine as the first was, 
 
 I cannot sing it to rest, 50 
 
 I cannot lift it up fatherly 
 
 And bliss it upon my breast ; 
 Yet it lies in my little one's cradle, 
 
 And it sits in my little one's chair, 
 And the light of the heaven she's gone to 
 
 Transfigures its golden hair. 
 
NOTES 
 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. 
 
 This poem came from the author's pen, substantially as it 
 now stands, almost at a single sitting, within the space of 
 forty-eight hours. During this time the poet scarcely ate or 
 slept. 
 
 "It was almost an improvisation, and its effect upon the 
 reader is like that of the outburst of an inspired singer. The 
 effect upon the public was immediate and powerful ; the poem 
 needed no herald or interpreter." — Underwood. 
 
 "As often as the first eight lines of this poem come to mind, 
 I feel a poetic breath not borne to me again from our home 
 hills and fields, and rarely wafted from the old lands beyond 
 the sea ; and passing on to the thirty-third line, beginning, 
 
 'And what is so rare as a day in June?' 
 
 1 say each time, 'Here and in certain passages of the later 
 odes are the purest, the sweetest, and at the same time the 
 freshest strains from any singer of our soil." — John Vance 
 Cheney. 
 
 Line i. Musing. Consider the particular force of the word. 
 
 2. Doubtfully and far away. Amplify. 
 
 3. List. What word would have been used in prose? 
 
 4. And builds, etc. Can you trace a similar thought in 
 Browning's Abt Vogler? 
 
 "Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, 
 Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, 
 
 Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch . . . 
 Should rush into sight at once. . . ." 
 93 
 
94 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 5. Touch. Suggest synonyms for the word as used here. 
 
 7. Give in full the comparison suggested by the metaphor 
 here. 
 
 8. How may the vista of the organist's dream be termed 
 wavering? 
 
 9-to. A reference to the well-known lines of Wordsworth's 
 Intimations of Immortality: 
 
 "Heaven lies about us in our infancy; 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing boy." 
 
 Compare also Hood's lines : 
 
 "I remember, I remember, 
 
 The fir-trees dark and high; 
 I used to think their slender tops 
 Were close against the sky. 
 
 "It was a childish ignorance, 
 But now 'tis little joy 
 To know I'm farther off from heaven 
 Than when I was a boy." 
 
 12. We Sinais climb. It was on Mount Sinai, in the north- 
 western part of Arabia, that Moses talked with God and re- 
 ceived the Ten Commandments. See Ex. xix, 20. 
 
 13. Compare again Browning's Abt Vogler: 
 
 "And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach 
 the earth." 
 
 15. Do the great winds prophesy against us by giving us 
 intimations of God, of whom we have been unmindful in al- 
 lowing our lives to become fallen and traitor, by suggesting 
 to us their obedience to law, as compared with our disregard 
 of it; or is there still another explanation? 
 
 16. Does this simply mean that mountains are inspiring? 
 
NOTES - 94 
 
 Are not the inhabitants of mountainous countries usually 
 brave and liberty-loving? With the line compare Childe 
 Harold: 
 
 "And to me 
 High mountains are a feeling." 
 
 And Wordsworth's Tintem Abbey: 
 
 "The mountains . . . were then to me 
 An appetite, a feeling, and a love." 
 
 17. Druid wood. The Druids were the priests, or prophets, 
 of the ancient Celts who lived in the woods, performing there 
 all religious observances, and giving instruction to the people. 
 The figure of the Druid wood has been a favorite with the 
 poets. Cf. Evangeline : 
 
 "The murmuring pines and the hemlocks. . . . 
 Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic." 
 
 Why does the Druid wood utter the benedicite, rather than 
 the wind or sea? 
 
 19. Age's. Connect in thought with lines 9 and 13. 
 
 21. Earth gets its price. Observe the contrast with what 
 follows : 
 
 " 'Tis heaven alone that is given away." 
 
 22. Beggar. What is the meaning of the word here? Ex- 
 plain the thought of the line. 
 
 25. What is the important word in this line? 
 
 27. By what figure is a fool's reward indicated? 
 
 28. What are some of the bubbles we buy? 
 
 29. What is the meaning of heaven as used here? 
 
 33. June was the favorite month of Lowell, as May has 
 always been of the English poets. In Under the Willows, he 
 says: 
 
 "June is the pearl of our New England year; 
 
 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, 
 A ghastly parody of real spring." 
 
96 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 "I think also that The Vision of Sir Launfal owed its suc- 
 cess quite as much to presentation of nature as to its misty 
 legend. It really is a landscape poem, of which the lovely 
 passage, 'And what is so rare as a day in June?' and the 
 wintry prelude to Part Second are the specific features." — 
 Stedman. 
 
 35-36. Heaven . . . lays. Give in full the comparison 
 implied in this metaphor. Compare with the feeling expressed 
 in "his loved instrument" of line 5. 
 
 38. What are some of the things in which life murmurs and 
 glistens? 
 
 41-42. Explain in full the meaning of these lines. 
 
 43. Flash. Can you suggest another word that will express 
 as much in this connection ? 
 
 46. The buttercup . . . chalice. Is there a special fit- 
 ness in speaking of the chalice of the buttercup as catching 
 the sun? What is the figure? 
 
