Part 1

James Russell Lowell.

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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

HEARTSEASE AND RUE

BY

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1888

Copyright, 1888, BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

_Along the wayside where we pass bloom few_ _Gay plants of heartsease, more of saddening rue;_ _So life is mingled; so should poems be_ _That speak a conscious word to you and me._

CONTENTS.

I.

FRIENDSHIP.

PAGE

AGASSIZ 1

TO HOLMES ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 23

IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYÁM 26

ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON’S “OLD WORLD IDYLLS” 27

TO C. F. BRADFORD ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE 29

BANKSIDE 32

JOSEPH WINLOCK 36

SONNET. TO FANNY ALEXANDER 37

JEFFRIES WYMAN 38

TO A FRIEND 39

WITH AN ARMCHAIR 40

E. G. DE R. 41

BON VOYAGE! 42

TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 43

ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF H. G. WILD 44

TO MISS D. T. 45

WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE 46

ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARA 47

AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 49

II.

SENTIMENT.

ENDYMION 61

THE BLACK PREACHER 70

ARCADIA REDIVIVA 74

THE NEST 78

A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS 81

BIRTHDAY VERSES 83

ESTRANGEMENT 85

PHŒBE 86

DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE 89

THE RECALL 91

ABSENCE 92

MONNA LISA 93

THE OPTIMIST 94

ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS 96

THE PROTEST 99

THE PETITION 100

FACT OR FANCY? 101

AGRO-DOLCE 103

THE BROKEN TRYST 104

CASA SIN ALMA 105

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 106

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY 108

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA 109

SONNET. SCOTTISH BORDER 110

SONNET. ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE 111

THE DANCING BEAR 112

THE MAPLE 113

NIGHTWATCHES 114

DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES 115

PRISON OF CERVANTES 116

TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN 117

THE EYE’S TREASURY 118

PESSIMOPTIMISM 119

THE BRAKES 120

A FOREBODING 121

III.

FANCY.

UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES 125

LOVE’S CLOCK 127

ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS 129

TELEPATHY 131

SCHERZO 132

“FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT” 134

AUSPEX 136

THE PREGNANT COMMENT 137

THE LESSON 139

SCIENCE AND POETRY 141

A NEW YEAR’S GREETING 142

THE DISCOVERY 143

WITH A SEASHELL 144

THE SECRET 146

IV.

HUMOR AND SATIRE.

FITZ ADAM’S STORY 149

THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY 173

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 177

CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE 180

TEMPORA MUTANTUR 189

IN THE HALF-WAY HOUSE 192

AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 196

IN AN ALBUM 205

AT THE COMMENCEMENT DINNER, 1866 207

A PARABLE 212

V.

EPIGRAMS.

SAYINGS 215

INSCRIPTIONS

FOR A BELL AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 216

FOR A MEMORIAL WINDOW TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH 216

PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON 216

A MISCONCEPTION 217

THE BOSS 217

SUN-WORSHIP 217

CHANGED PERSPECTIVE 217

WITH A PAIR OF GLOVES LOST IN A WAGER 218

SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY 218

I.

FRIENDSHIP.

POEMS.

AGASSIZ.

Come Dicesti _egli ebbe_? non viv' egli ancora? Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome?

I. 1.

The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, Confutes poor Hope’s last fallacy of ease,-- The distance that divided her from ill: Earth sentient seems again as when of old The horny foot of Pan Stamped, and the conscious horror ran Beneath men’s feet through all her fibres cold: Space’s blue walls are mined; we feel the throe From underground of our night-mantled foe: The flame-winged feet Of Trade’s new Mercury, that dry-shod run Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, Are mercilessly fleet, And at a bound annihilate Ocean’s prerogative of short reprieve; Surely ill news might wait, And man be patient of delay to grieve: Letters have sympathies And tell-tale faces that reveal, To senses finer than the eyes, Their errand’s purport ere we break the seal; They wind a sorrow round with circumstance To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance The inexorable face: But now Fate stuns as with a mace; The savage of the skies, that men have caught And some scant use of language taught, Tells only what he must,-- The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust.

2.

