TURNER'S OLD TÉMÉRAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE

CHURCH

THOU wast the fairest of all man-made things;

Thy thunders now but birthdays greet,
Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet,
Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind
brings.

Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks,

That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good;

1 This poem is the last, so far as is known, written by Mr. Lowell. He laid it aside for revision, leaving two of the verses incomplete. In a pencilled fragment of the poem the first verse appears as follows:

Strong, simple, silent, such are Nature's Laws. In the final copy, from which the poem is now printed, the verse originally stood:

lawe.

Strong, steadfast, silent are the but steadfast' is crossed out, and 'simple' written above.

A similar change is made in the ninth verse of the stanza, where simpleness' is substituted for stead fastness.' The change from steadfast' to 'simple' was not made, probably through oversight, in the first verse of the second stanza. There is nothing to indicate what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen to complete the first verse of the third stanza. (Note by Professor C. E. Norton, in Last Poems of James Rut sell Lowell.)

THERE WAS A CHILD WENT

FORTH 1

THERE was day, And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,

a child went forth every

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phobe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

10

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him, Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms

and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,

1 In the first edition, 1855, without title. In the second edition, 1856, called Poem of The Child That Went Forth and Always Goes Forth Forever and Forever.'

And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys,

And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb and birth'd him,

They gave this child more of themselves than that,

20

They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,

The mother with mild words, clean her cap

and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by, The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the

sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how, Whether that which appears so is so, or i it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets if they are not flashes and specks what are they?

30

The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries, The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between, Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off,