Part 16 (1/2)
110-114. In shaping this elaborate battle metaphor, one can easily believe the poet to have had in mind some fierce mountain struggle during the war, such as the battle of Lookout Mountain.
111. Creeds: Here used in the broad sense of convictions, principles, beliefs.
115-118. The construction is faulty in these lines. The two last clauses should be co-ordinated. The substance of the meaning is: Peace has her wreath, while the cannon are silent and while the sword slumbers. Lowell's attention was called to this defective pa.s.sage by T.W. Higginson, and he replied: ”Your criticism is perfectly just, and I am much obliged to you for it--though I might defend myself, I believe, by some constructions even looser in some of the Greek choruses. But on the whole, when I have my choice, I prefer to make sense.” He then suggested an emendation, which somehow failed to get into the published poem:
”Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Redden the cannon's lips, and while the sword.”
120. Baal's stone obscene: Human sacrifices were offered on the altars of Baal. (_Jeremiah_ xix, 5.)
147-205. This strophe was not in the ode as delivered, but was written immediately after the occasion, and included in the published poem.
”It is so completely imbedded in the structure of the ode,” says Scudder, ”that it is difficult to think of it as an afterthought. It is easy to perceive that while the glow of composition and of recitation was still upon him, Lowell suddenly conceived this splendid ill.u.s.tration, and indeed climax of the utterance, of the Ideal which is so impressive in the fifth stanza.... Into these threescore lines Lowell has poured a conception of Lincoln, which may justly be said to be to-day the accepted idea which Americans hold of their great President. It was the final expression of the judgment which had slowly been forming in Lowell's own mind.”
In a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, Lowell says: ”The pa.s.sage about Lincoln was not in the ode as originally recited, but added immediately after. More than eighteen months before, however, I had written about Lincoln in the _North American Review_--an article that pleased him. I _did_ divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin caste.”
It is a singular fact that the other great New England poets, Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, had almost nothing to say about Lincoln.
150. Wept with the pa.s.sion, etc.: An article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for June, 1885, began with this pa.s.sage: ”The funeral procession of the late President of the United States has pa.s.sed through the land from Was.h.i.+ngton to his final resting-place in the heart of the prairies. Along the line of more than fifteen hundred miles his remains were borne, as it were, through continued lines of the people; and the number of mourners and the sincerity and unanimity of grief was such as never before attended the obsequies of a human being; so that the terrible catastrophe of his end hardly struck more awe than the majestic sorrow of the people.”
170. Outward grace is dust: An allusion to Lincoln's awkward and rather unkempt outward appearance.
173. Supple-tempered will: One of the most p.r.o.nounced traits of Lincoln's character was his kindly, almost femininely gentle and sympathetic spirit. With this, however, was combined a determination of steel.
175-178. Nothing of Europe here: There was nothing of Europe in him, or, if anything, it was of Europe in her early ages of freedom before there was any distinction of slave and master, groveling Russian Serf and n.o.ble Lord or Peer.
180. One of Plutarch's men: The distinguished men of Greece and Rome whom Plutarch immortalized in his _Lives_ are accepted as types of human greatness.
182. Innative: Inborn, natural.
187. He knew to bide his time: He knew how to bide his time, as in Milton's _Lycidas_, ”He knew himself to sing.” Recall ill.u.s.trations of Lincoln's wonderful patience and faith.
198. The first American: In a prose article, Lowell calls him ”The American of Americans.” Compare Tennyson's ”The last great Englishman,” in the _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_.
Stanza IV of Tennyson's ode should be compared with this Lincoln stanza.
202. Along whose course, etc.: Along the course leading to the ”inspiring goal.” The conjunction of the words ”pole” and ”axles”
easily leads to a confusion of metaphor in the pa.s.sage. The imagery is from the ancient chariot races.
232. Paean: A paean, originally a hymn to Apollo, usually of thanksgiving, is a song of triumph, any loud and joyous song.
236. Dear ones: Underwood says in his biography of Lowell: ”In the privately printed edition of the poem the names of eight of the poet's kindred are given. The nearest in blood are the nephews, General Charles Russell Lowell, killed at Winchester, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, at Seven Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, at Ball's Bluff. Another relative was the heroic Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who fell in the a.s.sault on Fort Wagner.”
As a special memorial of Colonel Shaw, Lowell wrote the poem, _Memoriae Positum._ With deep tenderness he refers to his nephews in _”Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly”:_
”Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee?
Didn't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'?
I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in s.h.i.+nin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'.
”Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?