So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise Yet scramble for no less, And read of public scandal, private fraud, Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, And all the unwholesome mess The Land of Honest Abraham serves of late To teach the Old World how to wait, When suddenly, As happens if the brain, from overweight Of blood, infect the eye, Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, And reeled commingling: _Agassiz is dead._ As when, beneath the street’s familiar jar, An earthquake’s alien omen rumbles far, Men listen and forebode, I hung my head, And strove the present to recall, As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall.

3.

Uprooted is our mountain oak, That promised long security of shade And brooding-place for many a wingëd thought; Not by Time’s softly-warning stroke With pauses of relenting pity stayed, But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed, From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught And in his broad maturity betrayed!

4.

Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, O mountains woods and streams, To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too; But simpler moods befit our modern themes, And no less perfect birth of nature can, Though they yearn tow’rd him, sympathize with man, Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, And drown in music the heart’s bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben,-- For he was masculine from head to heel. Nay, let himself stand undiminished by With those clear parts of him that will not die. Himself from out the recent dark I claim To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; To show himself, as still I seem to see, A mortal, built upon the antique plan, Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran, And taking life as simply as a tree! To claim my foiled good-bye let him appear, Large-limbed and human as I saw him near, Loosed from the stiffening uniform of fame: And let me treat him largely: I should fear, (If with too prying lens I chanced to err, Mistaking catalogue for character,) His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. Nor would I scant him with judicial breath And turn mere critic in an epitaph; I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death, And would but memorize the shining half Of his large nature that was turned to me: Fain had I joined with those that honored him With eyes that darkened because his were dim, And now been silent: but it might not be.

II. 1.

In some the genius is a thing apart, A pillared hermit of the brain, Hoarding with incommunicable art Its intellectual gain; Man’s web of circumstance and fate They from their perch of self observe, Indifferent as the figures on a slate Are to the planet’s sun-swung curve Whose bright returns they calculate; Their nice adjustment, part to part, Were shaken from its serviceable mood By unpremeditated stirs of heart Or jar of human neighborhood: Some find their natural selves, and only then, In furloughs of divine escape from men, And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, Driven by some instinct of desire, They wander worldward, ’tis to blink and stare, Like wild things of the wood about a fire, Dazed by the social glow they cannot share; His nature brooked no lonely lair, But basked and bourgeoned in copartnery, Companionship, and open-windowed glee: He knew, for he had tried, Those speculative heights that lure The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, Tow’rd ether too attenuately pure For sweet unconscious breath, though dear to pride, But better loved the foothold sure Of paths that wind by old abodes of men Who hope at last the churchyard’s peace secure, And follow time-worn rules, that them suffice, Learned from their sires, traditionally wise, Careful of honest custom’s how and when; His mind, too brave to look on Truth askance, No more those habitudes of faith could share, But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss manse, Lingered around them still and fain would spare. Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, The enigma of creation to surprise, His truer instinct sought the life that speaks Without a mystery from kindly eyes; In no self-spun cocoon of prudence wound, He by the touch of men was best inspired, And caught his native greatness at rebound From generosities itself had fired; Then how the heat through every fibre ran, Felt in the gathering presence of the man, While the apt word and gesture came unbid! Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, Fined all his blood to thought, And ran the molten man in all he said or did. All Tully’s rules and all Quintilian’s too He by the light of listening faces knew, And his rapt audience all unconscious lent Their own roused force to make him eloquent; Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring To find new charm in accents not her own; Her coy constraints and icy hindrances Melted upon his lips to natural ease, As a brook’s fetters swell the dance of spring. Nor yet all sweetness: not in vain he wore, Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled By velvet courtesy or caution cold, That sword of honest anger prized of old, But, with two-handed wrath, If baseness or pretension crossed his path, Struck once nor needed to strike more.

2.

His magic was not far to seek,-- He was so human! Whether strong or weak, Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, But sate an equal guest at every board: No beggar ever felt him condescend, No prince presume; for still himself he bare At manhood’s simple level, and where’er He met a stranger, there he left a friend. How large an aspect! nobly unsevere, With freshness round him of Olympian cheer, Like visits of those earthly gods he came; His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, Doubled the feast without a miracle, And on the hearthstone danced a happier flame; Philemon’s crabbed vintage grew benign; Amphitryon’s gold-juice humanized to wine.

