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James Russell Lowell (February 22, 1819 ? August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets. These poets usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.

Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. He published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. He and his wife had several children, though only one survived past childhood. The couple soon became involved in the movement to abolish slavery, with Lowell using poetry to express his anti-slavery views and taking a job in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. After moving back to Cambridge, Lowell was one of the founders of a journal called The Pioneer, which lasted only three issues. He gained notoriety in 1848 with the publication of A Fable for Critics, a book-length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. The same year, he published The Biglow Papers, which increased his fame. He would publish several other poetry collections and essay collections throughout his literary career.

Maria White died in 1853, and Lowell accepted a professorship of languages at Harvard in 1854. He traveled to Europe before officially assuming his role in 1856; he continued to teach there for twenty years. He married his second wife, Frances Dunlap, shortly thereafter in 1857. That year Lowell also became editor of The Atlantic Monthly. It was not until 20 years later that Lowell received his first political appointment: the ambassadorship to Spain and, later, to England. He spent his last years in Cambridge, in the same estate where he was born, where he also died in 1891.

Lowell believed that the poet played an important role as a prophet and critic of society. He used poetry for reform, particularly in abolitionism. However, Lowells commitment to the anti-slavery cause wavered over the years, as did his opinion on African-Americans. Lowell attempted to emulate the true Yankee accent in the dialogue of his characters, particularly in The Biglow Papers. This depiction of the dialect, as well as Lowells many satires, were an inspiration to writers like Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken.

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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE

NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

CONTENTS. PAGE Biographical Sketch ix EARLY POEMS. Sonnet 1 Hakon’s Lay 1 Out of Doors 2 A Reverie 4 In Sadness 6 Farewell 7 A Dirge 10 Fancies about a Rosebud 15 New Year’s Eve, 1844 17 A Mystical Ballad 20 Opening Poem to A Year’s Life 23 Dedication to Volume of Poems entitled A Year’s Life The Serenade 24 Song 26 The Departed 27 The Bobolink 30 Forgetfulness 32 Song 33 The Poet 34 Flowers 35 The Lover 39 To E. W. G. 40 Isabel 42 Music 43 Song 46 Ianthe 48 Love’s Altar 52 Impartiality 54 Bellerophon 54 Something Natural 58 A Feeling 58

The Lost Child 59 The Church 60 The Unlovely 61 Love-Song 62 Song 63 A Love-Dream 65 Fourth of July Ode 66 Sphinx 67 “Goe, Little Booke!” 69 Sonnets 71 Sonnets on Names 82 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. Threnodia 85 The Sirens 87 Irené 90 Serenade 93 With a Pressed Flower 93 The Beggar 94 My Love 95 Summer Storm 97 Love 100 To Perdita, Singing 101 The Moon 103 Remembered Music 104 Song 105 Allegra 105 The Fountain 106 Ode 107 The Fatherland 112 The Forlorn 112 Midnight 114 A Prayer 115 The Heritage 116 The Rose: A Ballad 118 A Legend of Brittany 120 Prometheus 139 Song 147 Rosaline 148 The Shepherd of King Admetus The Token 152 An Incident in a Railroad Car 153 Rhœcus 156 The Falcon 160 Trial 161 A Requiem 161 A Parable 162 A Glance behind the Curtain 164 Song 172 A Chippewa Legend172 Stanzas on Freedom 176 Columbus 176 An Incident of the Fire at Hamburg The Sower 185 Hunger and Cold 187 The Landlord 189 To a Pine-Tree 190 Si Descendero in Infernum, Ades To the Past 192

151

183

191

To the Future 194 Hebe 196 The Search 197 The Present Crisis 199 An Indian-Summer Reverie 203 The Growth of the Legend 211 A Contrast 213 Extreme Unction 214 The Oak 216 Ambrose 217 Above and Below 219 The Captive 220 The Birch-Tree 223 An Interview with Miles Standish 224 On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves near Washington To the Dandelion 230 The Ghost-Seer 231 Studies for Two Heads 236 On a Portrait of Dante by Giotto 239 On the Death of a Friend’s Child 240 Eurydice 242 She Came and Went 245 The Changeling 245 The Pioneer 247 Longing 248 Ode to France 249 A Parable 254 Ode 255 Lines 257 To —— 258 Freedom 259 Bibliolatres 261 Beaver Brook 262 Appledore 263 Dara 265 TO J. F. H. 267 MEMORIAL VERSES. Kossuth 268 To Lamartine 269 To John G. Palfrey 271 To W. L. Garrison 273 On the Death of C. T. Torrey 274 Elegy on the Death of Dr. Channing 275 To the Memory of Hood 277 Sonnets 278 L’envoi 289 The Vision of Sir Launfal 293 A Fable for Critics 303 The Biglow Papers 357 The Unhappy Lot of Mr Knott 471 An Oriental Apologue 496 [Pg ix]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

