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 E-UBRARY^A
 
 AMERICAN POETS 
 
 AND 
 
 THEIR THEOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG 
 
 D. D., LL. D., LITT. D. 
 
 PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; 
 AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY," "SYSTEM- 
 ATIC THEOLOGY, " "PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION," " CHRIST IN 
 CREATION," "MISCELLANIES," " CHAPEL-TALKS," AND 
 "LECTURES ON THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT " 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JUDSON PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO LOS ANGELES 
 
 KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO
 
 Copyright 1916 by 
 A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 
 
 Published December, 1916
 
 Mo 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 SOME years ago I printed a volume entitled " The 
 Great Poets and Their Theology." I gave account of 
 Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, 
 Wordsworth, Browning, and Tennyson. The volume 
 had some currency, and I was asked by the publishers 
 to prepare another book on " American Poets and Their 
 Theology." After a little consideration I declined, 
 upon the ground that American poets had no theology. 
 Most of them being spokes of " The Hub," Harvard 
 men, and Unitarians, I unwisely took it for granted 
 that their theology was either nebulous or nil. When 
 I demitted my office as president of a seminary and pro- 
 fessor of theology, this old proposition recurred to me, 
 and I considered the question anew. I concluded to 
 make trial of Bryant, since he was the real founder of 
 our poetic line. To my surprise and gratification I 
 found that his poems contained a large amount of the- 
 ology, and that of a very respectable sort for he never 
 wholly escaped the influence of his early Calvinistic 
 training. This discovery emboldened me to go on to 
 Emerson, in whom I encountered a teacher of a very 
 different type, whom I was obliged severely to criti- 
 cize. But when I came to Whittier, I was again en- 
 couraged ; and I did not stop my work until Poe, Long- 
 fellow, Lowell, Holmes, Lanier, and Whitman had 
 come under review. These poets represent various 
 
 344943
 
 Vi PREFACE 
 
 phases of poetic art, and almost as many phases of 
 theological belief. By turns I have praised and have 
 condemned; but, as I trust, with constant effort to 
 utter only truth. 
 
 It will be readily perceived that the standard by 
 which these poets are tried is that of the evangelical 
 faith; and by the evangelical faith I mean modified 
 Calvinism, or the theology of the New Testament. I 
 do not scruple to add that, to my mind, that theology 
 is most fully presented to us in the writings of the 
 apostles Paul and John. I regard these writings, how- 
 ever, as only the posthumous works of our Lord him- 
 self, and as the fulfilment of his promise that his Spirit 
 should lead his followers into all the truth. So far 
 as I know, our American poets have never been sys- 
 tematically subjected to this standard of judgment. 
 There have been books in plenty which have estimated 
 their work as simple poetry ; but there have been none 
 which have asked every poet to .justify his theology by 
 comparing it with divine revelation. The result has 
 been that the charm of the poetry has often blinded the 
 reader to its skeptical tendencies, even if it has not 
 subtly undermined his religious faith. I have thought 
 it a service to the church and to the truth to point out 
 the shortcomings, if not the positively erroneous teach- 
 ings, of some of our poets, while at the same time I 
 drew attention to the correct and uplifting doctrine of 
 others. I have conducted my investigation with a pro- 
 found belief in the deity and the atonement of Jesus 
 Christ, and I have tried, by applying his revealed stand- 
 ards, to anticipate his final judgment. How far I have 
 succeeded, my readers will judge for themselves. I
 
 PREFACE Vll 
 
 shall be content to receive even their disapproving ver- 
 dict, if I may only at the last hear the Master say, 
 "Well done!" 
 
