Project Gutenberg's The Vision of Sir Launfal, by James Russell Lowell
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Vision of Sir Launfal
And Other Poems
Author: James Russell Lowell
Release Date: November 20, 2005 [EBook #17119]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL ***
Produced by David Starner, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
James Russell Lowell.
The Riverside Literature Series
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL
AND OTHER POEMS
BY
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
AND NOTES
A PORTRAIT AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1848, 1857, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1876, and 1885,
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
Copyright, 1887, 1894, and 1896,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
[v]
I.
ELMWOOD.
About half a mile from the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
on the road leading to the old town of Watertown, is Elmwood, a
spacious square house set amongst lilac and syringa bushes, and
overtopped by elms. Pleasant fields are on either side, and from the
windows one may look out on the Charles River winding its way among
the marshes. The house itself is one of a group which before the war
for independence belonged to Boston merchants and officers of the
crown who refused to take the side of the revolutionary party. Tory
Row was the name given to the broad winding road on which the houses
stood. Great farms and gardens were attached to them, and some sign of
their roomy ease still remains. The estates fell into the hands of
various persons after the war, and in process of time Longfellow came
to occupy Craigie House. Elmwood at that time was the property of the
Reverend Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church in Boston, and
when Longfellow thus became his neighbor, James Russell Lowell was a
junior in Harvard College. He was born at Elmwood, February 22, 1819.
[vi]Any one who will read An Indian Summer Reverie will discover how
affectionately Lowell dwelt on the scenes of nature and life amidst
which he grew up. Indeed, it would be a pleasant task to draw from the
full storehouse of his poetry the golden phrases with which he
characterizes the trees, meadows, brooks, flowers, birds, and human
companions that were so near to him in his youth and so vivid in his
recollection. In his prose works also a lively paper, Cambridge
Thirty Years Ago, contains many reminiscences of his early life.
To know any one well it is needful to inquire into his ancestry, and
two or three hints may be given of the currents that met in this poet.
On his father's side he came from a succession of New England men who
for the previous three generations had been in professional life. The
Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell,—a name which
survives in the family,—of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury,
Massachusetts, in 1639. The great-grandfather was a minister in
Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons
when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons
again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle."
The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional
Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the
Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men
are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of
setting free every man then held as a slave in Massachusetts. A son of
John Lowell and brother of the Rev. Charles Lowell was Francis Cabot
Lowell, who gave a great impetus to New England manufactures, and from
whom the city of Lowell took its name. Another son, and thus also an
[vii]
uncle of the poet, was John Lowell, Jr., whose wise and far-sighted
provision gave to Boston that powerful centre of intellectual
influence, the Lowell Institute. Of the Rev. Charles Lowell, his son
said, in a letter written in 1844, "He is Doctor Primrose in the
comparative degree, the very simplest and charmingest of
sexagenarians, and not without a great deal of the truest
magnanimity." It was characteristic of Lowell thus to go to The Vicar
of Wakefield for a portrait of his father. Dr. Lowell lived till
1861, when his son was forty-two.
Elmwood, Mr. Lowell's home in Cambridge.
Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell, the poet's mother, was of Scotch origin, a
native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is described as having "a
great memory, an extraordinary aptitude for language, and a passionate
fondness for ancient songs and ballads." It pleased her to fancy
herself descended from the hero of one of the most famous ballads, Sir
Patrick Spens, and at any rate she made a genuine link in the Poetic
Succession. In a letter to his mother, written in 1837, Lowell says:
"I am engaged in several poetical effusions, one of which I have
dedicated to you, who have always been the patron and encourager of my
youthful muse." The Russell in his name seems to intimate a strain of
Jewish ancestry; at any rate Lowell took pride in the name on this
account, for he was not slow to recognize the intellectual power of
the Hebrew race. He was the youngest of a family of five, two
daughters and three sons. An older brother who outlived him a short
time, was the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell, who wrote besides a
novel, The New Priest in Conception Bay, which contains a delightful
study of a Yankee, some poems, and a story of school-boy life.