228

In the year 1639 Percival Lowle, or Lowell, a merchant of Bristol, England, landed at the little seaport town of Newbury, Mass. 3

We generally speak of a man’s descent. In the case of James Russell Lowell’s ancestry it was rather an ascent through eight genera-tions. Percival Lowle’s son, John Lowell, was a worthy cooper in old Newbury; his great-grandson was a shoemaker, his great-great-grandson was the Rev. John Lowell of Newburyport, the father of the Hon. John Lowell, who is regarded as the author of the clause in the Massachusetts Constitution abolishing slavery.

Judge Lowell’s son, Charles, was a Unitarian minister, “learned, saintly, and discreet.” He married Miss Harriet Traill Spence, of Portsmouth,—a woman of superior mind, of great wit, vivacity, and an impetuosity that reached eccentricity. She was of Keltic blood, of a family that came from the Orkneys, and claimed descent from the Sir Patrick Spens of “the grand old ballad.” Several of her family were connected with the American navy. Her father was Keith Spence, purser of the frigate “Philadelphia,” and a prisoner at Tripoli.

By ancestry on both sides, and by connections with the Russells and other distinguished families, Lowell was a good type of the New England gentleman.

He was born on the 22d of February, 1819, at Elmwood, not far from Brattle Street, Cambridge.

This three-storied colonial mansion of wood, was built in 1767 by Thomas Oliver, the last royal Lieutenant-Governor, before the Revolution.[1] Like other houses in “Tory Row,” it was abandoned by its owners. Soon afterwards it came into possession of Elbridge Gerry, Governor of Massachusetts, and îfth Vice-President of the United States, whose memory and name are kept alive by the term “gerrymander.” It next became the property of Dr. Lowell about a year before the birth of his youngest child, and it was the home of the poet until his death.

Lowell’s early education was obtained mainly at a school kept nearly opposite Elmwood by a retired publisher, an Englishman, Mr. William Wells. He also studied in the classical school of Mr. Danial G. Ingraham in Boston. He was graduated from Harvard Col-lege in the class of 1838. He is reported as declaring that he read almost everything except the class-books prescribed by the faculty. Lowell says, in one of his early poems referring to Harvard,—

“Tho’ lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had.” He was secretary of the Hasty Pudding Society, and one of the editors of the college periodical Harvardiana, to which he con-tributed various articles in prose and verse. His neglect of prescribed studies, and disregard of college discipline, resulted in his rustication just before commencement in 1838. He was sent to Concord, where he resided in the family of Barzillai Frost, and made the acquaintance of Emerson, then beginning to rouse the ire of conservative Unitarianism by his transcendental philosophy, of the brilliant but overestimated Margaret Fuller, who afterwards severely criticised Lowell’s verse, and of other well-known residents of the pretty town. He had been elected poet of his class. His removal from college prevented him from delivering the poem which was afterwards published anonymously for private distribution. It contained a satire on abolitionists and reformers. “I know the village,” he writes long afterwards in the person of Hosea Biglow, Esquire.

“I know the village though, was sent there once A-schoolin’, ‘cause to home I played the dunce!” On his return to Cambridge he took up the study of law, and, in 1840, received the degree of LL.B. He even went so far as to open an ofîce in Boston; but it is a question whether there was any actual basis of fact in a whimsical sketch of his entitled “My First Cli-ent,” published in the short-lived Boston Miscellany, edited by Nathan Hale.