 50. What special form does stilt give to the picture? 
 
 51. Read this line, emphasizing in turn lets, illumined being, 
 and o'errun. 
 
 54. Why dumb breast? 
 
 55. Swinton asks what human application can be made of 
 this line. 
 
 56. Suggest synonyms of nice. Can you answer the ques- 
 tion? 
 
 "What Lowell loves most in nature are the trees and their 
 winged inhabitants, and the flowers that grow unattended. 
 The singing of birds, as we learn in both his prose and verse, 
 enraptured him." — Stedman. 
 
 Compare the following lines from the Indian-Summer Rev- 
 erie : 
 
 "Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, 
 
 Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 
 Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, 
 And 'twixt the windrows most demurely drops." 
 
 59. Flooding back. Compare the thrilling back of line 44. 
 
NOTES 97 
 
 What is the basis of this metaphor? How many lines does it 
 cover? 
 
 62. One of the most noticeable characteristics of Lowell's 
 poetry is its deep religious feeling. Compare The Courtin'. 
 
 "God made sech nights, all white an' still 
 Fur'z you can look or listen." 
 and 
 
 "So nigh to the . . . heart of God, 
 You almost seem to feel it beat 
 Down from the sunshine and up from the sod." 
 
 67. Does line 65 contain the key to this line? 
 70. Lowell's fondness for the dandelion may be seen in his 
 poem To the Dandelion. 
 
 77. Is there anything in this line that tends to destroy its 
 euphony ? . 
 87. Unscarred . . . tvake. Is the figure mixed? 
 91. Sulphurous rifts. This figure anticipates what lines? 
 94-95. Has the poet been letting his "fingers wander as 
 they list" thus far? 
 
 96. et seq. Compare with this passage the preparations made 
 by Sir Galahad and Percevale's sister in Tennyson's Holy 
 Grail: 
 
 "And so she prayed and fasted till the sun 
 Shone . . . 
 
 But she, the wan sweet maiden, shore away 
 Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair 
 Which made a silken mat-work for her feet ; 
 And out of this she plaited broad and long 
 A strong sword belt, and wove with silver thread 
 And crimson in the belt a strange device, 
 A crimson grail within a silver beam; 
 And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him." 
 
 99. Holy Grail. See Introduction. 
 
 102. Compare Sir Launfal's vow with the vow of Gawain 
 and the other knights of the Round Table. See Introduction. 
 
98 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 103. On the rushes. It was a custom of feudal times to 
 have the floors strewn with rushes. 
 
 no. What time of the year does this line indicate it to be? 
 
 109-118. Does the contrast contained in these lines suggest 
 the class distinctions of the feudal period? 
 
 119. Summer besieged. Does this metaphor continue the 
 thought of the simile in line 115? 
 
 122. What are the pavilions tall of this line and the tents 
 of line 125? 
 
 128. How does the change in the rhythm affect the vivid- 
 ness of this stanza? 
 
 137. Does this line seem incongruous with what precedes? 
 
 144. How appropriate is gloomed here and brimmed in the 
 following line? 
 
 146. Pitcher-plant's cup. Is this figure dignified enough to 
 correspond with the rest of the stanza? 
 
 147. Made morn. Explain. 
 
 148. Do you find a commonplace, prosaic expression in this 
 line which detracts from the beauty of the stanza ? 
 
 154. What do you think of the force and beauty of this 
 simile ? 
 
 159. Who are included in the term leper? 
 
 163. True. Explain. 
 
 166. lie. Give grammatical construction. 
 
 168. What is this thread of the all-sustaining Beauty? How 
 does it run through and unite all? Give the meaning of the 
 passage in full. 
 
 172. A god. That is, a power to bless. What part of speech 
 is store? 
 
 • 175. Five thousand. Is there any special reason for five 
 rather than for any other number? What is the figure of 
 speech ? 
 
 176. Is open necessary to define what is meant by wold? 
 Consult dictionary. 
 
 180. In his essay, A Good Word for Winter, Lowell shows 
 his love for the "season of cold." "For my part," he says, 
 "I think winter a pretty wide-awake old boy, and his bluff 
 
NOTES 99 
 
 sincerity and hearty ways are more congenial to my mood, 
 and more wholesome for me, than any charms of which his 
 rivals are capable." Compare likewise the beautiful descrip- 
 tion of winter in An Indian-Summer Reverie. 
 
 181. Lowell himself tells us the source of this picture of 
 the brook. "Last night I walked to Watertown over the 
 snow," he writes in a letter, "with the new moon before me, 
 and a sky exactly like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion 
 was rising behind me; and, as I stood on the hill just before 
 you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me 
 was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which 
 runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook 
 in Sir Launfal was drawn from it." 
 
 184. Explain groined. Compare Emerson's use of the word 
 in The Problem: 
 
 "And groined the aisles of Christian Rome." 
 
 195. Explain relief and arabesques in the following line. 
 201. How were the beams crystalled? 
 
 210. How does the thought of this line agree with that of 
 line 181? 
 
 212. Cheeks of Christmas. What is the figure? Express 
 the thought literally. 
 
 213. Corbel. This is a shoulder-piece jutting out in the 
 wall, or a bracket supporting the spring of an arch. It is much 
 used in Gothic architecture. 
 