 An old-fashioned theologian will be pardoned for 
 indulging in proof-texts. Mere description of a poet's 
 views would fail to convince the reader of its justice, 
 if it were not accompanied by definite quotations from 
 the poet's writings. I have therefore furnished ex- 
 cerpts wherever this was possible. As in the case of 
 proof-texts from Scripture, there is danger that the 
 extract, in separation from its context, may give wrong 
 impressions of its real meaning. I have tried to fortify 
 my interpretations by references to each poet's " Life 
 and Letters." Proof-texts, thus interpreted, express 
 the substance of a document more clearly than the or- 
 dinary reader would gather it from the document as a 
 whole. The ordinary reader, at least, will be grateful 
 to me for saving his labor and time, while the critic 
 will all the more enjoy his comparison of the quota- 
 tions with the originals. With the single additional 
 proviso that my aim is the limited one of exhibiting 
 not so much the poetical as the theological merits and 
 demerits of the writers whom I describe, I commit my 
 work to the candid consideration of all who love truth 
 in literature. It is my humble offering to Christ and 
 to the world on my eightieth birthday. 
 
 AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG. 
 ROCHESTER, August 3, 1916.
 
 NOTE 
 
 The thanks of the author are especially due to 
 Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized pub- 
 lishers of the poems of Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, 
 Lowell, and Holmes, by permission of, and arrange- 
 ment with, whom so many quotations have been made 
 from these poems; to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for 
 similar permission to quote from the poems of Bryant ; 
 to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, in the case of La- 
 nier; and to David McKay, the publisher of Whitman's 
 " Leaves of Grass," for the same courtesy.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT I-/ 
 
 Poetry a belated product of American soil 3 
 
 William Cullen Bryant our first real poet 4 
 
 He came of sturdy New England stock 5 
 
 His birthplace, and his early discipline 6 
 
 Educational influence of the times 7 
 
 A natural linguist, but with little college training. 7 
 Indebtedness to his father, and dawn of poetical 
 
 ambition 8 
 
 At eighteen is author of " Thanatopsis " 9 
 
 At eighty, of " Ode on Birthday of George 
 
 Washington " 12 
 
 His influence covered a period of fifty-six years. 13 
 
 Cowper and Wordsworth his possible models.. 13 
 
 Studies law, and practises for nine years 14 
 
 Editor of " The Evening Post " in New York 
 
 City 15 
 
 His influence upon American journalism 16 
 
 Untiring energy, and its physical conditions . . 18 
 Foundation of his character was his belief in 
 
 God 19 
 
 His poetry not intentionally theological 20 
 
 As poet of nature, compared with Wordsworth. 21 
 Saw a personal God in beauty and grandeur of 
 
 the world 22 
 
 Recognized the sinfulness of humanity , 23 
 
 Human sinfulness touches the divine compas- 
 sion 24 
 
 External world beautiful because unfallen 25 
 
 God's justice is recognized, but justice is mixed 
 
 with love . . .26 
 
 IX
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 A vein of humor in Bryant 27 
 
 Truth and freedom are not impersonal 28 
 
 Address " To a Waterfowl " celebrates divine 
 
 Providence 29 
 
 Declared his reliance on Christ for salvation . . 31 
 
 Wrote hymns for public worship 31 
 
 Declared the world-wide supremacy of Christ. . 35 
 
 Yet we do not read of the Cross in his poetry. 36 
 
 An unwavering belief in immortality 36 
 
 Poems addressed to his wife 37 
 
 Separation caused by death is not lasting 39 
 
 Filial piety one of his noblest traits 41 
 
 Bryant's limitations : he is descriptive and medi- 
 tative, but never lyric or dramatic 44 
 
 Explanation of the somberness of his verse.. 45 
 
 He lacked the recognition of a present Christ.. 45 
 Sees in nature the transcendence, rather than 
 
 the immanence, of God 46 
 
 His translations of the " Iliad " and the 
 
 "Odyssey" 47 
 
 He brings us "authentic tidings of invisible 
 
 things " 48 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 49~IO3 
 
 Emerson the heir of eight generations of Puri- 
 tan divines 51 
 
 Straitened circumstances, but habitual self- 
 reliance Si 
 
 His intellectual " Declaration of Independence " . 52 
 Bryant more simple and intelligible than Emer- 
 son 53 
 