Several things engrossed Lowell’s attention to the exclusion of law. Society at Cambridge was particularly attractive at that time. Allston the painter was living at Cambridgeport. Judge Story’s pleasant home was on Brattle Street. The Fays then occupied the house which has since become the seat of Radcliffe College. Longfellow, described as “a slender, blond young professor,” was estab-lished in the Craigie House. The famous names of Dr. Palfrey, Professor Andrews Norton, father of Lowell’s friend and biographer, the “saintly” Henry Ware, and others will occur to the reader. He was fond of walking and knew every inch of the beautiful ground then called “Sweet Auburn,” now turned by the hand of misguided man into that most distressing of monstrosities—a modern cemetery. He haunted the poetic shades of the Waverley Oaks, heard the charming music of Beaver Brook, and climbed the hills of Belmont and Arlington.

He himself took his turn in establishing a magazine. In January, 1843, he started The Pioneer, to which Hawthorne, John Neal, Miss Barrett, Poe, Whittier, Story, Parsons, and others contributed, and which, in spite of such an array of talent, perished untimely during the winds of March. 4

He had already published, in 1841, a little volume of poems entitled “A Year’s Life.” They were marked by no great originality, betrayed little promise of future eminence, and Margaret Fuller, who reviewed them, was quite right in asserting that “neither the imagery nor the music of Lowell’s verses was his own.” The îrst sonnet in the present volume (page 1) practically acknowledges the force of this criticism. The inuence of Wordsworth and Tennyson may be distinctly traced in most of them. But many of the lines were harsh and many of the rhymes were careless. Lowell’s later and correcter taste omitted most of them from his collected works.

Not far from Elmwood, but in the adjoining village of Watertown, lived one of Lowell’s classmates, whose sister, Maria White, a slender, delicate girl, with a poetic genius in some respects more regulated and lofty than his own, early inspired him with a true and saving love. Speaking of the inuences that moulded his life, George William Curtis says:—

“The îrst and most enduring was an early and happy passion for a lovely and high-minded woman who became his wife—the Egeria who exalted his youth and conîrmed his noblest aspirations; a heaven-eyed counsellor of the serener air, who îlled his mind with peace and his life with joy.”

The young lady’s prudent father objected to the marriage until the newly edged lawyer should be in a position to support a wife.

Shortly after the shipwreck of The Pioneer, Lowell was offered a hundred dollars by Graham’s Monthly for ten poems. When Pegasus is able to earn such princely sums, there seems no reason why Love should be kept waiting at the cottage door. In 1844 Lowell published a new edition of his poems, and married Miss White. It was her inuence that decided him to cast in his lot with the abolitionists. It was her reîned taste that shaped and tempered his impetuous verse. A volume of her poems was in 1855, in an edition of îfty copies, privately printed, and is now very rare. It is an odd circumstance that in Lowell’s library, from which Harvard College was allowed to select any volumes not in Gore Hall, neither this book nor any of Lowell’s own early poems was to be found.

The young couple took up their residence at Elmwood, and here were born three daughters and a son. All but one of his children died in infancy. Many of the tenderest of his poems refer with touching pathos to his bereavement: such for instance are “The Changeling” and “The First Snowfall.”

In 1845 appeared “The Vision of Sir Launfal,”—a genuine inspiration composed in two days in a sort of ecstasy of poetic fervor. That more than anything established his fame. He recognized that he was dedicated to the Muses.

In 1846 he wrote:—

“If I have any vocation, it is the making of verse. When I take my pen for that, the world opens itself ungrudgingly before me; eve-rything seems clear and easy, as it seems sinking to the bottom could be as one leans over the edge of his boat in one of those dear coves at Fresh Pond.... My true place is to serve the cause as a poet. Then my heart leaps before me into the conict.”

The same year he began his “Biglow Papers” in the Boston Courier. Such jeux d’esprit are apt to be ephemeral. Lowell’s are immor-tal. They preserved in literary form a fast-fading dialect; they caught and embalmed the mighty issues of a tremendous world-prob-lem. Their inuence was incalculable. He gathered them into a volume in 1848, and became corresponding editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard. Fortunate man who throws himself into an unpopular cause which is in harmony with the Right! How different from Wordsworth who attacked the ballot and took sides against reform!

Lowell’s penchant for satire was exempliîed again the same year in his “Fable for Critics.”

