really declarative of little more than an individual purpose that the
_Pioneer_ should contain good and not dull or imitative literature. A
good beginning was made, for the three numbers which were published
contained poems and papers by Dr. Parsons, Story, Poe, Hawthorne, Jones
Very, John Neal, John S. Dwight, and the two editors. Lowell continued
his studies in the Old English Dramatists, printed several poems, and
wrote apparently much of the criticism, but there were no papers of a
directly didactic character; it was clear that the editor relied on
criticism for a medium of aggressive preaching of sound literary
doctrine. Here also Lowell had his opportunity to fly the flag of
anti-slavery, and he did it with a fine chivalry in a notice of
Longfellow’s “Poems on Slavery,” when he used the occasion to pay
glowing tribute to the earlier fighters. Garrison, “the half-inspired
Luther of this reform, a man too remarkable to be appreciated in his
generation, but whom the future will recognize as a great and wonderful
spirit;” Whittier, “the fiery Koerner of this spiritual warfare, who,
Scævola-like, has sacrificed on the altar of duty that right hand which
might have made him acknowledged as the most passionate lyrist of his
time;” the “tenderly-loving Maria Child, the author of that dear book,
‘Philothea,’ a woman of genius, who lives with humble content in the
intellectual Coventry to which her conscientiousness has banished her--a
fate the hardest for genius to bear. Nor ought the gentle spirit of
Follen, a lion with a lamb’s heart, to be forgotten, whose fiery fate,
from which the mind turns horror-stricken, was perhaps to his mild
nature less dreadful than that stake and fagot of public opinion, in
dragging him to which many whom he loved were not inactive, for silence
at such times is action.”
Lowell threw himself into this literary venture with resolution and
hope. He had the double motive of making a vehicle for sound and
generous literature, and of securing for himself a rational means of
support. Those nearest to him watched the experiment with solicitude,
for magazine making on a small scale was as perilous then as it is now
on a scale of magnitude. His sister, Mrs. Putnam, wrote him a most
anxious letter called out by the fact that her brother was in New York
and Carter in charge, a man too easy and good-natured she thought for
such a position. She begged him to consider that his first number was
better than his second, and that in turn seemed likely to be better than
the third, and she dreaded a decline in the magazine. As for Miss White,
she looked upon the scheme, when it was taking shape, with mingled pride
and anxiety. She shared Lowell’s lively trust in the pioneer character
of the journal, but she had a prudent mind, and saw with a woman’s
instinct the possibility of failure, where Lowell would listen to
nothing but the note of success.
The _Pioneer_ lived but three months. The ostensible cause of its
failure was the sudden and lamentable breakdown of its chief supporter,
as shown in the following card printed at the close of the third number.
“The absence of any prose in the present number of _The Pioneer_ from
the pen of Mr. Lowell, and the apparent neglect of many letters and
contributions addressed to him personally, will be sufficiently
explained by stating that, since the tenth of January, he has been in
the city of New York in attendance upon Dr. Elliot, the distinguished
oculist, who is endeavoring to cure him of a severe disease of the eyes,
and that the medical treatment to which he is necessarily subjected
precludes the use of his sight except to a very limited extent. He will,
however, probably be enabled, in time for the fourth number, to resume
his essays on the Poets and Dramatists, and his general supervision of
the magazine. R. C.”
It is plain that when the third number appeared the conductors expected
to bring out a fourth, but the enforced abstention from work of the
principal editor and writer and the lack of resources in money made the
discontinuance of the magazine inevitable.[35] In spite, however, of the
disastrous experience and the debt which it entailed, the activity of
mind which the venture called forth was worth much to Lowell. He had not
a specially orderly or methodical habit, and he lacked thus the
equipment which an editor requires, but he had great fertility, and was
under an impulse which at this time he turned to account in literature.
Could he have been associated with some well organized nature, it is not
impossible that the _Pioneer_ would have become established on a sound
basis and have been the vehicle for Lowell’s creative and critical work
in literature. Such work would have attracted the best that was to be
had in America, and the periodical might have been an important factor
in the intellectual life of the day.
The persistence with which the magazine idea was exploited hints at the
possibilities which lay for a rising literature in this particular form.
The vigorous John Neal wrote to Lowell when he was projecting the
_Pioneer_: “Persevere; be bold and fear not. A great change is
foretelling itself in the literature of the day. Magazines are to
supersede newspapers, and newspapers novels among light readers.” The
criticism which Lowell wrote or commanded for the _Pioneer_ was frank,
fearless, and sure to arrest attention. It pointed the way, and might
easily have done much to shape the course of letters and art. In the
absence of such a serviceable vehicle, Lowell was left to his own
resources, and having no organ at hand he dropped criticism for the time
and concentrated his mind on his poetry.
As Mr. Carter’s apologetic note intimates, Lowell was obliged to go to
New York early in January, 1843, for treatment at the hands of the
oculist, Dr. Elliot. A few extracts from his letters to Mr. Carter
during his absence show something of his life and interests in this
enforced absence.
January 15, 1843.... My course of life is this. Every morning I go
to Dr. Elliot’s (who, by the way, is _very_ kind) and wait for my
turn to be operated upon. This sometimes consumes a great deal of
time, the Dr. being overrun with patients. After being made stone
blind for the space of fifteen minutes, I have the rest of the day
to myself.
Handbills of the _Pioneer_ in red and black with a spread eagle at
the head of them face me everywhere. I could not but laugh to see a
drayman standing with his hands in his pockets diligently spelling
it out, being attracted thereto doubtless by the bird of America,
which probably led him to think it a proclamation of the
President--a delusion from which he probably did not awake after
perusing the document.... I shall endeavor while I am here to write
an article on Pope. _Something_ I will send you for the next
number, besides what I may possibly glean from others. A new
magazine has just been started here, but it is illiberal and will
probably fail.
January 17, 1843. I shall only write a word or two, as I have
already been writing, and my eyes, having been operated on
yesterday _with the knife_, must be used charily.... I hope to hear
better accounts of money matters in your next. Explain as to the
500 copies you speak of as sold the day before. Remember how
interesting the least particle of news is to me, and I may be at
home under three weeks from this, though I hope to be in a
fortnight....
January 19. So you are fairly bewitched![36] Well, I might have
expected it, but still it was no reason that you should have told
me so little about the magazine. _I_ should not have talked wholly
about one individual--of course not. _I_ should not have been
bewitched....
Have you got any copy for the third number? Do not ask any
conservatives to write, for it will mar the unity of the magazine.
We shall be surer of success if we maintain a uniform course, and
have a decided tendency either one way or the other. We shall, at
least, gain more influence in that way.
I have picked up a poem by Harry Franco against capital punishment.
It has a good deal of humor in it and is striking. A woodcut of a
poor devil hanging with the crows discussing his fate will perhaps
accompany it. Prose I have got no scent of as yet....
