218. House-bespotted swell: Lowell notes with some resentment the
change from nature's simple beauties to the pretentiousness of wealth
shown in incongruous buildings.
220. Cits: Contracted from citizens. During the French Revolution,
when all titles were abolished, the term _citizen_ was applied to
every one, to denote democratic simplicity and equality.
223. Gentle Allston: Washington Allston, the celebrated painter,
whom Lowell describes as he remembered him in the charming essay
_Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_.
225. Virgilium vidi tantum: I barely saw Virgil--caught a glimpse of
him--a phrase applied to any passing glimpse of greatness.
227. Undine-like: Undine, a graceful water nymph, is the heroine of
the charming little romantic story by De la Motte Fouqué.
234. The village blacksmith: See Longfellow's famous poem, _The
Village Blacksmith_. The chestnut was cut down in 1876. An arm-chair
made from its wood still stands in the Longfellow house, a gift to
Longfellow from the Cambridge school children.
254. Six old willows: These much-loved trees afforded Lowell a
subject for a later poem _Under the Willows_, in which he describes
particularly one ancient willow that had been spared, he "knows not by
what grace" by the ruthless "New World subduers"--
"One of six, a willow Pleiades,
The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink
Where the steep upland dips into the marsh."
In a letter written twenty years after the _Reverie_ to J.T. Fields,
Lowell says: "My heart was almost broken yesterday by seeing nailed to
_my_ willow a board with these words on it, 'These trees for sale.'
The wretch is going to peddle them for firewood! If I had the money, I
would buy the piece of ground they stand on to save them--the dear
friends of a lifetime."
255. Paul Potter: One of the most famous of the Dutch painters of
the seventeenth century, notable for the strong realism of his work.
264. Collegisse juvat: The full sentence, in the first ode of
Horace, reads, "Curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat." (It is
a pleasure to have collected the dust of Olympus on one's chariot
wheels.) The allusion is to the Olympic games, the most celebrated
festival of Greece. Lowell puns upon the word _collegisse_ with his
own coinage, which may have the double meaning of _going to college_
and _collecting._
272. Blinding anguish: An allusion to the death of his little
daughter Blanche. See _The Changeling, The First Snow-fall,_ and _She
Came and Went_.
_THE OAK_
11. Uncinctured front: The forehead no longer encircled with a
crown.
13-16. There is a little confusion in the figures here, the cathedral
part of the picture being a little far fetched.
40. Mad Pucks: Puck is the frolicsome, mischief-making spirit of
Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream._
45. Dodona grove: The grove of oaks at Dodona was the seat of a
famous Greek oracle, whose responses were whispered through the
murmuring foliage of the trees.
_BEAVER BROOK_
Beaver Brook at Waverley was a favorite resort of Lowell's and it is
often mentioned in his writings. In summer and winter it was the
frequent goal of his walks. The poem was at first called _The Mill_.
It was first published in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and to the
editor, Sidney H. Gay, Lowell wrote:--"Don't you like the poem I sent
you last week? I was inclined to think pretty well of it, but I have
not seen it in print yet. The little mill stands in a valley between
one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on the
edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest spots in the world.
It is one of my lions, and if you will make me a visit this spring, I
will take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you 'the oaks'--the
largest, I fancy, left in the country."
21. Undine: In mythology and romance, Undine is a water-spirit who
is endowed with a soul by her marriage with a mortal. The _race_ is
the watercourse conducted, from the dam in an open trough or
"penstock" to the wheel.
45. In that new childhood of the Earth: This poem was written a few
weeks after the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ was published, and it
therefore naturally partakes of its idealism.
_THE PRESENT CRISIS_
This poem was written in 1844. The discussion over the annexation of
Texas was absorbing public attention. The anti-slavery party opposed
annexation, believing that it would strengthen the slave-holding
interests, and for the same reason the South was urging the scheme.
Lowell wrote several very strong anti-slavery poems at this time, _To
W.L. Garrison_, _Wendell Phillips_, _On the Death of C.T. Torrey_, and
others, which attracted attention to him as a new and powerful ally of
the reform party. "These poems," says George William Curtis,
"especially that on _The Present Crisis,_ have a Tyrtæan resonance, a
stately rhetorical rhythm, that make their dignity of thought, their
intense feeling, and picturesque imagery, superbly effective in
recitation. They sang themselves on every anti-slavery platform."
While the poem was inspired by the political struggle of the time,
which Lowell regarded as a crisis in the history of our national honor
and progress, its chief strength is due to the fact that its lofty
sentiment is universal in its appeal, and not applicable merely to
temporal and local conditions.
17. Round the earth's electric circle, etc.: This prophetic figure was
doubtless suggested by the first telegraph line, which Samuel F.B.
Morse had just erected between Baltimore and Washington.
37. The Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God." (_John_ i, 1.)
44. Delphic cave: The oracle at Delphi was the most famous and
authoritative among the Greeks. The priestess who voiced the answers
of the god was seated in a natural fissure in the rocks.
46. Cyclops: The Cyclopes were brutish giants with one eye who lived
in caverns and fed on human flesh, if the opportunity offered. Lowell
is recalling in these lines the adventure of Ulysses with the Cyclops,
in the ninth book of Homer's _Odyssey_.
64. Credo: Latin, I believe: the first word in the Latin version of
the Apostles' Creed, hence used for _creed_.
_THE COURTIN'_
This poem first appeared as "a short fragment of a pastoral," in the
introduction to the First Series of the _Biglow Papers_. It is said to
have been composed merely to fill a blank page, but its popularity was
so great that Lowell expanded it to twice its original length, and
finally printed it as a kind of introduction to the Second Series of
the _Biglow Papers_. It first appeared, however, in its expanded form
in a charitable publication, _Autograph Leaves of Our Country's
Authors_, reproduced in facsimile from the original manuscript.
"This bucolic idyl," says Stedman, "is without a counterpart; no
richer juice can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee soil."
Greenslet thinks that this poem is "perhaps the most nearly perfect of
his poems."