 216. What do you think of the use of wallows here? The 
 burning of the Yule-log in the fireplace on Christmas Eve is 
 an old custom come down to us from heathen times. The 
 word comes from jul, the Swedish and Danish word for 
 Christmas. 
 
 220. Galleries blind. Explain the figure. 
 
 223. What is meant by the soot-forest's tangled dark? 
 
 224. Is the picture of dreariness in lines 174-180 intensified 
 by this stanza? If so, how? 
 
 233. The seneschal was an officer in the households of medi- 
 aeval nobles and dignitaries, whose duty it was to superintend 
 
 LOFC 
 
100 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 all domestic ceremonies. What do you think of the figure, 
 flared like a torch, as a predicate of voice? 
 
 238-239. Explain the metaphor in these lines. 
 
 240. For vividness compare this stanza with stanza III of 
 Part First. What produces this vividness? 
 
 243. Contrast with the metaphor in this line the one in 
 line 181. State the effect of each. 
 
 244. What does the single crow add to the scene? Com- 
 pare line 109. 
 
 249. What is the difference in effect of the two pictures of 
 morning, as given in this stanza and stanza IV of Part First? 
 
 250. Explain the figure in hard gate. 
 
 259. Comment on the force of barbed as used here. 
 270. Name two things that add much to the beauty of this 
 line. 
 
 279. What is it that produces the strength of this line? 
 
 287. How long had it taken Sir Launfal to arrive at this 
 conception of Christ and of mankind? Cf. Matt, xxv, 40: 
 "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my 
 brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 
 294. Ashes and dust. Explain. Compare with the ex- 
 pression, "Repent in sackcloth and ashes." 
 
 307. Beautiful Gate. A reference, doubtless, to Acts ii, 2, 
 where mention is made of the Gate Beautiful of the Temple. 
 
 309. Compare 1 Cor. ii, 16: "Ye are the temples of God." 
 
 318. Behold it is here. What is the practical application 
 of the fact that Sir Launfal found the Holy Grail at his own 
 door? 
 
 327. Himself. How is the giver fed by his own gift? 
 Compare Acts xx, 35: "It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive." The beauty of these lines, as indeed that of many 
 others, must be absorbed and felt ; it cannot be imparted. The 
 lesson taught here is one that the poet often urges. The same 
 idea of human love and sympathy is paramount in A Parable. 
 
 322. What is the stronger mail referred to here ? 
 
 336. The hangbird. The oriole. In My Garden Acquaint- 
 
NOTES IOI 
 
 ance Lowell also makes mention of the oriole's nest in the 
 elm tree. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 Prelude to Part First. 
 
 1. What is the purpose of the first stanza? 
 
 2. What is the name of the analogy that the poet suggests 
 by his figure? 
 
 3. Just what about the poem does the stanza tell? 
 
 4. What is the theme of the poet? 
 
 5. Explain the thoughts that the poet puts into "faint 
 auroral flushes." 
 
 Lines 9-20. 
 
 6. To whose ascent of Mount Sinai is reference made? 
 
 7. Explain the purpose for which he went up into the 
 mountain. 
 
 8. Explain how we ascend Sinai without knowing it. 
 
 9. What particulars are given in substantiation of the 
 general statement? 
 
 10. What, then, is the central idea of these twelve lines? 
 
 11. What appeals are made to us? 
 
 12. Through what channels are they made? 
 
 13. Explain in what way our lives may be said to be 
 "fallen and traitor." 
 
 14. Explain what there is of benediction in the wood; of 
 inspiration in the sea. 
 
 Lines 21-32. 
 
 15. Explain the nature of the contrast in this section of 
 the poem. 
 
 16. Express the central idea of this stanza in terms of this 
 contrast. 
 
 17. What relation do lines 22-28 bear to the general state- 
 ment with which the stanza opens. 
 
 18. What other general statement is made in the stanza? 
 Illustrated by what particulars? 
 
102 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 19. In what way does this stanza prepare for the passage 
 that follows? 
 
 Lines 33-56. 
 
 20. What part of this stanza is given to the description of 
 the beauty of a day in June? 
 
 21. What part is devoted to showing the fullness of life in 
 nature ? 
 
 22. Which lines show the influence of spring on living 
 things? 
 
 23. Which of. the above ideas contains most nearly the 
 central thought of the stanza? Explain how. 
 
 Lines 57-79. 
 
 24. In what is the thought of this stanza closely connected 
 with that of the preceding? 
 
 25. In what way does it progress nearer to the poet's 
 theme? 
 
 26. What general statement is made and then substan- 
 tiated by particulars? 
 
 27. Is the poet's purpose here to show the influence of the 
 return of life upon earth's creatures in general, more particu- 
 larly upon man? 
 
 Lines 80-95. 
 
 28. In what way does the thought of this stanza differ 
 from that of the preceding? 
 
 29. In what way is this stanza a summary of the preceding 
 parts of the prelude? 
 
 30. In what way is it the culmination of a line of thought? 
 
 31. Show how the author is nearer his theme than he has 
 been before. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 I. 
 
