The Vision of Sir Launfal Part 14

46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of this detail of the picture. Compare Bryant's _Death of the Flowers:_

"And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day."

50. Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, _The Birch Tree._

68. Lavish of their long-hid gold: The chestnut leaves, it will be remembered, turn to a bright golden yellow in autumn. These descriptions of autumn foliage are all as true as beautiful.

73. Maple-swamps: We generally speak of the swamp-maple, which grows in low ground, and has particularly brilliant foliage in autumn.

82. Tangled blackberry: This is the creeping blackberry of course, which every one remembers whose feet have been caught in its p.r.i.c.kly tangles.

91. Martyr oak: The oak is surrounded with the blazing foliage of the ivy, like a burning martyr.

99. Dear marshes: The Charles River near Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes, the characteristic features of which Lowell describes with minute and loving fidelity.

127. Bobolink: If Lowell had a favorite bird, it was the bobolink, although the oriole was a close compet.i.tor for his praises. In one of his letters he says: "I think the bobolink the best singer in the world, even undervaluing the lark and the nightingale in the comparison." And in another he writes: "That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I always date the New Year from the day of my first draught.

Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all _arriere pensee_ about getting a livelihood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me--makes a business of it and pipes as it were by the yard--but Bob squanders song like a poet."

Compare the description in _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line:_

"'Nuff said, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air."

See also the opening lines of _Under the Willows_ for another description full of the ecstasy of both bird and poet. The two pa.s.sages woven together appear in the essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_, as a quotation. An early poem on _The Bobolink_, delightful and widely popular, was omitted from later editions of his poems by Lowell, perhaps because to his maturer taste the theme was too much moralized in his early manner. "Sh.e.l.ley and Wordsworth," says Mr.

Brownell, "have not more worthily immortalized the skylark than Lowell has the bobolink, its New England congener."

134. Another change: The description now returns to the marshes.

147. Simond's hill: In the essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_ Lowell describes the village as seen from the top of this hill.

159-161. An allusion to the Mexican War, against which Lowell was directing the satire of the _Biglow Papers_.

174-182. Compare the winter pictures in Whittier's _s...o...b..und_.

177. Formal candles: Candles lighted for some form or ceremony, as in a religious service.

192. Stonehenge: Stonehenge on Salisbury plain in the south of England is famous for its huge blocks of stone now lying in confusion, supposed to be the remains of an ancient Druid temple.

207. Sanding: The continuance of the metaphor in "higher waves" are "whelming." With high waves the sand is brought in upon the land, encroaching upon its limits.

209. Muses' factories: The buildings of Harvard College.

218. House-bespotted swell: Lowell notes with some resentment the change from nature's simple beauties to the pretentiousness of wealth shown in incongruous buildings.

220. Cits: Contracted from citizens. During the French Revolution, when all t.i.tles were abolished, the term _citizen_ was applied to every one, to denote democratic simplicity and equality.

223. Gentle Allston: Was.h.i.+ngton Allston, the celebrated painter, whom Lowell describes as he remembered him in the charming essay _Cambridge Thirty Years Ago_.

225. Virgilium vidi tantum: I barely saw Virgil--caught a glimpse of him--a phrase applied to any pa.s.sing glimpse of greatness.

227. Undine-like: Undine, a graceful water nymph, is the heroine of the charming little romantic story by De la Motte Fouque.

234. The village blacksmith: See Longfellow's famous poem, _The Village Blacksmith_. The chestnut was cut down in 1876. An arm-chair made from its wood still stands in the Longfellow house, a gift to Longfellow from the Cambridge school children.

254. Six old willows: These much-loved trees afforded Lowell a subject for a later poem _Under the Willows_, in which he describes particularly one ancient willow that had been spared, he "knows not by what grace" by the ruthless "New World subduers"--

"One of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh."

In a letter written twenty years after the _Reverie_ to J.T. Fields, Lowell says: "My heart was almost broken yesterday by seeing nailed to _my_ willow a board with these words on it, 'These trees for sale.'

The wretch is going to peddle them for firewood! If I had the money, I would buy the piece of ground they stand on to save them--the dear friends of a lifetime."

255. Paul Potter: One of the most famous of the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, notable for the strong realism of his work.

264. Collegisse juvat: The full sentence, in the first ode of Horace, reads, "Curriculo pulverem Olympic.u.m collegisse juvat." (It is a pleasure to have collected the dust of Olympus on one's chariot wheels.) The allusion is to the Olympic games, the most celebrated festival of Greece. Lowell puns upon the word _collegisse_ with his own coinage, which may have the double meaning of _going to college_ and _collecting._

272. Blinding anguish: An allusion to the death of his little daughter Blanche. See _The Changeling, The First Snow-fall,_ and _She Came and Went_.

_THE OAK_

11. Uncinctured front: The forehead no longer encircled with a crown.

13-16. There is a little confusion in the figures here, the cathedral part of the picture being a little far fetched.

40. Mad Pucks: Puck is the frolicsome, mischief-making spirit of Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream._

45. Dodona grove: The grove of oaks at Dodona was the seat of a famous Greek oracle, whose responses were whispered through the murmuring foliage of the trees.

_BEAVER BROOK_

Beaver Brook at Waverley was a favorite resort of Lowell's and it is often mentioned in his writings. In summer and winter it was the frequent goal of his walks. The poem was at first called _The Mill_.

It was first published in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and to the editor, Sidney H. Gay, Lowell wrote:--"Don't you like the poem I sent you last week? I was inclined to think pretty well of it, but I have not seen it in print yet. The little mill stands in a valley between one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest spots in the world.

It is one of my lions, and if you will make me a visit this spring, I will take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you 'the oaks'--the largest, I fancy, left in the country."

21. Undine: In mythology and romance, Undine is a water-spirit who is endowed with a soul by her marriage with a mortal. The _race_ is the watercourse conducted, from the dam in an open trough or "penstock" to the wheel.

45. In that new childhood of the Earth: This poem was written a few weeks after the _Vision of Sir Launfal_ was published, and it therefore naturally partakes of its idealism.

_THE PRESENT CRISIS_