THE SOWER.
A POEM IN WHICH A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN POET AND DIPLOMAT EXPRESSED HIS FEAR OF OLD WORLD INFLUENCES.
With the single exception of John Hay, no English-speaking poet has been so distinguished as a student of the social and political phases of national life as was James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). It is doubtful whether the United States ever produced a poet who was more truly national. His earlier verses were characterized by quaint Yankee humor, and many were virile pictures of New England life. In his later years, as a writer, editor, and lecturer, Lowell labored zealously to bring the literature and culture of the New World to a plane as high as that of the Old World. As a diplomat, he did more to cement the friendship of Great Britain and the United States than any man had done before. His official title, while in England, was that of United States Minister to Great Britain, but a London newspaper bestowed upon him another—“His Excellency the Ambassador of American Literature to the Court of Shakespeare.”
But though Lowell was cosmopolitan in many of his tastes, he was essentially a patriotic American. The great influx of foreigners and foreign ideals into the United States oftentimes excited his apprehension, and it was while under the influence of these fears that he wrote “The Sower,” which is printed herewith.
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
I saw a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow.
His head drooped forward on his breast.
With shriveled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed he was both deaf and blind.
His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had clasped Excalibur.
I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung:
“I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.
“Then all was wheat without a tare,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.
“The fruitful germs I scatter free,
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap.”
Then I looked back along his path,
And heard the clash of steel on steel,
Where man faced man, in deadly wrath,
While clanged the tocsin’s hurrying peal.
The sky with burning towns flared red,
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled,
And brothers’ blood, by brothers shed,
Crept, curdling, over pavements cold.
Then marked I how each germ of truth
Which through the dotard’s fingers ran
Was mated with a dragon’s tooth
Whence there sprang up an armed man.
I shouted, but he could not hear;
Made signs, but these he could not see;
And still, without a doubt or fear,
Broadcast he scattered anarchy.
Long to my straining ears the blast
Brought faintly back the words he sung:
“I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.”