RESURGAMUS.

'His arrowes an elle longWith pecocke well ydight,'

'His arrowes an elle long

With pecocke well ydight,'

which we gather, and our fair dames weave into brilliant fans that flutter and snap in many a gay assembly, and whose myriad eyes of blue and purple smile with irresistible mirthfulness into the most hostile countenances. Still Holmes apparently likes best the unrestrained freedom of prose. His genius delights in periods finished after its own heart,—pyramidal, trapezoidian, isoscelesian, rhomboidical. But Lowell's genius is infinitely pliable, accommodating itself without hesitation to the arbitrary requirements of the Sieur Spondee, and laughing in the face of the halting Dactyl. His Birdofredom could, we doubt not, sail majestically in the clouds of a stately hexameter, make the aristocratic Alexandrine cry for quarter, and excel the old Trouveurs in theRime équivoquée. From the quiet esteem which his early poems and essays had won for him, he leaped at once into the high tide of popularity, and down its stream

'Went sailing with vast celerity,'

with the 'Biglow Papers' for his sail. This work electrified the public. It pierced the crust of refinement and intelligence, and roused the latent laughter of its heart. Even newsboys chuckled with delight over its caustic hits at the powers that were, against which, with the characteristic precocity of Young America, each had his private individual spite; while they found in its peculiar phraseology a mine of fun. Patriots rejoiced that one vigilant thinker dared stand guard over our national honor, with the two-edged sword of satire in his hand. Men in authority, at whom the shafts of its scathing rebukes were leveled, writhed on their cushions of state, while, in sheer deference to his originality and humor, they laughed with the crowd at—themselves. And in sooth it was a goodly sight, the young scholar, who had hitherto only dabbled delicately with the treasures of poetry, whose name was a very synonym for elegance and the repose of a genial dignity, whom we suspected of no keen outlooks into the practical world of to-day,—to see this man suddenly flashing into the dusty arena, with indignation rustling through his veins and breathing more flame

'Than ten fire-kings could swallow,'

scorching with his burning words, which an inimitable carelessness made doubly effective, the willful absurdities of government and the palpable wrongs of society, to question which had seemed before almost a heresy. But Lowell's humor was the chrism, snatching together parallels whose apparent inequalities, yet real justice, were powerfully convincing. He never sought the inconsistencies of his subject, they flocked to meet him uninvited. And his infinite cheerfulness, his freedom, even in his most daring onslaughts, from ill-nature, these were the influences meet,

'That bowed our hearts like barley bending.'

Scarcely did we know our knight in his new armor. Off with the hauberk and visor, down with the glittering shield of his mediæval crusade, and, lo! with his hand on the plow and his eyes on the fair fields of his own New England, our country boy sings hisAve Aquila!while other men are rubbing the sunbeams of[pg 180]of the new-born day into their sleepy eyes.

And it was not alone in our own country that this newly developed phase of our poet's genius was acknowledged and applauded. Says a British Review, with an admiration whose reservations are unfortunately too just to be disputed: 'All at once we have a batch of small satirists,—Mr. Bailey at their head,—in England, and one really powerful satirist in America, namely, Mr. J.R. Lowell, whose "Biglow Papers" we most gladly welcome as being not only the best volume of satires since the Anti-Jacobin, but also the first work of real and efficient poetical genius which has reached us from the United States. We have been under the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American literature from time to time, and it is with hearty pleasure that we are now able to own that the Britishers have been for the present utterly and apparently hopelessly beaten by a Yankee in one important department of poetry. In the United States, social and political evils have a breadth and tangibility which are not at present to be found in the condition of any other civilized country. The "peculiar domestic institution," the fillibustering tendencies of the nation, the charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the shafts of the satirist, which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell. We do not pretend to affirm that the evils of European society may not be as great in their own way as those which affect the credit of the United States, with the exception, of course, of slavery, which makes American freedom deservedly the laughing-stock of the world; but what we do say is, that the evils in point have a boldness and simplicity which our more sophisticated follies have not, and that a hundred years hence Mr. Lowell's Yankee satires will be perfectly intelligible to every one.'

The predictions of the English reviewer are fulfilled already. The prescribed century has not elapsed, and in a decade the 'Yankee satires' are comprehended as perhaps even their author failed to comprehend as he created them. There is something positively startling and uncanny in his prophetic insight into the passions that have attained their majority in this present year of grace,—passions that,

'Like aconite, where'er they spread, they kill.'

He does not approach with the old show of superstitious reverence the altar of our vaunted destiny, where men have sung their in-secula-seculorums, while pagans at the chancel rail have been distributing to infidel hordes the relics of their holiest saints, and threatening the very fane itself with fire. Mere words will never strike him dumb. He does not bow to the shadow of Justice or kneel with the ignorant and unsuspicious at the shrine of every plausible Madonna by the roadside. Hear him on the constitutional pillars that heaven and earth are now moved to keep in place, and let us commiserate what must now be the distracting dread of Increse D. O'Phace, Esquire, lest some Samson in blind revenge entomb himself in the ruins of the Constitution.

'Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers,Our four fathers fetched with 'em over the billers,Them pillers the people so soundly hev slept on,Wile to slav'ry, invasion an' debt they were swept on,Wile our destiny higher an' higher kep mountin'(Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hands her account in).Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em,They won't hev so much ez a feather left in em.'

'Wy, all o' them grand constitootional pillers,

Our four fathers fetched with 'em over the billers,

Them pillers the people so soundly hev slept on,

Wile to slav'ry, invasion an' debt they were swept on,

Wile our destiny higher an' higher kep mountin'

(Though I guess folks'll stare wen she hands her account in).

