BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horace E. Scudder: James Russell Lowell: A Biography. 2 vols. The standard biography.

Ferris Greenslet: James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work. The latest biography (1905) and very satisfactory. Francis H. Underwood: James Russell Lowell: A Biographical Sketch and Lowell the Poet and the Man. Interesting recollections of a personal friend and editorial associate. Edward Everett Hale: Lowell and His Friends.

Edward Everett Hale, Jr.: James Russell Lowell. (Beacon Biographies.)

Charles Eliot Norton: Letters of James Russell Lowell. 2 vols. Invaluable and delightful.

Edmund Clarence Stedman: Poets of America.

W. C. Brownell: James Russell Lowell. (Scribner's Magazine, February, 1907.) The most recent critical estimate.

George William Curtis: James Russell Lowell: An Address. John Churton Collins. Studies in Poetry and Criticism, Poetry and Poets of America." Excellent as an English estimate.

Barrett Wendell: Literary History of America and Stelligeri, 66 Mr. Lowell as a Teacher."

Henry James: Essays in London and Library of the World's Best Literature.

George E. Woodberry: Makers of Literature.

William Watson: Excursions in Criticism.

W. D. Howells: Literary Friends and Acquaintance.
Charles E. Richardson: American Literature.

M. A. De Wolfe Howe: American Bookmen.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Old Cambridge.

Frank Preston Stearns: Cambridge Sketches. 1905.
Richard Burton: Literary Leaders of America. 1904.

John White Chadwick: Chambers's Cyclopedia of English
Literature.

Hamilton Wright Mabie: My Study Fire. Second Series, "Lowell's Letters."

Margaret Fuller: Art, Literature and the Drama. 1859.

Richard Henry Stoddard: Recollections, Personal and Literary, "At Lowell's Fireside."

Edwin P. Whipple: Outlooks on Society, Literature and Politics, "Lowell as a Prose Writer."

H. R. Haweis: American Humorists.
Bayard Taylor: Essays and Notes.

G. W. Smalley: London Letters, Vol. I., “Mr. Lowell, why the English liked him."

THE POETS' TRIBUTES TO LOWELL

Longfellow's Herons of Elmwood; Whittier's A Welcome to Lowell; Holmes's Farewell to Lowell, At a Birthday Festival, and To James Russell Lowell; Aldrich's Elmwood; Margaret J. Preston's Home-Welcome to Lowell; Richard Watson Gilder's Lowell; Christopher P. Cranch's To J. R. L. on His Fiftieth Birthday, and To J. R. L. on His Homeward Voyage; James Kenneth Stephen's In Memoriam; James Russell Lowell, Lapsus Calami and Other Verses"; William W. Story's To James Russell Lowell, Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 150; Eugene Field's James Russell Lowell; Edith Thomas's On Reading Lowell's "Heartsease and Rue."

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10

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

AND OTHER POEMS

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

PRELUDE TO PART FIRST

OVER his keys the musing organist,
Beginning doubtfully and far away,

First lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his
lay:

Then, as the touch of his loved instrument

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his
theme,

First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent
Along the wavering vista of his dream.

Not only around our infancy

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.

Over our manhood bend the skies;

Against our fallen and traitor lives 15 The great winds utter prophecies;

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T

With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood

Waits with its benedicite; benè dicite And to our age's drowsy blood

Still shouts the inspiring sea.

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives

us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in;

25 At the Devil's booth are all things sold,

Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking
'T is heaven alone that is given away,

30 'T is only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;

35 Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

40

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;

45 The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chal

50

ice,

And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean

To be some happy creature's palace;

The little bird sits at his door in the sun,

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and

sings;

55 He sings to the wide world, and she to her

nest,