 Is Emerson philosopher, poet, or prophet? 53 
 
 He had no system, and his philosophy is eclectic. 54 
 The poet of transcendentalism, but of trans- 
 scendentalism under bonds to a naturalistic 
 
 philosophy 54 
 
 He begins with nature, instead of beginning 
 
 with man 55 
 
 Nature is necessitated and deterministic will .. 56
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Transcendentalism is a compound of English 
 idealism, German intuitionalism, and Oriental 
 
 immanence 56 
 
 His idealism led to pantheism, rather than to 
 
 theism 57 
 
 His intuitionalism made the inner light an ex- 
 clusive source of knowledge 58 
 
 Emerson's intuitions are colored by finiteness 
 
 and sin 60 
 
 They need to be corrected by positive revela- 
 tion 60 
 
 The immanence taught is an impersonal im- 
 manence 63 
 
 Compare with it the immanence of Christ, as 
 
 taught by Jonathan Edwards 65 
 
 He lacked humility and the sense of sin 66 
 
 Regarded sin as a necessity, always resulting 
 
 in good 67 
 
 A discord necessary to perfect harmony 70 
 
 The remedy of evil is in self, not in God 71 
 
 The poet is simply the emancipated man 73 
 
 Emerson is neither simple, sensuous, nor pas- 
 sionate 74 
 
 He has the substance of poetry, without its 
 
 form 75 
 
 He shows an open heaven and a present God.. 76 
 But this God is indistinguishable from ourselves. 76 
 
 This God does not hear or answer prayer 78 
 
 Yet Emerson's positive doctrine of individuality 
 
 is valuable ,. 80 
 
 Painfully slighting allusions to Jesus 81 
 
 He left the ministry because he could not wor- 
 ship Jesus < 83 
 
 His message became the fallible message of a 
 
 human seer 84 
 
 His optimism is a pantheistic denial of any 
 
 moral evil 84 
 
 The evangelization of men did not interest him. 88 
 Yet all the good in his doctrine came from 
 
 Christ 89 
 
 We praise his recognition of spirit in matter.. 89
 
 Xll CONTENTS 
 
 An apostle of human freedom only in the ab- 
 stract 91 
 
 He was slow to oppose secession of our South- 
 ern States 93 
 
 Conceived of Christianity as a merely ethical 
 
 philosophy 94 
 
 No clear belief in personal immortality 95 
 
 His personal characteristics, physical and men- 
 tal 97 
 
 A monist, but not an ethical monist 100 
 
 His burial in the great Cathedral of Nature .. 103 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 105-158 
 
 Of all our poets, the most American 107 
 
 Profoundly and pervasively religious 107 
 
 An Orthodox Quaker 108 
 
 The inner light tested and corrected by Scrip- 
 ture 109 
 
 Protested against Puritan intolerance no 
 
 Revolt held in check by his principles of peace. . in 
 
 His description of Quaker life and doctrine .. 112 
 
 His inner light differed from Emerson's 114 
 
 Early surroundings and privations 115 
 
 His reading wakened an intense love of litera- 
 ture 1 16 
 
 An early poem attracted the attention of Gar- 
 rison 117 
 
 His first poetry was journalistic 117 
 
 Garrison summoned him to join the abolitionists. 119 
 
 He gave himself to the anti-slavery cause 120 
 
 And paid the penalty of ostracism and poverty. 121 
 
 His differences with Garrison 124 
 
 His scathing fulmination against Daniel Web- 
 ster 125 
 
 But subsequent compassion, in " The Lost Oc- 
 casion " 126 
 
 Corrects the early faults of his poetry 127 
 
 Public favor and freedom from financial care.. 128 
 His faith in evangelical truth shown in his 
 
 hymns 130
 
 CONTENTS Xlll 
 
 His one book was the Bible ...< 131 
 
 He believed in a personal God of justice and 
 
 of love 132 
 
 Penalty is always disciplinary and remedial . . . 134 
 Illustrated by the mother's training of her child. 136 
 Genuine conviction of sin at the basis of his 
 
 poetry 137 
 
 Sin and suffering are inseparable 138 
 
 In Christ alone he trusts for himself and for 
 
 others 139 
 
 God is one; Christ is the same eternal One; 
 The Holy Spirit is the same Christ mani- 
 fested within us 140 
 
 A practical view of the Trinity, possibly Sa- 
 
 bellian 141 
 
 His acceptance of Christ's sacrifice on his be- 
 half 142 
 
 The mercy of God is his only hope 143 
 
 Not so far away from Calvinism as he thought. 145 
 
 Faith in the ultimate triumph of goodness 146 
 
 Yet he is not a Universalist 147 
 
 Feared for the lost, not outward punishment, 
 
 but inward suffering 148 
 
 Firm faith in personal immortality, unlike 
 
 Emerson 149 
 
 His genius was rustic and homely, but conse- 
 crated to God 151 
 
 A natural balladist, in " Barbara Frietchie " and 
 
 "Maud Muller" 152 
 
 Prosperity and comfort crowned his latter days. 153 
 
 " The end of that man was peace " 154 
 
 The secret of his life was his humble faith in 
 God 157 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 159-206 
 
 Whittier and Poe both unlike and like 161 
 
 Griswold's conclusions have been essentially 
 
 justified 163 
 
 Poe's ancestry and early training 163 
 
 His schooling in England , 165
 
 XIV CONTENTS 
 
 His earliest verses striking and melodious 166 
 
 His dissipated life at college 168 
 
 Two years in the army, under an assumed name. 169 
 A few months in the West Point Military 
 
 Academy 169 
 
 His patron casts him off, and he becomes in- 
 temperate 1 70 
 
 His inordinate desire for literary fame 171 
 
 He prints "Tamerlane" and "Al Aaraaf " ... 171 
 His early poetry lacks unity and rationality .. 174 
 First successful work is his prose " Tales of 
 
 the Arabesque and the Grotesque" 174 
 
 These are tales of the charnel-house, and they 
 
 aim to startle 175 
 
 Poe becomes an editor and a critic unduly 
 
 harsh 1 76 
 
 The illness and death of his young wife 177 
 
 Commemorated in his poem "Annabel Lee" .. 178 
 Regarded himself as a victim, not as a criminal 179 
 
 His miserable death in Baltimore 181 
 
 A professed atheist, he still fears God's judg- 
 ment 182 
 
 Conceit of his own powers blinded him 183 
 
 His theology declared in his prose poem, 
 
 " Eureka " 184 
 
 He regarded mind as a sensitive form of matter. 184 
 We are parts of God, and shall ourselves be- 
 come God 186 
 
 God is only material force, without intelligence 
 
 or love 187 
 
 Truth and goodness are by-products of beauty. . 188 
 Poetry is the expression of merely physical 
 
 loveliness 188 
 
 There is no standard of beauty, and beauty is 
 
 lost 189 
 
 He reveled in abnormal and revolting incidents. 191 
 Dealt in the "witchery of words," as in his 
 
 poem " The Bells " 192 
 
 His essays : " The Poetic Principle," " The Phi- 
 losophy of Composition," and " The Rationale 
 of Verse " 194
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 Mastery of technique, but ever-gathering gloom. 198 
 " The Haunted Palace " a picture of Poe's own 
 
 soul 201 
 
 A haunting melody is not the highest poetry.. 202 
 To satisfy the mind, substance must equal form. 202 
 His poetry is melody without truth and with- 
 out love 203 
 
 Quotations from Griswold and from Tennyson. 203 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 207-263 
 
 Great influence of Longfellow upon young men 
 
 of the last generation 209 
 
 Of all our American poets the most beloved . . 210 
 
 His family and his early home 210 
 
 His indebtedness to Irving and to Bryant 212 
 
 Hawthorne, Abbott, and Pierce his college mates 
 
 at Bowdoin 213 
 
 Indians of Maine suggested his future "Hia- 
 watha " 213 
 
 Early verses and literary ambition 214 
 
 Professorship of Modern Languages, and three 
 
 years abroad 215 
 
 " Outre-Mer " his first work in prose 218 
 
 Appointment to Harvard, marriage, and death 
 
 of his wife 219 
 
 " Hyperion " shows growing originality and 
 
 unity 221 
 
 Swings off from federal theology to Unitarian- 
 ism 222 
 
 Though unevangelical, still a Christian poet . . . 223 
 Discovers his vocation, and prints " The Voices 
 