Ef members in this way go kickin' agin 'em,

They won't hev so much ez a feather left in em.'

Not less wonderful than his penetration into political affairs is Lowell's command of the pure Yankee dialect. His knowledge of it is perfect; he elevates it to the dignity of a distinct tongue, having its own peculiar etymology, and only adopting the current rules of prosody in tender consideration for its thousands of English readers. There is, however, we are tolerably assured, a certain class of critics who venture to lament that this laughter-inspiring muse should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired,[pg 181]the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred. These are the dapper gentlemen, who, tripping gayly along to the blasts and tinklings of Lanner's Waltzes, would judge every man's intellect by the measure of their own. Know, oh dwarfed descendants of Procustes, that the quality of humor is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven; and if, after patient blending with grains of intolerance and egotism, in the mortar of your minds, it seems to you but that poisonous foam that of old sorcerers drew, by their incantations, from the moon, we can only smile with Voltaire at your 'foolish ingenuities,' and recommend to you a new career. 'Go pype in an ivy lefe,' Monsieur Mustard-seed, or 'blow the bukkes' horne.'

It is no trifling merit in a work of so extraordinary a character that the original programme should have been so perfectly carried out. The poet never relaxes, even into a Corinthian elegance of allusion; his metaphors are always fresh and ungarnished; they no more shine with the polish of the court than do those of Panurge. In fact, there is a flavor of the camp about them, a pleasant suspicion, and more than a suspicion, of life in the open air, the fresh smell of the up-turned earth, the odor of clover blossoms. The poet is walking in thefresco, and the sharp winds cut a pathway across every page. Equally remarkable and pervaded by a most delightful personality are the editorial lucubrations of the Rev. Homer Wilbur. The very lustre of the midnight oil shines upon their glittering fragments of philosophy, admirably twisted to suit the requirements of an eminently unphilosophical age; moral axioms from heathen writers applied judiciously to the immoral actions of Christian doers; distorted shadows of a monstrous political economy, and dispassionate and highly commendable views 'de propagandâ fide.' Like Johnson,

'He forced Latinisms into his line,Like raw undrilled recruits,'

'He forced Latinisms into his line,

Like raw undrilled recruits,'

that have yet done immense service in his conflicts with the enemy. This pedantry, so inimitable, is unequaled even by the most weighty pages of the 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' of Sir Thomas Browne. That it should prove obnoxious to some critics only testifies to its perfection and their own incapacity for enjoyment. If a man does not relish the caviare and truffles at a dinner, he does not question the wisdom of his Lucullus in providing them; the fault is in his own palate, not in the judgment of his host. The aggrieved individuals, who are either too weak or too indolent to scale the numberless peaks of Lowell's genius, may comfort themselves with the reflection that the treasures of their minds will never be tesselated into the mosaic of any satirist's fancy, for in them can abound only emptiness and cobwebs—as saith the Staphyla of Plautus:—

'Nam hic apud nos nihil est aliud qua sti furibus,Ita inaniis sunt oppletæ atque araneis.'

'Nam hic apud nos nihil est aliud qua sti furibus,

Ita inaniis sunt oppletæ atque araneis.'

Caricatures have never been disdained by the greatest minds. They were rather the healthful diversion of their leisure hours. Even the stern and rugged-natured artist, Annibale Caracci, was famous for his humorous inventions, and the good Leonardo da Vinci esteemed them as most useful exercises. We all remember the group of the Laocoon that Titian sketched with apes, and those whole humorous poems in lines found in Herculaneum, where Anchises and Æneas are represented with the heads of apes and pigs. Lessing even tells us in his Laocoon that in Thebes the rage for thesecaricaturawas so great that a law was passed forbidding the production of any work conflicting with the severe and absolute laws of beauty.

In quite another vein, yet transfused with the same irrepressible mirth, we have Lowell's 'Fable for Critics,' which, with its 'preliminary notes and few candid remarks to the reader,' is a literary curiosity whose parallel we have not in any work by an American author. It is all one merry outburst of youth and health, and music and poetry, with the spice of[pg 182]a criticism so rare and genial, that one could almost court dissection at his hands, for the mere exquisitely epicurean bliss of an artistic euthanasia. It is genius on a frolic, coquetting with all the Graces, and unearthing men long since become gnomes,

'In that countryWhere are neither stars nor meadows,'

'In that country

Where are neither stars nor meadows,'

to join in his merry carousing. They float on floods of Chian and moor their barks under 'hills of spice.' What golden wine of inspiration has our poet drunk, whose flush is on his brow and its fire in his veins? For every sentence of this poem is aglow with vigor and life and power;

'Its feeldes have een and its woodes have eeres.'

And if he sometimes stumbles over a metre or lets his private friendships and preferences run away with his cool discretion and judgment, why,bonus dormitat Homerus, let us, like the miser Euclio, be thankful for the good the gods vouchsafe us. Taken in themselves and without regard to their poetical surroundings, no more comprehensive, faithful, concise portraitures of our authors have ever been produced. They unite in the highest degree candor and justice, and there is withal a tone so kindly and a wit so pure, that we almost believe him to be describing a community of brothers affiliated by the close ties of deep mutual appreciation. He flings his diamonds of learning upon the page, and we recognize the scholar whom no extravagance in knowledge can make bankrupt. We seem to have come by rare chance upon one of those wardrobes of the early kings, wherein are all savory treasures,—the rose and violet colored sugars of Alexandria, sweet almonds, and sharp-toothed ginger. We pardon his puns, indeed we believe them to be inevitable, the flash of the percussion cap, the sparks of electricity, St. Elmo's stars, phosphorescent gleams, playing over the restless ocean of his fruitful imagination. And we are persuaded that if the venerable Democritus (who was uncanonized only because the Holy See was still wavering, an anomalous body, inWeissnichtwo, and who existed forty days on the mere sight of bread and honey) had been regaled with the piquant delicacies of Lowell's picture of a Critic, he might have continued unto this present. It is a satire so pleasantly constructed, so full of palpable hits at the 'musty dogmas' of the day, so rich in mirthful allusion, and with such a generously insinuated tribute to the true and earnest-hearted critic, that we know not which most to admire, the sketch, or the soul whence it emanated. The following description of a 'regular heavy reviewer' is complete:

'And here I must say he wrote excellent articlesOn the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles,They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for;And nobody read that which nobody cared for;If any old book reached a fiftieth edition,He could fill forty pages with safe erudition;He could gauge the old books by the new set of rules,And his very old nothings pleased very old fools.But give him a new book fresh out of the heart,And you put him at sea without compass or chart,—His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him,Exhausting the sap of the native, and true in him,So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite,New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet,Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must createIn the soul of their critic the measure and weight,Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace,To compute their own judge and assign him his place,Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it,And reporting each circumstance just as he found it,Without the least malice—his record would beProfoundly æsthetic as that of a flea,Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes,Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes,Or, borne by an Arab guide, venture to render aGeneral view of the ruins of Denderah.'

'And here I must say he wrote excellent articles

On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles,

They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for;

And nobody read that which nobody cared for;

If any old book reached a fiftieth edition,

He could fill forty pages with safe erudition;

He could gauge the old books by the new set of rules,

And his very old nothings pleased very old fools.

But give him a new book fresh out of the heart,

And you put him at sea without compass or chart,—

His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;

For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him,

Exhausting the sap of the native, and true in him,

So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,

Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite,

New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet,

Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create

In the soul of their critic the measure and weight,

Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace,

To compute their own judge and assign him his place,

Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it,

And reporting each circumstance just as he found it,

Without the least malice—his record would be

Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea,

Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes,

Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes,

Or, borne by an Arab guide, venture to render a

General view of the ruins of Denderah.'

[pg 183]

He draws with a few strokes of his magical charcoal a sharp silhouette of Brownson upon the wall of our waiting curiosity, fills in his sketch of Parker with a whole wilderness of classical shades, disposes of Willis with a kiss and a blow, gives pages of sharp pleasantries to Emerson, pays a graceful tribute to Whittier, and Hawthorne,—

'His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek,That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,—He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck;When Nature was shaping him, clay was not grantedFor making so full-sized a man as she wanted,So to fill out her model, a little she sparedFrom some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared,And she could not have hit a more excellent planFor making him fully and perfectly man.'

'His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek,

That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,—

He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a Puritan Tieck;

When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted

For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,

So to fill out her model, a little she spared

From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared,

And she could not have hit a more excellent plan

For making him fully and perfectly man.'

Turning backward from these evidences of Lowell's ripening powers to his early poems, astonishment at his versatility is the first emotion produced. It is hard to believe that the 'Biglow Papers' slid from under the hand that wrote the 'Prometheus' and the 'Legend of Brittany.' His genius flashes upon us like a certain flamboyant style of poetic architecture—the flowing, flame-like curves of his humor blending happily with the Gothic cusps of veneration for the old, with quaint ivy-leaves, green and still rustling under the wind and rain, springing easily out of its severer lines. What resistless magic is there in the fingers whose touch upon the same rich banks of keys, summons solemn, vibrant peals as of Beethoven's grandest fugues, endless harmonies as of the deep seas, and the light and graceful fantasies of Rossini, which are as the glad sunshine upon their waves. Truly the poet's gift is a divine and an awful one. His heart must needs be proud and humble too, who is claimed as nearer of kin than a brother by myriads of stranger souls, each, perhaps, owning its separate creed, and in whose unspoken prayers his name is ever present. In his 'Conversations on some of the old Poets,' we discover the alembic through which his crude opinions, his glowing impulses, his exquisitely minute discrimination were distilled;—the old poets, to whom the heart turns ever lovingly as to the wide west at eve. They were the nursing mothers of his intellectual infancy, and it is probably to his reverent but not blind esteem for them, his earnest study of them, not merely as poets, but as men, citizens, and friends, that much of the buoyancy and vigor of his poetry is to be attributed. The 'Conversations' themselves are alive with that enthusiasm and sympathetic inquiry that disproves the false saying of the Parisian Aspasia of Landor—'Poets are soon too old for mutual love.' They are the warm photographs of feeling as it bubbles from a burning heart; sometimes burned over-deep, with a leaning to fanaticism, but with so much of the generosity and justice of maturity in their decisions that these necessary errors of an ardent youth are overlooked, and the more as they have disappeared almost entirely from the productions of later years. He betrays in his quick conception of an author's mood and meaning a delicacy so extreme, an organization so nervously alive to beauties and discords, and a religious sentiment so cultured to the last degree of feeling, that we dread lest we shall encounter the weakness, morbidness or bigotry that naturally results from the contact of such a soul with the passions of everyday life, recalling the oft-quoted 'Medio in fonte leporum'—

'In the bowl where pleasures swim,The bitter rises to the brim,And roses from the veriest brakeMay press the temples till they ache.'

'In the bowl where pleasures swim,

The bitter rises to the brim,

And roses from the veriest brake

May press the temples till they ache.'