[viii]
Not long before his death, Lowell wrote to an English friend a
description of Elmwood, and as he was very fond of the house in which
he lived and died, it is agreeable to read words which strove to set
it before the eyes of one who had never seen it. "'Tis a pleasant old
house, just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in
what was once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still
has some ten acres of open about it, and some fine old trees. When the
worst comes to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have four
and a half acres left with the house, the rest belonging to my
brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is a square house, with four
rooms on a floor, like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in
English provincial towns, only they are of brick, and this is of wood.
But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the spaces between which
in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you mustn't
fancy a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with
wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the
fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun
rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure) through the
northern windows, and going round the other three sides in the course
of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted
banisters,—which they call balusters now; but mine are banisters. My
library occupies two rooms opening into each other by arches at the
sides of the ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest
things I remember. There you have me in my new-old quarters. But you
must not fancy a large house—rooms sixteen feet square, and on the
ground floor, nine high. It was large, as things went here, when it
was built, and has a certain [ix]air of amplitude about it as from some
inward sense of dignity." In an earlier letter he wrote: "Here I am in
my garret. I slept here when I was a little curly-headed boy, and used
to see visions between me and the ceiling, and dream the so often
recurring dream of having the earth put into my hand like an orange.
In it I used to be shut up without a lamp,—my mother saying that none
of her children should be afraid of the dark,—to hide my head under
the pillow, and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters
that thronged around me, minted in my brain.... In winter my view is a
wide one, taking in a part of Boston. I can see one long curve of the
Charles and the wide fields between me and Cambridge, and the flat
marshes beyond the river, smooth and silent with glittering snow. As
the spring advances and one after another of our trees puts forth, the
landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, till, by the end of May,
I am closeted in a cool and rustling privacy of leaves." In two of his
papers especially, My Garden Acquaintance and A Good Word for
Winter, has Lowell given glimpses of the out-door life in the midst
of which he grew up.
II.
EDUCATION.
His acquaintance with books and his schooling began early. He learned
his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened
a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near
Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and
severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made
almost a native speech to [x]judge by the ease with which he handled it
afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He
lived at his father's house, more than a mile away from the college
yard; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he had
the freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. The Rev.
Edward Everett Hale has given a sketch of their common life in
college. "He was a little older than I," he says, "and was one class
in advance of me. My older brother, with whom I lived in college, and
he were most intimate friends. He had no room within the college
walls, and was a great deal with us. The fashion of Cambridge was then
literary. Now the fashion of Cambridge runs to social problems, but
then we were interested in literature. We read Byron and Shelley and
Keats, and we began to read Tennyson and Browning. I first heard of
Tennyson from Lowell, who had borrowed from Mr. Emerson the little
first volume of Tennyson. We actually passed about Tennyson's poems in
manuscript. Carlyle's essays were being printed at the time, and his
French Revolution. In such a community—not two hundred and fifty
students all told,—literary effort was, as I say, the fashion, and
literary men, among whom Lowell was recognized from the very first,
were special favorites. Indeed, there was that in him which made him a
favorite everywhere."
Lowell was but fifteen years old when he entered college in the class
which graduated in 1838. He was a reader, as so many of his fellows
were, and the letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college
show how intent he had been on making acquaintance with the best
things in literature. He began also to scribble verse, and he wrote
both poems and essays for college [xi]magazines. His class chose him
their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem; but he was careless
about conforming to college regulations respecting attendance at
morning prayers; and for this was suspended from college the last term
of his last year, and not allowed to come back to read his poem. "I
have heard in later years," says Dr. Hale, "what I did not know then,
that he rode down from Concord in a canvas-covered wagon, and peeped
out through the chinks of the wagon to see the dancing around the
tree. I fancy he received one or two visits from his friends in the
wagon; but in those times it would have been treason to speak of
this." He was sent to Concord for his rustication, and so passed a few
weeks of his youth amongst scenes dear to every lover of American
letters.
III.
FIRST VENTURE.