January [20]. I have received _all_ your letters, and like to have
you send by express. I should like to see Miss Gray’s and Miss
Peabody’s articles before they go to press. I am a better judge of
that kind of merchandise than you. The second number is a good one,
but _full_ of misprints. The notices in the cover, if printed at
all, should have been expurgated. See to it next time, and do not
let your kind heart seduce you into printing any more puffs of _me_
personally. What do you mean by that notice of Emerson? I shall
have to write to him. Your notice of De Quincey was excellent.
I send herewith a poem of Miss Barrett[37] which came with the
letters you sent me. She sent _three_ others, and promises more in
a very pleasant letter. I shall send on quite a budget of prose, I
hope, soon, but cannot use my eyes much. I am going to answer an
article on the copyright question by O’Sullivan in the forthcoming
_Democratic Review_. I must see proofs of Miss Barrett and all my
own pieces.... I must not write any more or I shall not get home
these six months.
January 22.... My dear, good, kindest, best friend, you know that I
would not write a word that should knowingly pain your loving
heart. So forgive whatever there has been in my other letters to
trouble, and only reflect how anxious I must naturally feel, away
from home as I am, and left a great part of the time to the
solitude of my own thoughts by the total deprivation of the use of
my eyes.
Willis is under Dr. E.’s care also, and yesterday introduced
himself to me, and said all manner of kind things. He had meant to
write to me, giving me his experience in editing, and had long been
anxious to know me, &c., &c. This morning he came and took me to
church with him, and altogether overwhelms me with attention. His
wife is a very _nice_ pretty little Englishwoman, with a very sweet
voice. W. said he wrote the notice in the _Jonathan_ as the most
judicious way of helping the magazine, giving your own philosophic
theory as to its possible results....
January 24.... I _must_ write an article for the next number, and
yet I do not see very well how I am to do it. For I can scarcely
get through one letter without pain, and everything that I write
retards my case and so keeps me the longer here. But I love Keats
so much that I think I can write something good about him.
Willis continues very kind, and I begin to think that he really
likes me. At least he said the same to Dr. E. about me that he told
me to my face. He told the Dr. (I copy it the more readily that I
know it will delight _you_) that I had written the most remarkable
poem that had been written in this country, and that I was destined
to be the brightest star that had yet risen in American literature.
He told me, also, that I was more popular and more talked about and
read at this time than any other poet in the land, and he is going
(or was) to write an article in the _Jonathan_ to that effect.
These things _you must keep in your own heart_. He promises to help
the _Pioneer_ in every way he can, and he will be able to do us a
great deal of good, as he has last week taken half the ownership of
the _Jonathan_ on condition of solely editing it. He talks of
paying me to write letters for him from Boston....
John Neal lectures here to-night. I have not seen him, and I do not
know whether I shall hear him, for if I get a package from you
to-day, as I hope I shall, I shall hardly have 25 cents left to buy
a ticket with. So you think we have succeeded. They are the
pleasantest words I have heard since I have been here. But we must
not feel too sure yet. I think we _shall_ succeed. Folks here (some
of them) say that we shall beyond our utmost expectation....
Saturday.... You shall have some copy from me on _Wednesday_
morning if I get blind by it. Where is Brownson? Don’t print
nonsense. Better not be out till the middle of March. But you are
only trying to frighten me. Do not print nonsense, for God’s sake.
Print the history of Mesmerism. Write an article on Japan. If I
were to read over your letters again in order to answer them
categorically, I should not be able to use my eyes for a week. You
do not recollect that I undergo an application or an operation
_every day_. If I could _see_ you for ten minutes I could arrange
all. I perhaps may come on and return hither again. _Do not hint_
this to any one, for if Maria heard of it, she would be expecting
anxiously every day. I am sick to death of this place, yet it does
me good spiritually to stay here. I _must_ not write any more. In
your next letter ask all questions and I will answer....
Lowell stayed on in New York on account of his eyes till the end of
February. At a period when Mrs. Child could gravely write and publish in
a book “Letters from New York,” to go to New York from Cambridge was
nearly equivalent to a winter abroad. As his letters to Carter show,
with the disabilities under which he labored Lowell could do little at
reading or writing, and he used the opportunity for social occupation.
Page he had already come to know, and he had made the acquaintance
through the _Miscellany_ of Charles F. Briggs, whom now he took into
warm friendship. Mr. Briggs was a diligent man of letters, best known to
the public of that day as “Harry Franco,” and through him Lowell fell in
with many writers and book people. But he was most impatient to return,
and now that his magazine had ceased he found himself with no routine
labors, but with a mind full to overflowing.
The real pursuit of Lowell during 1843 was poetry, and poetry of a lofty
character. In the Ode which he wrote in 1841 beginning,--
“In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder”--
he had outlined the function of the poet; and the whole set of his
nature in the months between his engagement and his marriage was in the
direction of poetic earnestness. His conception was dominated by moral
enthusiasm: the preacher in him was always thrusting himself to the
front, and the reformer of the day sometimes masqueraded in his verse in
very antique forms. But his genuine love of art above all his unfailing
apprehension of poetry as an end in itself saved him from a merely
utilitarian notion of his high calling. And it is safe to say that he
never was so happy as when he was abandoning himself to the full
enjoyment of poetic composition. He diverted the streams of love and of
anti-slavery fervor into this full current, and could say of his
“Prometheus” that it was “overrunning with true radicalism and
anti-slavery;” but the exhilaration which fanned his wings was the
consciousness of youth and love finding an outlet in the natural voice
of poetry. “I was never so happy as now,” he writes to Loring, 15 June,
after telling of his “Prometheus” and “A Legend of Brittany,” on which
he was at work. “I see Maria every other day. I am embowered in leaves,
have a voluntary orchestra of birds and bees and frogs, and a little
family of chickens to whom I have a sort of feeling of paternity, and
begin to believe I had some share in begetting them.”
Page painted Lowell’s portrait when he was in New York and exhibited it
in the spring. This picture is at once a likeness of the poet and an
expression of the painter. Page was an idealist who found a most
congenial subject in Lowell. Out of the dark canvass--for the painter,
pursuing the elusive phantom of a recovery of the art of the Venetians,
succeeded at any rate in giving to his work an ancient air--there looks
forth a face which is the very apparition of poetry. Far removed from
the sentimental aspect, it has depth of feeling, a serene assurance, and
a Shakespearean ideality. It is not difficult to see that Page was not
painting in Lowell a young Cambridge author, but the student of the
English dramatists and the inheritor of all the ages of poetry. To his
own neighbors and friends Lowell had much of this air in his presence.
His flowing chestnut hair falling in rich masses from an equally
dividing line, his unshorn face, his eyes with their kindly wistful
look, his tremulous mouth,--all served to separate him in appearance
from common men and to mark him as an unusual person.
