James Russell Lowell

“ Yes, thou dear, noble Mother! if ever men's praise
Could be claimed for creating heroical lays,
Thou has won it; if ever the laurel divine
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine!
Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude
Rock-rib of our Earth here was tamed and subdued;
Thou has written them plain on the face of the planet
In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite;
Thou has printed them deep for all time; they are set
From the same runic type-fount and alphabet
With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay,—
They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay. ”

“ Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round,
(Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor,
And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore,
Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"—
It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile;)
A lily, perhaps, would set my mill agoing,
For just at this season, I think, they are blowing,
Here, somebody, fetch one, not very far hence
They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence;
There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his
Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies ”

“ You have watched a child playing—in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. ”

“ To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven;
But, set that aside, and ’tis 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 apart
Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,
’Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth’s hubbub and strife
As quiet and chaste as the author’s own life. ”

“ She tells me my efforts in verse are quite clever;—
She's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever;
One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she'd be
Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea,
For a woman must surely see well, if she try,
The whole of whose being's a capital I:
She will take an old notion, and make it her own,
By saying it o'er in her Sibylline tone,
Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep,
By repeating it so as to put you to sleep ”

“ Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect;
There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;
And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,)
From the very same cause that has made him a poet,—
A fervor of mind, which knows no separation
'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration,
As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing
If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing ”

“ Though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor,—much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat Ugolino inside to a picture of meat. ”

“ Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears,
Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise,
For ’tis dotted as thick as a peacock’s with I’s) .
Apropos of Miranda, I’ll rest on my oars
And drift through a trifling digression on bores,
For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorum,
Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore ’em. ”

“ Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard,
Broke the strings of his lyre out by striking too hard,
And cracked half the notes of a truly fine voice,
Because song drew less instant attention than noise.
Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise,
That he goes the farthest who goes far enough,
And that all beyond that is just bother and stuff.
No vain man matures, he makes too much new wood;
His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be good;
'Tis the modest man ripens, 'tis he that achieves,
Just what's needed of sunshine and shade he receives ”

“ That ’tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round
And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind
That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind;
Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side,
With no doctrine pleased that’s not somewhere denied,
He lays the denier away on the shelf,
And then—down beside him lies gravely himself.
He’s the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing{47}
To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling,
And so fond of the trip that, when leisure’s to spare,
He’ll row himself up, if he can’t get a fare. ”

“ Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing
On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing;
It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest,
Grand natural features—but, then, one has no rest;
You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance,
When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,—
Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?"
—Here the laurel-leaves murdered the name of poor Daphne. ”

“ But in one thing, ’tis clear, he has faith, namely—Parker,
And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher,
There’s a background of god to each hardworking feature,
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest:
There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest,
If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least,
His gestures all downright and same, if you will,
As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill ”

“ There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,
Is some of it pr———No, 'tis not even prose;
I'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled
From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled;
They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin,
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke ”

“ No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him,
'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow him;
Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Number One
Displacing himself in the mind of his son,
And detests the same faults in himself he'd neglected
When he sees them again in his child's glass reflected;
To love one another you're too like by half ”

“ It matters not whether he blame or commend,
If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend;
Let an author but write what's above his poor scope,
He goes to work gravely and twists up a rope,
And, inviting the world to see punishment done,
Hangs himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun;
'Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along
Who has anything in him peculiar and strong,
Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop-) gundeck at him
And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him ”

“ Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim æther,
And nobody'd think of his critics—or him either;
If an author have any least fibre of worth in him,
Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him,
All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban,
One word that's in tune with the nature of man. ”

“ By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions
Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions,
That while the Old World has produced barely eight
Of such poets as all men agree to call great,
And of other great characters hardly a score,
(One might safely say less than that rather than more,)
With you every year a whole crop is begotten,
They're as much of a staple as corn, or cotton ”

“ I can hardly tell whether a question will ever arise in which he and I should by any strange fortune agree but meanwhile, my esteem for him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge on earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my love for them, whether on my side or t’ other. ”

“ And never a fact to perplex him or bore him,
With a snug room at Plato's when night comes, to walk to,
And people from morning till midnight to talk to,
And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;—
So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening,
For his highest conceit of a happiest state is
Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis;
And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better—
Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter ”

“ Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, but I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more than a young author’s lawful ease and laugh in a queer way so like Mephistopheles, that the Public will doubt, as they grope{ix} through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of them or with them. ”

“ If some English hack-critic should chance to review him;
The old porcos ante ne projiciatis
Margaritas, for him you have verified gratis;
What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester,
Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor,
For aught I know or care; 'tis enough that I look
On the author of 'Margaret,' the first Yankee book
With the soul of Down East in't, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new. ”

“ There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet, unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any sex in a pen. ”

“ He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten,
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written.
"But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears,
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say
There is nothing in that which is grand, in its way;
He is almost the one of your poets that knows
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose;
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar
His thought's modest fulness by going too far ”

“ Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,—
For reading new books is like eating new bread,
One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he
Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. ”

“ For there is not a poet throughout the whole land, but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut-up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and Magazine critics call lofty and true, and about thirty thousand (this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed full of promise and pleasing. ”

“ That he strips himself naked to prove he's a poet,
And, to show he could leap Art's wide ditch, if he tried,
Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge t'other side.
He has strength, but there's nothing about him in keeping;
One gets surelier onward by walking than leaping ”

“ Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot
With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut,
And we all entertain a secure private notion,
That our Thus far! will have a great weight with the ocean.
’Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore
With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore ”

“ Montaigne; find a new depth in Wordsworth, undreamed of before,—that marvel, a poet divine who can bore. Or, out of my study the scholar thrown off, Nature holds up her shield ’gainst the sneer and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and kind pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind. ”