_MY LOVE_
Lowell's love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in this little
poem. He wrote it at about the time of their engagement. While it is
thus personal in its origin, it is universal in its expression of
ideal womanhood, and so has a permanent interest and appeal. In its
strong simplicity and crystal purity of style, it is a little
masterpiece. Though filled with the passion of his new and beautiful
love, its movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of
one of Wordsworth's best lyrics.
_THE CHANGELING_
This is one of the tender little poems that refer to the death of the
poet's daughter Blanche, which occurred in March, 1847. _The First
Snow-fall_ and _She Came and Went_ embody the same personal grief.
When sending the former to his friend Sydney H. Gay for publication,
he wrote: "May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole
meaning of the poem to you." Underwood, in his _Biographical Sketch_
says that "friends of the poet, who were admitted to the study in the
upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes that hung over a
picture-frame." The volume in which this poem first appeared contained
this dedication--"To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little
Blanche this volume is reverently dedicated."
A changeling, according to folk-lore and fairy tale, is a fairy child
that the fairies substitute for a human child that they have stolen.
The changeling was generally sickly, shrivelled and in every way
repulsive. Here the poet reverses the superstition, substituting the
angels for the mischievous fairies, who bring an angel child in place
of the lost one. Whittier has a poem on the same theme, _The
Changeling._
29. Zingari: The Gypsies--suggested by "wandering angels" above--who
wander about the earth, and also sometimes steal children, according
to popular belief.
52. Bliss it: A rather violent use of the word, not recognized by
the dictionaries, but nevertheless felicitous.
_AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE_
Lowell's love of Elmwood and its surroundings finds expression
everywhere in his writings, both prose and verse, but nowhere in a
more direct, personal manner than in this poem. He was not yet thirty
when the poem was written, and Cambridge could still be called a
"village," but the familiar scenes already had their retrospective
charms, which increased with the passing years. Later in life he again
celebrated his affection for this home environment in _Under the
Willows._
"There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and
more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole,
so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling
verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young
man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not
so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of
beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with beauty in the
soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding through the marshes, the
distant sound of the ploughman, the near chatter of the chipmunk, the
individual trees, each living its own life, the march of the seasons
flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of
human life associated with his own experience, the hurried, survey of
his village years--all these pictures float before his vision; and
then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of the singer's
voice with tears, there wells up the thought of the little life which
held as in one precious drop the love and faith of his heart."
1. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to almost any
autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In
America these characteristic features of late fall were especially
associated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied
that region.
5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their feasts on Olympus.
Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant
hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic
influence.
11. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that his own
spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own,
rather than receiving the influence from nature's mood.
25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning in the fields of
Boaz, see the book of _Ruth_, ii.
38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had "squirrel" here, which would be
inconsistent with the "underground fastness." And yet, are chipmunks
seen up in walnut trees?
40. This line originally read, "with a chipping bound." _Cheeping_ is
chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like "cheep," or
"chip."
45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble and other
refuse of the season before his "fall plowing."
46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of this detail
of the picture. Compare Bryant's _Death of the Flowers:_
"And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day."