How affectionately Lowell regarded Page and what admiration he had for
his genius may be read in the dedication to him which was prefixed to
his “Poems” issued in 1843 and retained in later collections. The
frankness with which he avows his love for his friend is a witness to
that openness of Lowell’s nature which we have already noticed, and the
terms in which he speaks of Page’s art and of the artistic faith which
they held in common give a hint of the basis of their comradery. Lowell
disclaimed any special knowledge of painting, and always brought to
bear, in his discussions on art, the principles which he had learned
through his devotion to the art of poetry. In the relation of the two
men to each other one is half tempted to recall the friendship of Keats
and Haydon. In each case the poet believed in the painter less by reason
of the work done than because of the ideals
[Illustration: _Mr. Lowell in 1843_]
held and aimed at. Page was an enthusiast, and a man of mingled
imaginative and speculative powers. As Haydon preached the Elgin marbles
to Keats, so Page discoursed on the old masters to Lowell. But the
reciprocal admiration of Lowell and Page was really for the man behind
the art. “I am glad you like my poems,” Lowell wrote to Mrs. Shaw; “Page
is wiser than you and likes them because he knows I am better than
they;” and to Mr. Briggs he had written shortly before: “You are a great
deal better than anything you write, and Page than anything he paints,
and I always think of you without your pen, and of him without his
brushes.”
The admiration and affection with which Page and Briggs regarded Lowell
were only more intimate than the feelings which were generally aroused.
He had come to be looked on as a new poet. So Hawthorne, in his “Hall of
Fantasy,” as first published, characterized him as “the poet of the
generation that now enters upon the stage.” When the _Pioneer_ was
started Lowell’s was a name to conjure with. “The principal editor,”
says the _Tribune_, “is well and widely known as one of the most gifted
and promising poets in America;” and a Philadelphia paper speaks of the
journal as “edited by a man whose genius and originality is at once the
praise and wonder of his countrymen.” To be sure, newspaper praise is
apt to be pitched in a high key, and the army of independent admirers on
closer examination turns out to be a company of the author’s
enthusiastic friends marching and countermarching across the stage,
disappearing in one wing only to come out from another. But after all
allowance has been made, it is clear that in a community which was
eagerly expecting great things in literature, Lowell, though he had
published little and much of that anonymously, was already one of the
candidates for fame. He himself did not need this incentive. He had the
consciousness of power and that audience of one which stimulated him to
the exercise of his power.
“A Year’s Life” had been frankly autobiographic. The poems written
afterward and now collected in the 1843 volume were the distinct
outgrowth of a nature stimulated by this new experience of love and at
last both fully alive to the consciousness of poetic feeling and eager
with a desire to act out the aspirations which had been blown into flame
by the breath of love. Hence the volume, in its contents, is of varied
character, as the poet himself held within his restless life the
somewhat contradictory elements which go to make up a poet and a
reformer. “A Legend of Brittany,” which is the substantial piece, and
stands at the front, is a piece of pure romance, pretty evidently sprung
from the soil in which grew Keats’s “Isabella; or the Pot of Basil.” The
underlying theme is not dissimilar, the measure is the same, and there
is something of the same richness of color and delight in the beauty of
single, even unfamiliar words. Yet the reader feels that Keats not only
had the more vivid imagination, but a clearer sense of the beauty that
lies in intensity of expression--an intensity so great that one almost
holds one’s breath as he reads. Lowell, as we know, rarely essayed
anything in the nature of story-telling; the dramatic faculty was not
his, and keen as was his appreciation of the power of the elder
dramatists, his criticism shows that he dwelt most emphatically on those
passages and lines which disclose poetic beauty, rather than the
features of construction. But Keats’s warmth and richness of decorative
painting appealed to him with peculiar force at a time when he himself
had come out into the sunshine and was intoxicated with his own
happiness. It is clear that when he was writing “A Legend of Brittany”
he was revelling in the possession of poetic fancy, and drawing himself
to the height of his enjoyment of pure poetry unmixed with elements of
didacticism. He wrote to G. B. Loring, 15 June, 1843, “I am now at work
on a still longer poem [than “Prometheus”] in the _ottava rima_ to be
the first in my forthcoming volume. I feel more and more assured every
day that I shall yet do something that will keep my name (and perhaps my
body) alive. My wings were never so light and strong as now. So hurrah
for a niche and a laurel.” The poem did not apparently call out any
strong response, nor has it, I suspect, ever been read with very great
admiration--certainly it cannot for a moment be compared in popularity
with “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” which followed five years later, and
the explanation is perhaps to be found mainly in its derivative
character, even though readers might not be acutely aware how far it
owed its origin to Keats.
Mr. Briggs, who was the stanchest of Lowell’s literary friends at this
time, wrote with enthusiasm of the volume, using terms of admiration
which must have been grateful indeed, since they were charged with
discrimination and just appreciation; but he was frank and honest in his
friendly judgment, and he wrote to Lowell of “A Legend of Brittany:” “It
is too warm, rich, and full of sweet sounds and sights; the incense
overpowers me, and the love and crime, and prayers and monks and
glimpses of spirits oppress me. I am too much a clod of earth to mingle
well in such elements. I feel while reading it as though I were lying
upon a bed of down with a canopy of rose-colored silk above me, with
gleams of sunshine darting in the room and half revealing and at times
more than revealing strange figures painted upon the walls of my
chamber. But I do not wonder that M. W. should like it. It is the proper
reading for pure-minded loving creatures, from whose eyes knowledge with
its hard besom has not yet swept away the golden cobwebs of fancy. I
like her the better myself for liking it.”[38]
This long poem is not the only one in the book which springs from pure
delight in poetic imagination; but it is by far the most full and
unalloyed expression of this pleasure. When one reads, however, such a
poem as “Rhœcus,” with its preface apologizing for so much paganism,
and its application, and especially when one reads “Prometheus,” one is
aware how largely Lowell was dominated, even in this time when his soul
was flushed with the sense of beauty and awake to the tendrils it was
putting forth, by a strong purpose to read the lesson of beauty and love
to his fellows. The seriousness of life was indeed charged with an
exalted meaning by the revelation which came to him when he was admitted
into the intimate companionship of a woman who had in her something of
the spirit of a prophetess, but it would be untrue to say that Maria
White handed him the torch; she kindled to a greater brilliancy that
which he already held, and his love transmuted the vague stirrings of
his own nature into more definite purpose. Keats, to refer again to one
with whom Lowell certainly had spiritual kinship, was mildly affected
somewhat in the same way by the friendship which he formed in his
impressionable years with Hunt and his circle, and if we could imagine
Fanny Brawne a Mary Wollstonecraft, we might speculate on the effect she
would have had on his poetry. Even Keats, with his passionate devotion
to beauty, could dig a subterranean passage under the opening of the
third book of “Endymion” for the purpose of blowing up the “present
ministers;” and Lowell, taking the world-worn myth of Prometheus, could
write into it reflections apposite to what he regarded as a tremendous
upheaving force just ready to manifest itself in society. The poem of
“Prometheus,” however, justly stands high in the estimation of Lowell’s
readers, for the thought involved in it rises above the level of a
didactic utterance, and carries with it an impersonation of human
dignity which saves it from the reproach of making the myth a mere text
for a modern discourse. The poem is the most comprehensive and largest
expression of the mind of the poet at this period of emancipation, and
the fine images with which it abounds spring from the subject itself and
are not mere decorations.