 of the Night " 225 
 
 Influence of "A Psalm of Life" soothing and 
 
 inspiring 226 
 
 His second marriage, noble house, and liberal 
 
 hospitality 226 
 
 Loss of his wife leads to his translation of 
 
 Dante 228 
 
 1843 to 1861 his most productive years 229
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Most successful in his shorter poems 231 
 
 "Evangeline" and "The Song of Hiawatha".. 231 
 
 " The Courtship of Miles Standish " 234 
 
 " Christus " lacks intensity and condensation . . 234 
 Its main defect an insufficient estimate of Jesus 
 
 Christ 235 
 
 Without proper knowledge of divine holiness 
 
 and human sin 236 
 
 As far from skepticism as from mysticism . . . 238 
 Growing tendency to a pagan view of the world. 239 
 " Hermes Trismegistus " indicates a final ag- 
 nostic attitude 241 
 
 " Poems on Slavery " did not please abolition- 
 ists 243 
 
 Our poet of national Union and of universal 
 
 Peace 244 
 
 His genius representative, rather than creative. 246 
 "Michael Angelo " is almost autobiographical. 246 
 His gentle and kindly spirit shown in his rela- 
 tion to others 250 
 
 Though not professedly or demonstratively 
 
 Christian 253 
 
 Faith in an overruling divine Providence 254 
 
 " Morituri Salutamus " gives his thoughts in 
 
 view of death 255 
 
 Faith in immortality strongest in his early 
 
 poems 256 
 
 Would have been a greater poet, if he had 
 rightly understood God's holiness, man's sin, 
 
 and Christ's atonement 261 
 
 His last days sunny and genial 262 
 
 His bust in Westminster Abbey intimates that 
 he is a poet of the whole English-speaking 
 race 263 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 265-317 
 
 Lowell is our chief poetical moralist 267 
 
 Hampered by the brilliancy of his genius 267 
 
 His ethics took the form of patriotism 268
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Parentage and education give him a bent to 
 
 literature 268 
 
 Marriage stimulates his moral impulses, 271 
 
 His first book of poems full of allusions to his 
 
 inamorata 272 
 
 Her early death makes him serious and sympa- 
 thetic 273 
 
 Begins a series of prose essays on English 
 
 dramatists 274 
 
 "Biglow Papers," "Fable for Critics," "Sir 
 
 Launfal " 274 
 
 Poems suggested by domestic sorrow 275 
 
 Growth of the ethical principle in his mind and 
 
 writing 277 
 
 His interest turning from literature to politics. 280 
 
 The " Biglow Papers " his greatest work 282 
 
 They showed the true greatness of the Yankee 
 
 stock 284 
 
 These dialect poems first made him famous . . 285 
 
 Appointed professor in Harvard College 289 
 
 His " Commemoration Ode " and " Concord 
 
 Bridge " 291 
 
 Second marriage, and editorship of " The At- 
 lantic Monthly " 292 
 
 Minister to Madrid, and in 1880 to London .. . . 293 
 His wit was a large part of his endowment . . 293 
 His public addresses sane and statesmanlike, .. 294 
 " The Cathedral " recognizes an indwelling God, 
 
 but not one transcendent 295 
 
 Therefore does not believe in miracle or special 
 
 revelation _. 295 
 
 An error as to man's moral condition and need. 296 
 An unmoral God needs no Mediator and no di- 
 vine Saviour 298 
 
 Each man is his own redeemer 299 
 
 Lowell's " Cathedral " compared with Brown- 
 ing's " Saul " 300 
 
 Religion gives him little comfort in bereave- 
 ment 301 
 
 His future life has no connection with Christ.. 302 
 He has missed the true theory of morals 303
 
