TYce'rabemp  rries   of Englitb Claziro
LO WELL
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL
AND OTHER POEMS
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
FRANCIS R. LANE
DIRECTOR OF THE HIGH SCHOOLS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
33Xtan
ALLYN AND BACON
I 900oo
,?i          
,', (. COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY FRANCIS R. LANE.
.''BY FRANCIS R. LANIE.
warigooll utBrv
J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
CONTENTS.
PAGE
V
INTRODUCTION
TEXT:
The Vision of Sir Launfal.
Summer Storm...
Allegra......
Tile Rose: A Ballad...
Rhcecus......
To a Pine Tree....
To the Past.....
The Oak.....
The Birch Tree....
To the Dandelion....
On a Portrait of Dante by Giotto.
A Fable for Critics..
What Mr. Robinson thinks. 
The Courtin'.....
NOTES.
iii
111
A,    r':     - f,-, i
-'I!.,,&            k    o
1
. 14
. 17
. 18
. 21
. 26
. 28
. 31
. 33
. 34
. 36
. 38
I.50
. 52
55  
INTRODUCTION.
OLD CAMBRIDGE, in the thirties, was hedged about with
the dignity that should surround the oldest seat of learning
in America. Its intellectual atmosphere was undisturbed
by the proximity of Boston; the struggle of the world of
business and politics was far away; it was distinctively
the center of literary culture. The traditions of the academic town were always inspiring to youth. In 1834, when
Lowell entered Harvard, there was, in addition, the stimulus
of men of a new stamp among the college dons -men of
warm hearts and keen sympathies as well as of high scholarship, men who demolished the barrier of ice which precedent had established between professor and "scholar," and,
coming into close touch with the undergraduates, quickened
and warmed their natures and implanted among them a
deep love for literature and the literary life.
Lowell entered the college at the age of fifteen. The
student world then cared little for politics or current affairs;
hardly a ripple of interest was stirred by the November
state elections. Perhaps not five men in the college saw a
daily paper. Longfellow, fresh from European travel and
study, began, in 1836, his long career as Smith Professor
of Modern Literature. Dr. Hale describes his presence
as a benediction to the college. Young as he was, he
had achieved an enviable position as a writer, which,
v 
INTRODUCTION.
combined with the charm of his personality and the inspira,
tion of his love for letters, made his influence largely
responsible for the prevailing devotion to literary culture.
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats were the fashion. Young
blood tingled with enthusiasm as each new volume of
poems was reprinted from the English editions. Tennyson's earlier poems could not be bought, but a borrowed
copy went the rounds of the college.   "Everybody who
had any sense knew that a great poet had been born, as
well as we know it now." Such an atmosphere fosters
creative effort; it is but a step from appreciation to imitation. A considerable group of students, plastic to such
influences, endeavored to realize in themselves their poet
ideals, in thought, action, and the written word. Lowell,
from his freshman year, had been something of a free-lance,
irritating his instructors by an indifference to the requirements of the prescribed courses, which he made little effort
to subdue. His heart was set upon wide digressions in study,
upon chance reading, upon much composition, upon animated
literary discussions with fellow-members of Alpha Delta
Phi, the secret society founded in defiance to the ban of the
college. Perhaps this society in some way controlled the
appointment of the editors of the college magazine, or, it
may be, that it had gathered to it the men of the strongest
native gift for writing. The five editors of Lowell's senior
year were all Alpha Deltas,- Rufus King, George Warren
Lippitt, Woodman Scates, Nathan Hale, Jr., and James
Russell Lowell.
The poems published in the Harvardiana before and during this year of editorship gained for Lowell his classmates'
recognition of' his literary abilities, and brought him the
honors of "class poet," without a rival and without a dis
vi 
INTRIODUCTION.
senting voice. It is interesting to note that the poem from
the same pen which in after years so stirred the North
with the Biglow Papers, was a stinging satire on the abolitionists, and that it was not delivered in person or by proxy,
but was put before the students of the college in the columns of the Harvardiana. Lowell's long indifference to
college discipline had resulted in his being "rusticated" for
the six weeks ending commencement day. Dr. Hale says,
in his reminiscences of Lowell, that when the news of
the class honor and of the college punishment reached
Dr. Lowell in Rome, he relieved his impatience with,
"Oh, dear! James promised me that he would quit writing
poetry, and would go to work."
Perhaps family tradition held letters in less repute than
the law. Possibly Lowell himself, though not in the least
doubt as to the selection of his calling, if his tastes alone
were to be consulted, felt that even a meager support, as a
man of letters, was doubtful. The argument for the serious
professions prevailed. He plunged into the study of Blackstone, was admitted to the bar, and in 1840 "hung out his
shingle."  My First Client is a humorous description of his
awakening from dreams of business to the fact that the
man who stood before him, whose cause, in his fancy, he
was eloquently to plead, was a sign painter, come to collect his bill. His brief struggle for clients was never very
keen. Much of his time was given to writing, many of
his contributions of this date appearing in the Boston
Miscellany, a magazine started by his classmate, Nathan
Hale, Jr., in 1842.
As was to be expected, Lowell abandoned the law, and,
with Robert Carter as an associate, ventured upon the publication of the Pioneer (1842).  The elegant N. P. Willis,
vii 
INTRODUCTION.
the arbiter of young literary reputations, found in the
editor's effort little to herald as promising: "J. R. Lowell,
a man of original and decided genius, has started a magazine in Boston.   The first number lies before me, and it
justifies our expectations, namely, that a man of genius is
a very unfit editor for a periodical." Later in life his work
with the Atlantic and the North American Review proved
him "perhaps the best literary editor whom the history of
American journalism has yet discovered."
His love for Maria White strengthened Lowell's ardor
for poetry, and caused him to collect many of his fugitive
pieces, which, with other unpublished poemsll, he put forth
in 1841, under the title of A  Year's Life.  He was but
twenty-two years of age; his life had not been warmed
with long contact with his fellow-men; he knew little of
life's real struggles; he had as yet but half-formed convictions; his sympathies were keenly literary, not deeply emotional; it was but natural that some of these early poems
should be crude, yet there were some that presaged the
dawn of his genius.
An income from his own labor was assured in a small
way by an arrangement with the Stanclard, a weekly antislavery journal published in New York, and by lecturing
at five dollars per night. With the important question of
support settled, Lowell married in 1844. His wife's influence added to his keen intellect the fire of emotions deeply
stirred. Through her the bigness of his nature was aroused,
and he became active in the discussion of the great questions of right and wrong and justice that were agitating the
North and South in connection with slavery.
The first volume of the Biglow Papers (1848) was a collection of poems directed with satiric fervor against the
viii 
INTRODUCTION.
politicians, north and south, who, in the interest of increased slave territory, were rushing the country into the
Mexican War. This effort seemed iniquitous to Lowell's
New England conscience. Convictions now came in abundance, and were voiced with no uncertain sound. The poet
was not upon the popular side; the events of later years
have shown us that his judgment was at fault, and that the
war was a necessary step to the ultimate settlement of the
slavery question. Yet common sense, high principle, and
pungent sarcasm made these papers powerful as polemics,
and won the hearts of Northern people. The Biglow Papers,
however, have a value independent of the issues which called
them into being. The weapon for the conflict came to the
poet's hand unsought; he used it with impassioned vigor,
with no intent to create enduring literature. The Cante'ibury Tales are valuable as a study of the life and manners
of Chaucer's times; like these, the Biglow Papers portray
the character and convictions, the clothes and queer dialect,
of the New England farmer, his hard-headedness, lis Calvinistic creed, his cheery wit and stern force. It was a
surprise to the poet that these poems caught the attention
of England, and won for him enduring reputation abroad.
Lowell was a New England man of pure stock; he realized
in himself perhaps the best that conditions of New England
climate, culture, and religion might produce. He could not
be the descendant of generations of lawyers and ministers,
"the Brahmin class of New England," and fail of a strong
influence upon his countrymen; he stamped himself upon
the times from the very law of his being.
The same year that the Biglow Papers were published as
a collected volume, A Fable for Critics appeared. Following in a degree the example of Byron, in English Bards and
.x 
INTRODUCTION.
Scotch Reviewers, yet without malevolence, he laid bare the
foibles in the character and writing of the men of the
Athenian Age of New England. His criticism was not all
tilting at vanities, nor was his vision obscured by the nearness of his view. His analysis of Whittier, Bryant, Poe,
Hawthorne, Emerson, and even of "that fellow Lowell"
was early evidence of his insight and power as a literary
critic. These judgments of half a century ago have stood
Time's test and are substantially the opinions of to-day.
This, too, was the year of Thle Vision of Sir Launfal
(1848). Inspired by the beauty of the Arthurian Legends,
stirred deeply by the great lesson to man, which he saw in
and around the dim story, and possessed for months with
the idea as the theme for a great narrative poem, Lowell,
like the prophets of old, seemed suddenly wrapped in a
frenzy. Shut up in his study for two days and nights,
almost without food or rest, he shaped his thought; with
little revision, as was his habit in composition, it was put
forth to set the high-water mark of his poetic genius.
