The Vision of Sir Launfal Part 13

See also the charming prose description in _My Garden Acquaintance_.

338. Summer's long siege at last is o'er: The return to this figure rounds out the story and serves to give unity to the plan of the poem.

The siege is successful, summer has conquered and entered the castle, warming and lighting its cold, cheerless interior.

342, 343. Is Lowell expressing here his own convictions about ideal democracy?

_THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS_

Apollo, the G.o.d of music, having given offense to Zeus, was condemned to serve for the s.p.a.ce of one year as a shepherd under Admetus, King of Thessaly. This is one of the most charming of the myths of Apollo, and has been often used by the poets. Remarking upon this poem, and others of its period, Scudder says that it shows "how persistently in Lowell's mind was present this aspect of the poet which makes him a seer," a recognition of an "all-embracing, all-penetrating power which through the poet trans.m.u.tes nature into something finer and more eternal, and gives him a vantage ground from which to perceive more truly the realities of life." Compare with this poem _An Incident in a Railroad Car_.

5. Lyre: According to mythology, Apollo's lyre was a tortoise-sh.e.l.l strung with seven strings.

8. f.a.gots for a witch: The introduction of this witch element into a Greek legend rather mars the consistency of the poem. Lowell finally subst.i.tuted for the stanza the following:

"Upon an empty tortoise-sh.e.l.l He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew."

_HEBE_

Lowell suggests in this dainty symbolical lyric his conception of the poet's inspiration. Hebe was cup-bearer to the G.o.ds of Olympus, in Greek mythology, and poured for them their nectar. She was also the G.o.ddess of eternal youth. By an extension of the symbolism she becomes G.o.ddess of the eternal joyousness of the poetic gift. The "influence fleet" is the divine afflatus that fills the creative mind of the poet. But Pegasus cannot be made to work in harness at will. True inspiration comes only in choice moments. Coy Hebe cannot be wooed violently. Elsewhere he says of the muse:

"Hara.s.s her not; thy heat and stir But greater coyness breed in her."

"Follow thy life," he says, "be true to thy best self, then Hebe will bring her choicest ambrosia." That is--

"Make thyself rich, and then the Muse Shall court thy precious interviews, Shall take thy head upon her knee, And such enchantment lilt to thee, That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow From farthest stars to gra.s.s-blades low."

_TO THE DANDELION_

Four stanzas were added to this poem after its first appearance, the sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth, but in the finally revised edition these were cut out, very likely because Lowell regarded them as too didactic. Indeed the poem is complete and more artistic without them.

"Of Lowell's earlier pieces," says Stedman, "the one which shows the finest sense of the poetry of nature is that addressed _To the Dandelion_. The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intuitively, and both thought and language are felicitous throughout. This poem contains many of its author's peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling."

6. Eldorado: The land of gold, supposed to be somewhere in South America, which the European adventurers, especially the Spaniards, were constantly seeking in the sixteenth century.

27. Sybaris: An ancient Greek colony in southern Italy whose inhabitants were devoted to luxury and pleasure.

52-54. Compare _Sir Launfal._

_MY LOVE_

Lowell's love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in this little poem. He wrote it at about the time of their engagement. While it is thus personal in its origin, it is universal in its expression of ideal womanhood, and so has a permanent interest and appeal. In its strong simplicity and crystal purity of style, it is a little masterpiece. Though filled with the pa.s.sion of his new and beautiful love, its movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of one of Wordsworth's best lyrics.

_THE CHANGELING_

This is one of the tender little poems that refer to the death of the poet's daughter Blanche, which occurred in March, 1847. _The First Snow-fall_ and _She Came and Went_ embody the same personal grief.

When sending the former to his friend Sydney H. Gay for publication, he wrote: "May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you." Underwood, in his _Biographical Sketch_ says that "friends of the poet, who were admitted to the study in the upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes that hung over a picture-frame." The volume in which this poem first appeared contained this dedication--"To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little Blanche this volume is reverently dedicated."

A changeling, according to folk-lore and fairy tale, is a fairy child that the fairies subst.i.tute for a human child that they have stolen.

The changeling was generally sickly, shrivelled and in every way repulsive. Here the poet reverses the superst.i.tion, subst.i.tuting the angels for the mischievous fairies, who bring an angel child in place of the lost one. Whittier has a poem on the same theme, _The Changeling._

29. Zingari: The Gypsies--suggested by "wandering angels" above--who wander about the earth, and also sometimes steal children, according to popular belief.

52. Bliss it: A rather violent use of the word, not recognized by the dictionaries, but nevertheless felicitous.

_AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE_

Lowell's love of Elmwood and its surroundings finds expression everywhere in his writings, both prose and verse, but nowhere in a more direct, personal manner than in this poem. He was not yet thirty when the poem was written, and Cambridge could still be called a "village," but the familiar scenes already had their retrospective charms, which increased with the pa.s.sing years. Later in life he again celebrated his affection for this home environment in _Under the Willows._

"There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole, so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with beauty in the soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding through the marshes, the distant sound of the ploughman, the near chatter of the chipmunk, the individual trees, each living its own life, the march of the seasons flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of human life a.s.sociated with his own experience, the hurried, survey of his village years--all these pictures float before his vision; and then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of the singer's voice with tears, there wells up the thought of the little life which held as in one precious drop the love and faith of his heart."

1. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially a.s.sociated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied that region.

5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the G.o.ds at their feasts on Olympus.

Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence.

11. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own, rather than receiving the influence from nature's mood.

25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning in the fields of Boaz, see the book of _Ruth_, ii.

38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had "squirrel" here, which would be inconsistent with the "underground fastness." And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees?

40. This line originally read, "with a chipping bound." _Cheeping_ is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like "cheep," or "chip."

45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble and other refuse of the season before his "fall plowing."