 XV111 CONTENTS 
 
 Gives us detached maxims, without foundation, 
 motive, or life 303 
 
 Bible preaching, not moralistic poetry, carried 
 us through our Civil War 304 
 
 Denies special inspiration, but all men are in- 
 spired 305 
 
 God is only another name for nature 306 
 
 On capital punishment, Lowell compared with 
 Wordsworth 308 
 
 His wit misplaced when he ridicules the Cross. 309 
 
 Wrongly fancied that ethics drew him away 
 from poetry 311 
 
 Better theology would have made him a better 
 poet 312 
 
 The good in his poetry rests on an inherited 
 Christian faith 313 
 
 Greater as essayist than as poet 314 
 
 Warmth of affection shown in poems addressed 
 to friends 314 
 
 He estimates himself truly in his " Fable for 
 Critics " 316 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 Holmes is our poetical humorist ............. 321 
 
 Fortunate in his parentage and early training. 322 
 In his boyhood conceives a great dislike for 
 
 Calvinism .................................. 324 
 
 Andover Academy and Harvard College ...... 325 
 
 His long series of class-poems ............... 326 
 
 Versifying began before he had learned to 
 
 write ...................................... 328 
 
 "Old Ironsides" and " The Last Leaf" never 
 
 afterward surpassed ..................... 329 
 
 Studies medicine, and spends two years in Paris. 331 
 Begins medical practice in Boston, which lasts 
 
 twelve years .............................. 332 
 
 Professor of anatomy at Harvard for thirty- 
 
 five years .................................. 333
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 His "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" makes 
 
 him famous 334 
 
 Charles Eliot Norton's characterization of 
 
 Holmes 334 
 
 His mind discursive, rather than philosophic . . . 335 
 " The Deacon's Masterpiece " and " The Cham- 
 bered Nautilus " 336 
 
 Encouraged to venture upon novel literature.. 338 
 His novels are " novels with a purpose," and 
 
 that purpose is the confutation of Calvinism. 339 
 Holds that inherited tendencies to evil are not 
 
 moral 339 
 
 Opposes hyper-Calvinism, rather than Calvinism. 341 
 Scripture and philosophy are against Holmes.. 342 
 He understood neither the evil nor the remedy. 343 
 Regarded Christ as an example, but not as a 
 
 Saviour 343 
 
 Holmes shows the downward gravitation of 
 
 Unitarianism 344 
 
 Evangelical faith the only alternative to agnos- 
 ticism 346 
 
 Holmes's hymns are hymns to the God of na- 
 ture 346 
 
 The fatalistic inheritance of physical evil throws 
 
 the blame of it back upon God 349 
 
 Bitterness of Holmes's theological animus .... 350 
 Somewhat excused by extravagancies of hyper- 
 
 Calvinists 351 
 
 The ethical fruits of his doctrine 352 
 
 He shrank from the reform movements of his 
 
 time 353 
 
 As far from transcendentalism as from aboli- 
 tionism 356 
 
 His " Life of Emerson " and " Memoir of 
 
 Motley " 357 
 
 Poems at public dinners, and tributes to friends. 359 
 
 An entertainer, rather than a teacher 362 
 
 A poet of this life, not of the life to come ... 362 
 
 His humor lasted to old age 363 
 
 Lowell's characterization of the poet and the 
 man 367
 
 XX CONTENTS 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER 369-418 
 
 The relation between poetry and music 371 
 
 Lanier was primarily a musician, secondarily 
 a poet 371 
 
 Our chief poetical musician 372 
 
 Lanier and Poe, their resemblances and their 
 differences 372 
 
 Lanier's passion for music, and his mastery of 
 the flute 374 
 
 His devotion to poetry came late in his devel- 
 opment 375 
 
 College course, religious nature, and struggles to 
 learn his duty 376 
 
 His Christian faith confirmed by study of 
 science 377 
 
 Outbreak of the Civil War arrests his scho- 
 lastic work 378 
 
 Three years in the Confederate Army, and final 
 capture and imprisonment weaken his consti- 
 tution 379 
 