But among the roses of his criticisms we look in vain for thorns. In style, it is true, these essays are halting and unequal. His adoption of the colloquial form for the expression of opinion to the public has never seemed to us remarkably felicitous, in spite of its venerable precedents. Where his imagery becomes lofty and his flow of thought should be continuous, we are indignant at its sudden arrest, and involuntarily devote the intruder to a temporary bungalow in Timbuctoo.

[pg 184]

It is refreshing to lose the moony Tennysonian sensuousness which induced, with Lowell's vigorous imagination, the blank artificiality of style which was visible in several of his early poems. There was a tendency, too, to the Byzantine liberty of gilding the bronze of our common words, a palpable longing after theississimusof Latin adjectives, of whose softness our muscular and variegated language will not admit. Mr. Lowell's Sonnets, too, we could wish unwritten, not from any defect in their construction, but from a fancied want of congeniality between their character and his own. In spite of its Italian origin, the sonnet always seems to demand the severest classical outlines, both in spirit and expression, calm and steadfastly flowing without ripples or waves, a poem cut in the marble of stately cadences that imprison some vast and divine thought. Lowell is too elastic, impulsive, for a sonneteer. But considered apart from our peculiar ideas of the sonnet, the following is full of a very tender beauty:—

'I ask not for those thoughts that sudden leapFrom being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken,With whose great rise the ocean all is shaken,And a heart-tremble quivers through the deep;Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep,Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise,Which by the toil of gathering energiesTheir upward way into clear sunshine keep,Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences,Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of greenInto a pleasant island in the seas,Where, 'mid tall palms, the cave-roofed home is seenAnd wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour,Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power.'

'I ask not for those thoughts that sudden leap

From being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken,

With whose great rise the ocean all is shaken,

And a heart-tremble quivers through the deep;

Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep,

Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise,

Which by the toil of gathering energies

Their upward way into clear sunshine keep,

Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences,

Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green

Into a pleasant island in the seas,

Where, 'mid tall palms, the cave-roofed home is seen

And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour,

Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power.'

And what could be more drippingly quaint than his song to 'Violets,' which breathes so gentle and real a sympathy with its subject, that we almost imagine it was written in those early times when men communed with Nature in her own audible language. It is even more beautiful than Herrick's

'Why do ye weep, sweet babe? Can tearsSpeak grief in you, who were but bornJust as the modest mornTeemed her refreshing dew?'

'Why do ye weep, sweet babe? Can tears

Speak grief in you, who were but born

Just as the modest morn

Teemed her refreshing dew?'

We give but a fragment of the Violet.

'Violet! sweet violet!Thine eyes are full of tears;Are they wetEven yetWith the thought of other years?Or with gladness are they full,For the night is beautiful,And longing for those far-off spheres?Thy little heart, that hath with loveGrown colored, like the sky aboveOn which thou lookest ever—Can it knowAll the woeOf hope for what returneth never,All the sorrow and the longingTo these hearts of ours belonging?'

'Violet! sweet violet!

Thine eyes are full of tears;

Are they wet

Even yet

With the thought of other years?

Or with gladness are they full,

For the night is beautiful,

And longing for those far-off spheres?

Thy little heart, that hath with love

Grown colored, like the sky above

On which thou lookest ever—

Can it know

All the woe

Of hope for what returneth never,

All the sorrow and the longing

To these hearts of ours belonging?'

And there are touches of what we are wont to call dear, womanly feeling, as when the 'Forlorn,' out in the bitter cold,

'Hears a woman's voice withinSinging sweet words her childhood knew,And years of misery and sinFurl off and leave her heaven blue.'

'Hears a woman's voice within

Singing sweet words her childhood knew,

And years of misery and sin

Furl off and leave her heaven blue.'

The 'Changeling' alone would sustain a reputation. It seems always like the plaintive but sweet warble of some unknown bird rising from the midst of tall water-rushes in the day's dim dawning. A wonderful melody as of Mrs. Browning's best efforts pervades every verse, priceless and rare as some old intaglio. But when we come to his 'Odes to the Past and the Future,' the full power of poesy unfolds before us. Their images are not the impalpable spectres of a poet's dream, but symbols hardened into marble by his skill, and informed with the fire of life by his genius.

'Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls,O kingdom of the past!There lie the bygone ages in their palls,Guarded by shadows vast;There all is hushed and breathless,Save when some image of old error falls,Earth worshiped once as deathless.'

'Wondrous and awful are thy silent halls,

O kingdom of the past!

There lie the bygone ages in their palls,

Guarded by shadows vast;

There all is hushed and breathless,

Save when some image of old error falls,

Earth worshiped once as deathless.'

Was ever picture of silence more effective and complete? We can see the desolate quiet of the vast arched halls, left undisturbed by centuries, and as the moldering statue totters forward from its niche, we feel a faith has fallen which was once the heaven of nations, and the awful tumult is audible as a voice from the drear kingdom of death. And the hymn to the Future, with all the[pg 185]joyful Titian hues of its opening strophes, the glowing fervor of its deep yearning, swelling through 'golden-winged dreams' of the 'Land of Promise':—

'To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered handsAnd cries for vengeance; with a pitying smileThou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,And her old woe-worn face a little whileGrows young and noble: unto thee the OppressorLooks and is dumb with awe;The eternal lawWhich makes the crime its own blindfold redresser,Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,And he can see the grim-eyed DoomFrom out the trembling gloomIts silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading.'

'To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands

And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile

Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,

And her old woe-worn face a little while

Grows young and noble: unto thee the Oppressor

Looks and is dumb with awe;

The eternal law

Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser,

Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,

And he can see the grim-eyed Doom

From out the trembling gloom

Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading.'