In this Lowell with no sparing hand laid on his portraits most droll and amusing colors. It is a comic portrait gallery, a series of cari-catures whose greatest value (as in all good caricatures) lies in the accurate presentation of characteristic features. He did not spare himself:—

“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 troubles and bowlders, 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 distinctions ‘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 shell, And rattle away till he’s old as Methusalem

At the head of a march to the last New Jerusalem.” Some of his thrusts left embittered feelings, but in general the tone was so good-natured that only the thin-skinned could object, and it must be confessed many of his judgments have been conîrmed by Time.

In 1851 Lowell visited Europe, and spent upwards of a year widening his acquaintance with the polite languages. But it is remarkable that Lowell gave the world almost no metrical translations. Shortly after his return his wife died (Oct. 27, 1853) after a slow decline. In reference to this bereavement Longfellow wrote his beautiful poem, “The Two Angels.”

The following year Longfellow resigned the Smith Professorship of the French and Spanish Languages and Literature and Belles Lettres, and Lowell was appointed his successor with two years’ leave of absence. He had won his spurs. He had collected his poems in two volumes, not including “A Year’s Life,” the “Biglow Papers,” or the “Fable for Critics.” He was known as one of the most bril-liant contributors to Putnam’s Monthly and other magazines.

In 1854 he delivered a series of twelve lectures on English poetry before the Lowell Institute. Ten years before he had published a volume of “Conversations on the Poets.” The contrast between the two works is no less pronounced than that between his earlier and later poems.

In both, however, there is a tendency toward a confusing over-elaboration—Metaphors trample on the heels of Similes, and quaint and often grotesque conceits sometimes pall upon the taste, just as in the poems a ash of incongruous wit sometimes disturbs the serenity that is desirable.

On his return from Europe, Mr. Lowell occupied the chair which he adorned by his brilliant attainments and made memorable by his fame. He lectured on Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Cervantes, and delighted his audiences. At the same time he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly for several years. From 1863 until 1872 he was associated with Professor Charles Eliot Norton in the conduct of the North American Review.

In 1857 he married Miss Frances Dunlap of Portland, Me., a cultivated lady who had been the governess of his daughter. She had unerring literary taste and sound judgment, and Mr. Lowell soon came to entrust to her the management of his înancial affairs. She was enabled to make their comparatively small income more than meet the exigencies of an exacting position.

The second series of the “Biglow Papers,” relating to the War of the Rebellion, were îrst published in the Atlantic. They were col-lected into a volume in 1865. That year was rendered notable by his “Commemoration Ode,” the worthy crowning of one of the grandest poetic opportunities ever granted to man. “Under the Willows” appeared in 1869; “The Cathedral” in 1870.

In 1864 he had issued a collection of his early descriptive articles under the title, “Fireside Travels.” In 1870 came “Among my Books.” The second series followed in 1876. “My Study Windows” was published in 1871. All these prose works were marked by an exuberant, vivid, poetic, impassioned style. The tropical eforescence of imagery was characteristic of them all. He ought to have remembered his own words,—

“Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose.” In 1876 appeared three memorial poems: that read at Concord, April 19, 1875; that read at Cambridge under the Washington Elm, July 3, 1875; and the Fourth of July Ode of 1876. This year Mr. Lowell was appointed one of the presidential electors; and the following year President Hayes îrst offered him the Austrian mission, and, on his refusal of that, gave him the honorary post at Madrid, which had been adorned by Everett, Irving, and Prescott. He was there three years, and, on the retirement of Mr. Welsh in 1880, was transferred to the Court of St. James, or, as one of the English papers expressed it, he became “His Excellency the Am-bassador of American Literature to the Court of Shakespeare.”

He was extremely popular. Known in private as “one of the most marvellous of story-tellers,” he became the lion of many public occasions. The London News spoke of the “Extraordinary felicity of his occasional speeches.” At Birmingham he delivered a noble address on Democracy. He was selected to deliver the oration at the dedication of the Dean Stanley Memorial. He spoke on Fielding at Taunton, on Coleridge at Westminster Abbey, on Gray at Cambridge. He was President of the Wordsworth Society. All sorts of honors were heaped upon him, both at home and abroad.