Here, again, a comparison of “Prometheus” with Keats’s “Hyperion”
illustrates the infusion of moral ardor which separates the disciple
from the master. Keats summed up his poetic philosophy in the lines--
“For ’tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might,”--
and he was fain to see the operation of Nature’s law by which one race
of conquerors would dispossess another.
“So on our heels a fresh perfection treads.”
Lowell, speculating on the eternal struggle, figured in “Prometheus,” of
right and wrong, of darkness and light, bids Jove heed that he--
“And all strength shall crumble except love”--
and sees in a vision--
“Peaceful commonwealths where sunburnt Toil
Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own.”
Mr. Briggs, writing to him on the appearance of the poem in the
_Democratic Review_, reminds him that he had read a bit of it when
visiting him in his house at Staten Island, and adds: “But I did not
anticipate that you could or would lengthen out those few lines into a
poem so full of majesty and sweetness. So far as my observation will
allow me to judge, it is the best sustained effort of the American Muse.
The structure of the verse is exceedingly fine to my ear, although it
may not be as acceptable to the public ear as the almost emasculate
smoothness of Bryant, to which it has been accustomed. The bold bright
images with which ‘Prometheus’ abounds would be sufficient of themselves
to give you a name among the wielders of the pen, but the noble and true
spirit of Philosophy which they help to develop makes them appear of
secondary importance, and gives you a claim to a higher renown than the
mere word-mongers of Parnassus can ever aspire to.” Lowell, in replying
to this letter, wrote: “My ‘Prometheus’ has not received a single public
notice yet, though I have been puffed to repletion for poems without a
tithe of its merit. Your letter was the first sympathy I received.
Although such great names as Goethe, Byron, and Shelley have all handled
the subject in modern times, you will find that I have looked at it from
a somewhat new point of view. I have made it _radical_, and I believe
that no poet in this age can write much that is good unless he give
himself up to this tendency. For radicalism has now for the first time
taken a distinctive and acknowledged shape of its own. So much of its
spirit as poets in former ages have attained (and from their purer
organization they could not fail of some) was by instinct rather than by
reason. It has never till now been seen to be one of the two great
wings that upbear the universe.” In the same letter he says: “The proof
of poetry is, in my mind, whether it reduces to the essence of a single
line the vague philosophy which is floating in all men’s minds, and so
renders it portable and useful and ready to the hand. Is it not so? At
least no poem ever makes me respect its author which does not in some
way convey a truth of philosophy.”
In the same temper which produced “Prometheus,” he wrote what he
regarded as in some way a companion piece, “A Glance behind the
Curtain,” in which he imagines a conversation between Cromwell and
Hampden. There is no seeming endeavor at characterization of either
figure, dramatically, but the poem, which is an attempt to read
Cromwell’s mind, is a stirring and indignant demand that Freedom shall
do her perfect work.
“Freedom hath yet a work for me to do,” he makes Cromwell exclaim:--
“So speaks that inward voice which never yet
Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on
To noble deeds for country and mankind.
And for success, I ask no more than this,--
To bear unflinching witness to the truth.
All true whole men succeed; for what is worth
Success’s name, unless it be the thought,
The inward surety, to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end,
Although it be the gallows or the block?
’Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need
These outward shows of gain to bolster her.”
Thus, in the guise of Cromwell, speaks the young man dimly conscious, in
a travailing age, of work needing to be done, and stirred too by the
high emotions of the woman he loved, yet not quite able to translate his
vague desire to be a champion of Truth into deeds. To be sure, at the
close of this poem he remembers that Cromwell was the friend of Milton,
“A man not second among those who lived
To show us that the poet’s lyre demands
An arm of tougher sinew than the sword.”
In the dreams of his youth I think he saw himself playing a part in the
drama that was opening, and wondering how he could wield the pen so as
to make it a weapon for slaying wrong or defending right. Yet direct as
he might wish his attack to be, he was held back by an equally potent
impulse to fulfil the demands of art. “A Chippewa Legend,” in this same
volume, though used as a parable for an impassioned denunciation of
slavery, has touches of nature in the unfolding of the story which show
clearly how much delight he took in the story itself, and how easily he
might have stopped short as a singer, if the preacher in him had not
made the song turn out a sermon.
The autobiographic element in this volume of “Poems” is most distinctly
summed up in a sonnet which dropped out of later collections containing
most of the other poems. It bears the title “On my twenty-fourth
Birthday, February 22, 1843,” and marks well his own sense of a certain
transition which had taken place in his growth.
“Now have I quite passed by that cloudy If
That darkened the wild hope of boyish days,
When first I launched my slender-sided skiff
Upon the wide sea’s dim, unsounded ways;
Now doth Love’s sun my soul with splendor fill,
And Hope bath struggled upward into Power,
Soft Wish is hardened into sinewy Will,
And Longing into Certainty doth tower:
The love of beauty knoweth no despair;
My heart would break, if I should dare to doubt,
That from the Wrong, which makes its dragon’s lair
Here on the Earth, fair Truth shall wander out,
Teaching mankind, that Freedom’s held in fee
Only by those who labor to set free.”
In “A Year’s Life” the l’envoi of the volume is a timid poem, “Goe,
little booke!” in which the poet, sending his venture out among
strangers and most likely among apathetic readers, comforts himself with
the reflection:--
“But, if all others are unkind,
There’s _one_ heart whither thou canst fly
For shelter from the biting wind;
And, in that home of purity,
It were no bitter thing to die.”
The “L’Envoi” of “Poems” is addressed to M. W. and is an open confession
of the indebtedness of his love, three years after the veiled disclosure
in “Ianthe,” “Irene,” “Isabel,” and other figurings of his affection,
and runs like a golden thread through all the warp and woof of his
imagination and fancy. In this serious poem, which he retained in his
later collections, though without the declarative initials,[39] Lowell
intimates very clearly that his maturer outlook on life, and his
attitude toward poetry are due largely to the inspiration which he has
derived from the aspirations of his betrothed. Not only has his love for
her quickened his eye of faith, but he has caught a wider view and a
firmer hold on the great realities of the spirit through the contagion
of her lofty idealism and its fervent expression in a moral ardor. This
is especially manifest in a long passage which has been omitted from the
poem in later collections. There are portions of this omitted passage
which are little better than a dissertation on the poet’s mission, and
they were wisely dropped, but they drew after them by necessity a few
verses which have an interest as recording in a candid fashion the
change which had come over the poet’s mind in these three years just
past. After the introductory lines, in which he speaks rather
disdainfully of “A Year’s Life,” and intimates that he has grown a
sadder and a wiser man, yet with no lessening of that trust in God which
was so marked a characteristic of his betrothed, he goes on:--
“Less of that feeling which the world calls love,
Thou findest in my verse, but haply more
Of a more precious virtue, born of that,
The love of God, of Freedom, and of Man.
