scholars and soldiers alike, were dissolved in admiration and tears."-Underwood's James Russell Lowell. The chapter entitled " Lowell and the War for the Union " in Scudder's Biography of Lowell should be read as an introduction to the study of the Commemoration Ode. A passage in one of Lowell's letters, 8 December, 1868, reveals the mood in which the poem was written and the intensity of feeling that inspired it. The letter was addressed to the author of a review of the volume of verse which included the ode, and the passage reads as follows: "I am not sure if I understand what you say about the tenth strophe. You will observe that it leads naturally to the eleventh, and that I there justify a certain narrowness in it as an expression of the popular feeling as well as my own. I confess I have never got over the feeling of wrath with which (just after the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an English paper that nothing was to be hoped of an army officered by tailor's apprentices and butcher boys. The poem was written with a vehement speed, which I thought I had lost in the skirts of my professor's gown. Till within two days of the celebration I was hopelessly dumb, and then it all came with a rush, literally making me lean (mi fece magro), and so nervous that I was weeks in getting over it. I was longer in getting the new (eleventh) strophe to my mind than in writing the rest of my poem. In that I hardly changed a word, and it was so undeliberate that I did not find out till after it was printed that some of the verses lacked corresponding rhymes. I had put the ethical and political view so often in prose that I was weary of it. The motives of the war? I had impatiently urged them again and again, but for an ode they must be in the blood and not the memory." In 1886, in a letter to R. W. Gilder, Lowell describes the composition of this ode and the effect of the effort upon himself. He says: "The passage about Lincoln was not in the ode as originally recited, but added immediately after. More than eighteen months before, however, I had written about Lin coln in the North American Review-an article which pleased him. I did divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin caste. The ode itself was an improvisation. Two days before the Commemoration I had told my friend Child that it was impossible that I was dull as a doormat. But the next day something gave me a jog and the whole thing came out of me with a rush. 1 sat up all night writing it out clear, and took it on the morning of the day to Child. 'I have something, but don't yet know what it is, or whether it will do. Look at it and tell me.' He went a little way apart with it under an elm-tree in the college yard. He read a passage here and there, brought it back to me, and said, 'Do? I should think so! Don't you be scared.' And I was n't, but virtue enough had gone out of me to make me weak for a fortnight after. I was amazed at the praises I got. Trevelyan told me afterwards that he never could have carried through the abolition of purchase in the British Army out for the reinforcement he got from that poem." The study of the versification of Commemoration Ode eveals many of Lowell's theories in regard to the adapta tion of measures, stanzaic forms, etc., to the spirit of the poem, on the one hand, and on the other to the manner of his presentation. He believed that an author in composing his verses must adapt his measures to recitation, that is to the ear; or to the eye, that is to reading, as the case might be. The Memorial Odes were composed for recitation, and the poet's own words best disclose how this purpose in fluenced him in the selection and adaptation of conventional verse forms. He writes: "The poems [Three Memorial Poems] were all intended for public recitation. That was the first thing to be con sidered. I suppose my ear (from long and painful practice on poems) has more technical practice in this than almost any. The least tedious measure is the rhymed heroic, but this, too, palls unless relieved by passages of wit or even mere fun. A long series of uniform stanzas (I am alwayı speaking of public recitation) with regularly recurring rhymes produces somnolence among the men and a des perate resort to their fans on the part of the women. No method has yet been invented by which the train of thought or feeling can be shunted off from the epical to the lyrical track. My ears have been jolted often enough over the sleepers on such occasions to know that. I know something (of course an American can't know much) about Pindar. But his odes had the advantage of being chanted. Now, my problem was to contrive a measure which should not be tedious by uniformity, which should vary with varying moods, in which the transitions (including those of the voice) should be managed without jar. I at first thought of mixed rhymed and blank verses of unequal measures, like those in the choruses of Samson Agonistes, which are in the main masterly. Of course, Milton deliberately departed from that stricter form of Greek Chorus to which it was bound quite as much (I suspect) by the law of its musical accompaniment as by any sense of symmetry. I wrote some stanzas of the Commemoration Ode on this theory at first, leaving some verses without a rhyme to match. But my ear was better pleased when the rhyme, coming at a longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than instant reverberation, produced the same effect almost, and yet was grateful by unexpectedly recalling an association and faint reminiscence of consonance. I think I have succeeded pretty well, and if you will try reading aloud I believe you would agree with me." For changes and emendations sug gested by Lowell but never incorporated in the ode, see Letters, ii, 141-143. Another description of this scene will be found in A. V. G. Allen's Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks, i, 552. The prayer of Phillips Brooks seemed to those present the great event of the day, the noblest expression of the deep, suppressed emotion that stirred the hearts of all ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION DEDICATED To the ever sweet and shining memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who have died for their country in the war of nationality." I WEAK-WINGED is song, Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious memory to buoy up and save II To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 10 15 The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good: No lore of Greece or Rome, No science peddling with the names of things, Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, Can lift our life with wings Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits. And lengthen out our dates 20 With that clear fame whose memory sings In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates Not such the trumpet-call Of thy diviner mood, That could thy sons entice From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. III Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 30 35 40 45 Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her; Of her divine completeness: 50 37. An early emblem of Harvard College was a shield with Veritas (truth) upon three open books. This device is still used. |