 32. What elements of Sir Launfal's character are sug- 
 gested by this first stanza? 
 
 33- By what means is his character unfolded to us? 
 
NOTES 103 
 
 34. What is Sir Launfal's evident purpose in setting out 
 
 on the quest? . 
 
 35. What is the spirit that prompts the knight to sleep on 
 
 the rushes? 
 
 II. 
 
 36. What is the time of year suggested by the first two 
 
 lines? . .. 
 
 37 What purpose has the author in portraying to us the 
 castle instead of the knight? What is the effect? 
 
 39. Show how the castle illustrates Sir Launfal s attitude 
 toward humanity. 
 
 39. Mention the human qualities suggested by the castle. 
 
 III. 
 
 40. In what way does the first line of this stanza suggest 
 Sir Launfal's lack of consecration to his mission? 
 
 41. Why does the poet lay so much stress on the gilded 
 
 mail? , .... , A 
 
 42. What condition of mind is suggested by lightsome as 
 
 a locust leaf"? 
 
 43. What does the last line of the stanza suggest about the 
 
 young knight? 
 
 IV. 
 
 44. Can you see that this stanza adds anything to the con- 
 trast in Stanza II? 
 
 45 For what purpose is the contrast introduced here, be- 
 tween Sir Launfal just before and just after he sees the leper? 
 
 V. 
 
 46 In what way did Sir Launfal make morn? 
 
 47. What purpose has Lowell in emphasizing the loath- 
 someness of the leper? . 
 
 48. Compare these lines with lines 136-139 and explain just 
 why Sir Launfal felt as he did. 
 
 49. Just why did Sir Launfal scorn the leper? 
 
104 
 
 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 VI. 
 
 50. Which is more forcible — the statement of the leper's 
 rejection of the gift, or the explanation of his reason for re- 
 jecting it? Explain why. 
 
 51. How does this incident affect our opinion of Sir Laun- 
 fal's quest? 
 
 52. Explain why Lowell proceeds no further with Sir Laun- 
 fal's quest. 
 
 PRELUDE TO PART SECOND. 
 
 Lines 174-210. 
 
 53. What is the effect of this abrupt introduction of the 
 bleakness of winter? 
 
 54. What does it suggest with respect to Sir Launfal's 
 need? His quest? 
 
 55. Explain the reason for the author's choice of this win- 
 ter scene for this prelude. 
 
 56. Explain the significance of the brightness and life of 
 the brook under its covering of ice. 
 
 Lines 174-180. 
 
 57. With what is this cheerfulness of the brook contrasted? 
 
 58. In what way does the brook, in the midst of its dismal 
 winter, form a direct contrast with Sir Launfal in Part First ? 
 
 59. In what way may the brook be compared to Sir Laun- 
 fal on his return ? 
 
 60. Explain the general nature of the figure running 
 through this passage. 
 
 Lines 211-224. 
 
 61. Explain why this picture of the interior of the castle 
 is given here. 
 
 62. With what other passages of the poem does it form a 
 contrast? 
 
NOTES 105 
 
 63. In what way is the cheerfulness of this picture differ- 
 ent from that of the brook? 
 
 64. Do you find anything selfish in this one? 
 
 65. For what does this picture prepare? In what way? 
 
 Lines 225-239. 
 
 66. With what is the first line contrasted? 
 
 67. In what way has the author prepared us for this in- 
 troduction of Sir Launfal as an old man ? 
 
 68. Explain the appropriateness of the introduction of 
 Christmas here. 
 
 69. In what respect may the deed of the seneschal be com- 
 pared to Sir Launfal's treatment of the leper in Part First? 
 
 70. Explain the general meaning of this prelude, and its 
 relation to the rest of the poem. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 I. 
 
 71. What characteristic of winter does Lowell emphasize 
 in this stanza? 
 
 72. With what in Part First is this in contrast? 
 
 73. Point out the various elements of contrast. 
 
 II. 
 
 74. What lesson has Sir Launfal learned when he turns 
 from his own hard gate? 
 
 75. What inner change is suggested by his no longer wear- 
 ing the cross on his surcoat? 
 
 III. 
 
 77. Under what circumstances, pleasurable or otherwise, 
 has Sir Launfal seen the things mentioned here? 
 
 78. Explain whether or not his reverie is pleasurable. 
 
io6 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 IV. 
 
 79. Compare the suddenness of the leper's appearance here 
 with that in Part First. 
 
 80. What is the first thing about the leper to be noticed 
 by Sir Launfal both times they meet? 
 
 V. 
 
 81. What feeling is aroused at the first meeting? At the 
 second? 
 
 82. Just what has wrought the difference in Sir Launfal — 
 failure or suffering? 
 
 VI. 
 
 83. What is it that reminds Sir Launfal of his former 
 meeting with the leper? 
 
 84. What is the spirit in which Sir Launfal gives to the 
 leper now ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 85. About what was Sir Launfal musing? 
 
 86. What is the evident significance of this transformation 
 of the leper? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 87. What ideas in the first prelude has Sir Launfal's life 
 in his vision exemplified? 
 