Thou knowest well what these three years have been,
How we have filled and graced each other’s hearts,
And every day grown fuller of that bliss,
Which, even at first, seemed more than we could bear,
And thou, meantime, unchanged, except it be
That thy large heart is larger, and thine eyes
Of palest blue, more tender with the love
Which taught me first how good it was to love;
And, if thy blessed name occur less oft,
Yet thou canst see the shadow of thy soul
In all my song, and art well-pleased to feel
That I could ne’er be rightly true to thee,
If I were recreant to higher aims.
Thou didst not grant to me so rich a fief
As thy full love, on any harder tenure
Than that of rendering thee a single heart;
And I do service for thy queenly gift
Then best, when I obey my soul, and tread
In reverence the path she beckons me.”
It would be joy enough, he proceeds, if he could so measure joy, to rest
in this contentment of loving and being loved, but life had nobler
destinies, and he rejoiced that she who gave him her love had a larger
conception of poetry, and so he passes to an analysis of the true aims
of poesy, which finally takes the turn of considering the possibility of
satisfying these aims by rendering the landscape of America into
verse,--
“They tell us that our land was made for song,”--
and so continues as preserved in the present form of the poem.
It will be seen thus that this volume of “Poems,” taken as a register of
Lowell’s development, marks a greater sureness of himself, a more
definite determination of aim, a confidence in powers whose precise
range he cannot yet measure, and with all this a swaying now toward the
expression of pure delight in art, now toward the use of his art for the
accomplishment of some great purpose. It is noticeable, also, that in “A
Year’s Life” there is no trace of humor and scarcely any singular
felicity of phrase; in “Poems,” wit and humor begin to play a little on
the surface. There can be little doubt that the direct influence of
Maria White was toward what may without offence be called the practical
issue, and this not because she was utilitarian--on the contrary, Lowell
felt called on to defend her against the charge of being a
transcendentalist, the charge implying a reproach as of a mere
visionary; no, it was a certain high, even exalted and enthusiastic
allegiance to Truth which dominated her nature, made her in a degree to
accept this allegiance as sign of a mission which she was to fulfil,
rendered her eager to have the close coöperation of her lover, and made
him almost feverishly desirous of justifying her faith by his works. A
letter which she wrote to Mr. Briggs, though it anticipates a little the
course of this narrative, may be cited here as throwing some further
light on her nature.
WATERTOWN, Dec. 12th, 1844.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--James is so hurried with his book that he has not
an instant to spare, and has therefore commissioned me to answer
your letter, and account to you for his long silence. The truth is,
he delayed writing his articles on Poets and Old Dramatists, or
rather delayed arranging them in the form of conversations, until
he had only two months left for what really required four. The book
must be out before we are married; he has three printers hard upon
for copy, for which he has to rise early and sit up late, so that
he can only spare time to see me twice a week, and then I have but
transient glimpses of his dear face.
The pears were thought delicious, and James would have told you
that we all thought so, had not these troubles about his book just
been dawning upon him. The basket still remains upon a shelf in my
closet, and when I look at it a pleasant train of thoughts comes up
in regard to my housekeeping, in which I see it filled, with eggs
white as snow, or apples from our little plot, though never again
with pears like those which first consecrated it.
Both James and myself feel greatly interested in your journal,[40]
in spite of its proposed name. James told me to express his horror
to you at the cockneyism of such a title. _The Broadway Chronicle_
chronicles the thoughts and feelings of Broadway, not those of the
New England people whom you seem willing to receive somewhat from.
Should not a title have truth for its first recommendation? Do you
write from the meridian of Broadway? I think you write from a
sturdy New England heart, that has a good strong well-spring of old
Puritan blood beating therein, with all its hatred to forms and
cant, to fashion and show. If ‘Pistol speaks naught but truth,’
should his name be a lie? Pistol’s is not; it expresses the man
truly. I wish yours did as much to us here, though if it _really_
gratifies your taste and judgment, if it is not a _whim_, but a
_thought_, we shall all like it in time, I suppose, if we do not
now. If it is good we shall of course come round to it. I always
say just what I think, as you see, and I trust it will not seem
harsh and unlovely to you in me as a woman. I do not wish to appear
so ever, but I had rather than give up what I think is truly and
undeniably one of _woman’s_ rights in common with man.
James says he cannot say anything now with certainty in regard to
his contributions to your paper, except that he will give you, of
course, the best he has. Mrs. Putnam, I believe, has nothing
translated at present, but James will ask her, also William Story
and Nathan Hale. I have some translations I made from the German,
songs, ballads, etc., which are at your service if you care to have
them. I hope to write somewhat when I can have James always by my
side to encourage me, and in time it may be something more than a
source of pleasure to us. Carter has seen your letter, and I do not
doubt will be ready to do all he can, ready and glad.
I intended to have written to you and Mrs. Briggs expressly to
invite you to our wedding, but I cannot do it now with much force
or grace after your paragraph on the subject.[41] To us who have
been married for nearly five years, it is of course no spiritual
change; but if it were merely for the fact that from that day we
can always be together, it would be well worth celebrating by some
rite and calling our friends about us to participate in it. What
that rite is does not greatly matter, but I prefer that which time
has consecrated.
“I can scorn nothing which a nation’s heart
Hath held for ages holy.”
That is, nothing in the form of rite or observance for things in
themselves sacred, for you will tell me the Ages held the gibbet,
the scourge and rack holy, if I let it pass without qualification.
Still, I bid you to our marriage, though I trust even if you do not
come you can see it whenever you see us. Some have great need to
ask their friends at such a time, that they may afterwards certify
such a thing has taken place because no trace of it remains. It can
never be so with us, it could never be so with any who hold love
sacred....
We shall be married the night after Christmas, and go on to New
York after one day and night spent at home. We should love to stop
there to see you” as long as you would like to have us, but our
present engagements in Philadelphia will take us directly on there.
We shall be in New York on Sunday, _where_ is not decided yet. With
love to your wife, yours with friendly heart,
MARIA WHITE.
