"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."
97. Elder than the Day: Elder than the first Day. "And God called
the light Day," etc. (_Genesis_ i, 5.) We may have light from the
divine fountains.
110-114. In shaping this elaborate battle metaphor, one can easily
believe the poet to have had in mind some fierce mountain struggle
during the war, such as the battle of Lookout Mountain.
111. Creeds: Here used in the broad sense of convictions,
principles, beliefs.
115-118. The construction is faulty in these lines. The two last
clauses should be co-ordinated. The substance of the meaning is: Peace
has her wreath, while the cannon are silent and while the sword
slumbers. Lowell's attention was called to this defective passage by
T.W. Higginson, and he replied: "Your criticism is perfectly just, and
I am much obliged to you for it--though I might defend myself, I
believe, by some constructions even looser in some of the Greek
choruses. But on the whole, when I have my choice, I prefer to make
sense." He then suggested an emendation, which somehow failed to get
into the published poem:
"Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
Redden the cannon's lips, and while the sword."
120. Baäl's stone obscene: Human sacrifices were offered on the
altars of Baäl. (_Jeremiah_ xix, 5.)
147-205. This strophe was not in the ode as delivered, but was written
immediately after the occasion, and included in the published poem.
"It is so completely imbedded in the structure of the ode," says
Scudder, "that it is difficult to think of it as an afterthought. It
is easy to perceive that while the glow of composition and of
recitation was still upon him, Lowell suddenly conceived this splendid
illustration, and indeed climax of the utterance, of the Ideal which
is so impressive in the fifth stanza.... Into these threescore lines
Lowell has poured a conception of Lincoln, which may justly be said to
be to-day the accepted idea which Americans hold of their great
President. It was the final expression of the judgment which had
slowly been forming in Lowell's own mind."
In a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, Lowell says: "The passage about
Lincoln was not in the ode as originally recited, but added
immediately after. More than eighteen months before, however, I had
written about Lincoln in the _North American Review_--an article that
pleased him. I _did_ divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin
caste."
It is a singular fact that the other great New England poets,
Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, had almost nothing to say about
Lincoln.
150. Wept with the passion, etc.: An article in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ for June, 1885, began with this passage: "The funeral
procession of the late President of the United States has passed
through the land from Washington to his final resting-place in the
heart of the prairies. Along the line of more than fifteen hundred
miles his remains were borne, as it were, through continued lines of
the people; and the number of mourners and the sincerity and unanimity
of grief was such as never before attended the obsequies of a human
being; so that the terrible catastrophe of his end hardly struck more
awe than the majestic sorrow of the people."
170. Outward grace is dust: An allusion to Lincoln's awkward and
rather unkempt outward appearance.
173. Supple-tempered will: One of the most pronounced traits of
Lincoln's character was his kindly, almost femininely gentle and
sympathetic spirit. With this, however, was combined a determination
of steel.
175-178. Nothing of Europe here: There was nothing of Europe in him,
or, if anything, it was of Europe in her early ages of freedom before
there was any distinction of slave and master, groveling Russian Serf
and noble Lord or Peer.
180. One of Plutarch's men: The distinguished men of Greece and Rome
whom Plutarch immortalized in his _Lives_ are accepted as types of
human greatness.