JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
It is not necessary to say that Lowell is the first poet of the time, or of the country, although it would be possible to maintain that proposition with strong reasons; but it will be conceded, we think, by most who have the capacity of appreciating poetic genius, that in some of his strains he reaches a note as lofty and clear and pure as any this generation has produced, and has written what will have long life in the world, and be hoarded by the wise as treasures of thought and expression.—Boston Advertiser.
The wisdom and wit and insight and imagination of the book are as delightful as they are surprising. The most cynical critic will not despair of American literature, if American authors are to write such books.—G. W. Curtis.
The moving power of Mr. Lowell’s poetry, which we take to be its delicate apprehension of the spiritual essence in common things, is, in some of his poems, embodied in the fine organization of a purely poetic diction; in others, in the strong, broad language of popular feeling and humor; and we enjoy each the more for the presence of the other.—The Spectator (London).
Hunting a Theme.
Now I’ve a notion if a poet
Beat up for themes, his verse will show it;
I wait for subjects that haunt me,
By day or night won’t let me be,
And hang about me like a curse,
Till they have made me into verse.
…
Make thyself rich, and then the Muse
Shall court thy precious interviews;
Shall take thy head upon her knee,
And such enchantment lilt to thee
That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow
From farthest stars to grass-blades low.
In the Twilight.
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went;
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music once heard by an ear
That can not forget or reclaim it,—
A something, so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!
And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure, more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad
Long ago!
[The following exquisite lines are suggestive, and in strong contrast with the familiar rollicking stanzas in the serio-comic “Biglow Papers.”]
Longing.
The thing we long for, that we are,
For one transcendent moment,
Before the present poor and bare
Can make its sneering comment.
Still, through our paltry stir and strife
Glows down the wished ideal,
And longing moulds in clay what life
Carves in the marble real;
To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal;
Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal.
Longing is God’s fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;
But, would we learn that heart’s full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope,
And realize the longing.
The world is impatient of distinction; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates it; it ends by receiving its influence, and by undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world’s blunders, and fixes the world’s ideals. It procures that the popular poet shall not finally pass for a Pindar, nor the popular historian for a Tacitus, nor the popular preacher for a Bossuet.—Matthew Arnold.