The book which this letter speaks of as absorbing Lowell’s time and
thought was his “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets,” for which Miss
White made a cover design and which was published by John Owen early in
January, 1845. It will be remembered that Lowell began in the _Boston
Miscellany_ and continued in the _Pioneer_ some studies on the Old
Dramatists. The series might have gone on at greater length, for he was
working a vein which yielded him great delight, and never indeed ceased
to engage his attention. He resumed the theme in the last considerable
venture of his life, and gave a course of lectures at the Lowell
Institute in the spring of 1887, which was in effect a series of
readings from the dramatists with running comments. “When I selected my
topic for this new venture,” he said to his audience at the opening of
the course, “I was returning to a first love. The second volume I ever
printed, in 1843 I think it was,[42]--it is now a rare book, I am not
sorry to know; I have not seen it for many years,--was mainly about the
Old English Dramatists, if I am not mistaken. I dare say it was crude
enough, but it was spontaneous and honest.”
The suspension of the _Pioneer_ left Lowell without any convenient
vehicle for carrying further these appreciative papers, and he projected
a book partly because the subject was in his mind, partly because he was
anxious to turn his printed matter to fresh account, but chiefly, it
must be inferred from the contents of the book, because he was eager to
have freedom of speech on several matters which lay close to his mind.
He resolved, therefore, to remodel his papers, so far as he used them
at all, into a series of conversations. His work upon the book was
hurried, as the letter last quoted from Miss White intimates. In
September, 1844, he was planning a course of four or five lectures on
English poetry, beginning with Chaucer, which he proposed delivering in
Philadelphia in the winter immediately after his marriage; but he seems
suddenly to have changed his mind, and to have tossed what he might have
prepared into this new book, which opens with a long conversation on
Chaucer,--a conversation split in the next edition into two. The
passages from Chaucer which he quotes are drawn sometimes from the
modernization by Wordsworth, but are also, in some cases, his own much
closer simplification of the original. To the ear they depart very
little from the original, the widest departure being in getting rid of
the final _e_. The talk on Chaucer is followed by comments on Chapman
and Ford, with reference by easy suggestion to Shakespeare, Marlowe,
Fletcher, Pope, and Wordsworth.
But though the staple of the “Conversations” is poetry, and there are
generous examples and much keen appreciation of the poets discussed, the
book would interest a reader to-day less by its treatment of the
subjects which gave it excuse for being than by its free and careless
exhibition of Lowell’s mind on topics of current concern. There is very
little of dramatic assumption in the interlocutors. Philip and John are
simply convenient personages playing at a battledore and shuttlecock
game of words. Philip is the major character, who does all of the
reading and advances most of the propositions, but John, whose chief
part is to start Philip by questions, and to interpose occasional jibes
or independent observations, is not differentiated in manner; he is
another of Lowell’s many selves, and may be taken as the critical,
interrupting side of his mind.[43] But both speakers are after the same
game.
One of the agreeable touches in the volume is in the asides with which
Lowell refers to contemporary authors like Hawthorne and Longfellow, to
Page, to Dwight, and to such beginners as W. W. Story and R. C., and
when he takes up for discussion a recent address by the Rev. Mr. Putnam.
These references and allusions help one to understand the attitude which
Lowell took toward his book. He did not deceive himself as to its
importance. It was a prolongation of his magazine work and gave him an
opportunity to free his mind. The form, as I have intimated, was not
that of a true conversation; it is far removed from such excellent
exemplars as the “Imaginary Conversations” of Landor, the first of which
had appeared a score of years before; it had but little of the graceful
fencing which brings the talkers closer and closer to the heart of a
subject, till one makes the final thrust that disarms his antagonist.
No; it was simply a device to secure flexibility and discursiveness,
and is talk run mad, sometimes an harangue, sometimes an epigram, most
often a rapid flow of views on literature and life. “If some of the
topics introduced seem foreign to the subject,” says Lowell, in his
prefatory address To the Reader, “I can only say that they are not so to
my mind, and that an author’s object in writing criticisms is not only
to bring to light the beauties of the works he is considering, but also
to express his own opinions upon those and other matters.”
The reading which lies behind the talk is varied, and the talker speaks
from a full mind, but there is none of that restraint of art which gives
weight to the words and makes one wish to read again and again the
reflections. The cleverness is of the showy sort, and an interesting
comparison could be drawn between the portions of the book which relate
directly to the dramatists and the more mellow discussion of the same
subject in the latest of Lowell’s published prose. But despite the
crudeness which marks the earlier book, it shares with the later that
delightful spontaneity and first hand intelligence which make Lowell
always worth attention when he speaks on literary art. It was
characteristic of him that when at sixty-eight he discoursed on the
dramatists whom he had been reading all his life, he had not the need
and apparently not the curiosity to turn back and see what he said about
them at twenty-five. There was little, if any, of the careful husbandry
of his ideas which marks some men of letters; out of the abundance of
the heart his mouth spoke.
In no one of his books can the reader discern better the spontaneous
element in Lowell’s mind, and the length to which he could go under the
impulse of the immediate thought. So fluent was he, so unaware of any
effort, and so swept away for the time being by the stream of his ideas,
that he seemed to himself as one possessed, and more than once he hinted
darkly that he was not writing the book, but was the spokesman for sages
and poets who used him as their means of communication. The visionary
faculty which he possessed could easily be confused at this time with
the half-rapt condition of the mind fed with emotional ardor. The book,
as we have seen, was written at full speed, and it reflects the generous
nature of the writer; but it reflects also the untempered thought, and
registers judgments in the process of making.
Running through the entire book, and making the real excuse for it, is
Lowell’s study of the essence of poetry. This is what gives to the
volume its chief interest; it is really a half-conscious explication of
the concern which was most agitating his mind at this time. What was
poetry? Could it be the substance of a man’s life? There is a
prosecution of some of the same problems which recently he had been
trying to solve in his own volume of poems. He had to ask himself if he
was a poet. The witness for that was to be found not so much in his
taste and his preferences in literature, nor solely in the delight which
he took in versification; he felt the stirring in his nature of that
high vocation of the poet which makes him a seer and an interpreter.
His impulse was to yield to it, but the question arose, What was he to
interpret? What was there in life about him which was crying out for
articulation? And here, if I mistake not, he fell into some confusion of
mind through the insistence of one particular incarnation of divine
thought. He was conscious and aware of a momentous idea, that of freedom
expressed in terms of human brotherhood, words which even then had the
dull ring of cant when they were used by counterfeit-minded men, yet had
in the minds of genuine men and women a vibrant and exultant sound as if
they were to pay all the debts of poor human nature. Remembering that
this was on the eve of ’48, when the visionaries of Europe and America
were very sure that they saw a great light, one sees how forcible this
idea could be as a motive in the throbbing and ingenuous heart of a
young American who was quite sure he was called to high endeavor.