We pass by the 'Legend of Brittany,' which, as a mere artistic study of light and shade in words, is worthy an extended notice. Its fine polish and refinement of feeling remind us of Spencer's silver verses, frosted here and there with the old fret-work of his lovable affectations. But we pause at the 'Prometheus,' honestly believing that no poem made up of so many excellences was ever written in America. Its defects are not of conception, but in an occasional carelessness of execution—a gasp in the rhythm; and when we consider its richness and majesty, when we feel its resistless grasp upon the heart, we could pardon it if its great pearls were strung on straws or its diamonds hidden in a sand-hill of sentimentality. But never was poem freer from morbidness: it repels the sickly pallor of our modern stereotyped sorrow, and is made up only of a grief that is regal—more—divine. If any place by its side the Prometheus of Æschylus and appeal to the unapproachable dignity of their model, we can only say that we hold these two poems distinct as the East is from the West, only between them springs boldly the blue arch of a universal humanity that suffered and enjoyed as now when the earth was young. But it must not be forgotten that the Greek lived when with men was born a boundless sympathy for, and pride in, their gods; that what are now to us but the wonderful dreams of a primeval poesy, shadowing mighty truths, were to the ancients living influences that molded their lives. And if it be urged that already faith must have grown dim in so great a mind as that of Æschylus, then indeed we wonder not at the marvels of magnificent despair, the death-in-life of a godlike suffering which reach in his 'Prometheus Chained' a height of sublimity we may scarcely hope to see approached in modern times, for the mind that created it stood in a light shallop, drifting away from the old landmarks of a worn-out creed into the dark, unknown night of doubt and speculation. But the Prometheus of Lowell is not the god-man writhing in an awful conflict with his slavery but begun. His heart

'For ages hath been empty of all joy,Except to brood upon its silent hope,As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.'

'For ages hath been empty of all joy,

Except to brood upon its silent hope,

As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.'

The defiant pride and scornful dignity that raised him above our sympathy in Æschylus, are tempered by Lowell with a human longing for comfort that, in its mighty woe, might melt adamant, or draw from the watchful heavens

'Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter,With her pale smile of sad benignity.'

'Mild-eyed Astarte, his best comforter,

With her pale smile of sad benignity.'

Chained to the rock in utter loneliness he lies. Long since the 'crisped smiles' of the waves and the 'swift-winged winds' had ceased to listen to his call.

'Year after year will pass away and seemTo me, in mine eternal agony,But as the shadows of dark summer clouds,Which I have watched so often darkening o'erThe vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first,But, with still swiftness lessening on and on,Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle whereThe gray horizon fades into the sky,Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yetMust I lie here upon my altar huge,A sacrifice for man.'

'Year after year will pass away and seem

To me, in mine eternal agony,

But as the shadows of dark summer clouds,

Which I have watched so often darkening o'er

The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first,

But, with still swiftness lessening on and on,

Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where

The gray horizon fades into the sky,

Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet

Must I lie here upon my altar huge,

A sacrifice for man.'

'A sacrifice for man.' The theme has won a high significance with time. One more passage, and we are done—a passage which rivals Shakspeare in its startling vividness, as it whispers with awful power close to our ears. All night had the prisoned god heard voices,—

'Deeper yetThe deep, low breathings of the silence grewAnd then toward me cameA shape as of a woman; very paleIt was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move,And mine moved not, but only stared on them.Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice;[pg 186]A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart,And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fogSuddenly closed me in, was all I felt.And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh,A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lipsStiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thoughtSome doom was close upon me, and I lookedAnd saw the red morn, through the heavy mist,Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling,Or reeling to its fall, so dim and deadAnd palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds mergedInto the rising surges of the pines,Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loinsOf ancient Caucasus with hairy strength,Sent up a murmur in the morning wind,Sad as the wail that from the populous earthAll day and night to high Olympus soars,Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!'

'Deeper yet

The deep, low breathings of the silence grew

And then toward me came

A shape as of a woman; very pale

It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move,

And mine moved not, but only stared on them.

Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice;

A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart,

And a sharp chill, as if a dank night-fog

Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt.

And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh,

A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips

Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought

Some doom was close upon me, and I looked

And saw the red morn, through the heavy mist,

Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling,

Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead

And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged

Into the rising surges of the pines,

Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins

Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength,

Sent up a murmur in the morning wind,

Sad as the wail that from the populous earth

All day and night to high Olympus soars,

Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!'

Mr. Lowell is no fine dreamer, no enthusiast in the filmy questions of some cloud-land of poetry: the sword of power is in his hand, and the stern teachings of Right and Justice ring through his heart. To such men, Destiny looks for her unfolding. Woe to them, if upon their silence, inaction or irresolution in these great days, the steadfast gaze of her high expectation falls unheeded.

Go where the sunlight brightly falls,Through tangled grass too thick to wave;Where silence, save the cricket's calls,Reigns o'er a patriot's grave;And you shall see Faith's violets springFrom whence his soul on heavenward wingRose to the realms where heroes dwell:Heroes who for their country fell;Heroes for whom our bosoms swell;Heroes in battle slain.God of the just! they are not dead,—Those who have erst for freedom bled;—Their every deed has boldly saidWe all shall rise again.A patriot's deeds can never die,—Time's noblest heritage are they,—Though countless æons pass them by,They rise at last to day.The spirits of our fathers riseTriumphant through the starry skies;And we may hear their choral song,—The firm in faith, the noble throng,—It bids us crush a deadly wrong,Wrought by red-handed Cain.AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the RightGoes onward with resistless might:His hand shall win for us the fight.We, too, shall rise again!