It was fitting that when Longfellow resigned the Smith
professorship, in 1856, Lowell, who had already shown the
breadth of his scholarship, the acuteness of his critical
faculties, and the completeness of his equipment, should
succeed to the chair of Modern Languages in Harvard.
For many years after this appointment, his surroundings
were almost ideal: Elmwood was the beautiful home of his
birth; Cambridge was still the best center of literary culture; in and about Boston were many American  men of
letters; the routine work of the college was not irksome,
nor were his duties such as to impede his own studies or
his activity through his writings in a cause to which he was
devoted. It was during this period that much of his criti
X 
INTRODUCTION.
cal prose was produced: Fireside Travels, in 1864; Among
my Books, 1870; My Study Windows, 1871; Democracy and
Other Addresses, 1886.
From 1857 to 1861, as editor of the Atlantic Monthly,
he was associated with Oliver Wendell Holmes; in fact,
Lowell was not willing to undertake the editorship without
the agreement that the "Boston Poet" should be a contributor.   The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, the literary
success of the magazine, resulted from this association. Lowell's own contributions were chiefly political, but his work as
a writer was overshadowed by his devoted toil as an editor.
From 1863 to 1877 he successfully conducted the North
American Review. These years of editorship broadened his
sympathies, enriched his character, made him widely known,
gave him a deeper insight into the hearts of men, and made
him a stronger national force. Much that made him the
successful diplomat in Spain and England was without
doubt due to the business training and political strength
acquired while associated with the Atlantic and the North
American Review.
The second series of Biglow Papers was collected and
published in 1867. The feelings which stirred Lowell at
the epoch of the war with Mexico were passionate convictions in the days of civil strife. That the Papers were the
work of a self-confessed humorist detracted nothing from
their strength; their wit was powerful, their ridicule
scorching. The poems were in everybody's mouth, and
were rightly considered, in spite of their lighter vein, to be
most potent forces in the stirring literature of the period.
The war poems, with others, including the noble Commemoration Ode, delivered at Harvard in 1865, were published in 1869, with the title Under the Willows.
xi 
INTRODUCTION.
During the Hayes administration, four foreign missions
were offered to Lowell; he accepted the appointment to
Spain, and, in 1877, began his diplomatic life at the court
of Alfonso XII. In 1880 he was transferred from Madrid
to the Court of St. James.  With much tact he effected the
social conquest of the English people, becoming a great
favorite, both as a man of culture and as a man of letters
By energy and devotion to his ministerial duties he won
the admiration of his own countrymen and the respect
of all Great Britain. He was never less of an American,
through the temptations to truckle to old-world prejudice
against our democratic ideals. His four years of service
did much to establish in England the belief in the existence
of the ideal American, -a man of all the social graces,
coupled with scholarly culture and sterling character.
After his return to his Cambridge home, the declining
years of his life were given to the revision of his prose
works. Many of the essays and addresses delivered in
England were included in  D)emocracy  (1886).  Political
Essays was published in 1888; and, in the last year of his
life, at the age of seventy-two, he put forth Latest Literary
Essacys, which was followed, in 1892, after his death, by
The Old English Dramatists.
"How  enviable the record of a poet who is our most
brilliant and learned critic, and who has given us our best
native idyl, our best and most complete work in dialectic
verse, and the noblest heroic ode that America has produced,
- each and all ranking with the first of their kinds in English literature of the modern time." - STEDMAN.
xii 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.
PRELUDE TO PART FIRST.
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:
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.
Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.
Over our manhood bend the skies;
Against our fallen and traitor lives
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.
1
20
10
15 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
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:
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the 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,
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,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
2
25
30
35
40
45
r:)o 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.
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,-   55
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
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;
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,
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!
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
3
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65
70
75
80 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
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, -
'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 of the season's youth,
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.
I.
"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,
Nor shall a pillow be under my head,
Till I begin my vow to keep;
IHere on the rushes will I sleep,
And perchance there may 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.
4
85
90
95
100
105 
THE VISION OF SIR LA UNFAL.
II.
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:           115
'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,                  125
And out of each a murmur went
Till the breeze fell off at night.
III.
The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,
And through the dark arch a charger sprang,
Bearing Sir Launfal, the mnaiden knight,
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,
Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,
And lightsome as a locust-leaf,
5
130
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SELECTIONS FROM LO WELL.
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail,
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.
IV.
It was morning on hill and stream and tree,
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,           155
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,
Better the blessing of the poor,
Though I turn me empty from his door;
That is no true alms which the hand can hold;
6
140
145
160 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.
He gives nothing but 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,
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;
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;
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
7
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170
175
180
185
190 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief             195
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,         200
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         205
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each fleeting 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
Within the hall are song and laughter,
The cheeks of Christmas grow 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
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;
And swift little troops of silent sparks,
Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
8
215
220 
THE VISION OF SIR LAU NFAL.
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.
But 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,
Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was -" Shelter]less, 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.
PART SECOND
I.
THERE was never a leaf on bush or tree,
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;
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 his 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.
9
225
230
235
II..,
11 I -,
i, II II
.1 
SELECTIONS FROM LO WELL.
II.
Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,        250
For another heir ill his earldom sate;
An old, bent man, worn out and frail,
He caine back from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,
No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,   255
But deep in his soul the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.
III.
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail'gainst the barbed air,
For it was just at the Christmas time;             260
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime,
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow
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,      265
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 almins;"The happy camels may reach the spring,
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,   275
10 
THE VISrON OF SIR LA UNFAL.
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
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!"
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                  290
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,                  295
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.
11
280
285 
SELECTIONS FROM LO TVELL.
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,
But 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 MAan.
VIII.
His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 310
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine,
That mingle their softness and quiet in one
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon;
And the voice that was calmer than silence said,
"Lo it is I, be not afraid!                            315
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;               325
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!
12
305 
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.
Hang my idle armor up on the wall,
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,
She entered with him in disguise,
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.
13
330
335
340
345 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
SUMMER STORM.
UNTREMULOUS in the river clear,
Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge;
So still the air that I can hear
The slender clarion of the unseen midge;
Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep,           5
Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases,
Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases,
The huddling trample of a drove of sheep
Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases
In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep,         10
A confused noise between two silences,
Finding at last in dust precarious peace.
On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses
Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide,
Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes    15
Of some slow water rat, whose sinuous glide
Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side;
But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge,
Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray;
Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge,        20
And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway.
Suddenly all the sky is hid
As with the shutting of a lid, 
One by one great drops are falling
Doubtful and slow,
Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,
And the wind breathes low;
Slowly the circles widen on the river,
14
25 
SUMMER STORM.
Widen and mingle, one and all;
Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver,
Struck by an icy raindrop's fall.
Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter,
The wind is gathering in the west;
The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter,
Then droop to a fitful rest;
Up from the stream with sluggish flap
Struggles the gull and floats away;
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,
We shall not see the sun go down to-day;
Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh
And tramples the grass with terrified feet,
The startled river turns leaden and harsh.
You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.
Look! look! that vivid flash!
And instantly follows the rattling thunder,
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,
Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,
On the Earth, which crouches in silence under;
And now a solid gray wall of rain
Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile;
For a breath's space I see the blue wood again,
And ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile,
That seemed but now a league aloof,
Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof;
Against the windows the stormn comes dashing,
Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing,
The blue lightning flashes,
The rapid hail clashes,
'15
30
35
40
45
50
55 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
The white waves are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar,
Like the toothless sea mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling
And crashing and crumbling,  Will silence return nevermore?
Hush! Still as death,
The tempest holds his breath
As from a sudden will;
The rain stops short, but from the eaves
You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, 70
All is so bodingly still;
Again, now, now, again,
Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,
The crinkled lightning
Seems ever brightening,                 75
And loud and long
Again the thunder shouts
His battle-song,
One quivering flash,
One wildering crash,                    80
Followed by silence dead and dull,
As if the cloud let go,
Leapt bodily below
To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow,
And then a total lull.               85
Gone, gone, so soon!
No more my half-crazed fancy there
Can shape a giant in the air,
16
60
65 
ALLEGRA.
No more I see his streaming hair,
The writhing portent of his form;
The pale and quiet moon
Makes her calm forehead bare,
And the last fragments of the storm,
Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,
Silent and few, are drifting over me.
ALLEGRA.
I WOULD more natures were like thine,
That never casts a glance before,Thou Hebe, who thy heart's bright wine
So lavishly to all dost pour,
That we who drink forget to pine,
And can but dream of bliss in store.
Thou canst not see a shade in life;
With sunward instinct thou dost rise,
And, leaving clouds below at strife,
Gazest undazzled at the skies,
With all their blazing splendors rife,
A songful lark with eagle's eyes.
Thou wast some foundling whom the Hours
Nursed, laughing, with the milk of Mirth;
Some influence more gay than ours
Hath ruled thy nature from its birth,
As if thy natal stars were flowers
That shook their seeds round thee on earth.
17
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95
5
10
15 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
And thou, to lull thine infant rest,
Wast cradled like an Indian child;
All pleasant winds from south and west
With lullabies thine ears beguiled,
Rocking thee in thine oriole's nest,
Till Nature looked at thee and smiled.
Thine every fancy seems to borrow
A sunlight from thy childish years,
Making a golden cloud of sorrow,
A hope-lit rainbow out of tears,
Thy heart is certain of to-morrow,
Though'yond to-day it never peers.
I would more natures were like thine,
So innocently wild and free,
Whose sad thoughts, even, leap and shine,
Like sunny wavelets in the sea,
Making us mindless of the brine,
In gazing on the brilliancy.
THE ROSE: A BALLAD.
I.
IN his tower sat the poet
Gazing on the roaring sea,
"Take this rose," he sighed, "and throw it
Where there's none that loveth me.
On the rock the billow bursteth
And sinks back into the seas,
18
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30
35 
THE ROSE: A BALLAD.
But in vain my spirit thirsteth
So to burst and be at ease.
Take, 0 sea! the tender blossom
That hath lain against my breast;
On thy black and angry bosom
It will find a surer rest.
Life is vain and love is hollow,
Ugly death stands there behind,
Hate and scorn and hunger follow
Him that toileth for his kind."
Forth into the night he hurled it,
And with bitter smile did mark
How the surly tempest whirled it
Swift into the hungry dark.
Foam and spray drive back to leeward,
And the gale, with dreary moan,
Drifts the helpless blossom seaward,
Through the breakers all alone.
II.
Stands a maiden, on the morrow,
Musing by the wave-beat strand,
Half in hope and half in sorrow,
Tracing words upon the sand;
"Shall I ever then behold him
Who hath been my life so long,
Ever to this sick heart fold him,
Be the spirit of his song?
Touch not, sea, the blessed letters
I have traced upon thy shore,
Spare his name whose spirit fetters
Mine with love forevermore!"
19
10
15
20
25
30
35 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Swells the tide and overflows it
But, with omen pure and meet,
Brings a little rose and throws it
Humbly at the maiden's feet.
Full of bliss she takes the token,
And, upon her snowy breast,
Soothes the ruffled petals broken
With the ocean's fierce unrest.
"Love is thine, 0 heart! and surely
Peace shall also be thine own,
For the heart that trusteth purely
Never long can pine alone."
III.
In his tower sits the poet,
Blisses new and strange to him
Fill his heart and overflow it
With a wonder sweet and dim.
Up the beach the ocean slideth
With a whisper of delight,
And the moon in silence glideth
Through the peaceful blue of night.
Rippling o'er the poet's shoulder
Flows a maiden's golden hair,
Maiden lips, with love grown bolder,
Kiss his moon-lit forehead bare.
"Life is joy and love is power,
Death all fetters doth unbind,
Strength and wisdom only flower
When we toil for all our kind.
Hope is truth,  the future giveth
More than present takes away,
20
40
45
50
5r)
60
65 
RH('CUS.
And the soul forever liveth
Nearer God from day to day."
Not a word the maiden uttered,
Fullest hearts are slow to speak,
But a withered rose-leaf fluttered
Down upon the poet's cheek.
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,
Infolds some germs of goodness and of right;
Else never had the eager soul, which loathes
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.
For, as in nature naught is made in vain,
But all things have within their hull of use
21
70
10
15
20 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
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
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 Rhcecus, 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.
But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind
That murmured "Rhcecus!"'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.
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.
22
25
30
35
40
45
50 
I?HECUS.
All naked like a goddess stood she there,
And like a goddess all too beautiful
To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame.
"Rhcecus, 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,
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 nature's goal."
After a little pause she said again,
But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone,
"I give it, Rhcecus, though a perilous gift;
An hour before the sunset meet me here."
And straightway there was nothing he could see
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.
Now, in those days of simpleness and faith,
Men did not think that happy things were dreams
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn
23
55
60
65
70
75
80 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful
To be the guerdon of a daring heart.
So Rhcecus 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 Rhcecus 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 Rhcecus, 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 Rhcecus laughed and said,
Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss,
"By Venus! does he take me for a rose? "
And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand.
But still the bee came back, and thrice again
Rhcecus did beat him off with growing wrath.
24
85
90
95
100
104
110 
RHl(ECUS.
Then through the window flew the wounded bee,
And Rhcecus tracking him with angry eyes,
Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly               115
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        125
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, "0 Rhoecus! nevermore
Shalt thou behold me or by day or night,            130
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 sent'st him back to me with bruised wings.    135
We spirits only show to gentle eyes,
We ever ask an undivided love,
And he who scorns the least of Nature's works
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all.
Farewell! For thou canst never see me more."        140o
Then Rhcecus beat his breast, and groaned aloud,
And cried, "Be pitiful! forgive me yet
25 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
This once, and I shall never need it more!"
"Alas!" the voice returned, "'tis thou art 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,
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.
TO A PINE TREE.
FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest,
Purple-blue with the distance and vast;
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
To its fall leaning awful.
In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened,
Thou singest and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
26
145
150
155
160
oo
5 
TO A PINE TREE.
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,
When whole mountains swoop valeward.
In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys
With thine arms, as if blessings imploring,
Like an old king led forth from his palace,
When his people to battle are pouring
From the city beneath him.
To the lumberer asleep'neath thy glooming
Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion,
Till he longs to be swung mid their booming
In the tents of the Arabs of ocean,
Whose finned isles are their cattle.
For the gale snatches thee for his lyre,
With mad hand crashing melody frantic,
While he pours forth his mighty desire
To leap down on the eager Atlantic,
Whose arms stretch to his playmate.
The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches,
Preying thence on the continent under;
Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches,
There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder,
Growling low with impatience.
Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory,
Lusty father of Titans past number!
The snowflakes alone make thee hoary,
Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,
And thee mantling with silence.
27
10
15
20
25
30
35 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Thou alone knowest the splendor of winter
Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices,
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,
And then plunge down the muffled abysses
In the quiet of midnight.
Thou alone knowest the glory of summer,
Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest,
On thy subjects that send a proud murmur
Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest
From thy bleak throne to heaven.
TO THE PAST.
WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls,
0 kingdom of the past!
There lie the bygone ages in their palls,
Guarded by shadows vast;
There all is hushed and breathless,
Save when some image of old error falls
Earth worshipped once as deathless.
There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands,
Half woman and half beast,
The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands
That once lit all the East;
A dotard bleared and hoary,
There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands
Of Asia's long-quenched glory.
28
10
45
5
10 
TO THE PAST.
Still as a city buried'neath the sea,
Thy courts and temples stand;
Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry
Of saints and heroes grand,
Thy phantasms grope and shiver,
Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently
Into Time's gnawing river.
Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,
Of their old godhead lorn,
Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,
Which they misdeem for morn;
And yet the eternal sorrow
In their unmonarched eyes says day is done
Without the hope of morrow.
O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,
The shapes that haunt thy gloom
Make signs to us and move their withered lips
Across the gulf of doom;
Yet all their sound and motion
Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships
On the mirage's ocean.
And if sometimes a moaning wandereth
From out thy desolate halls,
If some grim shadow of thy living death
Across our sunshine falls
And scares the world to error,
The eternal life sends forth melodious breath
To chase the misty terror.
29
15
20
25
30
35
40 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds
Are silent now in dust,
Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds
Beneath some sudden gust;
Thy forms and creeds have vanished,
Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds
From the world's garden banished.
Whatever of true life there was in thee
Leaps in our age's veins;
WVield still thy bent and wrinkled empery,
And shake thine idle chains; -
To thee thy dross is clinging,
For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see,
Thy poets still are singing.
Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife and care,
Float the green Fortunate Isles
Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share
Our martyrdoms and toils;
The present moves attended
With all of brave and excellent and fair
That made the old time splendid.
30
45
50
55
60 
THE OAK.
THE OAK.
WHAT gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his!
There needs no crown to mark the forest's king;
How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!
Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring,
Which he with such benignant royalty
Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent;
All nature seems his vassal proud to be,
And cunning only for his ornament.
How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows,
An unquelled exile from the summer's throne,
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows,
Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown.
His boughs make music of the winter air,
Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral front
Where clinging snow-flakes with quaint art repair
The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt.
How doth his patient strength the rude March wind
Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze,
And win the soil that fain would be unkind,
To swell his revenues with proud increase!
He is the gem; and all the landscape wide
(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense)
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside,
An empty socket, were he fallen thence.
So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales,
Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots
81
5
10
15
20
25 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails
The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots?