He returned to America in 1885, and once more occupied the somewhat dilapidated historic mansion at Elmwood. Once more he moved amid his rare and precious books, and heard the birds singing in the elms that his father had planted, or in the clustered bushes back of the house. He took a deep interest in the struggle for international copyright. He was President of the American Copyright League, and wrote the memorable lines:—

“In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge; And stealing will continue stealing.” He used the leisure of his failing health in revising his works. His last volume of poems was entitled “Heart’s Ease and Rue.” One of his latest poems, “My Book,” appeared in the Christmas number of the New York Ledger in 1890. In the December number of the Atlantic his hand was visible in the anonymous “Contributor’s Club.”

During the last years his health was a matter of grave anxiety to his friends. In the spring of 1891 he seemed better. He was engaged in writing a life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. When the present writer call to see him one beautiful spring day, he found him in his library, at that moment engaged in making suggestions for the inscriptions on the new Boston Public Library. His manner was the perfection of courtesy and high breeding. His keen eyes seemed to read the very soul. Simplicity and beautiful dignity, tempered by evident feebleness of health, made him a memorable îgure.

Toward the end of the summer he suddenly grew more seriously ill. He suffered severely, and his last words were, “Oh! why don’t you let me die?”

He drew his last breath in the early morning of Aug. 12, 1891. He was buried at Mount Auburn, in the shadow of Indian Ridge, not far from Longfellow’s grave, in a lot unenclosed and marked by no monument.

Memorial services were held in many places. Lord Tennyson cabled a message of sympathy: “England and America will mourn Mr. Lowell’s death. They loved him and he loved them.” The Queen publicly expressed her respect and sorrow.

Few men have left a deeper impress on their age. Few men have used noble powers more nobly. In private life and public station there is not a shadow to stain the whiteness of his fame.

As a poet he stands in the front rank of those who have yet appeared in America. As a critic he was generous and just; as a humorist he used his shafts of ridicule only to wound wrong; as a statesman and diplomat he was actuated by broad, far-seeing views; as a man he was a type to be upheld and followed. America has just cause to reverence his memory; and the whole English-speaking world, without geographical distinction, claims him as its own.

Nathan Haskell Dole.

[1] Thomas Oliver was graduated from Harvard College in the class of 1758. He was a gentleman of fortune, and lived îrst in Roxbury. He bought the property on Elmwood Avenue in 1766. When he accepted the royal commission of Lieutenant-Governor, he became President of the Council appointed by the King. On Sept. 2, 1774, about four thousand Middlesex freeholders assembled at Cambridge and compelled the mandamus councillors to resign. The President of the Council urged the propriety of delay, but the Committee would not spare him. He was forced to sign an agreement, “as a man of honor and a Christian, that he would never hereafter, upon any terms whatsoever, accept a seat at said Board on the present novel and oppressive form of government.” He im-mediately quitted Cambridge; and when the British troops evacuated Boston he accompanied them. By an odd coincidence he went to reside at Bristol, England, where he died at the age of eighty-two years, in 1815, shortly before the Lowells, who were of Bristol origin, took possession of his former home. In Underwood’s sketch of Lowell, Thomas Oliver is confused with Chief Justice Peter Oliver, a man of a very different type of character.

[Pg 1]

EARLY POEMS.

SONNET. If some small savor creep into my rhyme Of the old poets, if some words I use, Neglected long, which have the lusty thews Of that gold-haired and earnest-hearted time, Whose loving joy and sorrow all sublime Have given our tongue its starry eminence,— It is not pride, God knows, but reverence Which hath grown in me since my childhood’s prime;

Wherein I feel that my poor lyre is strung With soul-strings like to theirs, and that I have No right to muse their holy graves among, If I can be a custom-fettered slave, And, in mine own true spirit, am not brave To speak what rusheth upward to my tongue.

