When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari

But loosed the hampering strings,

And when they had opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

30

But they left in her stead a changeling,

A little angel child,

That seems like her bud in full blossom,

35

And smiles as she never smiled:

When I wake in the morning, I see it

This child is not mine as the first was,

I cannot sing it to rest,

I cannot lift it up fatherly

And bliss it upon my breast:

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.

THE FOOT-PATH

Ir mounts athwart the windy hill
Through sallow slopes of upland bare,
And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still
Its narrowing curves that end, in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue

Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clue To gracious climes where all is well.

By night, far yonder, I surmise

An ampler world than clips my ken, Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home,
Still master of my secret rare;

10

Once tried, the path would end in Rome,
But now it leads me everywhere.

15

Forever to the new it guides,

From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides,

'Tis wiser to divine than clutch.

My prying step would make him dumb,

And the fair tree, his shelter, sear.

20

Behind the hill, behind the sky,
Behind my inmost thought, he sings;
No feet avail; to hear it nigh,

The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird, close hid, and raise
Those angel stairways in my brain,
That climb from these low-vaulted days
To spacious sunshines far from pain.

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet,
I leave thy covert haunt untrod,

And envy Science not her feat

To make a twice-told tale of God.

ALADDIN

WHEN I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,

I had not a friend nor a toy,

But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose,

For I own no more castles in Spain !

10

15

AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE VISION OF

SIR LAUNFAL

BY H. A. DAVIDSON

THE STUDY OF THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

о

LOWELL's interpretation of the poet's mission is given ir his own words in a letter to his friend, C. F. Briggs, dated February 18, 1846. He writes, "my calling is clear to me. I am never lifted up to any peak of vision — and moments of almost fearful inward illumination I have some times but that when I look down in hope to see some valley of the Beautiful Mountains, I behold nothing but blackened ruins; and the moans of the downtrodden the world over but chiefly here in our own land- come up to my ear, in stead of the happy songs of the husbandmen reaping and binding the sheaves of light; yet these, too, I hear not sel dom. Then I feel how great is the office of poet, could I but even dare to hope to fill it. Then it seems as if my heart would break in pouring out one glorious song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of consolation and strength t the oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my madness lies, if any."

The same conception of the poet's high mission as a leader of reform finds expression in many of Lowell's early poems especially those in a small volume entitled A Year's Life,

"Never had poets such high call before,
Never can poets hope for higher one,

For he who settles Freedom's principles

Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny;

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.”

From L'Ennoù.

But the true inspiration of The Vision of Sir Launfai must be sought in Lowell's relation to the anti-slavery cause in its birth hour. With the enthusiasm of early love and superabundant vitality, the young poet entered the lists as the champion of the downtrodden and the oppressed. The movement led by Garrison and Phillips and a score of devoted men was to him none other than a holy crusade. He bewailed the necessity which compelled him to receive money for the contributions of his pen; in his own thought, his words were the expression of burning conviction, poured forth in behalf of fellow beings-even the lowliest and most oppressed.

It is significant that twice in Lowell's life the composition of great poems at fever heat, in an incredibly short space of time, followed many months of polemical writing in prose on the same subject. It would seem as if the man had sweated over his ideas and wrought them into phrases apt to express his meaning until, in his own words, they passed from his memory into the blood, when suddenly the poet's brain took fire, and transmuted into song the deep conviction and the heartfelt emotion of the philanthropist. In the year preceding the composition of the Commemora tion Ode, in January, July, and October, the North Amer ican Review contained political articles from his pen, dealing with the issues involved in Mr. Lincoln's candidacy for reëlection. Of this and other poems belonging in the same group he writes, "My blood was up and you would hardly believe me if I were to tell how few hours intervened be tween conception and completion, even in so long a one as Mason and Slidell. So I have a kind of faith that the Ode' is right because it was there, I hardly knew how. 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 argued them again and again - but for an de they must be in the blood, not in the memory."

Once before, in Lowell's life, a period of hot partisanship and polemical argument had been followed by the conception