 88. What, in Sir Launfal's second gift, is most strongly 
 exemplified? 
 
 89. In what way is Sir Launfal rewarded for his gift? 
 
 IX. 
 
 90. How much time has elapsed since the dream began? 
 
 91. Can you see any reason for Lowell's having Sir Laun- 
 fal learn the lesson through the vision, instead of by actual 
 experience? 
 
 92. Is the actual Sir Launfal seen in this stanza and the 
 first stanza of Part First as haughty and selfish as the Sir 
 Launfal of the first part of the vision? 
 
NOTES 107 
 
 X. 
 
 93. If the poem ended with the first line of this stanza, 
 how much would be told about the change in Sir Launfal's 
 life? 
 
 94. Why does this suggest so much? 
 
 95. Explain, as fully as you can, how the castle illustrates 
 Sir Launfal's attitude toward humanity. 
 
 96. For what does summer stand in this stanza? 
 
 97. Aside from Sir Launfal's kindness, what adds pleasure 
 to this closing stanza? 
 
 98. In what way has Sir Launfal climbed Sinai without 
 knowing it? 
 
 99. Compare the way Sir Launfal profited by the lesson he 
 learned in his vision with the use the Ancient Mariner made 
 of his awful experiences at sea. 
 
 100. Explain fully the life lesson the author meant to teach 
 by the poem. 
 
 RHCECUS. 
 
 56. Dryad. The active imagination of the ancients peopled 
 with superior beings every mountain, vale, plain, stream, and 
 tree. These beings were called nymphs. The nymphs were 
 beings of natures somewhere between the natures of men and 
 those of gods. They were gifted with power to make them- 
 selves visible or invisible at will ; were "able to do many things 
 only permitted to be done by gods ; living, like the gods, on 
 ambrosia ; leading a cheerful, happy life of long duration, and 
 retaining strength and youthfulness to the last, but not des- 
 tined to immortality." 
 
 Dryad was the name given to nymphs who inhabited forests, 
 trees, and shrubs. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What is the central thought of this poem? 
 
 2. State, in a single sentence, the thought of the first stanza 
 of the poem. 
 
 3. What idea is developed in the -first thirty-five lines? 
 
108 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 4. What was the feeling that prompted Rhcecus to prop up 
 the old oak? 
 
 5. What is the real thought behind the Greek's belief that 
 trees were inhabited by Dryads ? 
 
 6. What is the weakness in the character of Rhcecus that 
 causes his disappointment? 
 
 7. What feeling led Rhcecus to forget his appointment? 
 
 8. Why did he treat the bee so roughly, although he felt 
 sympathy for the old oak? 
 
 9. Just why is Rhcecus unable to see the Dryad? 
 10. W r hat is the effect of his error upon his life? 
 
 A CHIPPEWA LEGEND. 
 
 "For the leading incidents in this tale I am indebted to the 
 very valuable Algic Researches of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq." 
 — Lowell. 
 
 12. Justify this assertion. 
 
 13-17. Is this idea common among Indians, or is it the 
 Christian conception of the poet put into the mouth of the old 
 chief? 
 
 19. Note the simplicity of this legend as compared with 
 that of Prometheus. To what cause do you attribute it ? 
 
 22. Moons. What is the special propriety in the use of this 
 figure here? 
 
 24-30. What is the keynote of the character of the elder 
 brother as exhibited in these lines? Was it this that led him 
 to forget utterly the little Sheemah (line 36) ? 
 
 40. Is the sister true to her brother from love or duty? 
 
 55. Is the sister led away at last by pride or selfishness, or 
 both? 
 
 76. From hope to fear. What was his hope? His fear? 
 
 91. Reference is made to Ruth, who was befriended by 
 Boaz. See Ruth ii. 
 
 102. Was something. What was it? 
 
 no. Even. A common use of the word in the Bible. 
 
 113. Why can he not meet Sheemah's first look? 
 
NOTES 109 
 
 114. What is the spirit in which the elder brother speaks 
 to Sheemah ? 
 
 123. Till the heart be changed. Was not the heart of the 
 elder brother already changed? What then is meant? 
 
 130. Was this really Sheemah or an illusion caused by the 
 elder brother's guilty conscience? 
 
 What is the meaning of this poem? 
 
 AMBROSE. 
 
 2. Ambrose. One of the early church fathers, noted for 
 his zeal and piety. 
 
 6. The early church fathers believed that sin was to be 
 avoided by giving as little attention as possible to the body ; 
 in other words, by ''crucifying the flesh." 
 
 36. Porch. Express your opinion of this metaphor. 
 
 42. Pillar of fire and cloud. A reference to the pillar of 
 cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, which went be- 
 fore the Israelites in their journey out of Egypt. See Exodus 
 xii, 21, 22. 
 
 46. Dividual essence. Explain. 
 
 58. Put on the figure. Explain. 
 * 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What are the qualities of Ambrose's character as shown 
 in the poem? 
 
 2. Why was the creed of Ambrose a failure? 
 
 3. What relation in thought do stanzas IX and X bear to 
 stanza VII ? 
 
 4. What, then, in your opinion, is the purpose of the poem? 
 
 5. What information da you get regarding the religious 
 belief of Lowell? 
 
 A PARABLE. 
 