HAKON’S LAY. Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate, Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, And said: “O, Skald, sing now an olden song, Such as our fathers heard who led great lives; And, as the bravest on a shield is borne Along the waving host that shouts him king, So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas!” Then the old man arose: white-haired he stood, White-bearded, and with eyes that looked afar From their still region of perpetual snow, Over the little smokes and stirs of men: His head was bowed with gathered akes of years, As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, But something triumphed in his brow and eye, Which whoso saw it, could not see and crouch: [Pg 2] Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, So wheeled his soul into the air of song High o’er the stormy hall; and thus he sang: “The etcher for his arrow-shaft picks out Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned, straight as light; And, from a quiver full of such as these, The wary bow-man, matched against his peers, Long doubting, singles yet once more the best. Who is it that can make such shafts as Fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, Or hits the white so surely? They are men, The chosen of her quiver; nor for her Will every reed sufîce, or cross-grained stick At random from life’s vulgar fagot plucked: Such answer household ends; but she will have Souls straight and clear, of toughest îbre, sound Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips All needless stuff, all sapwood, hardens them, From circumstance untoward feathers plucks Crumpled and cheap, and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy; When she draws bow, ‘tis not across the wind, Nor ‘gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her: Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold, In the butt’s heart her trembling messenger! “The song is old and simple that I sing: Good were the days of yore, when men were tried By ring of shields, as now by ring of gold; But, while the gods are left, and hearts of men, And the free ocean, still the days are good; Through the broad Earth roams Opportunity

And knocks at every door of hut or hall, Until she înds the brave soul that she wants.” He ceased, and instantly the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along; But Leif, the son of Eric, sate apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the îre, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen; [Pg 3] But then with that resolve his heart was bent, Which, like a humming shaft, through many a strife Of day and night across the unventured seas, Shot the brave prow to cut on Vinland sands The îrst rune in the Saga of the West.

OUT OF DOORS. ‘Tis good to be abroad in the sun, His gifts abide when day is done; Each thing in nature from his cup Gathers a several virtue up; The grace within its being’s reach Becomes the nutriment of each, And the same life imbibed by all Makes each most individual: Here the twig-bending peaches seek The glow that mantles in their cheek— Hence comes the Indian-summer bloom That hazes round the basking plum, And, from the same impartial light, The grass sucks green, the lily white. Like these the soul, for sunshine made, Grows wan and gracile in the shade, Her faculties, which God decreed Various as Summer’s dædal breed, With one sad color are imbued, Shut from the sun that tints their blood; The shadow of the poet’s roof Deadens the dyes of warp and woof; Whate’er of ancient song remains Has fresh air owing in its veins, For Greece and eldest Ind knew well That out of doors, with world-wide swell Arches the student’s lawful cell. Away, unfruitful lore of books, For whose vain idiom we reject The spirit’s mother-dialect, Aliens among the birds and brooks, Dull to interpret or believe [Pg 4] What gospels lost the woods retrieve, Or what the eaves-dropping violet Reports from God, who walketh yet His garden in the hush of eve! Away, ye pedants city-bred, Unwise of heart, too wise of head, Who handcuff Art with thus and so, And in each other’s footprints tread, Like those who walk through drifted snow; Who, from deep study of brick walls

Conjecture of the water-falls, By six square feet of smoke-stained sky Compute those deeps that overlie The still tarn’s heaven-anointed eye, And, in your earthen crucible, With chemic tests essay to spell How nature works in îeld and dell! Seek we where Shakspeare buried gold? Such hands no charmed witch-hazel hold; To beach and rock repeats the sea The mystic Open Sesame; Old Greylock’s voices not in vain Comment on Milton’s mountain strain, And cunningly the various wind Spenser’s locked music can unbind.

A REVERIE. In the twilight deep and silent Comes thy spirit unto mine, When the moonlight and the starlight Over cliff and woodland shine, And the quiver of the river Seems a thrill of joy benign. Then I rise and wander slowly To the headland by the sea, When the evening star throbs setting Through the cloudy cedar tree, And from under, mellow thunder Of the surf comes îtfully. [Pg 5] Then within my soul I feel thee Like a gleam of other years, Visions of my childhood murmur Their old madness in my ears, Till the pleasance of thy presence Cools my heart with blissful tears. All the wondrous dreams of boyhood— All youth’s îery thirst of praise— All the surer hopes of manhood Blossoming in sadder days— Joys that bound me, griefs that crowned me With a better wreath than bays— All the longings after freedom— The vague love of human kind, Wandering far and near at random Like a winged seed in the wind— The dim yearnings and îerce burnings Of an undirected mind— All of these, oh best belovèd, Happiest present dreams and past, In thy love înd safe fulîlment, Ripened into truths at last; Faith and beauty, hope and duty To one centre gather fast. How my nature, like an ocean, At the breath of thine awakes, Leaps its shores in mad exulting And in foamy thunder breaks,