Go where the sunlight brightly falls,

Through tangled grass too thick to wave;

Where silence, save the cricket's calls,

Reigns o'er a patriot's grave;

And you shall see Faith's violets spring

From whence his soul on heavenward wing

Rose to the realms where heroes dwell:

Heroes who for their country fell;

Heroes for whom our bosoms swell;

Heroes in battle slain.

God of the just! they are not dead,—

Those who have erst for freedom bled;—

Their every deed has boldly said

We all shall rise again.

A patriot's deeds can never die,—Time's noblest heritage are they,—Though countless æons pass them by,They rise at last to day.The spirits of our fathers riseTriumphant through the starry skies;And we may hear their choral song,—The firm in faith, the noble throng,—It bids us crush a deadly wrong,Wrought by red-handed Cain.AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the RightGoes onward with resistless might:His hand shall win for us the fight.We, too, shall rise again!

A patriot's deeds can never die,—

Time's noblest heritage are they,—

Though countless æons pass them by,

They rise at last to day.

The spirits of our fathers rise

Triumphant through the starry skies;

And we may hear their choral song,—

The firm in faith, the noble throng,—

It bids us crush a deadly wrong,

Wrought by red-handed Cain.

AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the Right

Goes onward with resistless might:

His hand shall win for us the fight.

We, too, shall rise again!

[pg 187]

My last article left the reader in the doorway of the Colonel's mansion. Before entering, we will linger there awhile and survey the outside of the premises.

The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters' dwellings, is located in full view of the highway. It is a rambling, disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural rules, and yet there is a kind of rude harmony in its very irregularities that has a pleasing effect. The main edifice, with a frontage of nearly eighty feet, is only one and a half stories high, and is overshadowed by a broad projecting roof, which somehow, though in a very natural way, drops down at the eaves, and forms the covering of a piazza, twenty-feet in width, and extending across the entire front of the house. At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards. A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter's residence. The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age was covered with paint of a grayish brown color. This, in many places, has peeled off and allowed the sap to ooze from the pine, leaving every here and there large blotches on the surface, which somewhat resemble the 'warts' I have seen on the trunks of old trees.

The house is encircled by grand, old pines, whose tall, upright stems, soaring eighty and ninety feet in the air, make the low hamlet seem lower by the contrast. They have stood there for centuries, their rough, shaggy coats buttoned close to their chins, and their long, green locks waving in the wind; but man has thrust his long knife into their veins, and their life-blood is fast oozing away.

With the exception of the negro huts, which are scattered at irregular intervals through the woods in the rear of the mansion, there is not a human habitation within an hour's ride; but such a cosey, inviting, hospitable atmosphere surrounds the whole place, that a stranger does not realize he has happened upon it in a wilderness.

The interior of the dwelling is in keeping with the exterior, though in the drawing-rooms, where rich furniture and fine paintings actually lumber the apartments, there is evident the lack of a nice perception of the 'fitness of things,' and over the whole hangs a 'dusty air,' which reminds one that the Milesian Bridget does not 'flourish' in South Carolina.

I was met in the entrance-way by a tall, fine-looking woman, to whom the Colonel introduced me as follows:—

'Mr. K——, this is Madam ——, my housekeeper; she will try to make you forget that Mrs. J—— is absent.'

After a few customary courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of 'Jim,' a razor, and one of the Colonel's shirts,—all of mine having undergone a drenching,—soon made a tolerably presentable appearance. The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found the family assembled.

It consisted, besides the housekeeper, of a tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired personage, with a low brow, a blear eye and a sneaking look, the Overseer of the plantation; and of a well-mannered, intelligent lad,—with the peculiarly erect carriage and uncommon blending of good-natured ease and dignity which distinguished my host,—who was introduced to me as the housekeeper's son.

Madam P——, who presided over the 'tea things,' was a person of perhaps thirty-five, but a rich olive complexion, enlivened by a delicate red-tint, and relieved by thick masses of black hair, made her appear to a casual observer several[pg 188]years younger. Her face showed vestiges of great beauty, which time, and, perhaps, care, had mellowed but not obliterated, while her conversation indicated high cultivation. She had evidently mingled in refined society in this country and in Europe, and it was a strange freak of fortune that reduced her to a menial condition in the family of a backwoods planter.

After some general conversation, the Colonel remarked that his wife and daughter would pass the winter in Charleston.

'And doyouremain on the plantation?' I inquired.

'Oh yes, I am needed here,' he replied; 'but Madam's son is with my family.'

'Madam's son!' I exclaimed in astonishment, forgetting in my surprise that the lady was present.

'Yes, sir,' she remarked, 'my oldest boy is twenty.'

'Excuse me, Madam; I forgot that in your climate one never grows old.'

'There you are wrong, sir; I'm sure Ifeelold when I think how soon my boys will be men.'

'Not old yet, Alice,' said the Colonel, in a singularly familiar tone; 'you seem to me no older than when you were fifteen.'

'You have been long acquainted,' I remarked, not knowing exactly what to say.

'Oh yes,' replied my host, 'we were children together.'

'Your Southern country, Madam, affords a fine field for young men of enterprise.'

'My eldest son resides in Germany,' replied the lady. 'He expects to make that country his home. He would have passed his examination at Heidelberg this autumn had not circumstances called him here.'

'You are widely separated,' I replied.

'Yes, sir; his father thinks it best, and I suppose it is. Thomas, here, is to return with his brother, and I may live to see neither of them again.'

My curiosity was naturally much excited to learn more, but nothing further being volunteered, and the conversation turning to other topics, I left the table with it unsatisfied.