So every year that falls with noiseless flake
Should fill old scars up on the stormward side,
And make hoar age revered for age's sake,
Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride.
So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate,
True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth,
So between earth and heaven stand simply great,
That these shall seem but their attendants both;
For nature's forces with obedient zeal
Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will;
As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel,
And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still.
Lord, all thy works are lessons; each contains
Some emblem of man's all-containing soul;
Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains,
Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole?
Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove,
Cause me some message of thy truth to bring,
Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love
Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing.
32
30
35
40
45 
TIE BIRCHI TREE.
THE BIRCH TREE.
RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine,
Among thy leaves that palpitate forever;
Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,
The soul once of some tremulous inland river,
Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!
While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,
Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence,
Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended,
I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,
And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.
Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,
Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,
Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow
Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,
Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled
Dryad.                                                 15
Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;
Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;
Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. 20
Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,
So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.
33
5
10
25 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.
TO THE DANDELION.
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.
Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
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.
34
30
5
10
15 
TO THE DANDELION.
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
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.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
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.
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.    45
How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art;
35
20
25
30
35 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
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
On all these living pages of God's book.
ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO.
CAN this be thou who, lean and pale,
With such inimmitigable eye
Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale,
And note each vengeance, and pass by
Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance
Cast backward one forbidden glance,
And saw Francesca, with child's glee,
Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee,
And with proud hands control its fiery prance?
With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow,
And eye remote, that inly sees
Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now
In some sea-lulled Hesperides,
Thou movest through the jarring street,
Secluded from the noise of feet
By her gift-blossom in thy hand,
Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet.
86
t)O
5
10
15 
ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO.
Yet there is something round thy lips
That prophesies the coming doom,
The soft, gray herald-shadow before the eclipse
Notches the perfect disk with gloom;
A something that would banish thee,
And thine untamed pursuer be,
From men and their unworthy fates,
Though Florence had not shut her gates,
And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free.
Ah! he who follows fearlessly
The beckoniings of a poet-heart
Shall wander, and without the world's decree,
A banished man in field and mart;
Harder than Florence' walls the bar
Which with deaf sternness holds him far
From home and friends, till death's release,
And makes his only prayer for peace,
Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war 1
37
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25
80
35
4t 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
EMERSON.
"THERE comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,
Is some of it pr      No,'tis not even prose;
I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled             5
From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled;
They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin,
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak;
If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand
stroke;                                              10
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter,
But thrown in a heap with a crush. and a clatter;
Now it is not one thing nor another alone
Makes a poem, but rather the general tone,
The something pervading, uniting the whole,               15
The before unconceived, unconceivable soul,
So that just in removing this trifle or that, you
Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue;
Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be,
But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. 20
"But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way,
I believe we left waiting), -his is, we may say,
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range
Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange;
He seems to my thinking (although I'm afraid
The comparison must, long ere this, have been made),
A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist
38
25 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist;
All admire, yet scarcely six converts he's got
To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what;            30
For though he builds glorious temples,'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.
'Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me
To meet such a primitive Pagan as he,
In whose mind all creation is duly respected                35
As parts of himself -just a little projected;
And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun,
A convert to- nothing but Emerson.
So perfect a balance there is in his head,
That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; 40
Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort,
He looks at as merely ideas; in short,
As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet,
Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it;
Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her,         45
Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer;
You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration,
Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion.
With the quiet precision of science he'll sort'em,
But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem.   50
"There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style,
Who insist on a likeness'twixt him and Carlyle;
To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer,
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer;
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, trulier,              55
If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar;
That he's more of a man you might say of the one,
Of the other he's more of an Emerson;
39 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim;
The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek,
Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek;
C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass, -
E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass;
C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues,
And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,
E. sits in a mystery calm and intense,
And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense;
C. shows you how every-day matters unite
With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,While E., in a plain, preternatural way,
Makes mysteries matters of mere every day;
C. draws all his characters quite a la Fuseli,He don't sketch their bundles of muscles and thews illy,
But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse,
They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews;
E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe,
And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords
The design of a white marble statue in words.
C. labors to get at the centre, and then
Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men;
E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted,
And, given himself, has whatever is wanted.
"He has imitators in scores, who omit
No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,'Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain,
And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again;
If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is
40
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65
70
75
80
85 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities,
As a mud-puddle seems as deep as heaven for a minute,
While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it.
"There comes, for instance, to see him's rare sport,
Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short;
How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, 95
To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace;
He follows as close as a stick to a rocket,
His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket.
Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own,
Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards alone?        100
Besides,'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,
has picked up all the windfalls before.
They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch'em,
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch'em;
He never suspects how the sly rogues came by'em;        105
He wonders why'tis there are none such his trees on,
And thinks'em the best he has tasted this season."
BRYANT.
"THERE is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified,
Save when by reflection'tis kindled o' nights           110
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation
(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation),
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,- 115
He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on:
Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has'em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
41
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SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,
Like being stirred up by the very North Pole.
"He is very nice reading in summer, but inter
Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter;
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.
But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in
him,                                                  125
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;
And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charitiesTo you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite.
If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis,        131
You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;
But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice,
And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,
If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain.        135
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,
Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning,
Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth
Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth.
No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant;             140
But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client,
By attempting to stretch him up into a giant:
If you choose to compare him, I think there are two persons fit for a parallel- Thompson and Cowper;'
1 To demonstrate quickly and easily how per versely absurd'tis to sound this name Cowper,
As people in general call him named super,
I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper.
42
120 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
I don't mean exactly,- there's something of each,           145
There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach;
Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness
Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness,
And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet,
Whose internal police nips the bud of all riot,-             150
A brain like a permanent straight-jacket put on
The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic;
He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten            155
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had written.
"But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say
There is nothing in that which is grand in its way;      160
He is almost the one of your poets that knows
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose;
If he sometimes falls short, he is too wise to mar
His thought's modest fulness by going too far;
'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial 165
Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial,
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff,
Which teaches that all has less value than half."
WHITTIER.
"THERE is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
Strains the straight-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, 170
And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect,
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect;
43 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;
And his failures arise (though perhaps he don't know it)
From the very same cause that has made him a poet,- 176
A fervor of mind which knows no separation
'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration,
As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing
If'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing;
Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction       181
And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection,
While, borne with the rush of the mnetre along,
The poet may chance to go right or go wrong,
Content with the whirl and delirium of song;               185
Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes,
And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes,
Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats
When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats,
And can ne'er be repeated again any more                   190
Than they could have been carefully plotted before:
Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings
(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings),
Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights
For reform and whatever they call human rights,            195
Both singing and striking in front of the war,
And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor;
Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks,
Vestis filii tui, 0 leather-clad Fox?
Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din,              200
Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in
To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin,
With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring
Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?
44 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
"All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard        205
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard,
Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave
When to look but a protest in silence was brave;
All honor and praise to the women and men
Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then!
I need not to name them for already for each             211
I see History preparing the statue and niche;
They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked at hard words
Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords,
Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain          215
By the reaping of men and of women than grain?
Why should you stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if
You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff?
Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long
Don't prove that the use of hard language is wrong;    220
While the World's heart beats quicker to think of such men
As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel pen,
While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright one
With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers       225
Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true
Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few,
Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved,
But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved!"   230
HAWTHORNE.
"THERE is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,
45 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;
'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood,
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood,
Should bloom after cycles of struggle and scathe,
With a single anemone trembly and rathe;
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek,
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,
He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck;
When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared,
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan
For making him fully and perfectly man.
The success of her scheme gave her so much delight,
That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight;
Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay,
She sang to her work in her sweet childish way,
And found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul,
That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole.'
POE.
"THEIRE comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge,   256
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind,
Who - But hey-day! What's this? Messieurs Matthews
and Poe,                                            261
You mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so.
46
235
240
245
250 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
Does it make a man worse that his character's such
As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much?
Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive            265
More willing than he that his fellows should thrive;
While you are abusing him thus, even now
He would help either one of you out of a slough;
You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse,
But remember that elegance also is force;                270
After polishing granite as much as you will
The heart keeps its tough old persistency still;
Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at bay;
Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray.
I'm not over fond of Greek metres in English,            275
To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jinglish,
And your modern hexameter verses are no more
Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer;
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is,
So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes; 280
I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is
That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies,
And my ear with that music impregnate may be,
Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea,
Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven  285
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven;
But, set that aside, and'tis truth that I speak,
Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek,
I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.   290
That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart
Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,
'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life."
47 
SELECTIONS, FROM LOWELL.
IRVING.
"WHAT! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine
brain,                                              295
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
And the gravest sweet humor that ever were there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair;
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,I shan't run directly against my own preaching,           300
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes,
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,                  305
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good-will,
Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er as a spell,
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well,
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain,                  310
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green
leaves,
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee, - just Irving."
HOLMES.
