450

his own rhapsodies,

490

And my ear with that music impregnate may be,

Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea,

Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven

To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven;

But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I speak,

Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek,

I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line

In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.

That's not ancient nor modern, its place is

Here, Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, while f pour

My heart out to my birthplace:1 O loved more and more

Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons

Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave,

such as runs

1 The only passage in "A Fable for Critics" which he [later] dwelt upon with genuine delight was his apostrophe to Massachusetts, and that is almost out of key with the rest of the poem.' (Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 266.) The passage should now be read as an apostrophe to America rather than to Massachusetts. It is far more true of the West than of New England, and of America as a whole than of any section.

451

rude

Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued;

Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet

In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite;

Thou hast printed them deep for all time; they are set

From the same runic type-fount and alpha

bet

560

With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay,

They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay.

If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease,

Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these,

Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art,

Toil on with the same old invincible heart;

Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand,

And creating, through labors undaunted and long,

The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song!

570

Nor e'er achieved aught in 't so worthy of praise

As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise.

You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon;

610

Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on,

Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes,

He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes.

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric

Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with

satiric

In a measure so kindly you doubt if the

toes

That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.

'There is Lowell, who 's striving Par

nassus to climb

With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme,

He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,

620

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 Methusa

lem,

At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.'

Here Miranda came up and began, 'As to that

Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and

hat,

And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared,

630

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 2

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:

Then, 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

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;3 10 Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. 4

Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives
The great winds utter prophecies;
With our faint hearts the mountain
strives;

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;

1 According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus 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, 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 supposed date of King Arthur's reign. (LOWELL.) 2 Holmes begins a poem of welcome to Lowell on his return from England:

This is your month, the month of ' perfect days.' June was indeed Lowell's month. Not only in the famous passage of this Prelude,' but in Under the Willows' (originally called 'A June Idyl'), 'Al Fresco' (originally A Day in June'), 'Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line' of the Biglow Papers, and The Nightingale in the Study,' he has made it peculiarly his

own.

Heaven lies about us in our Infancy! (WORDSWORTH, in the fifth stanza of the 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality.')

See Lowell's letter, of Sunday, September 3, 1848, to his friend C. F. Briggs.

The castle alone in the landscape lay
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray:
"T was 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,
But 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;

Green and broad was every tent,
And out of each a murmur went
Till the breeze fell off at night.

III

121

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,
And through the dark arch a charger sprang,
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130
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