After his graduation he set about the study of law, and for a short
time even was a clerk in a counting-room; but his bent was strongly
toward literature. There was at that time no magazine of commanding
importance in America, and young men were given to starting magazines
with enthusiasm and very little other capital. Such a one was the
Boston Miscellany, launched by Nathan Hale, Lowell's college friend,
and for this Lowell wrote gaily. It lived a year, and shortly after
Lowell himself, with Robert Carter, essayed The Pioneer in 1843. It
lived just three months; but in that time printed contributions by
Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr. Parsons,—a group
which it would be hard to match in any of the little magazines [xii]that
hop across the world's path to-day. Lowell had already collected, in
1841, the poems which he had written and sometimes contributed to
periodicals into a volume entitled A Year's Life; but he retained
very little of the contents in later editions of his poems. The book
has a special interest, however, from its dedication in veiled phrase
to Maria White. He became engaged to this lady in the fall of 1840,
and the next twelve years of his life were profoundly affected by her
influence. Herself a poet of delicate power, she brought into his life
an intelligent sympathy with his work; it was, however, her strong
moral enthusiasm, her lofty conception of purity and justice, which
kindled his spirit and gave force and direction to a character which
was ready to respond, and yet might otherwise have delayed active
expression. They were not married until 1844; but they were not far
apart in their homes, and during these years Lowell was making those
early ventures in literature, and first raids upon political and moral
evil, which foretold the direction of his later work, and gave some
hint of its abundance.
About the time of his marriage, he published two books which, by their
character, show pretty well the divided interest of his life. His bent
from the beginning was more decidedly literary than that of any
contemporary American poet. That is to say, the history and art of
literature divided his interest with the production of literature, and
he carried the unusual gift of a rare critical power, joined to hearty
spontaneous creation. It may indeed be guessed that the keenness of
judgment and incisiveness of wit which characterize his examination of
literature sometimes interfered with his poetic power, and made him
liable to question his art [xiii]when he would rather have expressed it
unchecked. One of the two books was a volume of poems; the other was a
prose work, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. He did not keep
this book alive; but it is interesting as marking the enthusiasm of a
young scholar treading a way then almost wholly neglected in America,
and intimating a line of thought and study in which he afterward made
most noteworthy venture. Another series of poems followed in 1848, and
in the same year The Vision of Sir Launfal. Perhaps it was in
reaction from the marked sentiment of his poetry that he issued now a
jeu d'esprit, A Fable for Critics, in which he hit off, with a rough
and ready wit, the characteristics of the writers of the day, not
forgetting himself in these lines:
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,
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 shell,
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.
This, of course, is but a half serious portrait of himself, and it
touches but a single feature; others can say better that Lowell's
ardent nature showed itself in the series of satirical poems which
made him famous, The Biglow Papers, written in a spirit of
indignation and fine scorn, when the Mexican War was causing many
Americans to blush with shame at the use of the country by a class for
its own ignoble ends. Lowell and his wife, who brought a fervid
anti-slavery temper as part of her marriage portion, were both
contributors to the [xiv]Liberty Bell; and Lowell was a frequent
contributor to the Anti-Slavery Standard, and was, indeed, for a
while a corresponding editor. In June, 1846, there appeared one day in
the Boston Courier a letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the
editor, Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr.
Hosea Biglow. It was no new thing to seek to arrest the public
attention with the vernacular applied to public affairs. Major Jack
Downing and Sam Slick had been notable examples, and they had many
imitators; but the reader who laughed over the racy narrative of the
unlettered Ezekiel, and then took up Hosea's poem and caught the gust
of Yankee wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew that he was in
at the appearance of something new in American literature. The force
which Lowell displayed in these satires made his book at once a
powerful ally of an anti-slavery sentiment, which heretofore had been
ridiculed.
IV.
VERSE AND PROSE.
A year in Europe, 1851-1852, with his wife, whose health was then
precarious, stimulated his scholarly interests, and gave substance to
his study of Dante and Italian literature. In October, 1853, his wife
died; she had borne him three children: the first-born, Blanche, died
in infancy; the second, Walter, also died young; the third, a
daughter, Mrs. Burnett, survived her parents. In 1855 he was chosen
successor to Longfellow as Smith Professor of the French and Spanish
Languages and Literature, and Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard
College. He spent two years in Europe in [xv]further preparation for the
duties of his office, and in 1857 was again established in Cambridge,
and installed in his academic chair. He married, also, at this time
Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine.