" THERE'S Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit;
A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit        316
The electrical tingles of hit after hit;
In long poems'tis painful sometimes, and invites
A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes,
48 
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully 320
As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully,
And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning
Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning.
He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,
But many admire it, the English pentameter,               325
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse,
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,
Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise.
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon; - 330
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on,
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes,
He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes.
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric        335
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'."
LOWELL.
"THERE is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,   340
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 preaching;
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shells         345
And rattle away till he's as old as Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem."
49 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.
GUVENER B. is a sensible man;
He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
My! ain't it terrible? Wut shall we du?
We can't never choose him o' course,- thet's flat;
Guess we shall hev to come round; (don't you?)
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He's been on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, -
He's ben true to one party, - an' thet is himnself: -
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don't vally principle more'n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
50
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10
15
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25 
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.
We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut ain't,
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.
The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country.
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
An' John P.
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.
Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies;
Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, fazv, fum:
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies
Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez it ain't no sech thing; an', of course, so must we.
Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life              50
Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swa]ler-tailed coats,
An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife,
To git some on'em office, an' some on'em votes;
But John P.
Robinson he                                   55
Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee.
51
30
35
40
45 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us
The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers,
To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough;
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez the world'l1l go right, ef he hollers out Gee!
THE COURTIN'.
ZEKLE crep' up, quite unbeknown,
An' peeked in thru the winder,
And there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.
Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung,
An' in amongst'em rusted
The old queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.
The walnut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An' leetle fires danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.
The very room, coz she was in,
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin',
And she looked full as rosy agin
Ez th' apples she was peelin'.
She heerd a foot an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper,All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
52
60
so
5
10
15
20 
ITHE COUR Ti'. 5.
He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the seekle;
His heart kep' goin' pitypat,
But hemrn went pity Zekle.
And yet she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work
Ez ef a wager spurred her.
"You want to see my Pa, I spose?"
"Well, no; I come designin'- -"
"To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es
Agin tomorrow's i'nin'."
He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t'other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He couldn't ha' told ye, nuther.
Sez he, "I'd better call agin";
Sez she, "Think likely, Mister";
The last word pricked him like a pin,
An'-  wal, he up an' kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon'em slips,
Huldy sot pale as ashes,
All kind o' smily round the lips
An' teary round the lashes.
Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they wuz cried
In meetin', come nex' Sunday.
53
25
30
35
40
45  
NOTES.
0
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. (Pages 1-13.)
LINEs 1-8. What is the poet's purpose in the first eight lines? Is
the musing organist necessary as a key to the structure of the poem?
Does the description give necessary color, prepare an atmosphere, or
does it delay the poem proper?
9-20. The preacher and poet were finely interwoven in Lowell's
nature. His verse frequently reveals precepts of conduct or blazons
a moral truth. Divest these lines of their figure, and word the lesson
which Lowell would have them teach.  Compare Shakespeare's "sermons in stones," for a suggestion of moral finger-posts in nature.
Pupils should be required to put in writing, in a single topic sentence,
the ideas contained in these lines. Only by a full discussion in the
class can a proper interpretation of the poet's thought be assured.
9. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." - WORDSWORTH, Intimations of Immortality.
12. We Sinais climb: where we might know the will of the Father,
as Moses on the mountain received the law for his people.
17. the druid wood: to the druids, the oak was a symbol of God;
the clinging mistletoe, of man's dependence upon the Divine Being.
The mysterious and awful ceremonies of the priests were held in the
heart of groves of oak.
18. benedicite: "Praise ye the Lord."  "Benedicite omnia opera
domini." Read Psalm cxlviii.
21-32. Express the central thought in a single sentence, as directed
in the note to lines 9-20. What use is made of these two stanzas
(9-20 and 21-32), in the development of the poem?
27. cap and bells: the insignia of a fool.
55 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.  [PAGES 2-3.
33 if. And what is so rare as a day in June? etc.: Stedman calls
this landscape poetry. Expand the idea of his adjective.
"If it were early June, the rows of horse-chestnuts along the fronts
of these houses showed, through every crevice of their dark heap of
foliage and on the end of every drooping limb, a cone of pearly flowers,
while the hill behind was white or rosy with the crowding blooms of
various fruit trees. There is no sound, unless a horseman clatters
over the loose planks of the bridge, while his antipodal shadow glides
silently over the mirrored bridge below, or unless,
" O winged rapture, feathered soul of spring,
Blithe voice of woods, fields, waters, all in one,
Pipe blown through by the warm, mild breath of June
Shepherding her white flocks of woolly clouds,
The bobolink has come, and climbs the wind
With rippling wings that quiver not for flight,
But only joy, or, yielding to its will,
Runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air."
-LOWELL, Fireside Travels, 1864.
49-56. Is this bubbling bird carol in any way analogous to the
poet's rhapsody over the resistless joy of the spring?
55. Scientists say that the song of the male bird, the call to his mate,
is loud, clear, and distinctive, while the gentle note of the female is
only loud enough to answer the male or to instruct her young.
57-60. Vary the expression of these four lines, in order to be sure
of the thought.
57-79. Contrast these lines with the solemn stanzas of Bryant's
autumn verse:
"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day."
- The Death of the Flowers.
56 
PAGES 34.]
Analyze the stanza for the means used by Lowell to produce his
effect; compare Bryant's method.
96 if. Read Tennyson's The HIoly Grail for the story of Sir Percivale, Sir Bors, Sir Galahad, and Lancelot.
"Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:
For waked at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills
Blown, and I thought,'It is not Arthur's use
To hunt by moonlight'; and the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me. 0 never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came; and then
Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colors leaping on the wall;
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Pass'd and the beam decay'd, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night."
- TENNYSON, The Holy Grail.
1"... I, Galahad, saw the Grail,
The Holy Grail, descend upon the shrine:
I saw the fiery face as of a child
That smote itself into the bread, and went;
And hither am I come: and never yet
Hath what thy sister taught me first to see,
This Holy Thing, fail'd from my side nor come
Cover'd, but moving with me night and day,
Fainter by day, but always in the night
Blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh
Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below
Blood-red. And in the strength of this I rode."
-TENNYSON, The Holy Grail. 
57
NOTES. 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
Sir Percivale, at the assumption of Sir Galahad into the Spiritual
City, sees the Grail as it disappears forever from the sight of men.
"And o'er his head the holy vessel hung
Redder than any rose, a joy to me,
For now I knew the veil had been withdrawn.
Then in a moment when they blazed again
Opening, I saw the least of little stars
Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,
Which never eyes on earth again shall see."
-TENNYSON, The Holy Grail.
A complete analysis of the Arthurian Romances, including the traditions of the Grail as treated by early French and English writers, is
to be found under "Romance," in the Encyclopcedia Britannica.
Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrim, who during the
life of Jesus had been afraid to confess belief in Him, boldly avowed
his faith at the crucifixion and begged from Pilate the body of our
Lord, which he laid in his own tomb. It is said that Joseph was
given son vaisseul, the Holy Grail, in which he collected the sacred
blood of the Saviour which gushed from the spear wound inflicted by
Longinus, and that this holy treasure remained in Joseph's hands during the forty-three years of his imprisonment by the Jews. Because of
its possession, the years seemed but three. After his release by Vespasian, he became the leader of a band of apostles, who brought
Christianity to Britain and built the abbey of Glastonbury, on the
south shore of England. Legend says that both the Holy Grail and
the spear of Longinus were long enshrined here, until removed by
supernatural power.
"According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or
Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ partook of the last
58
[PAGF, 4. 
NOTES.
supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of
Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration,
for many years, in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was
incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought,
word, and deed; bat, one of the keepers having broken this condition,
the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it.  Sir
Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the
seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur.  Tennyson has
made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his
poems.
"The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the
following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged
the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a
manner as to include not only other persons than the heroes of the
Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King
Arthur's reign." - LOWELL.
"The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with His own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat After the day of darkness, when the dead
Went wandering o'er Moriah -the good saint
Ariniathean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
And there awhile it bode; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd."
- TENNYSON,  The Holy Grail.
99. Grail: from low Latin cratella,'a chalice'; there is no sufficient ground for the etymology which traces the word to agreer,'to
please,' from the gracious influence of the cup.
107. Does Lowell ennoble the commonplace literary device, a dream,
by its use in such exalted poetry?
59
PAGE 4.] 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.  [PAGES 5.
109-127. Does this word-painting suggest an  artist's canvas?
Analyze the description, for the method employed in producing the
picture.
116. North Countree: of indefinite location, used by Hans Andersen and others in the lore of fairy tale.
128 if. Because of the vividness of every line, it is hard to remember that this is still the vision of the slumbering knight.
130. maiden knight: untried; the idea is repeated in "unscarred
mail."
159 if. "Lowell's New England character forced him to be both
teacher and preacher."
168. Does this imply that, when the thread of charity runs through
the fabric of our characters, the Divine is in each of us?