III. 1.

The garrulous memories Gather again from all their far-flown nooks, Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks Thicken their twilight files Tow’rd Tintern’s gray repose of roofless aisles: Once more I see him at the table’s head When Saturday her monthly banquet spread To scholars, poets, wits, All choice, some famous, loving things, not names, And so without a twinge at others' fames; Such company as wisest moods befits, Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth Of undeliberate mirth, Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, Now with the stars and now with equal zest Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest.

2.

I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, The living and the dead I see again, And but my chair is empty; ’mid them all ’Tis I that seem the dead: they all remain Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain: Well nigh I doubt which world is real most, Of sense or spirit, to the truly sane; In this abstraction it were light to deem Myself the figment of some stronger dream; They are the real things, and I the ghost That glide unhindered through the solid door, Vainly for recognition seek from chair to chair, And strive to speak and am but futile air, As truly most of us are little more.

3.

Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, The latest parted thence, His features poised in genial armistice And armed neutrality of self-defence Beneath the forehead’s walled preëminence, While Tyro, plucking facts with careless reach, Settles off-hand our human how and whence; The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing hears The infallible strategy of volunteers Making through Nature’s walls its easy breach, And seems to learn where he alone could teach. Ample and ruddy, the board’s end he fills As he our fireside were, our light and heat, Centre where minds diverse and various skills Find their warm nook and stretch unhampered feet; I see the firm benignity of face, Wide-smiling champaign, without tameness sweet, The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, The eyes whose sunshine runs before the lips While Holmes’s rockets curve their long ellipse, And burst in seeds of fire that burst again To drop in scintillating rain.

4.

There too the face half-rustic, half-divine, Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with humor fine, Of him who taught us not to mow and mope About our fancied selves, but seek our scope In Nature’s world and Man’s, nor fade to hollow trope, Content with our New World and timely bold To challenge the o’ermastery of the Old; Listening with eyes averse I see him sit Pricked with the cider of the Judge’s wit (Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh again), While the wise nose’s firm-built aquiline Curves sharper to restrain The merriment whose most unruly moods Pass not the dumb laugh learned in listening woods Of silence-shedding pine: Hard by is he whose art’s consoling spell Hath given both worlds a whiff of asphodel, His look still vernal ’mid the wintry ring Of petals that remember, not foretell, The paler primrose of a second spring.

5.

And more there are: but other forms arise And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer eyes: First he from sympathy still held apart By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow’s sweep Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, And steeped in doom familiar field and hill,-- New England’s poet, soul reserved and deep, November nature with a name of May, Whom high o’er Concord plains we laid to sleep, While the orchards mocked us in their white array And building robins wondered at our tears, Snatched in his prime, the shape august That should have stood unbent ’neath fourscore years, The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, All gone to speechless dust. And he our passing guest, Shy nature, too, and stung with life’s unrest, Whom we too briefly had but could not hold, Who brought ripe Oxford’s culture to our board, The Past’s incalculable hoard, Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old, Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements sweet With immemorial lisp of musing feet; Young head time-tonsured smoother than a friar’s, Boy face, but grave with answerless desires, Poet in all that poets have of best, But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy aims, Who now hath found sure rest, Not by still Isis or historic Thames, Nor by the Charles he tried to love with me, But, not misplaced, by Arno’s hallowed brim, Nor scorned by Santa Croce’s neighboring fames, Haply not mindless, wheresoe’er he be, Of violets that to-day I scattered over him; He, too, is there, After the good centurion fitly named, Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, Still found the surer friend where least he hoped the praise.

6.

Yea truly, as the sallowing years Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves Pushed by the misty touch of shortening days, And that unwakened winter nears, ’Tis the void chair our surest guest receives, ’Tis lips long cold that give the warmest kiss, ’Tis the lost voice comes oftenest to our ears; We count our rosary by the beads we miss: To me, at least, it seemeth so, An exile in the land once found divine, While my starved fire burns low, And homeless winds at the loose casement whine Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apennine.

IV. 1.