After enjoying a quiet hour with the Colonel in the smoking-room, he invited me to join him in a ride over the plantation. I gladly assented, and 'Jim' shortly announced the horses were ready. That darky, who invariably attended his master when the latter proceeded from home, accompanied us. As we were mounting I bethought me of Scip, and asked Jim where he was.

'He'm gwine to gwo, massa. He want to say good-by to you.'

It seemed madness for Scip to start on a journey of seventy miles without rest, so I requested the Colonel to let him remain till the next day. He cheerfully assented, and sent Jim to find him. While waiting for the darky, I spoke of how faithfully he had served me during my journey.

'He's a splendid nigger,' replied the Colonel; 'worth his weight in gold. If affairs were more settled I would buy him.'

'But Colonel A—— tells me he is too intelligent. He objects to "knowing" niggers.'

'Ido not,' replied my host, 'if they are honest, and I would trust Scip with uncounted gold. Look at him,' he continued, as the negro approached; 'were flesh and bones ever better put together?'

The darkywasa fine specimen of sable humanity, and I readily understood why the practiced eye of the Colonel appreciated his physical developments.

'Scip,' I said, 'you must not think of going to-day; the Colonel will be glad to let you remain until you are fully rested.'

'Tank you, massa, tank you bery much, but de ole man will spec me, and I orter gwo.'

'Oh, never mind old ——,' said the Colonel, 'I'll take care of him.'

'Tank you, Cunnel, den I'll stay har till de mornin.'

Taking a by-path which led through the forest in the rear of the mansion, we[pg 189]soon reached a small stream, and, following its course for a short distance, came upon a turpentine distillery, which the Colonel explained to me was one of three that prepared the product of his plantation for market, and provided for his family of two hundred souls.

It was enclosed, or rather roofed, by a rude structure of rough boards, open at the sides, and sustained on a number of pine poles about thirty feet in height, and bore a strong resemblance to the usual covering of a New England haystack.

Three stout negro men, divested of all clothing excepting a pair of coarse gray trowsers and a red shirt,—it was a raw, cold, wintry day,—and with cotton bandannas bound about their heads, were 'tending the still.' The foreman stood on a raised platform level with its top, but as we approached very quietly seated himself on a turpentine barrel which a moment before he had rolled over the mouth of the boiler. Another negro was below, feeding the fire with 'light wood,' and a third was tending the trough by which the liquid rosin found its way into the semi-circle of rough barrels intended for its reception.

'Hello, Junius, what in creation are you doing there?' asked the Colonel, as we approached, of the negro on the turpentine barrel.

'Holein' her down, Cunnel; de ole ting got a mine to blow up dis mornin; I'se got dis barrl up har to hole her down.'

'Why, you everlasting nigger, if the top leaks you'll be blown to eternity in half a second.'

'Reckon not, massa; de barrl and me kin hole her. We'll take de risk.'

'Perhapsyouwill,' said the Colonel, laughing, 'but I won't. Nigger property isn't of much account, but you're too good a darky, June, to be sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine.'

'Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way.'

'Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of you.' (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a switch; though the switch is generally thought toredden, notwhiten, the darky.)

The negro did not seem at all alarmed, for he showed his ivories in a broad grin as he replied, 'Jess as you say, massa; you'se de boss in dis shanty.'

Directing the fire to be raked out, and the still to stand unused until it was repaired, the Colonel turned his horse to go, when he observed that the third negro was shoeless, and his feet chapped and swollen with the cold. 'Jake,' he said, 'where are your shoes?'

'Wored out, massa.'

'Worn out! Why haven't you been to me?'

''Cause, massa, I know'd you'd jaw; you tole me I wears 'em out mighty fass.'

'Well, you do, that's a fact; but go to Madam and get a pair; and you, June, you've been a decent nigger, you can ask for a dress for Rosey. How is little June?'

'Mighty pore, massa; de ma'am war dar lass night and dis mornin', and she reckun'd he's gwine to gwo sartain.'

'Sorry to hear that,' said the Colonel. I'll go and see him. Don't feel badly, June,' he continued, for the tears welled up to the eyes of the black man as he spoke of his child; 'we all must die.'

'I knows dat, massa, but it am hard to hab em gwo.'

'Yes, it is, June, but we may save him.'

'Ef you cud, massa! Oh, ef you cud!' and the poor darky covered his face with his great hands and sobbed like a child.

We rode on to another 'still,' and there dismounting, the Colonel explained to me the process of gathering and manufacturing turpentine. The trees are 'boxed' and 'tapped' early in the year, while the frost is still in the ground. 'Boxing' is the process of scooping a cavity in the trunk of the tree by means of a peculiarly shaped axe, made for the purpose; 'tapping' is scarifying the rind of the wood above the boxes. This is never done until the trees have[pg 190]been worked one season, but it is then repeated year after year, till on many plantations they present the marks of twenty and frequently thirty annual 'tappings,' and are often denuded of bark for a distance of thirty feet from the ground. The necessity for this annual tapping arises from the fact that the scar on the trunk heals at the end of a season, and the sap will no longer run from it; a fresh wound is therefore made each spring. The sap flows down the scarified surface and collects in the boxes, which are emptied six or eight times in a year, according to the length of the season. This is the process of 'dipping,' and it is done with a tin or iron vessel constructed to fit the cavity in the tree.

The turpentine gathered from the newly boxed or virgin tree is very valuable, on account of its producing a peculiarly clear and white rosin, which is used in the manufacture of the finer kinds of soap, and by 'Rosin the Bow,' and commands, ordinarily, nearly five times the price of the common article. When barreled, the turpentine is frequently sent to market in its crude state, but more often is distilled on the plantation, the gatherers generally possessing means sufficient to own a still.