174-180. Compare with the first stanza of Keats's Eve of St. Agnes
for the effect produced; which gives the more genuine sense of cold?
Why?
"St. Agnes' Eve,- ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold;
Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seemed taking flight for heaven without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith."
174-210. The joy of the poet is as evident in his description of
winter as of June. Compare the two for the feeling and the art.
176. open wold: the unwooded plain.
184. groined: the intersection of the cylindrical surfaces of
vaulted ceilings produces angles called'groins.' See the dictionary
illustrations.
190. forest-crypt: the name'crypt' was given to a subterranean
chapel of the Gothic churches; in a broader way it is applied to an
underground vault, usually for the dead.
196. arabesques: fantastic, ornamental patterns.
211-239. What is the purpose of these lines? Contrast them
60 
PAGEs 8-12. ]
with Stanzas II, III, and IV of The Eve of St. Agnes. What is the
difference in feeling? in result? Which do you like better? Why?
213. corbel:' a bracket'; derivation, a diminutive of Latin, corbis;
French, corbeille,' a basket.'  See Century Dictionary.  "A piece of
stone, wood, or iron projecting from the vertical face of a wall to support some superincumbent object."
"The corbells were carved grotesque and grim."
-SCOTT, Lay of the Last Minstrel.
216. Yule-log: burnt in Christmas hospitality, as in the olden
times it was, in feasting the god Thor.
233. seneschal: literally,'old servant'; Latin, seniscalcus.  The
steward of royal palace and princely hall, whose duties were those of
a major-domo, managing feasts and dispensing hospitality. Sometimes higher dignity, even military command, was accorded to this
officer of the household.
255. surcoat: sur,'over'; cote,'coat'; a loose outer garment
worn over chain armor, from the thirteenth century to the advent of
plate armor in the fifteenth. Among the Crusaders it was not only
emblazoned with the cross, but by its cut, color, and military adornment distinctively indicated the followers of the various great leaders.
291. leprosie: is there other reason for the form of the word
than the rhyme?
305. stood before him glorified: there are many stories of
Christ's revelation of himself, after humble human service done in
his name.
The Legend of Saint Christopher ('Christ-bearer') tells us that
Offero, a giant of the land of Canaan, resolved to serve only masters
of fearless heart and mighty power. Wandering to the court of a king
of great wealth and dominion, he entered his service. But when he
discovered that his royal master, cowering, crossed himself in terror at
the name of Satan, he deserted him to join the higher power. Satan
he served, but only till he found that the cross inspired him with
craven fear; then, guided by a holy man, Offero became a follower of
the Great King, rendering humble service in bearing on his mighty
shoulders, through a rushing stream, the frail, the weak, and the old,
at a ford where many precious lives had been lost.
61
NOTES. 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.  [PAGES 12-17.
At length came the giant's trial.   Through the howling night
stormn a plaintive voice: "Offero, wilt thou carry me over?"  With
difficulty he found a little child, whom he lifted to his shoulder. Seizing a great pine tree to serve him as a staff, he began the passage.
The storm grew fiercer, the winds buffeted hard, crashing thunder and
blinding lightning came, the child grew to superhuman weight; though
fearing to sink, the giant, struggling hard, reached the opposite shore.
"Whom have I borne? Had it been the world, it could not have
been more heavy."
"Me thou hast desired to serve, and I have accepted thee.  Thou
hast borne not only the whole world, but Him who made it, upon thy
shoulders.  As a sign of my power and of my approbation of thee, fix
thou thy staff in the earth, and it shall grow and bear fruit."  Then
Offero knew that it was Christ whom he had borne, and he fell down
and worshipped Him. -Summarized from Mrs. Clement's A   i Handbook of Legendary Art.
307. Beautiful Gate: read The Acts iii. 2.
336. the hangbird: the orchard oriole, or Baltimore oriole.
SUMMER STORM. (Pages 14-17.)
Lowell's comment upon Bryant (p. 42, line 126) may be repeated
of     himself:
"He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him."
What is the effect of the description upon the imagination? Does
it create the poet's own glow of emotions? Is the development,
through the approach of the storm, its burst of crashing fury, and
succeeding quiet, vigorous and absorbing?
Study the details of the picture; first, the sheep and the looseplanked bridge, the idle tide, marked with the water rat's wake, the
great storm cloud in the west; then the storm's burst; and finally,
study the poet's art in closing with the quiet moon.
Read the poem aloud; are the melody of the line, the rhythm, and
figure equal to the sympathy of the poet's soul with a mood of nature?
73. gouts: Latin gustus,' taste';'drops,' by secondary meaning.
62 
PAGES 17-21.]
ALLEGRA. (Pages 17-18.)
The name is from the Latin alacris,'happy,'' cheerful.'
Is this a poem upon temperament?
3. Hebe: daughter of Juno, cup-bearer to the Olympian gods,
whose fabled power was to restore to the aged the charm of youth.
"Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek."
-MILTON, L'Allegro.
THE ROSE. (Pages 18-21.)
Study the rhythm of the ballad: is it faultless? Is the verse flowing
and melodious?
Compare p. 19, lines 13 if.,              "Life is vain and love is hollow," etc.,
with p. 20, lines 61 if., -
"Life is joy and love is power," etc.,
If this is both "singing and preaching," express in your own words the
poet's text and discuss its force.
RHCECUS.  (Pages 21-26.)
Rhoecus: pronounced Rel-kus. This tale, with minor variations,
is a bit of classic mythology. See Bulfinch's Age of Fable. According
to the Greeks, the dryad pledged her love to Rhcecus, exacted his constancy, and agreed that a bee should, as her messenger, summon him
at her pleasure.   Rhcecus, absorbed in a game  of draughts, once
bruised and brushed aside the bee; the nymph's love turned at once
to bitterness, and in anger she deprived Rhcecus of his eyes.
Keats's Lamia (1819) was perhaps the inspiration of this poem.
Does the introduction of the first thirty-five lines, through its
didactic character, delay the poem and lessen its beauty?
Stedman contrasts Rhoecus as a piece of art work with Landor's
Hamnadryad. "Landor worked as a Grecian might, giving the tale ill
63
NOTES. 
SELECTIO~S FROM LOWELL. [PAGEs 21-28.
chiselled verse, with no curious regard for its teachings. Its beauty is
enough for him, and there it stands- a Periclean vase."
-American Poets.
18. hazel twig: this is the "staff" of the Bible (Hosea iv. 12), the
"virgula divina" of Cicero, the "divining rod" of more recent times.
When held lightly between the hands, the rod, shaped like a Y, turned
downwards as its holder walked over precious metal, buried treasure,
or secret springs.
136-139. We spirits only show to gentle eyes,
We ever ask an undivided love,
And he who scorns the least of Nature's works
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all.
Here lies the moral of the tale; does the wording of it overweight
the poem? To aid your decision, it is perhaps admissible to compare
these lines with the Lamnia - noting its simplicity, its lack of moralizing
and reflection, its absence of preaching.
TO A PINE TREE. (Pages 26-28.)
"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,
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."
Is there repeated evidence that Lowell, both as child and man, was
filled with love of bird and tree and was taught by them to deem
"More sacredly of every human heart"?
Does the diction fill the ear richly? Are the rhymes perfect?
Compare valleys and palace (p. 27, lines 11 and 13).
1. Katahdin: the mountains of Maine are superb, through the
grandeur of the pines. Katahdin is the king of the hills (5325 feet in
height).
64 
PAGES 28-36.]
TO THE PAST. (Pages 28-30.)
13. Asser: 353-427 A.D.; a rabbi known chiefly as the author and
compiler of the Babylonian Talmud.
58. Fortunate Isles: the Greeks located the Elysian Fields in the
Canaries, into which "happy islands of the blest"  mighty heroes
passed without dying.
THE OAK. (Pages 31-32.)
Does the poet's joy in wood and tree dominate him in The Oak, or
have we to regret the lack of warmth, his "tabulation and enumeration," which are neither art nor emotion?
40. Puck:
"... Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skims milk, and sometimes labors in the quern,
And bootless makes the breathless housewife's churn;
And sometime makes the drink to bear no barm;
Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?"
41. Lord, all thy works are lessons: this is to confound the
moralist and the poet.
"Whenever a work of art is the vehicle for an idea or purpose outside of its essential form, it falls short of being a pure art creation, and
fails in its appeal to the esthetic mood, whilst, be it conceded, it may
serve some other but secondary purpose, which belongs to the province
of the archeologist, the art historian, and the collector."- WALDSTEIN.
THE BIRCH TREE. (Pages 33-34.)
12. Dryad: the Dryads were the nymphs of the trees, making them
their abode and dying in them. See p. 23, line 56,
"Rhcecus, I am the Dryad of this tree."
TO THE DANDELION. (Pages 34-36.)
6.  Eldorado: el dorado,'golden country'; a part of South
America, named by the Spaniards.