But with the shrewdness which belonged to his mother wit, Lowell could
not satisfy himself with merely windy utterances. He needed emphatically
to kindle something with his divine flame. As he says of Lessing: “His
genius was not a St. Elmo’s fire, as it so often is with mere poets,--as
it was in Shelley, for example, playing in ineffectual flame about the
points of his thoughts, but was interfused with his whole nature and
made a part of his very being.” Now he found himself confronting a
monstrous denial of this truth of freedom issuing in human brotherhood
when he contemplated slavery in America, and his natural indignation
was heightened by the ardor of the woman he loved. Was he not, after
all, to be a reformer beyond everything else? and where was the point of
contact between the poet and the reformer? His mind circled about this
problem; his convictions called upon him with a loud voice to make good
his professions; his instinctive sense of congruity, which is hardly
more than an alternate form of the sense of humor, forbade him to make
poetry the maid of all work for the anti-slavery cause, and he sought
diligently to resolve this particular form of spiritual activity into
the elemental properties of freedom, and so to find therein a true
medium for the sustenance of poetry. Moreover, though he described
himself not long after, in “A Fable for Critics,” as--
“striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of _isms_ tied together with rhyme,”--
it must be said with emphasis that he held these _isms_ too lightly for
them to become the determining factor in his intellectual and spiritual
growth. They did hamper him, as he says a little ruefully in the next
line, and while it is idle business to speculate on what a man might
have become in the absence of the very conditions that made him what he
was, one is tempted to wonder if with his endowments Lowell might not,
under less strenuous conditions, have been exclusively a poet. What is
one man’s meat is another man’s poison, says the homely adage, and it is
a curious fact that but for the same flame of anti-slavery passion
Whittier might never have been more than a verbose Quietist versifier.
In his dedication of the volume to his father, Lowell speaks of it as
“containing many opinions from which he will wholly, yet with the large
charity of a Christian heart, dissent,” and the most flagrant of these
is probably in a passage in which he speaks with vehemence of the church
and religion. As falls to the hearer of many impulsive utterances of
young men, one is apt to see in them rather the impatience of a generous
heart (“why so hot, my little man?”) than the deliberate convictions
into which one has been forced reluctantly, but the passage is so
characteristic of Lowell at this period and so expressive of the
turbulence of his mind that it may well be read here. John has been
commenting on the innate piety of Chaucer as illustrated by his glowing
words on the daisy, and Philip takes up the parable.
“PHILIP.
“Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or the ear.
There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or
other. The Puritans forgot this and thrust beauty out of the
meeting-house, and slammed the door in her face. I love such
sensuality as that which Chaucer shows in his love of nature.
Surely, God did not give us these fine senses as so many posterns
to the heart for the Devil to enter at. I believe that he has
endowed us with no faculty but for his own glory. If the Devil has
got false keys to them, we must first have given him a model of
the wards to make a mould by. The senses can do nothing unless the
soul be an accomplice, and, in whatever the soul does, the body
will have a voice....
“JOHN.
“All things that make us happy incline us also to be grateful, and
I would rather enlarge than lessen the number of these. Morose and
callous recluses have persuaded men that religion is a prude, and
have forced her to lengthen her face, and contract her brows to
suit the character. They have laid out a gloomy turnpike to heaven,
upon which they and their heirs and assigns are privileged to levy
tolls, and have set up guide-boards to make us believe that all
other roads lead in quite an opposite direction. The pleasanter
they are, the more dangerous. For my part, I am satisfied that I am
upon the right path so long as I can see anything to make me
happier, anything to make me love man, and therefore God, the more.
I would stamp God’s name, and not Satan’s, upon every innocent
pleasure, upon every legitimate gratification of sense, and God
would be the better served for it. In what has Satan deserved so
well of us, that we should set aside such first-fruits for him?
Christianity differs not more widely from Plato than from the
Puritans.
“PHILIP.
“The church needs reforming now as much as in Luther’s time, and
sells her indulgences as readily. There are altars to which the
slaveholder is admitted, while the Unitarian would be put forth as
unclean. If it be God’s altar, both have a right there,--the sinner
most of all,--but let him not go unrebuked. We hire our religion by
the quarter, and if it tells any disagreeable truths, we dismiss
it, for we did not pay it for such service as this. Christ scourged
the sellers of doves out of the temple; we invite the sellers of
men and women in. We have few such preachers now as Nathan was.
They preach against sin in the abstract, shooting their arrows into
the woundless air. Let sin wrap itself in superfine broadcloth, and
put its name on charitable subscription papers, and it is safe. We
bandy compliments with it, instead of saying sternly ‘Get thee
behind me!’ The Devil might listen to some preaching I have heard
without getting his appetite spoiled. There is a great deal of time
and money expended to make men believe that this one or that one
will be damned, and to scare or wheedle them into good Calvinists
or Episcopalians; but very little pains is taken to make them good
Christians....
“JOHN.
“It has never been a safe thing to breathe a whisper against the
church, least of all in this country, where it has no prop from the
state, but is founded only on the love, or, if you will have it so,
the prejudices of the people. Religion has come to be esteemed
synonymous with the church; there are few minds clear enough to
separate it from the building erected for its convenience and
shelter. It is this which has made our Christianity external, a
task-ceremony to be gone through with, and not a principle of life
itself. The church has been looked on too much in the light of a
machine, which only needs a little oil, now and then, on its joints
and axles, to make it run glibly and perform all its functions
without grating or creaking. Nothing that we can say will be of
much service. The reformers must come from her own bosom; and there
are many devout souls among her own priests now, who would lay down
their lives to purify her. The names of infidel and heretic are the
_San benitos_ in which we dress offenders in the nineteenth
century, and a bigoted public opinion furnishes the fagots and
applies the match! The very cross itself, to which the sacred right
of private judgment fled for sanctuary, has been turned into a
whipping post. Doubtless, there are no nations on the earth so
wicked as those which profess Christianity; and the blame may be
laid in great measure at the door of the church, which has always
sought temporal power, and has chosen rather to lean upon the arm
of flesh than upon that of God. The church has corrupted
Christianity. She has decked her person and embroidered her
garments with the spoils of pagan altars, and has built her temples
of blocks which paganism has squared ready to her hand. We are
still Huns and Vandals, and Saxons and Celts, at heart. We have
carved a cross upon our altars, but the smoke of our sacrifice goes
up to Thor and Odin still. Lately I read in the newspapers a toast
given at a military festival, by one of those who claim to be the
earthly representatives of the Prince of Peace. England and France
send out the cannon and the bayonet, upon missionary enterprises,
to India and Africa, and our modern Eliots and Brainerds among the
red men are of the same persuasive metal.
“PHILIP.
“Well, well, let us hope for change. There are signs of it; there
has been a growling of thunder round the horizon for many days. We
are like the people in countries subject to earthquakes, who crowd
into the churches for safety, but find that their sacred walls are
as fragile as other works of human hands. Nay, the very massiveness
of their architecture makes their destruction more sudden and their
fall more dangerous. You and I have become convinced of this. Both
of us, having certain reforms at heart, and believing them to be of
vital interest to mankind, turned first to the church as the
nearest helper under God. We have been disappointed. Let us not
waste our time in throwing stones at its insensible doors. As you
have said, the reformers must come from within. The prejudice of
position is so strong that all her servants will unite against an
exoteric assailant, melting up, if need be, the holy vessels for
bullets, and using the leaves of the holy book itself for wadding.
