JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. We have nothing biographical to say respecting Mr. Lowell; we know not that his history presents any striking facts. He is the son of a distinguished Boston divine; he graduated at Harvard, and with high honors, and he wrote excellent poetry at an early age. But Lowell is a remarkable man and poet. He lacks the fire of Whittier; he is possibly inferior to many American poets in important respects, but that he is one of the first poets of this age no man will deny. He is sincerely a reformer; his sympathies are entirely with the oppressed and down-trodden; he has always been true to the cause of the negro slave, and many of his poems prove it. Some of his poems are exceedingly beautiful, while others are full of grand thoughts, which strike upon the ear and heart, like the booming cannon-shot, which tells that an ardently desired conflict has commenced. This class of poems are less fiery than Whittier's reform poetry, but a very few of them are, we have sometimes thought, characterized by more grandeur than any of Whit upon the same subject. tier's One of the most beautiful of Lowell's poems is that entitled "The Forlorn." It betrays the nature of his religion and philosophy; at least, it proves that his sympathies are with the poor and friendless. To us, it seems that this poem can never die—that some of its stanzas are unsurpassed by any modern poetry. THE FORLORN. THE night is dark, the stinging sleet, The street-lamps flare and struggle dim Through the white sleet-clouds as they pass, Or, governed by a boisterous whim, Drop down and rattle on the glass. One poor, heart-broken, out-cast girl Her tattered cloak more tightly draws. The flat brick walls look cold and bleak, Her bare feet to the side-walk freeze; Though faint with hunger and disease. The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, Makes colder the cold heart within. She lingers where a ruddy glow Streams outward through an open shutter, Giving more bitterness to woe, More loneliness to desertion utter. One half the cold she had not felt Until she saw this gush of light Spread warmly forth, and seemed to melt She hears a woman's voice within, Singing sweet words her childhood knew, And years of misery and sin Furl off and leave her heaven blue. Her freezing heart, like one who sinks Old fields, and clear blue summer days, Old meadows, green with grass and trees, That shimmer through the trembling bare, And whiten in the western breeze; Old faces-all the friendly past And sunshine from her childhood cast Enhaloed by a mild, warm glow, She hears old footsteps wandering slow Outside the porch below the door, Her cheek upon the cold, hard stone, She lies, no longer foul and poor, No longer dreary and alone. Next morning, something heavily A smile upon the wan lips told That she had found a calm release, For, whom the heart of man shuts out, With silence mid the world's loud din; And one of his great charities Is music, and it doth not scorn Far was she from her childhood's home, To die in maiden innocence. Mr. Lowell has shown that he is a wit and humorist in the publication of his "Biglow Papers." He is the only American who has attempted to laugh down the oppressors of the slave-the propagandists of slavery. Some of the Biglow poems are capital specimens of Yankee wit and humor. They are of course written purposely in the rough, exaggerated, Yankee style. Hosea gives his ideas of war as follows: "Ez for war, I call it murder,- Than my testyment for that; "God haz sed so plump and fairly, Ef you want to take in God." Occasionally in the midst of fun, a fine, grand verse occurs, which puts away all laughter from the face. For instance, the following verse from the same poem, from which the foregoing was extracted: "Massachusetts, God forgive her, She that ough' to stand so fearless While the wracks are round her hurled, Holdin' up a beacon peerless To the oppressed of all the world!" One of the most popular of Lowell's Biglow po ems, is that upon John P. Robinson. Cushing gets the following hit: "Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: In it General He's been on all sides that give places or pelf; Robinson he Sez he shall vote for Gineral C. |