Lowell was now in his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his
professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the
Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provençal
poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry
before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong
impression on the community, and his work on the series of British
Poets in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical
sketch of Keats, had been recognized as of a high order. In poetry he
had published the volumes already mentioned. In general literature he
had printed in magazines the papers which he afterward collected into
his volume, Fireside Travels. Not long after he entered on his
college duties, The Atlantic Monthly was started, and the editorship
given to him. He held the office for a year or two only; but he
continued to write for the magazine, and in 1862 he was associated
with Mr. Charles Eliot Norton in the conduct of The North American
Review, and continued in this charge for ten years. Much of his prose
was contributed to this periodical. Any one reading the titles of the
papers which comprise the volumes of his prose writings will readily
see how much literature, and especially poetic literature, occupied
his attention. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser,
Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne,
Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, Gray,—these are the principal subjects of his
prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his
taste.
[xvi]
In these papers, when studying poetry, he was very alive to the
personality of the poets, and it was the strong interest in humanity
which led Lowell, when he was most diligent in the pursuit of
literature, to apply himself also to history and politics. Several of
his essays bear witness to this, such as Witchcraft, New England Two
Centuries Ago, A Great Public Character (Josiah Quincy), Abraham
Lincoln, and his great Political Essays. But the most remarkable of
his writings of this order was the second series of The Biglow
Papers, published during the war for the Union. In these, with the
wit and fun of the earlier series, there was mingled a deeper strain
of feeling and a larger tone of patriotism. The limitations of his
style in these satires forbade the fullest expression of his thought
and emotion; but afterward in a succession of poems, occasioned by the
honors paid to student soldiers in Cambridge, the death of Agassiz,
and the celebration of national anniversaries during the years 1875
and 1876, he sang in loftier, more ardent strains. The most famous of
these poems was his noble Commemoration Ode.
V.
PUBLIC LIFE.
It was at the close of this period, when he had done incalculable
service to the Republic, that Lowell was called on to represent the
country, first in Madrid, where he was sent in 1877, and then in
London, to which he was transferred in 1880. Eight years were thus
spent by him in the foreign service of the country. He had a good
knowledge of the Spanish language and literature when he went to
Spain; but he at once took pains to [xvii]make his knowledge fuller and his
accent more perfect, so that he could have intimate relations with the
best Spanish men of the time. In England he was at once a most welcome
guest, and was in great demand as a public speaker. No one can read
his dispatches from Madrid and London without being struck by his
sagacity, his readiness in emergencies, his interest in and quick
perception of the political situation in the country where he was
resident, and his unerring knowledge as a man of the world. Above all,
he was through and through an American, true to the principles which
underlie American institutions. His address on Democracy, which he
delivered in England, is one of the great statements of human liberty.
A few years later, after his return to America, he gave another
address to his own countrymen on The Place of the Independent in
Politics. It was a noble defense of his own position, not without a
trace of discouragement at the apparently sluggish movement in
American self-government of recent years, but with that faith in the
substance of his countrymen which gave him the right to use words of
honest warning.
The public life of Mr. Lowell made him more of a figure before the
world. He received honors from societies and universities; he was
decorated by the highest honors which Harvard could pay officially;
and Oxford and Cambridge, St. Andrews and Edinburgh and Bologna, gave
gowns. He established warm personal relations with Englishmen, and,
after his release from public office, he made several visits to
England. There, too, was buried his wife, who died in 1885. The
closing years of his life in his own country, though touched with
domestic loneliness and diminished by growing physical [xviii]infirmities
that predicted his death, were rich also with the continued expression
of his large personality. He delivered the public address in
commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard
University; he gave a course of lectures on the Old English Dramatists
before the Lowell Institute; he collected a volume of his poems; he
wrote and spoke on public affairs; and, the year before his death,
revised, rearranged, and carefully edited a definitive series of his
writings in ten volumes. He died at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. Since
his death three small volumes have been added to his collected
writings, and Mr. Norton has published Letters of James Russell
Lowell, in two volumes.
