1 Margaret Fuller. Lowell wrote to Briggs, March 26, 1848: 'I think I shall say nothing about Margaret Fuller (though she offer so fair a_target), because she has done me an ill-natured turn. I shall revenge myself amply upon her by writing better. She is a very foolish, conceited woman, who has got together a great deal of information, but not enough knowledge to save her from being ill-tempered. However, the temptation may be too strong for me. It certainly would have been if she had never said anything about me. Even Maria thinks I ought to give her a line or two.' Lowell's Letters, vol. i, p. 128. Quoted by permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) See Margaret Fuller's Papers on Literature and Art, or Greenslet's Lowell, p. 63; and Poe's review of the Fable for Critics, in his Works, vol. xiii, pp. 165-175.

'Quite out of conceit! I'm enchanted to

hear it,'

Cried Apollo aside. Who 'd have thought she was near it?

To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those commodities

One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is

450

As if Neptune should say to his turbots and whitings,

"I'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own writings "

(Which, as she in her own happy manner has said,

Sound a depth, for 't is one of the functions of lead).

She often has asked me if I could not find A place somewhere near me that suited her mind;

I know but a single one vacant, which she, With her rare talent that way, would fit to a T.

And it would not imply any pause or cessation

In the work she esteems her peculiar vocation, —

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That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies,

490

And my ear with that music impregnate may be,

Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea,

Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven

To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven;

But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I speak,

Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek,

I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line

In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.

That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart

Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,

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"T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife

As quiet and chaste as the author's own life.

1 The only passage in "A Fable for Critics" which he [later] dwelt upon with genuine delight was his apostrophe to Massachusetts, and that is almost out of key with the rest of the poem.' (Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 266.) The passage should now be read as an apostrophe to America rather than to Massachusetts. It is far more true of the West than of New England, and of America as a whole than of any section.

praise of mine,

She learned from her mother a precept divine

About something that butters no parsnips, her forte

In another direction lies, work is her sport

(Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will,

If you talk about Plymouth and red Bunker's hill).

Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night,

Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burning bright,

And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking,

Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, 580 Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving,

Whether flour 'll be so dear, for, as sure as she's living,

She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig

By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big,

And whether to sell it outright will be best,

Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest, —

At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel!

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel;

So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz

Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is.'

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That are trodden upon are your own or your foes'.

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 2

Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies;

With our faint hearts the mountain
strives;

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;

1 According to the mythology of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems.

The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the supposed date of King Arthur's reign. (LOWELL.) 2 Holmes begins a poem of welcome to Lowell on his return from England:

This is your month, the month of perfect days.' June was indeed Lowell's month. Not only in the famous passage of this 'Prelude,' but in Under the Willows' (originally called 'A June Idyl'), 'Al Fresco (originally A Day in June'), 'Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line' of the Biglow Papers, and 'The Nightingale in the Study,' he has made it peculiarly his

own.

3 Heaven lies about us in our Infancy! (WORDSWORTH, in the fifth stanza of the 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality.'

4 See Lowell's letter, of Sunday, September 3, 1848, to his friend C. F. Briggs.

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,

The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking:

"T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking;

No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may
be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June ? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might,

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An instinct within it that reaches and