26.  Sybaris: a city of Greece, 720-510 B.C.  "In the sixth century
probably no Hellenic city could compare with its wealth and splendor."
65
NOTES. 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL. [PAGEs 36-38.
ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO. (Pages 36-37.)
Read Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of Florence, Chapters I-III, for
Dante's public life and exile; Chapter IV, for the work of Giotto,
master painter, builder, and sculptor.
The burly peasant Giotto's "first great public commission was to
paint a Paradise over the altar in the chapel of the Podest,, in the old,
stern Bargello palace.... What more natural than that Giotto,
peacefully painting the saints of his Paradise, should introduce the
portraits of his friends among them, and above all that special friend
whose notice of the young painter was so flattering, and whose acquaintance, at once as a statesman, ambassador, and poet, it was a
pride to possess?... With a painter's admiration for the beautiful
countenance, yet unworn with anything worse than the sweet sorrows
of a visionary love, Giotto set Dante in the front of his group, and thus
preserved to us forever such a softened representation of the poet's
face, and along with it of his character, as has been most gratefully
received by all lovers of Dante." - Makers of Florence.
12. Beatrice: the poetic story of Dante's exalted yet unrequited
love for Beatrice Portinari, as told in the Vita Nuova, is still an
inspiration to poets and an immortal part of literature.
13. Hesperides: the golden apples which Juno received as her
marriage gift were guarded by three sisters, aided by the dragon
Ladon, in some remote, mysterious spot known as the " Garden
of the Hesperides." See Love's Labor's Lost, IV, 3.
26. The Neri, a faction of the Guelph party, condemned Dante to
perpetual banishment. His poverty and many afflictions were the
inspiration for much of his poetry.
28 if. Are the poet-souled necessarily isolated from the world of
less gifted men?
A  FABLE  FOR  CRITICS.  (Pages 3849.)
The selections, though each is complete, make but a fragment of
the poem.
66 
PAGE 3        8.]
READER! walk up at once (it will soon be too late)
and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate
A
FABLE FOR CRITICS.
OR, BETTER,
(I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike,
an old-fashioned title-page,
such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents,)
A GLANCE
AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES
(Mrs. Malaprop's word)
From
THE TUB OF DIOGENES;
A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY
THAT IS
A SERIES OF JOKES
~3 a onubterful quit,
Wbo accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace,
on the top of the tub.
Set forth in October, the 3 i st day,
In the year'48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway.
This humorous title-page was followed, in the original edition of
1848, by a preface which, though light in tone, states with sincerity
67
lv,OTES. 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.  [PGEs 38-44.
that "All the characters sketched in this slight jet d'esprit... are
meant to be faithful." (The italics are Lowell's.)
1. Emerson:  "I know what is meant by a caricature and what
by a portrait."  Which is given here?
27. Plotinus: 204-270 A.D.; a Greek philosopher, who was born
in Egypt.  He was a teacher of the neo-Platonic philosophy in Rome
for twenty-five years.
"He was intensely religious, and if he had come a century later
would, instead of a heathen philosopher, have been one of the first
names among the saints of the church."-HALLAM.
Montaigne: 1533-1592; a Gascon philosopher and essayist, whose
writings have had an extraordinary influence upon the taste and
opinions of Europe.
"The Essays are an interesting soliloquy on every random topic
that comes into his head, treating everything without ceremony, yet
with masculine sense. There have been men with deeper insight, but,
one —would say, never a man with such abundance of thought: he is
never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader
care for all that he cares for." - EMERSON.
51 if. What is your opinion of the comparison with Carlyle - is it
mere words, or shrewd analysis?
112. Griswold: a Baptist minister, of a kindly and impartial mind,
who was the author of Prose Writers of America (1842).
121. inter nos: just between ourselves.
131. in loco (add foco here) desipis: you who at the proper time
(add "by the fireside" here) indulge in trifling.
136. Mr. Quivis: Mr. "So-and-so."
144. Thompson and Cowper were great rivals in poetic description
of rural scenes; the first, in the Seasons (1730), maintains an "unvaried pomp of diction," while the latter wrote, in all his poems, with
"manly and idiomatic simplicity."'
167. Hesiod: a Greek poet, 800 B.C.
198. Anne haec,... Vestis filii tui:'can this be the dress of
thy son?'
203. Castaly's spring: a sacred fountain springing from the side
of Mount Parnassus, which inspired those who drank from it with the
gift of poetry.
68 
PAGES 45-50.]
224. Harmodius and Aristogeiton: Athenian heroes who, conspiring against the tyrannical Pisistratidae, were martyred, 525 B.C.
242. Fouque: 1777-1843; a German writer, whose powerful imagination was thrilled by Northern traditions. Undine is one of the most
exquisite conceptions of his rare genius.    Tieck: 1773-1853; Ludvig Tieck, a German poet and novelist, who wrote much that was
weird and gloomy.
250. Dwight: 1786-1850; Sereno Edwards, was the son of President Timothy Dwight of Yale, and grandson of Jonathan Edwards;
he practiced law for ten years, then became the pastor of the Park
Street Church in Boston. He abandoned both professions to become
a teacher, and afterward was president of Hamilton College.
261. Matthews: Cornelius, author of novels and plays, and magazine writer. Read Poe's MX. Longfellow and Other Plagiarists, which
caused Lowell's protest against the flinging of "mud-balls."
280. Old Melesigenes:'Meles-born.'  Homer, by tradition, was
born in Ionia, upon the banks of the Meles.
290. Is this estimate of Evangeline just and adequate?
295. Irving; the years from 1826 to 1829, which Irving spent in
Spain, were years of arduous literary toil. The Life of Columbus, The
Conquest of Granada, and The Alhambra, which Prescott called a
Spanish Sketch-Book, were the fruits of his labor.
326. Campbell: read The Battle (f the Baltic, to appreciate the
fire of the poet.
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS. (Pages 50-52.)
1. Guvener B.: George N. Briggs was the Whig governor of
Massachusetts, from 1843 to 1851.
15. Gineral C.: Caleb Cushing, who was a stanch supporter of
the Mexican War. He raised and equipped a regiment, which he
commanded in the campaign of 1847. Upon his return from the war,
he was a candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
This poem, with its dialect, argument, and satire, is typical of the
strength of the Biglow Papers, from which it is selected.
Lowell's title-page to the first edition of the Biglow Papers was
followed by droll "Notices of the Press," written by Lowell himself,
69
NOTES. 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.
satirizing newspaper puff or condemnation of an author's effort.  The
selections reveal, under the guise of humor, a powerful use of ridicule,
which is perhaps the strongest characteristic of the Papers. The titlepage and some of the notices are as follows:
THE
BIGLOW PAPERS,
EDITED,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, GLOSSARY,
AND COPIOUS INDEX,
BY
HOMER WILBUR, A.M.,
PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN JALAAM
And (prospective) member of many literary, learned, and scientific societies.
NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS.
From the Universal Literary Universe.
Full of passages which rivet the attention of the reader.... Under
a rustic garb, sentiments are conveyed which should be committed to
the memory and graven on the heart of every moral and social being.
...  We consider this a unique performance..  We hope to see
it soon introduced into our common schools....   Mr. Wilbur has
performed his duties as editor with excellent taste and judgment....
This is a vein which we hope to see successfully prosecuted....  We
hail the appearance of this work as a long stride towards the formation
of a purely aboriginal, indigenous, native, and American literature.
We rejoice to meet with an author national enough to break away from
the slavish deference, too common among us, to English grammar and
70
[PAGE 60. 
PAGE 50. ]
orthography.... Where all is so good, we are at loss how to make
extracts....  On the whole, we may call it a volume which  no
library, pretending to entire completeness, should fail to place upon
its shelves.
From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle.
A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever
our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and
the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but
should any of our readers peruse the book (from which calamity
Heaven preserve them) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves
of Vallumbrozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the
combined heads of author and editor. This work is wretchedly got
up.... We should like to know how much British gold was pocketed
by this libeller of our country and her purest patriots.
From the Saltriver Pilot and Flag of Freedom.
A volume in bad grammar and in worse taste.... While the
pieces here collected were confined to their appropriate sphere in the
corners of obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath
contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders.... Vilest Billingsgate.... Has raked all the
gutters of our language.... The most pure, upright, and consistent
politicians not safe from his malignant venom.... General Cushing
comes in for a share of his vile calumnies...   The Reverend Homer
Wilbur is a disgrace to his cloth....
From the Onion Grove Phoenix.
A talented young townsman of ours, recently returned from a continental tour, and who is already favorably known to our readers by
his sprightly letters from abroad which have graced our columns,
called at our office yesterday. We learn from him that, having
enjoyed the distinguished privilege, while in Germany, of an introduction to the celebrated Von Humbug, he took the opportunity to
present that eminent man with a copy of the Biglow Papers. The
next morning he received the following note, which he has kindly
furnished us for publication.  We prefer to print it verbatim, know
NOTES.