In the process of distilling, the crude turpentine is 'dumped' into the boiler through an opening in the top,—the same as that on which we saw Junius composedly seated,—water is then poured upon it, the aperture made tight by screwing down the cover and packing it with clay, a fire built underneath, and when the heat reaches several hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the process of manufacture begins. The volatile and more valuable part of the turpentine, by the action of the heat, rises as vapor, then condensing flows off through a pipe in the top of the still, and comes out spirits of turpentine, while the heavier portion finds vent at a lower aperture, and comes out rosin.

No article of commerce is so liable to waste and leakage as turpentine. The spirits can only be preserved in tin cans, or in thoroughly seasoned oak barrels, made tight by a coating of glue on the inner side. Though the material for these barrels exists at the South in luxuriant abundance, they are all procured from the North, and the closing of the Southern ports has now entirely cut off the supply; for while the turpentine farmer may improvise coopers, he can by no process give the oak timber the seasoning which is needed to render the barrel spirit-tight. Hence it is certain that a large portion of the last crop of turpentine must have gone to waste. When it is remembered that the one State of North Carolina exports annually nearly twenty millions in value of this product, and employs fully three-fourths of its negroes in its production, it will be seen how dearly the South is paying for the mad freak of secession. Putting out of view his actual loss of produce, how does the turpentine farmer feed and employ his negroes? and, pressed as these blacks inevitably are by both hunger and idleness, those prolific breeders of sedition, what will keep them quiet?

'What effect would secession have on your business?' I asked the Colonel, after a while.

'A favorable one. I should ship my crop direct to Liverpool and London, instead of selling it to New York middlemen.'

'But is not the larger portion of the turpentine crop consumed at the North?'

'Oh, yes. We should have to deal with the Yankees anyhow, but we should do as little with them as possible.'

'Suppose the Yankees object to your setting up by yourselves, and put your ports under lock and key?'

'They won't do that, and if they did England would break the blockade.'

'We might rap John Bull over the knuckles in that event,' I replied.

'Well, suppose you did, what then?'

'Merely, England would not have a ship in six months to carry your cotton. A war with her would ruin the shipping trade of the North. Our marine would seek employment at privateering, and soon sweep every British merchant ship from the ocean. We could afford to give[pg 191]up ten years' trade with you, and have to put down seccession by force, for the sake of a year's brush with John Bull.'

'But, my good friend, where would the British navy be all the while?'

'Asleep. The English haven't a steamer that can catch a Brookhaven schooner. The last war proved that vessels of war are no match for privateers.'

'Well, well! but the Yankees won't fight.'

'Suppose they do. Suppose they shut up your ports, and leave you with your cotton and turpentine unsold? You raise scarcely anything else—what would you eat?'

'We would turn our cotton-fields into corn and wheat. Turpentine-makers, of course, would suffer.'

'Then why are notyoua Union man?'

'My friend, I have two hundred mouths to feed. I depend on the sale of my crop to give them food. If our ports are closed, I can not do it,—they will starve, and I be ruined. But sooner than submit to the domination of the cursed Yankees, I will see my negroes starving and my child a beggar.'

At this point in the conversation we arrived at the negro shanty where the sick child was. Dismounting, the Colonel and I entered.

The cabin was almost a counterpart of the 'Mills House,' described in my previous paper, but it had a plank flooring, and was scrupulously neat and clean. The logs were stripped of bark, and whitewashed. A bright, cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and an air of rude comfort pervaded the whole interior. On a low bed in the farther corner of the room lay the sick child. He was a boy of about twelve years, and evidently in the last stages of consumption. By his side, bending over him as if to catch his almost inaudible words, sat a tidy, youthful-looking colored woman, his mother, and the wife of the negro we had met at the 'still.' Playing on the floor, was a younger child, perhaps five years old, but while the faces of the mother and the sick lad were of the hue of charcoal,hisskin, by a process well understood at the South, had been bleached to a bright yellow.

The woman took no notice of our entrance, but the little fellow ran to the Colonel and caught hold of the skirts of his coat in a free-and-easy way, saying, 'Ole massa, you got suffin' for Dickey?'

'No, you little nig,' replied the Colonel, patting his woolly head as I might have done a white child's, 'Dickey isn't a good boy.'

'Yas, I is,' said the little darky; 'you'se ugly ole massa, to gib nuffin' to Dickey.'

Aroused by the Colonel's voice, the woman turned towards us. Her eyes were swollen and her face bore traces of deep emotion.

'Oh massa!' she said, 'de chile am dyin'! It'm all along ob his workin' in de swamp,—nomanorter work dar, let alone a chile like dis.'

'Do you think he is dying, Rosey?' asked the Colonel, approaching the bedside.

'Shore, massa, he'm gwine fass. Look at 'em.'

The boy had dwindled to a skeleton, and the skin lay on his face in crimpled folds, like a mask of black crape. His eyes were fixed, and he was evidently going.

'Don't you know massa, my boy?' said the Colonel, taking his hand tenderly in his.

The child's lips slightly moved, but I could hear no sound. The Colonel put his ear down to him for a moment, then, turning to me, said,—

'Heisdying. Will you be so good as to step to the house and ask Madam P—— here, and please tell Jim to go for Junius and the old man.'

I returned in a short while with the lady, but found the boy's father and 'the old man'—the darky preacher of the plantation—there before us. The preacher was a venerable old negro, much bowed by years, and with thin wool as white as snow. When we entered he was bending over the dying boy, but shortly turning to my host, said,—

'Massa, de blessed Lord am callin' for de chile,—shall we pray?'

Back to Index Next