 Desperate illness, and hemorrhage of the lungs. 381 
 
 Marriage, practice of law, dawn of poetical 
 ambition 381 
 
 Love-poems addressed to his wife 383 
 
 " The Jacquerie," the longest of his poems, but 
 a fragment 384 
 
 " Resurrection " and " A Ballad of Trees and 
 
 the Master" 385 
 
 . Position in the Symphony Orchestra of Balti- 
 more 387 
 
 For eight years a heroic fight with death 387 
 
 His poem " Corn " first brings him into public 
 notice 387 
 
 "The Symphony" leads to his appointment to 
 write the " Centennial Cantata " 300 
 
 A poem to be sung, not read, it is severely 
 criticized 390 
 
 Launched on a literary career, but handicapped 
 by disease ,,,,,,,, 392
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 " The Marshes of Glynn " often called his best 
 
 production 393 
 
 " Individuality " shows faith in a moral self- 
 hood 395 
 
 Lectures at Johns Hopkins University 396 
 
 " The beauty of holiness and the holiness of 
 
 beauty mean one thing " 397 
 
 His " Science of English Verse " interprets the 
 
 forms of poetry in terms of music 397 
 
 Makes rhythm consist in time rather than in 
 
 accent 397 
 
 Music too much dominated his poetry 399 
 
 Christian faith implicit in his poems 400 
 
 God's love enables us to face the problem of 
 
 sin 401 
 
 " How Love Looked for Hell " incorrectly makes 
 
 sin furnish its own remedy 404 
 
 His strong faith in immortality 405 
 
 " The Crystal " is his greatest poem 407 
 
 Its characterizations of great names in litera- 
 ture show him to be a natural critic 408 
 
 His affection for his friends, and his optimism. 410 
 He applied the scientific method to the study 
 
 of poetry 414 
 
 His indomitable spirit persisted to the end ... 415 
 A noble poetic gift in process of development.. 416 
 Its premature ending on earth argues a life 
 beyond 417 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 419-470 
 
 Difficulty in finding a ninth poet 421 
 
 Whitman's significant choice of the nickname 
 
 " Walt " 421 
 
 The poet considered from three points of view : 
 
 his art, his morality, and his religion 422 
 
 ^ Poetry must have a correct view of nature . . . 423 
 
 Free-verse is not necessarily poetry 423 
 
 It needs to have a true philosophy underlying it. 424 
 The early life of Whitman as a preparation for 
 
 his writing 4 2 5
 
 XX11 CONTENTS 
 
 His tour of our Southern States, and its free- 
 dom from restraint 426 
 
 Returning home, he gives himself to poetry and 
 not to prose 427 
 
 Two sources of his philosophy, Elias Hicks and 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 428 
 
 The influence of Quakerism upon his method of 
 thought 428 
 
 The influence of transcendentalism upon his 
 thinking 428 
 
 The poet regards his own personality as ex- 
 pressing the All 429 
 
 Emerson commends " Leaves of Grass " to the 
 general public 430 
 
 Whitman persists in his method in spite of 
 Emerson's criticisms 431 
 
 A pantheistic philosophy degrades the form of 
 art 433 
 
 Free-verse is an undeveloped and lower kind of 
 poetry 433 
 
 " O Captain ! my Captain ! " is Whitman's high- 
 est achievement 434 
 
 The poet's egotism also impairs the value of 
 his art 435 
 
 He could not tell the commonplace from the 
 inspired 436 
 
 His glorification of the body makes his poems 
 often immoral 436 
 
 He chooses a non-moral in place of a moral 
 God 439 
 
 He confesses to being the father of six illegiti- 
 mate children 439 
 
 Awakens suspicion of even more serious lapses 
 from virtue 440 
 
 His " comradeship " was of a peculiar sort . . . 442 
 
 How far are bodily organs the proper subjects 
 of poetry? 443 
 
 Whitman exalted obscenity into a principle ... 443 
 
 Yet noted literary men praised his work /|/|/| 
 
 Our Civil War made Whitman democratic and 
 sympathetic 445
 
 CONTENTS XX111 
 
 His care for the sick and wounded 445 
 
 Stricken with paralysis he retires to Camden.. 447 
 After eighteen years of ascetic living he breathes 
 
 his last 447 
 
 His democracy is freedom without law 450 
 
 The influence of music upon his verse 452 
 
 He claimed to be the founder of a new religion. 453 
 It was a religion of affectionate impulse with- 
 out moraTlirw~0r a personal God 453 
 