71 
SELECTIONS FROM LOWELL.  [PAGES 50-53.
ing that our readers will readily forgive the few errors into which the
illustrious writer has fallen, through ignorance of our language.
"HIGH-WORTHY MISTER!
"I shall also now especially happy starve, because I have more or
less a work of one of those aboriginal Red-Men seen in which have I
so deaf an interest ever taken full-worthy on the self shelf with our
Gottsched to be upset.
"Pardon my in the English-speech un-practice!
"VON HUMBUG."'
THE COURTIN'. (Pages 52-53.)
The Courtin' is taken from the Biglow Papers.   The "editor"
of the Papers makes this reference to the poem: -
"[The following genuine "notice" having met my eye, I gladly insert a portion of it here, the more especially as it contains o0 p of Mr.
Biglow's poems not elsewhere printed.- H. W.]
"From the Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss.
"... But, while we lament to see our young townsman thus mingling in the heated contests of party politics, we think we detect in him
the presence of talents which if properly directed might give an innocent pleasure to many. As a proof that he is competent to the
production of other kinds of poetry, we copy for our readers a short
fragment of a pastoral by him, the manuscript of which was loaned
us by a friend. The title of it is The Courtin'."
ES E-   I  t  i
72 
ENGLISIL                1
8tudies in English Composition.
By HARRIET C. KEELER, High School, Cleveland, Ohio, and EMMA
C. DAVIS, Cleveland, Ohio. I2mo, cloth, 2I9 pages. Price, 8o cents.
HE main principle of this book is that pupils learn to write by
writing. Accordingly it has little to do with theories of rhetoric, and deals largely with practical helps on the work assigned.
Many topics for composition adapted to the needs of high school
pupils are given in the exercises, and many more are suggested in
a supplementary list. The experience of the authors has led them
to believe that it is of the utmost importance that pupils be supplied with good models. These are furnished in abundance, and
serve the double purpose of defining clearly to the pupil the nature
of his task, and of keeping before him during its performance an
id(al toward which he may strive. By following these methods
in their own classes, the authors find that they can overcome selfconsciousness in their pupils -the first great barrier to the development of originality. The pupil is encouraged to observe
and write, and criticism is left till something to criticise has been
produced.
R. Adelaide Witham, Latin School, Somerville, Mass.: I have found the
Keeler and Davis Composition book more satisfactory than any of its
competitors for use in the lower classes of the High School. Its chief aim
-that of inducing the pupil to write first and correct afterward-is fol  lowed consistently and intelligently. Rules and examples, the bane of the
old-fashioned rhetorics, are minimized here, so that more attractive and
less text-book-like matter holds the prominent place.  The least that can
be said for the book is that it is useful both to teachers and pupils. Senior
pupils have often come to me to borrow their freshman text-book for
reference.
J. Tuckerman, High School,  4'allingford, Conn.: I have examined care  fully your Studies in English Composition, and I am highly pleased with
it.  I find it just the thing I have been looking for....  The study of
English, as directed by this book, must be the finest thing in the world.
The more I think of your book, the better I like it.
Edward H. Cobb, English High School, Boston: Studies in English Com  position by Keeler and Davis is good, because practical. Pupils deal
with selections from the best authors; and the particular point which the
author has in mind is worked into the pupils' daily writing, which is often
turned on their own experiences.
ENGLISH.
1 
2                ENCLISIL
An Elementary Composition Book.
By Professor F. N. ScoTT, of the University of Michigan, and Professor J. V. DENNEY, of Ohio State University. Cloth, 249 pages.
Price, 80 cents.
HE authors of this book believe that "young persons do not
learn to write good English by reading and reciting treatises on rhetoric....  Composition in the schools," they say,
"has long been under a curse,'and not without reason.  It has
lacked substance, vitality, enrichment.... But now composition seems to be coming into its rights....   The time is at
hand when the opportunities for scholarship and general culture
in this branch of instruction will be generally recognized. The
authors venture the hope that the Elementary English Composition may play some small part in hastening the advent of this
golden age."
From cover to cover the book is alive and active; it must inevitably come as a breath of fresh inspiration to pupils, and as a
wealth of suggestion to teachers.
The manual of Notes and Suggestions that accompanies the
book contains the authors' recommendations as to methods,
many exercises and other additional material, and valuable refer
ences on subjects connected with the work.
Samuel Thurber, Girts High School, Boston, Mass.: In their Elementary
English Composition, Messrs. Scott and Denney have struck the right
key. Their ideas are quite in harmony with my own theory and prac tice, though they have thought out a mass of material quite surpassing
all my achievements in that line, and present illustrations and give hints
with a fertility of invention that is really imposing. They know how to
pique curiosity. This is the great thing. I want my better pupils to
clamor to hear a composition because they believe it will interest them.
The school public must be kept in view, and young writers must write to
be read by this public. Thus the subject of the writing becomes all important, and material must be gathered for pupils whose minds do not
readily apprehend the possibilities that lie unsuspected all about them.
Messrs. Scott and Denney's plan is to furnish the young mind and stiittu late the young imagination as the proper preliminary to writing. This
idea is wholly reasonable and right. I admire their book without quali fication. It will aid and guide my own teaching.
ENGLISH.
2 
ENGLISIL                 3
Composition-Rhetoric for Use in Secondary
Schools.
By Professor F. N. SCOTT, of the University of Michigan, and Professor
J. V. DENNEY, of Ohio State University. I2mo, cloth, 4i6 pages.
Price, $i.oo.
N this book the authors have attempted to bring about a closer
union between composition and rhetoric, a more extended
use of the paragraph as a unit of composition, and a wider recognition of the idea of growth in composition work. The rhetoric
given in the book is meant to be the theory of the pupil's actual
practice.   The paragraph is made the basis of a systematic
method of instruction. Throughout the book, the composition
is regarded, not as a dead form to be analyzed into its component
parts, but as a living product of an active, creative mind. The
illustrative material has been chosen with especial care for its
fitness and intrinsic interest.  An appendix gives an outline of
formal rhetoric for courses that require a study of the subject
apart from composition.
Emily I. Meader, Classical High School, Providence, R.I.: I like the
make-up of the book better than that of any other book I have seen,
especially because of its emphasis on the paragraph as the basis of com  position work...  The  examples are uniformly well chosen from
standard authors intrinsically interesting, and are happy instances of the
application of the principles involved. The choice of examples in a text
book is so important a factor of its usefulness that this point of excellence
deserves particular mention.
Edith R. Dunton, High School, Rutland, Vermont: I cannot praise it
highly enough.
Professor Sophie C. Hart, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.: As a
whole, I consider it the best book on English Composition for the
preparatory school, and shall recommend it to all teachers who send
students to Wellesley.
Eva March Tappan, Ph.D., English High School, Worcester, Mass.: There
are rhetorics by the score that would help Macaulay and'Tennyson to
criticise their own work, and that do assist the struggling pupil to put
thoughts into plain English; but Scott and Denney's is the only rhetoric
with which I am familar that will mitigate the sufferings of the pupil who
does not know "what to say," that will really help him to develop thought,
and then to stiffen up even the rather limp ideas into form and comeliness.
ENGLISH.
3 
4               ENGUSIL
Paragraph-Writing.
By Professor F. N. SCOTT, of the University of Michigan, and Pro   fessor J. V. DENNEY, of Ohio State University. I2mo, 304 pages.
Price, $i.oo.
HE  principles embodied in this work were developed and
put in practice by its authors at the University of Michigan.
Its aim is to make the paragraph the basis of a method of composition, and to present all the important facts of rhetoric in their
application to it.
The book is in three parts: the first on the nature and laws of
the paragraph; the second, for teachers and advanced students,
on the theory of the paragraph; and the third consisting of references and material for class work.
It contains a chapter on the Rhetoric of the Paragraph, in
which will be found applications of the paragraph idea to the
sentence and to the constituent parts of the sentence, so far as
these demand especial attention.
Professor J. M. Hart, Cornell University: The style of the writers is admi  rable for clearness and correctness.... They have produced an uncom  monly sensible text-book....  For college work it will be hard to beat.
I know of no other book at all comparable to it for freshman drill.
Professer Charles Mills Gayley, University of California: Paragraph  Writing is the best thing of its kind, -the only systematic and exhaustive
effort to present a cardinal feature of rhetorical training to the educational
world.
Introduction to Theme-Writing.
ByJ. B. FLETCHER, of Harvard University, and Professor G. R. CAR  PENTER, of Columbia College. i6mo, cloth, I43 pages. Price, 60 cents.
HE  lectures that form the basis of this book were delivered
by Mr. Fletcher in one of the courses for the Freshman class
at Harvard University. These have been rearranged, with additional matter, by Professor Carpenter. The result is a text-book
for students who have completed the introductory course in rhetoric usually prescribed at the beginning of the Freshman year.
4
EA7'GLISH.