[1]
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Lowell was in his thirtieth year when he wrote and published The
Vision of Sir Launfal. It appeared when he had just dashed off his
Fable for Critics, and when he was in the thick of the anti-slavery
fight, writing poetry and prose for The Anti-Slavery Standard, and
sending out his witty Biglow Papers. He had married four years
before, and was living in the homestead at Elmwood, walking in the
country about, and full of eagerness at the prospect which lay before
him. In a letter to his friend Charles F. Briggs, written in December,
1848, he says: "Last night ... I walked to Watertown over the snow,
with the new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in Page's
evening landscape. Orion was rising behind me, and, as I stood on the
hill just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields
around me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook
which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook
in Sir Launfal was drawn from it. But why do I send you this
description,—like the bones of a chicken I had picked? Simply because
I was so happy as I stood there, and felt so sure of doing something
that would justify my friends. But why do I not say that I have done
something? I believe that I have done better than the world knows yet;
but the past seems so little compared with the future.... I am the
first poet who has endeavored [2]to express the American Idea, and I
shall be popular by and by."
It is not very likely that Lowell was thinking of Sir Launfal when
he wrote this last sentence, yet it is not straining language too far
to say that when he took up an Arthurian story he had a different
attitude toward the whole cycle of legends from that of Tennyson, who
had lately been reviving the legends for the pleasure of
English-reading people. The exuberance of the poet as he carols of
June in the prelude to Part First is an expression of the joyous
spring which was in the veins of the young American, glad in the sense
of freedom and hope. As Tennyson threw into his retelling of Arthurian
romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic
apprehension, made a parable of his tale, and, in the broadest
interpretation of democracy, sang of the leveling of all ranks in a
common divine humanity. There is a subterranean passage connecting the
Biglow Papers with Sir Launfal; it is the holy zeal which attacks
slavery issuing in this fable of a beautiful charity, Christ in the
guise of a beggar.
The invention is a very simple one, and appears to have been suggested
by Tennyson's Sir Galahad, though Lowell had no doubt read Sir
Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The following is the note which
accompanied The Vision when first published in 1848, and retained by
Lowell in all subsequent editions:—
"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 supper with his disciples. It was brought into
England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an
object of pilgrimage and adoration, [3]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; but, 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."
[4]
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:
5Then, 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[1]
10Doth 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
15The 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
20Still shouts the inspiring sea.
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;
[5]
25At 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,[2]
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:
'T is heaven alone that is given away,
30'T is 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;
35Then 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,
40An 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;
45The 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,
50Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
55He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
[6]
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
60Into 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;
65We 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,
70That 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,
75For 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!
80Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,—
85'T is the natural way of living:
[7]
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;
90The 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
95Remembered 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;
100Shall never a bed for me be spread,
Nor shall a pillow be under my head,
Till I begin my vow to keep;
Here on the rushes will I sleep,
And perchance there may come a vision true
105Ere 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.
II.
The crows flapped over by twos and threes,
110In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees,
The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year,
[8]
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees:
The castle alone in the landscape lay
115Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray:
'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree,
And never its gates might opened be,
Save to lord or lady of high degree;
Summer besieged it on every side,
120But the churlish stone her assaults defied;
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;
125Green and broad was every tent,
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,
130Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden 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,
135And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,
Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,
And lightsome as a locust-leaf,
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail,
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.
IV.
140It was morning on hill and stream and tree,
And morning in the young knight's heart;
Only the castle moodily
[9]
Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,
And gloomed by itself apart;
145The 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;
150And a loathing over Sir Launfal came;
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;
155For this man, so foul and bent of stature,
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,—
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn.
VI.
The leper raised not the gold from the dust:
160"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;
He gives nothing but worthless gold
165Who 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,—
170The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
[10]
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,[3]
175From 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
180From 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;
185Slender 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
190Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
195Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
As Sir Launfal Made Morn Through the Darksome Gate.
[11]
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops
200And hung them thickly with diamond-drops,
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of everyone:
No mortal builder's most rare device[4]
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
205'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,[5]
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
210By the elfin builders of the frost.
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;
215Through 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,
220Hunted to death in its galleries blind;
And swift little troops of silent sparks,
Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.
225But 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,
230A Christmas carol of its own,
Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was—"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"
The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,
235And 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.
[12]
PART SECOND.
I.
240There 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
245From 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.
[13]
II.
250Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate,
For another heir in his earldom sate;
An old, bent man, worn out and frail,
He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,
255No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,
But deep in his soul the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.
III.
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air,
260For it was just at the Christmas time;
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
265O'er the edge of the desert, black and small,
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one,
He can count the camels in the sun,
As over the red-hot sands they pass
To where, in its slender necklace of grass,
270The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade,
And with its own self like an infant played,
And waved its signal of palms.
IV.
"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;"—
The happy camels may reach the spring,
275But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing,
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone,
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone
[14]
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas
In the desolate horror of his disease.
V.
280And 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
285The 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
290Remembered in what a haughtier guise
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;
295He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink:
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread,
'T was water out of a wooden bowl,—
300Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed,
And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul.
So he Mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime.
VII.
As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face,
A light shone round about the place;
The leper no longer crouched at his side,
[15]
305But stood before him glorified,
Shining and tall and fair and straight
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—
Himself the Gate whereby men can
Enter the temple of God in Man.
VIII.
310His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine,
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,
315"Lo it is I, be not afraid!
In many climes, without avail,
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;
Behold, it is here,—this cup which thou
Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now;
320This crust is My body broken for thee,
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,—
325For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."
IX.
Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound:—
"The Grail in my castle here is found!
330Hang 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."
[16]
X.
The castle gate stands open now,
335And 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,
340She 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
345Has 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.
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION.
[On the 21st of July, 1865, Harvard University welcomed back those of
its students and graduates who had fought in the war for the Union. By
exercises in the church and at the festival which followed, the
services of the dead and the living were commemorated. It was on this
occasion that Mr. Lowell recited the following ode.]
I.
Weak-winged is song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
We seem to do them wrong,
5Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
[17]
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
10Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave
Of the unventurous throng.
II.
15To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back
Her wisest Scholars, those who understood
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome,
And offered their fresh lives to make it good:
No lore of Greece or Rome,
20No science peddling with the names of things,
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,
Can lift our life with wings
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,
And lengthen out our dates
25With that clear fame whose memory sings
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!
Not such the trumpet-call
Of thy diviner mood,
30That could thy sons entice
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest
Of those half-virtues which the world calls best,
Into War's tumult rude;
But rather far that stern device
35The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood
In the dim, unventured wood,
[18]
The Veritas that lurks beneath[6]
The letter's unprolific sheath,
Life of whate'er makes life worth living,
40Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
III.
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
45With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
50So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness
Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are true,
55And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.
60Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
65And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
[19]
IV.
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
70Is earth too poor to give us
Something to live for here that shall outlive us?
Some more substantial boon
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?
The little that we see
75From doubt is never free;
The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
80Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in everyone's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss,
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,
After our little hour of strut and rave,
85With all our pasteboard passions and desires,
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
90For in our likeness still we shape our fate.
Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
95Something that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;
[20]
A seed of sunshine that doth leaven
Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars,
And glorify our clay
100With light from fountains elder than the Day;
A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
105A light across the sea,
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,
Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years.
V.
Whither leads the path
To ampler fates that leads?
110Not down through flowery meads,
To reap an aftermath
Of youth's vainglorious weeds;
But up the steep, amid the wrath
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds,
115Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
120Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword
Dreams in its easeful sheath;
But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baal's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene
125Of God's pure altar brought,
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
[21]
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:
130Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
135Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
140So bountiful is Fate;
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
145And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth;
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
VI.
150Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,
Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,
Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
155To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
[22]
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
160Repeating us by rote:
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
165Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
170Not lured by any cheat of birth,
But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust
175In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
180A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,
185Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;
Here was a type of the true elder race,
190And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
[23]I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
195Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
200Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
205Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.
VII.
Long as man's hope insatiate can discern
210Or only guess some more inspiring goal
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole,
Along whose course the flying axles burn
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;
Long as below we cannot find
215The meed that stills the inexorable mind;
So long this faith to some ideal Good,
Under whatever mortal name it masks,
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood
That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,
220Feeling its challenged pulses leap,
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,
[24]
Shall win man's praise and woman's love,
Shall be a wisdom that we set above
225All other skills and gifts to culture dear,
A virtue round whose forehead we enwreathe
Laurels that with a living passion breathe
When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.
What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,
230And seal these hours the noblest of our year,
Save that our brothers found this better way?
VIII.
We sit here in the Promised Land
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk;
But 't was they won it, sword in hand,
235Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.[7]
We welcome back our bravest and our best;—
Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,
Who went forth brave and bright as any here!
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,
240But the sad strings complain,
And will not please the ear:
I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
Again and yet again
Into a dirge, and die away in pain.
245In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:
Fitlier may others greet the living,
For me the past is unforgiving;
250I with uncovered head
Salute the sacred dead,
Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!
'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,[8]
But the high faith that failed not by the way;
255Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;[9]
No bar of endless night exiles the brave;
And to the saner mind
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
260For never shall their aureoled presence lack:
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track;
In every nobler mood
265We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;
They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
270Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
[25]
IX.
But is there hope to save
Even this ethereal essence from the grave?
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong
275Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song
Before my musing eye
The mighty ones of old sweep by,
Disvoicéd now and insubstantial things,
As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,
280Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,
[26]
And many races, nameless long ago,
To darkness driven by that imperious gust
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:
O visionary world, condition strange,
285Where naught abiding is but only Change,
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!
Shall we to more continuance make pretence?
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;
And, bit by bit,
290The cunning years steal all from us but woe:
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.
But, when we vanish hence,
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,
Save to make green their little length of sods,
295Or deepen pansies for a year or two,
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?
Was dying all they had the skill to do?
That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents
Such short-lived service, as if blind events
300Ruled without her, or earth could so endure;
She claims a more divine investiture
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;
Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,
Gives eyes to mountains blind,
305Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
And her clear trump sings succor everywhere
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind,
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
310And larger privilege of life than man.
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
[27]
So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,
Is covered up ere long from mortal eyes
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;
315But that high privilege that makes all men peers,
That leap of heart whereby a people rise
Up to a noble anger's height,
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,
That swift validity in noble veins,
320Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,
Of being set on flame
By the pure fire that flies all contact base,
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
These are imperishable gains,
325Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.
X.
Who now shall sneer?
Who dare again to say we trace
330Our lines to a plebeian race?
Roundhead and Cavalier!
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,
They flit across the ear:
335That is best blood that hath most iron in 't.
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.
Tell us not of Plantagenets,
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl
340Down from some victor in a border-brawl!
How poor their outworn coronets,
[28]
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,
Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets
345Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears
With vain resentments and more vain regrets!
XI.
Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude,
350Ever to base earth allied,
But with far-heard gratitude,
Still with heart and voice renewed,
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates our brave.
355Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
360Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!
'Tis no Man we celebrate,
365By his country's victories great,
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
370For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
Till the basest can no longer cower,
[29]
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.
375Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower!
How could poet ever tower,
If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,
Kept not measure with his people?
380Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!
Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!
And from every mountain-peak
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,
385Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,
And so leap on in light from sea to sea,
Till the glad news be sent
Across a kindling continent,
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:
390"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all mankind!
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
395From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled
Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,
Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.
400No challenge sends she to the elder world,
That looked askance and hated; a light scorn
Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees
[30]She calls her children back, and waits the morn
Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."
XII.
405Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!
Thy God, in these distempered days,
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise!
410No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow,
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
415And letting thy set lips,
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
420Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
425But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
The Seal of Harvard University[31]
ON BOARD THE '76.
WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
November 3, 1864.
[After the disastrous battle of Bull Run, Congress authorized the
creation of an army of 500,000, and the expenditure of $500,000,000.
The affair of the Trent had partially indicated the temper of the
English government, and the people of the United States were
thoroughly roused to a sense of the great task which lay before them.
Mr. Bryant, at this time, not only gave strong support to the Union
through his paper The Evening Post of New York, but wrote two lyrics
which had a profound effect. One of these, entitled Not Yet, was
addressed to those of the Old World who were secretly or openly
desiring the downfall of the republic. The other, Our Country's
Call, was a thrilling appeal for recruits. It is to this time and
these two poems that Mr. Lowell refers in the lines that follow.]
Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea,
Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side;
Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free,
Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide;
5Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn,
We lay, awaiting morn.
Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair;
And she that bare the promise of the world
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare,
10At random o'er the wildering waters hurled;
The reek of battle drifting slow alee
[32]
Not sullener than we.
Morn came at last to peer into our woe,
When lo, a sail! Now surely help was nigh;
15The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no,[10]
Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by
And hails us:—"Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought!
Sink, then, with curses fraught!"
I leaned against my gun still angry-hot,
20And my lids tingled with the tears held back;
This scorn methought was crueller than shot:
The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack,
Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far
Than such fear-smothered war.
25There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute
The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best?
