In the simple customs of those days, when one clergyman exchanged pulpits with another, Dr. Lowell would drive in his own “chaise” to the parsonage of his friend, would spend the day there, and return probably on Monday morning. He soon found that James was a good companion in such rides, and the little fellow had many reminiscences of these early travels. It would be easy to quote hundreds of references in his poems and essays to the simple Cambridge life of these days before college. Thus here are some lines from the poem hardly known, on “The Power of Music.”
“When, with feuds like Ghibelline and Guelf,
Each parish did its music for itself,
A parson’s son, through tree-arched country ways,
I rode exchanges oft in dear old days,
Ere yet the boys forgot, with reverent eye,
To doff their hats as the black coat went by,
Ere skirts expanding in their apogee
Turned girls to bells without the second e;
Still in my teens, I felt the varied woes