But I will never enter a church from which a prayer goes up for the
prosperous only, or for the unfortunate among the oppressors, and
not for the oppressed and fallen; as if God had ordained our pride
of caste and our distinctions of color, and as if Christ had
forgotten those that are in bonds. We are bid to imitate God; let
us in this also follow his example, whose only revenge upon error
is the giving success to truth, and but strive more cheerfully for
the triumph of what we believe to be right. Let us, above all
things, imitate him in ascribing what we see of wrong-doing to
blindness and error, rather than to wilful sin. The Devil loves
nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads
nothing so much as their charity and patience. The scourge is
better upon our backs than in our hands.
“JOHN.
“When the air grows thick and heavy, and the clouds gather in the
moral atmosphere, the tall steeples of the church are apt to
attract the lightning first. Its pride and love of high places are
the most fatal of conductors. That small upper room, in which the
disciples were first gathered, would always be safe enough.”
These kindling words are those of a reformer dealing with existing
conditions. It would be much more to the point if we could have in
definite terms that revelation of the inner verity of religion which
visited Lowell a little earlier than this, as may be seen by a passage
from a letter to Dr. Loring, 20 September, 1842. “I had a revelation
last Friday evening. I was at Mary’s, and happening to say something of
the presence of spirits (of whom, I said, I was often dimly aware), Mr.
Putnam entered into an argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was
speaking the whole system rose up before me like a vague Destiny looming
from the abyss. I never before so clearly felt the spirit of God in me
and around me. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed
to wave to and fro with the presence of Something, I knew not what. I
spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet.”[44]
No doubt this ecstasy may be regarded as one manifestation of that
psychical temper which caused him to see visions in his childhood, but
it allied itself with intellectual processes, for he goes on to say: “I
cannot tell you what this revelation was. I have not yet studied it
enough. But I shall perfect it one day, and then you shall hear it and
acknowledge its grandeur. It embraces all other systems.”
We may not find a clear statement of this mystic revelation in the
discursive “Conversations;” rather we should look for it in his poems of
this period, and here, though we find nothing whatever to correspond to
a system of divine order, we do find, recurring in various forms, a
recognition of an all-embracing, all-penetrating power which through the
poet transmutes nature into something finer and more eternal, and gives
him a vantage ground from which to perceive more truly the realities of
life. “The Token,” “An Incident in a Railroad Car,” “The Shepherd of
King Admetus,” all in a manner witness to this, and show how
persistently in Lowell’s mind was present this aspect of the poet which
makes him a seer. Perhaps there is a more direct attempt at expressing
this truth in one of the poems not retained in later collections. It is
entitled “A Dirge,” and is the imagined plaint over a poet who has died.
In this tumultuous period of Lowell’s youth, when the tranquillity which
a returned love brought was after all a very self-conscious
tranquillity, there was always room for morbid fancies, and the
frequency with which in his poetry he recurs to the images of death
leads one to suspect that he experimented a little with the idea of his
own death. And it may be that in this poem, which a healthier judgment
later led him to suppress, he was dramatizing himself.
“Poet! lonely is thy bed,
And the turf is overhead,--
Cold earth is thy cover;
But thy heart hath found release,
And it slumbers full of peace
’Neath the rustle of green trees,
And the warm hum of the bees
Mid the drowsy clover;
Through thy chamber still as death
A smooth gurgle wandereth,
As the blue stream murmureth
To the blue sky over.
* * * * *
Thou wast full of love and truth,
Of forgivingness and ruth,--
Thy great heart with hope and youth
Tided to o’erflowing;
Thou didst dwell in mysteries,
And there lingered on thine eyes
Shadows of serener skies,
Awfully wild memories
That were like foreknowing;
Thou didst remember well and long
Some fragments of thine angel-song,
And strive, through want, and woe, and wrong,
To win the world unto it;
Thy curse it was to see and hear
Beyond to-day’s scant hemisphere,
Beyond all mists of doubt and fear,
Into a life more true and clear,--
And dearly thou didst rue it.
* * * * *
“Poet! underneath the turf,
Soft thou sleepest, free from morrow;
Thou hast struggled through the surf
Of wild thoughts, and want, and sorrow;
Now, beneath the moaning pine
Full of rest thy body lieth,
While, far up in pure sunshine,
Underneath a sky divine,
Her loosed wings thy spirit trieth;
Oft she strove to spread them here,
But they were too white and clear
For our dingy atmosphere.”
The limitations of his theme and measure forbid more than a hint at this
vocation of the poet, but it happens that we have a somewhat more
explicit statement of the same general idea in a prose form. A very few
weeks after the revelation referred to in the letter to Dr. Loring, too
soon certainly for it to have faded from his mind, he sat down to write
a paper on “The Plays of Thomas Middleton,” and the introductory
passages contain what may fairly be taken as snatches from that music of
the spheres which he seems suddenly to have overheard.
“Poets are the forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world.
Driven, by their finer nature, to search into and reverently contemplate
the universal laws of soul, they find some fragments of the broken
tables of God’s law, and interpret it, half conscious of its mighty
import. While philosophers are wrangling, and politicians playing at
snapdragon with the destinies of millions, the poet, in the silent deeps
of his soul, listens to those mysterious pulses which, from one central
heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins of the universe,
and utters truths to be sneered at, perchance, by contemporaries, but
which become religion to posterity....
“The dreams of poets are morning-dreams, coming to them in the early
dawn and day-breaking of great truths, and are surely fulfilled at last.
They repeat them, as children do, and all Christendom, if it be not too
busy with quarrelling about the meaning of creeds which have no meaning
at all, listens with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile of pitying
incredulity: for reformers are always madmen in their own age, and
infallible saints in the next.”
In such rhetorical terms did Lowell, all aflame himself with poetic
zeal, try to outline the divine call of the poet, and the
“Conversations” reënforce a doctrine which was held more firmly since
the preacher was eager to display it in his own practice. At this time,
certainly, Lowell’s conception of the function of the poet was blended
with his apprehension of the divine order, and he entered upon the
discharge of poetic duties with the seriousness which a young priest
might have carried to the sacred office. The very suppression of his
native humor, so that it makes only a few furtive leaps in his poetry up
to this time,--for we are setting aside his boyish pranks in
verse,--illustrates the exalted mood in which he was living.
* * * * *
The “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets” was published, as we have
seen, in January, 1845,[45] but as soon as his own part of the book was
done, he was free for a more vital venture: on the 26th of December,
1844, after a five years’ betrothal, he was married in her father’s
house at Watertown to Maria White.