“But now, oh worst of collapses,
My Temple of Fame is in ruins,
Its forecourt, nave, transept, and apse is
A shelter for foxes and bruins!
“For all of my Public Opinion
With the wind in its sails to drive it
To the port of supreme dominion
Turns out most especially private.
“My Fame’s accoucheur sadly yields his
Place up to the Deputy Cor’ner,
For my Public Opinion was Fields’s,
My tradewind a puff from the ‘Corner.’”
That the poem at once found disinterested friends is evident from the letter which Lowell writes in acknowledgment of the praise which the poet, Dr. Parsons, gave it. “Something more than half of it,” Lowell says, “was written more than twenty years ago, on the death of our eldest daughter; but when I came to complete it, that other death, which broke my life in two, would come in against my will, so that you were right in your surmise. I was very glad you liked it, and your letter touched me deeply, as you may well conceive.”
In September Lowell made out a tentative list of the poems to be included in the volume, and wrote to Mr. Fields: “I think it best not to include any humorous poems in this collection. They can come by and by, if they are wanted. They would jar here. Some I may be able to shorten somewhat in printing, but commonly I find it hard work to improve them after they are dry, though I seem to see well enough where and how much they need it. The poems of the war I shall put by themselves at the end, so as to close with the Ode as I begin with the Idyll. How I do wish the whole of them were better—now that I am putting them between stiff covers to help them stand alone! ‘Bad is the best’ is a good proverb—but how if the best is bad? Well, here and there one catches a good strain, but I feel very hopeless about them.”
Lowell meant to call his volume “A June Idyll and other Poems,” but Mr. Fields pointed out that Whittier’s new volume just about to appear was to carry the title of “A Summer Idyll.”[33] Lowell retorted: “Why the devil should Whittier bag my title? I can’t claim a copyright in ‘Idyll,’ that is in the dictionary—but, June ‘Idyll’ was mine. It will be thought his poem suggested mine, as it was with the ‘Present Crisis,’ though mine was written two years before. However, J. G. W. is welcome to anything of mine, for he is a trump, and after all the milk is spilt. But if his volume is not advertised, might I not insist? It’s of more consequence to me than to him, for I have nothing else that will look so well in the vanguard. But if it’s all up, how would ‘Appledore and other Poems’ do? It is a pretty name enough, and the poem is one of my longest,—though not, perhaps, the one I would otherwise have put first. My dedication, I think, is good, and that will take the edge off.”
Mr. Fields suggested that he should give the volume the title of his place, “Elmwood,” but Lowell replied: “I can’t bear ‘Elmwood,’ and the more I think of it, the more I can’t bear it—’tis turning one’s household gods upon the town, as it were. No, never! They have endured me for fifty years, and I won’t desert ’em in their old age. Let me have my hermitage to myself. (I had eight visitors this morning—one of whom wanted me to read ‘The Biglow Papers’ to him.) But I have it now. Instead of ‘June Idyll,’ which was the pis aller of a prosaic mind, I shall call it ‘Under the Willows.’ Like all great discoveries, it is simple, and, you may depend upon it, it is the thing. It means everything and nothing. I can’t make the poem over so as to suit ‘Elmwood,’ and so I shall settle upon this, fixed as a butterfly, stable as the Horse-railway stables. You can’t move me. The man that moved Chicago couldn’t move me. I am happy, and discharge my mind of the whole concern. I shall now devote my evening to the ‘Flying Dutchman’ in peace, and write you something clever for the Atlantic. I snap my fingers at you and Bazin,[34] wore he even the helmet of Mambrino. Nothing can touch me further. ‘Under the Willows and other Poems’—it satisfies every want, and will be immensely popular. The basketmakers will buy up the first edition and the gunpowder makers the second. Then comes the general public, mad with curiosity to know what the d—l I mean. I am charmed with my own powers of invention. A duller man would have said ‘Under the Elms,’ or some such things. Let me alone for tickling the fancy of a purchaser. I know what they want.”
To Mr. Norton he writes, reciting his tribulations over the name of his book, and adds: “I was suddenly moved to finish my ‘Voyage to Vinland,’ part of which you remember was written eighteen years ago.[35] I meant to have made it much longer, but maybe it is better as it is. I clapt a beginning upon it, patched it in the middle, and then got to what had always been my favorite part of the plan. This was to be a prophecy by Gudrida, a woman who went with them, of the future America.
