41. The original edition has "grasping" instead of "groping."
42. Climbs to a soul, etc.: In his intimate sympathy with nature, Lowell endows her forms with conscious life, as Wordsworth did, who says in Lines Written in Early Spring:
"And 't is my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes."
So Lowell in The Cathedral says:
"And I believe the brown earth takes delight,
In the new snow-drop looking back at her,
To think that by some vernal alchemy
It could transmute her darkness into pearl."
So again he says in Under the Willows:
"I in June am midway to believe
A tree among my far progenitors,
Such sympathy is mine with all the race,
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet
There is between us."
It must be remembered that this humanizing of nature is an attitude toward natural objects characteristic only of modern poetry, being practically unknown in English poetry before the period of Burns and Wordsworth.
45. The cowslip startles: Surprises the eye with its bright patches of green sprinkled with golden blossoms. Cowslip is the common name in New England for the marsh-marigold, which appears early in spring in low wet meadows, and furnishes not infrequently a savory "mess of greens" for the farmer's dinner-table.
46. Compare Al Fresco, lines 34-39: