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The striking characteristics of this passage are similar to those noted in the extract from "Sir Launfal." There is a whole chapter of poetical botany in it and the immediately following lines; and there are some interesting hints at bird-lore; but it is all such knowledge as any sensitive, intelligent observer can obtain for himself. Lines 4-6 and 21-22 are examples of the perfect realism and delicate fancy with which the characteristic beauties of our spring blossoms are pointed out. Let the student search out others for himself. The dialect is admirably managed in this selection. It gives a racy, countrified flavor to the whole passage which greatly increases the effect. And if the dialect of "The Biglow Papers" is studied, with the guidance of the introduction to the second series, the study will amount to a respectable little course in the history of our language.

Some of Lowell's strongest work has been done in lyric poetry. Among the earlier poems no one more fully expresses the deepest soul of the poet than "The Present Crisis," and probably none has more deeply moved other men. It expresses the poet's ideal of progress, in thought and in reform. Written for a special crisis, it fits all crises, when the question is between old abuses and new reforms. It is full of lines that cling to the memory, and will always be quoted by those who are leading toward better things.

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong, And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, — Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

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New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of

Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate

winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

There is an inspiring march movement in these long trochaic lines. We feel as we read them that we are keeping step with the great army of progress who march "abreast with Truth"; and the strong thought is thus fitted with a strong expression. Lowell's later volumes include two extended meditative poems, full of suggestive thought: "Under the Willows," and "The Cathedral." But it is the judgment of many critics that he reached the highest point of his poetical career in the "Harvard Commemoration Ode," written in 1865, in honor of the graduates and students of Harvard University who had given their lives in the Civil War. It is probably the noblest ode in American Literature, and for eloquent expression of noble thoughts distinguished among all such compositions.

Take from the " Commemoration

Ode" some

passages in the sixth strophe, in which the character of Lincoln is described.

5

Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

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They could not choose but trust

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In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,

And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

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Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

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These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.1

1 Copyright, 1865, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston.

*

The metaphors and similes used here are notable for their freshness and force. See lines 5, 11-13, 17. The last, especially, is thoroughly American, and happily adapted to the circumstance that Lincoln came to the Presidency from the prairie state of Illinois. The epithets are especially suggestive, and well suited to the character they illustrate. Thus "supple-tempered will," line 12; "level-lined," line 17. There are a number of lines in this selection which are notable for their clear, strong expression of thought. Read lines 8, 19, 21, 28-30, and especially the closing line. In all of these the thought crowds the words full, and yet it is clearly uttered. This is the secret of effective writing. To say fully what is in your mind, yet not to use a word more than is needed, is the problem. Then the form of the sentence and the words chosen have much to do with the effect. We notice in these lines the sound effects we have noted so often. The last line is one of those rare phrases struck out in the glow of composition, which put into a very few words what many people have tried to say, but knew not how. It characterizes Lincoln, as no one else has succeeded in doing. That is the remarkable thing about this strophe of the ode. It gave within a few months of Lincoln's death the judgment of posterity, as to his fame, not in general terms, but with a nice discrimination of the essential quality of his great

ness.

Perhaps most truly American, and certainly most intensely "New England," of the New England

John Greenleaf Whittier, born in Massachusetts, 1807;

died in New

poets, was John Greenleaf Whittier. He was a farmer's boy, whose childhood was spent in the ordinary work of one of the hill farms of Massachusetts. His education was such as could be ob

Hampshire, tained in the district school, followed by a few

1892.

interrupted terms in the academy, and some district school teaching, for which his academy studies were supposed to prepare him, supplemented by the very few books that could be found in his father's house. In these respects his life is sharply contrasted with the scholastic career of the other New England poets. A volume of Burns' poems, which came into his hands when he was fourteen years old, had much to do with his true education. The impulse to poetry came very early in life; and he began, when yet a lad, to send his verses to the papers. Some lines printed in the "Liberator" attracted the attention of William Lloyd Garrison, then its editor, and he sought out the young author, and encouraged him to give his pen to the cause of antislavery. Whittier's family were Friends, or Quakers; and the poet always retained his connection with that company of Christians. Thus he was by training, as well as by the natural tendency of his mind, inclined to take up the cause of the slave. In his early manhood he was actively engaged in political movements; but he saw that, if he was to be a successful agitator, he must give up hopes and plans for political preferment; and this sacrifice he deliberately made. At the same time he refused to follow Garrison in his rejection of all political action; but,

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