and Hosea Biglow in the spring "allus feels the sap start in his veins." The poet's first love is always given to the bobolink. Hosea Biglow writes, ... "June's bridesman, poet o' the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings." In the coming of spring among the willows, the swallow and the bluebird are no more than forerunners for the true poet of song. ... The bobolink has come, and, like the soul Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what." There is no space here for tracing further Lowell's habit of repeating forms of expression in different poems for similar ideas, and of using over conceits adapted now to one poetic or imaginative point of view, now to another. The illustrations that have been given are no more than suggestions for wider reading and comparison such as any pupil fond of poetry may carry out. Lowell calls all his war poems improvisations. This seems to be his own characterization of the moment of creation which combined in imaginative unity material long familiar to his thought in other form. In The Vision of Sir Launfal, he chose to make improvisation personified in the musing organist building "a bridge from Dreamland for his lay" the mould of form for the poem. Thus the main theme is expressed in a narrative held within another narrative form so slight that it slips away from the reader completely as he goes on. When the opening of Part Second appears the word "Prelude" recalls him, but seems scarcely justified. In The Ancient Mariner, Coleridge has employed the same literary device, but with infinitely greater skill. Now and again, the wedding guest, an enforced lis tener, is brought to the reader's attention, and so perfect is this narrative form, which serves as setting for the tale the mariner tells, that the critic may note each typical step of progress from beginning to moment of climax and conclusion, clearly marked but distinct from the narrative art of the tale itself, which has also its own complete, well-arranged sequence and organization as plot. In The Vision of Sir Launfal, the figure of improvisation is shown first in the gradual approach of the poet to the subject of his narrative. True, he begins with a generalized statement of his theme,- "We Sinais climb and know it not," but this is introduced in the form of a protest. It is not true, as Wordsworth intimates, that heaven recedes from the growing boy as he leaves infancy far behind. Few readers perceive striving to catch the somewhat obscure meaningthe significance of these words as the announcement, remote and far away, of the real theme of the poem. Then the poet passes on to specify the influences in all nature, animate and inanimate, which strive with the heart of man that he may be led from the wilderness to the mountain heights where the soul talks face to face, as Moses of old, with God It is but a step from description of these divine influences, manifest in the beauty and teeming life of June, to their effect on the hearts of men, - which at last brings the im provisator to the goal he had in mind from the first, the beginning of his narrative. Then the generalization is dropped in a moment, and henceforth an illustration, in the single instance, of the great truth he has tried to phrase, is substituted. We follow in concrete example the story of how nature and his own heart and many varied experiences compelled one man along the upward way, until, after a weary interval, the light shone around him and he lifted his downward gaze to discover that, unwittingly, he had climbed nis Sinai and found the Lord. Lowell marks the thematic improvisation threading his poem by prolonging the influence of springtime and June into the dream. The June day, introduced first as a mani festation of the divinity that dwells in all nature and finds expression in beauty and life, becomes then the influence that moved the knight to the keeping of his vow, and lingered in his memory as he lay on the rushes in his own courtyard. When he fell asleep, the little birds of spring sang on in his dream, and it was, in his vision, as in reality, the one perfect day of all the year. Thus has the poet, advancing, retreating, illustrating, built a bridge, not from, but into, Dreamland, for his lay. The picture of summer in siege around the dark castle, representative of the man's heart before the call to remember his vow came to him, repeats in variation. mingling with the thread of the narrative, the description of the June day, and suggests the motive insistently, so that it remains in the mind, as in music the theme holds the ear and is the compelling or dominant note. The Prelude to Part Second of The Vision of Sir Launfal seems to be an attempt to return to the point of view of the improvisator and to create an artistic parallel to the first prelude. Beautiful as are the lines descriptive of the descent of winter from the mountain and the housing of the little brook in his palace of ice, they nevertheless fail of the artistic purpose which the poet designed them to fulfil in his plan. The reasons for this failure must be indicated with the utmost brevity. The attempt to lead the imagination outside of the dream, to the point of view of the improvisator, is unsuccessful, because the moment the reader pictures Sir Launfal sitting at his own gate, cold and shelterless, the parts of the scene are inevitably reversed, and the preceding description of winter and storm becomes no more than the setting of the picture, subordinate to the figure of the old man. In the Prelude to Part First this reversal of parts when the element of human interest enters does not occur, for two reasons; first, the description leads up to the narrative and serves as a means of introduction, and, secondly, the motive which is the beginning of the slight plot, the stirring of purpose in the heart of the knight, is supplied by this means. In Part Second the narrative is under way, the imagination of the reader is fully committed to it, and there has been no reminder that the action of the story has reality only in the visions of the sleeping knight. The description, further, supplies no motive for the incidents that follow. The attempt to build out of it a contrast in the manner of the earlier figure is not convincing for lack of intimate correspondence between the figure and the meaning. The winter palace in no way typifies or motives the spiritual experience of the returning knight; the contrast between the frost and cold without the castle and the cheering glow of warmth from within seems superficial and unreal, since the life and light of a new spiritual purpose are in the heart of the man on the outside and must enter with him when at last the siege of summer is over. For similar reasons, the awakening of Sir Launfal at the end fails to quicken the imagination. The narrator has done his work too well. Readers have followed the progress of the tale with such belief in the reality of the passage of time that the mind refuses to turn back or to exchange the thin figure of the old man for the youthful knight who rode forth in the morning. The effort is made difficult by a belief rooted in the minds of us all that such charity and humility as Sir Launfal showed when for the second time he met the leper, arise in proud hearts only after long and bitter experience. The very wording of the conclusion, "The Summer's long siege at last is o'er," lends itself to the persuasion of the mind that the experience of Sir Launfal was a real one, and the result, namely that mingling of new-born purpose and sympathy which ripens only in the flight of years, adds conviction. In passing, we should note that one element of an ideally arranged narrative is entirely lacking in the story of the poem. Lowell gives his tale a definite beginning and motives sufficiently the going forth of the knight, but he doe not indicate, even by remote suggestion, the experiences that changed his spirit and sent him back the humble servant of the lowliest human need The reminiscent memory of the old man and the contrast between his earlier and later self go far to supply the omission, and doubtless the difficulty of rounding the narrative without lessening the force of the truth the poet would convey was too great. The Vision, of Sir Launfal is so full of beauty in all its parts, and so derived from the very sun and wind and bloom of our own land, so instinct with the history and spirit of a young nation, that we all must love it and cherish it in the memory, not in the spirit of criticism, but as a choice inheritance. A FEW REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF James Russell Lowell, a Biography by H. E. Scudder. In volume i, chapters i-iv are especially important in the study of The Vision of Sir Launfal. In chapter iv are many quotations which interpret the meaning of phrases in the poem. Letters of James Russell Lowell, edited by C. E. Norton. James Russell Lowell, by F. H. Underwood. James Russell Lowell, by E. E. Hale, Jr., Beacon Biogra phies of Eminent Americans. American Prose, by G. R. Carpenter. James Russell Lowell, by G. W. Curtis. A Literary History of America, by Barrett Wendell. Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, by J. R. Lowell. In Riverside Edition of Lowell's Prose Works, vol. i; In My Garden Acquaintance, and other essays. Contemporaries, by T. W. Higginson. Old Cambridge, by T. W. Higginson, in National Studies in American Letters. |