 2. Holy hill. The holy hill of Scripture was Mount Zion. Is 
 the prophet represented as having made a pilgrimage to this 
 place ? 
 
HO LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 12. What kind of a sign did the prophet desire? 
 
 20. What hint does this stanza give concerning Lowell's 
 idea of God as revealed in nature? 
 
 26. In Eld. Of old, in olden times. 
 
 28. Explain the meaning in this line. Does the following 
 stanza throw light on it? 
 
 36. How was he less tlian tlicyf 
 
 44. Compare with this a thought in Sir Lannfal: 
 "The Grail in my castle here is found." 
 
 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE. 
 
 "What Lowell loves most are the trees and their winged in- 
 habitants, and the flowers that grow unattended. The Indian- 
 Summer Reverie is an early and delightful avowal of his pas- 
 toral tastes. His favorite birds and trees, the meadows, riv- 
 er, and marshes, all are there, put in with strokes no modern 
 descriptive poet has excelled." — Stedman. 
 
 Line 1. Visionary. Note the force of this word as suggest- 
 ing that which is dim, distant, faintly seen, and at the same 
 time that which is fighting or changeable. 
 
 5. Hebe was the cup-bearer of the gods. Note how the 
 figure is carried out in fills the bowl. 
 
 7. Tremulous hair. Explain what is meant. 
 
 11. Projected. Spread out, extended, expanded. Note what 
 the word means by derivation. 
 
 22. Chickadee. The black-cap titmouse of North America. 
 
 25. Gleaning Ruth. For Ruth gleaning in the fields of 
 Boaz, refer to Ruth ii. 
 
 28. Seem remote. Do distances seem greater in the autumn 
 than during other seasons of the year in certain localities? 
 Give reason for your answer. 
 
 29. The cock's shrill trump. Compare "the cock's shrill 
 clarion" of Gray's Elegy. 
 
 33. Flails. Much of the threshing on the smaller farms of 
 New England was done with a flail at a comparatively recent 
 date; and the instrument may still occasionally be seen. 
 
NOTES III 
 
 38. Shag-bark's. The shag-bark is a species of hickory. 
 46. Single crow. The crow seems to be a favorite bird of 
 Lowell. Cf. Sir Launfal, 109, and 244 : 
 
 "A single crow on the tree-top bleak." 
 
 See also line 166 of this poem. 
 
 50. Most shy and ladylike of trees. Explain why these epi- 
 thets are applicable to the birch. 
 
 59. Lapi. Enveloped, wrapt. 
 
 61. Note the contrast between hushed wood and city's Hare. 
 
 67. How does the red-oak appear to rebuff the kiss of the 
 relenting sky? 
 
 83. Express your opinion of ensanguined, as applied to the 
 color of autumnal leaves. Also of coral, in the following line. 
 
 85. Crumbling boundary. What -is it? 
 
 92. The Charles separates Cambridge from Boston. Ex- 
 plain a stripe of nether sky. 
 
 94. Bellying by. For the use of this word, cf. Sir Launfal, 
 218: 
 
 "And belly and tug as a flag in the wind." 
 
 99. Marshes. Here used in the sense of Hats. 
 
 106. They. What is the antecedent? 
 
 107. Glimmering. Show the application of this figure. 
 
 119. Note the numerous figures in this stanza. Give the 
 application of each. Of dimpling light modifies what? 
 
 120. Blithesome is a very common word with Lowell. Do 
 any synonyms express as much ? 
 
 143. Explain the meaning of shorn sun and swells. 
 147. Of . . . hill. What does this phrase modify? 
 161. With the thought here compare the following from 
 Locksley Hall: 
 
 "Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags 
 were furled 
 In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. 
 There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 
 
 in awe, 
 And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." 
 
112 LOWELL'S POEM£ 
 
 163. Tinkle. For a like use of this word, see Sir Launfal, 
 189: 
 
 "Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt." 
 
 165. See note on 46. 
 
 172. Too fleet and vanishing. What is the length of winter 
 as compared with the other seasons? 
 
 178. Dumb and blind. Compare Sir Launfal, 242: 
 
 "The river was dumb and could not speak." 
 
 183. Eastern blow. The storms of the vernal equinox. 
 
 190. Druid-like. Note the frequency with which this figure 
 appears in Lowell. 
 
 192. Stonehenge is the name given to the Druidical monu- 
 ments in Salisbury Plain, England. It is a set of circles and 
 oval figures. The first circle has pillars of stone about 13 feet 
 high and 4 feet apart, with stones placed across the top. There 
 are about 140 stones in all, some being 23 feet high. Stone- 
 henge has been classed as one of the four wonders of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 201. Nigh. This word, used doubtless for the sake of 
 rhyme, mars the beauty of the line much. 
 
 209. Muses' factories. The buildings of Harvard College. 
 
 220. Cits. A contraction of citizen. Do you think the word 
 poetic ? 
 
 221. Coptic tombs. The Copts were an ancient Egyptian 
 race. Explain the force of the figure in this and the preced- 
 ing lines. 
 
 222. Allston. Washington Allston was a native of Amer- 
 ica, but a member of the Royal Academy, England. After 
 many years in Europe he returned to this country, where he 
 devoted himself to literature and painting. He died in 1843. 
 