Once more tug bravely at the peril's root,
Though death came with it? Or evade the test
If right or wrong in this God's world of ours
30Be leagued with higher powers?
Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag
With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs;
Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag
That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs
35Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done
'Neath the all-seeing sun.
[33]
But there was one, the Singer of our crew,
Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign,
But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew;
40And couchant under brows of massive line,
The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet,
Watched, charged with lightnings yet.
The voices of the hills did his obey;
The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song;
45He brought our native fields from far away,
Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng
Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm
Old homestead's evening psalm.
But now he sang of faith to things unseen,
50Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust;
And words of doughty cheer he spoke between,
That made all earthly fortune seem as dust,
Matched with that duty, old as Time and new,
Of being brave and true.
55We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,—
Manhood to back them, constant as a star;
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords,
And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar
Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed
60The winds with loftier mood.
In our dark hours he manned our guns again;
Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's stores;
Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain:
And shall we praise? God's praise was his before;
[34]
65And on our futile laurels he looks down,
Himself our bravest crown.
AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE.
[When Mr. Lowell wrote this poem he was living at Elmwood in
Cambridge, at that time quite remote from town influences,—Cambridge
itself being scarcely more than a village,—but now rapidly losing its
rustic surroundings. The Charles River flowed near by, then a limpid
stream, untroubled by factories or sewage. It is a tidal river and not
far from Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes. Mr. Longfellow's
old home is a short stroll nearer town, and the two poets exchanged
pleasant shots, as may be seen by Lowell's To H.W.L., and
Longfellow's The Herons of Elmwood. In Under the Willows Mr.
Lowell has, as it were, indulged in another reverie at a later period
of his life, among the same familiar surroundings.]
What visionary tints the year puts on,
When falling leaves falter through motionless air
Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone!
How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,
5As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills
The bowl between me and those distant hills,
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
No more the landscape holds its wealth apart,
Making me poorer in my poverty,
10But mingles with my senses and my heart;
[35]
My own projected spirit seems to me
In her own reverie the world to steep;
'Tis she that waves to sympathetic sleep,
Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill and tree.
15How fuse and mix, with what unfelt degrees,
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms,
Each into each, the hazy distances!
The softened season all the landscape charms;
Those hills, my native village that embay,
20In waves of dreamier purple roll away,
And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms.
Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee
Close at my side; far distant sound the leaves;
The fields seem fields of dream, where Memory
25Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the sheaves
Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye
Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by,
So tremble and seem remote all things the sense receives.
The cock's shrill trump that tells of scattered corn,
30Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates,
Faint and more faint, from barn to barn is borne,
Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits;
Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails;
34Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails,
With watchful, measuring eye, and for his quarry waits.
The sobered robin, hunger-silent now,
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer;
[36]The squirrel, on the shingly shagbark's bough,
Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear,
40Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound,
Whisks to his winding fastness underground;
The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.
O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the ploughman's call
45Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed meadows;
The single crow a single caw lets fall;
And all around me every bush and tree
Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be,
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all.
50The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees,
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,
And hints at her foregone gentilities
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves;
The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on,
55Glares red as blood across the sinking sun,
As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves.
He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt,
Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed whites,
Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt,
60With distant eye broods over other sights,
Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace,
The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace,
And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights.
[37]
The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost,
65And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry,
After the first betrayal of the frost,
Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky;
The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold,
69To the faint Summer, beggared now and old,
Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye.
The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
75All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days,
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone,
Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine
80Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone
Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine,
The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves
A prickly network of ensanguined leaves;
Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine.
85Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary,
Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot,
Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye,
Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot,
The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires,
90Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires;
[38]
In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute.
Below, the Charles—a stripe of nether sky,
Now hid by rounded apple-trees between,
Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by,
95Now flickering golden through a woodland screen,
Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond,
A silver circle like an inland pond—
Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green.
Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight
100Who cannot in their various incomes share,
From every season drawn, of shade and light,
Who sees in them but levels brown and bare;
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free
104On them its largess of variety,
For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare.
In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green,
O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet:
Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen,
There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet;
110And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd,
As if the silent shadow of a cloud
Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet.
All round, upon the river's slippery edge,
Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide,
115Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge;
Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide,
[39]Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun,
And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run
Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide.
120In Summer 'tis a blithesome sight to see,
