And elsewhere we are reminded that
Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time,
With eyes uplift the poet's soul should look
Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook
One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime;
To him the earth is ever in her prime
And dewiness of morning; he can see
Good lying hid, from all eternity,
Within the teeming womb of sin and crime.[1]
The true poet is thus an evangelist of good things to come—an apostle of the kingdom of heaven as at hand, nay, as already set up—a revealer of "golden glimpses of To Be"—a lark
Of Truth's morning, from the dark
Raining down melodious hope
Of a freer, broader scope,
Aspirations, prophecies,
Of the spirit's full sunrise;
while the untrue, unfaithful poet is but a noisome bird of night,
Which with eyes refusing light,
Hoots from out some hollow tree
Of the world's idolatry,[2]
The Past is nehushtan to very many in America, who feel in its shadow a presence not solemn or softening, but chilly and blighting, and who therefore assume the attitude of iconoclasts toward its eikon basilikè; of such is Mr. Lowell—susceptible as he may be to the poetry of the past:
Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest,
The wingèd brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan;
The serf of his own Past is not a man;
To change and change is life, to move and never rest;—
Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.[3]
Among the special abuses of the Present, as fatal legacies of the Past, which he assails, naturally the "peculiar institution" occupies a front rank. Slavery he denounces as eagerly as any Garrison, or Stowe, or Whittier can do: sometimes with bitter sarcasm, as in the stanzas entitled "An Interview with Miles Standish"—sometimes with burning indignation,. as in those "On the Capture of certain fugitive Slaves near Washington," a generous outburst of impassioned invective and prophetic remonstrance,—or with contemptuous aversion, as in the eulogy on John G. Palfrey,—or with the quietness that comes of faith in better times, as in the sonnet which declares "slave" to be "no word of deathless lineage sprung," but one in protest against which
Too many noble souls have thought and died,
Too many mighty poets lived and sung,
And our good Saxon, from lips purified
With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath wrung
Too long,