 227. Undine-like. Undine is the name of water-spirits in 
 the mythology of the Paracelsists. The Undine could marry 
 among mortals and received a soul upon the birth of a child. 
 The idea has been beautifully developed in Fouque's Undine. 
 
 230. Painter. See line 222 and note. 
 
NOTES 113 
 
 237. Compare with this stanza Longfellow's Village Black- 
 smith. 
 
 254. Causey is a shortened form of causeway. 
 
 255. Paul Potter. A painter of high renown, born at Enk- 
 huysen in 1625. He was instructed in art by his father, Peter 
 Potter. Before the attainment of his fifteenth year his work 
 was held in high estimation. He was primarily a painter of 
 animals, his landscapes rarely extending beyond a pasture, a 
 clump of trees, and a farm-house or a hovel ; but these are 
 represented with uncommon fidelity. 
 
 264. Collegisse juvat. He is glad to have attended college. 
 280. With the feeling in this stanza compare the following 
 lines from Wordsworth : 9 
 
 "Dear native regions, I foretell, 
 From what I feel at this farewell, 
 That wheresoe'er my footsteps tend, 
 And whensoe'er my course shall end, 
 If in that hour a single tie 
 Survive of local sympathy, 
 My soul will cast the backward view, 
 The longing look, alone on you." 
 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Is there any one thought running through the poem? 
 If so, what is it? 
 
 2. What was the author's purpose in writing this poem? 
 
 3. What things in nature does the poem show that he liked 
 most? 
 
 4. What is the effect of nature on the poet's spirit? 
 
 5. Compare this poem with Sir Launfal, with regard to 
 lyrical beauty. 
 
 TO A DANDELION. 
 
 "Of Lowell's earlier pieces, the one which shows the finest 
 sense of the poetry of Nature is that addressed 'To the Dan- 
 delion,' The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Words- 
 
114 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 worth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intui- 
 tively . . . and both thought and language are felicitous 
 throughout. . . . This poem contains many of the author's 
 peculiar beauties and none of his faults ; it was the outcome of 
 the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the 
 gladdest thought and most elusive feeling." — Stedman. 
 
 5. Buccaneers. Explain the force and application of the 
 figure. 
 
 6. Eldorado. From the Spanish word el. the, and dorado, 
 gilt or gilded. The word generally means to us a land of 
 gold. Explain the figure. 
 
 14-15. Compare lines 31-32 of Sir Launfal: 
 
 "No price is set on the lavish summer; 
 June may be had by the poorest comer." 
 
 23. Golden cuirasscd. What was the cuirass? Explain the 
 force of the figure. 
 
 26. Sybaris was a town in Lucania, between the Sybaris 
 and the Crathis rivers. The town was so noted for its luxury 
 and love of pleasure that its name became a synonym of vol- 
 uptuousness. 
 
 55. The winds take care. How? 
 
 57. Fare. The original meaning of this word was to travel, 
 journey; the noun meaning a journey. Compare our farewell. 
 It afterward came to mean the cost of traveling; hence its 
 present meaning. The poets have used the word much in the 
 original sense. Cf. Milton : 
 
 "So on he fares, and to the border comes 
 Of Eden." — Paradise Lost. 
 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Which is the more natural and free in movement, To a 
 Dandelion or Applcdore? 
 
 2. From a comparison of these two poems, does it seem to 
 you that Lowell was more at home with inland nature than 
 with the sea? 
 
NOTES 
 
 115 
 
 3. The term Hazvless has been applied to this poem ; does 
 it seem to you to be justifiable? 
 
 4. What are the distinctive characteristics of the poem? 
 
 5. What elements has it in common with Sir Launfalf 
 
 THE BOBOLINK. 
 
 1. Anacreon was a Greek poet of the latter part of the 
 sixth century B. C. He was born at Teos, in Ionia, but spent 
 the greater part of his life at the court of Polycrates, on the 
 island of Samos, where he celebrated the praise of wine and 
 dancing. He died in his eighty-sixth year, about 478 B. C. 
 
 6. Compare Sir Launfal: 
 
 "The heart is so full that a drop overfills it." 
 13-15. With these lines compare the picture in Sir Launfal, 
 
 "The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
 Atilt like a blossom among the leave^, 
 And lets his illumined being o'errun." 
 
 Which is more beautiful? Why? 
 
 16-17. This is worthy to be compared with the beautiful 
 lines of Shelley's To a Skylark: 
 
 "Bird thou never wert, 
 That from heaven, or near it, 
 Pourest thy full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 
 
 28. In the lines which follow, note how the metre varies to 
 agree with the lightsomeness of the thought. 
 
 57. This same thought is expressed by Wordsworth in sev- 
 eral of his poems. Compare the following from The Tables 
 Turned: 
 
 "Books ! 'tis a dull and endless strife : 
 Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
 How sweet his music ! On my life, 
 There's more of wisdom in it," 
 
Il6 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 73- Unhoodwinked. Has this word any place In aesthetic 
 poetry? 
 
 106. The thought throughout this poem is quite Words- 
 worthian, and it is one of the poems cited as a proof of the in- 
 fluence of the great nature poet upon the early productions of 
 Lowell. 
 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Are the lyrical qualities of this poem superior or in- 
 ferior to those of To a Dandelion? Give reasons for your 
 answer. 
 
 2. Does animate or inanimate nature appeal to Lowell more 
 forcibly? 
 
 3. Is this poem simply an expression of poetic feeling? 
 Give reason for answer. 
 
 4. What are the principal elements of its beauty? 
 
 5. Does the poem compare favorably with Shelley's To a 
 Skylark? 
 
 THE PRESENT CRISIS. 
 
 This poem was written in 1845 when the question of the 
 annexing of Texas was before the country. This annexation 
 was opposed by the anti-slavery party, on the ground that it 
 would enlarge the slave territory and strengthen the South. 
 The poem well illustrates Lowell's patriotism, his hatred of 
 oppression, and the zeal with which he espoused the cause of 
 abolition. 
 
 3-5. Express, in your own words, the effect upon the slave 
 of a deed done for freedom. 
 
 6-10. The thought here seems to be that the advance of 
 truth comes as a result of upheavals and overturnings of sys- 
 tems and institutions, and that the effect of every such ad- 
 vance is universal — felt through every "hut and palace." 
 
 13-15. What was the effect of Evil's triumph upon the 
 slave ? 
 
NOTES 117 
 
 16-20. Which line expresses the central thought of this 
 stanza ? Illustrates the truth of it. Compare the poet's ex- 
 pression of the same thought in the homely language of The 
 Biglozv Papers: 
 
 "Laborin' man an' laborin' woman 
 Hev one glory an' one shame. 
 Ev'y thin' that's done inhuman 
 Injers all on 'em the same." 
 
 Also the following from the Capture of the Fugitive Slave 
 near Washington: 
 
 "He's true to God who's true to man; wherever wrong is 
 done 
 To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding 
 
 sun, 
 That wrong is also done to us ; and they are slaves most 
 
 base 
 Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their 
 
 race." 
 23-25. Why is some great cause called God's new Messiah ? 
 See Matt, xxv, 32-33- 
 
 "And before him shall be gathered all nations ; and he shall 
 separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his 
 sheep from the goats : 
 
 "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats 
 on the left." 
 
 27. Reference is here made to the instructions of Christ 
 to the Disciples. On departing from any city which refused 
 to receive them they were to shake the dust from their san- 
 dals as a testimony against it. 
 
 28. Compare Bryant's lines: 
 
 "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 
 The eternal years of God are hers; 
 But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, 
 And dies among her worshipers." 
 
Ii8 LOWELL'S POEMS 
 
 29-30. What does the poet mean by saying Truth was a 
 wandering outcast? Explain the prophecy in these lines. 
 
 31. Beacon-moments. What other two expressions in the 
 stanza are synonymous ? 
 
 35. Shows. Give synonyms of the word as used here. 
 
 2,7. The reference is to John i, 1 : 
 
 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God." 
 
 39-40. Explain these lines. 
 
 42. What is the grammatical construction of this line? 
 
 43-44. The famous oracle of Apollo was at Delphi, an old 
 Greek town in Phocis. In the centre of the temple was a 
 small opening in the ground, out of which arose an intoxicat- 
 ing vapor. The priestess, called the Pythia, having breathed 
 this, sat down upon a tripod placed over the hole in the 
 ground and then delivered the oracle. It was either given 
 in verse or handed over to a poet employed for turning it 
 into poetic form. The Delphic oracle was famous not only in 
 Greece, but among neighboring nations as well. 
 
 46-50. The reference in this stanza is to Polyphemus, the 
 great Cyclops, who was king of this fabulous race of giants. 
 They had a single eye in the middle of the forehead. Whfen 
 Ulysses landed on the island of Sicily he entered the cave of 
 Polyphemus with twelve companions, six of whom were de- 
 voured by the giant. Ulysses succeeded in making Polyphe- 
 mus drunk, and, after boring out the giant's one eye with a 
 burning stake, made his escape, leaving the blinded monster 
 to grope about in the darkness. 
 
 51-52. Lowell has expressed the same thought elsewhere: 
 
 "They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three." 
 
 56. Name some of the heroes the poet probably had in 
 mind. 
 
 57. Golden-beam. Explain. 
 
 58. Mastered, To what does this participle belong? 
 
NOTES 
 
 119 
 
 64. Credo. In Latin the Apostles' Creed begins with this 
 word, meaning / believe. 
 
 68. Far in front. Explain. 
 
 74. Does the poet mean to charge any persons or party 
 with being behind their time? If so, whom? 
 
 78. What is meant by the truth of the Puritans? 
 
 83. Compare the first half of this line with line 78. What 
 is the unexpressed object of to slay? 
 
 86. Illustrate the thought of this line. 
 
 90. Compare the meaning of this line with that of line 86. 
 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What was the purpose of this poem? 
 
 2. What is the prominent characteristic of the style? 
 
 3. What passages seem to you most vigorous? 
 
 4. Compare the stanza used in this poem, as regards force 
 and beauty, with that of Sir Launfal. 
 
 5. How great would you judge the influence of this poem 
 to have been, as compared with that of The Biglow Papers? 
 
NOV 18 190?