 His aversion to preachers and churches 455 
 
 Self-deifying, he makes Jehovah, Christ, Satan, 
 and the Holy Spirit, to be all and equally 
 
 manifestations of his life 458 
 
 His instinct of immortality is indefinite though 
 
 strong 462 
 
 Evolution cannot furnish the certainty of a 
 
 happy future 463 
 
 Only one poem shows belief in a righteous God 
 
 or in retribution for evil-doing 466 
 
 "Heavenly Death" therefore is the only savior. 467 
 Walt Whitman is a poet only in the sense of 
 
 giving us the materials for poetry 468 
 
 His verse divorces liberty from law, and makes 
 the highest poetry impossible 469
 
 I 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
 THERE are patriotic people who maintain that 
 America is the predestined home of poetry. They 
 point to little Greece, with her rocky cliffs and bosky 
 vales, her purple hills and encircling isles, and ask 
 triumphantly if Greece was not the natural habitat 
 of liberty and beauty. When we assent, they argue 
 a fortiori that our great continent was even more mani- 
 festly ordained to nourish the largest and most precious 
 growths of the human mind. Poetry is one of those 
 largest and most precious growths, for it is the rhyth- 
 mical expression of the world's meaning, in thoughts 
 that breathe and words that burn. Poetry therefore 
 must be native to America. 
 
 The argument would do credit to Henry Thomas 
 Buckle, who attributes civilization wholly to environ- 
 ment. But it is not convincing. Unfortunately, per- 
 haps, poetry needs for its production something more 
 than bigness of territory or sublimity of scenery. 
 Switzerland has giant and snow-crowned peaks, but 
 she has never had a great poet. Our own mountain 
 ranges and untrodden forests, our prairie cyclones and 
 river floods, furnish proper surroundings, but they 
 do not furnish the needed inspiration. Our struggles 
 with Indian ferocity and British tyranny, our combi- 
 
 3
 
 4 POETRY A BELATED PRODUCT OF AMERICA 
 
 nation of civil freedom with civil union, give us sub- 
 jects for poetry, but not the genius to treat them. A 
 nation of Gradgrinds would still value Niagara only 
 for its water-power, and would be entirely content with 
 prose. 
 
 As a matter of fact, poetry was a belated product of 
 the American soil. We may possibly explain this by 
 remembering that 
 
 The Pilgrim bands, who passed the sea to keep 
 Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone, 
 In his wide temple of the wilderness 1 
 
 were Puritans of the most straitest sect, many of 
 whom thought love for nature a dangerous rival to 
 love for God. The clearing of forests and the fear of 
 savage aggression, moreover, occupied their thoughts. 
 The Bay Psalm Book was the nearest approach to 
 poetical expression, and that was wholly religious. 
 Grotesque and unmelodious as it was, it witnessed that 
 the instinct of poetry still survived, and that men can- 
 not long live without some such exercise of the imagi- 
 nation. Most wonderful it is that, after such bare and 
 unpromising beginnings, there should have suddenly 
 appeared the true father of American literature, the 
 first real poet of our Western world. We wonder when 
 we see the sun of Homer rising upon the darkness of 
 Hellenic times; we may quite as justly wonder when 
 we find the bizarre and tasteless lines of Trumbull and 
 Barlow succeeded by the mature and lofty verse of 
 William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 Yet even this prodigy was rooted in the past. 
 
 1 Bryant, " The Burial-place."
 
 BRYANT S ANCESTRY 5 
 
 Though the poetic afflatus was an original and divine 
 endowment, heredity and environment prepared the 
 way for its expression. The poet came of a sturdy 
 New England stock. His father and his father's 
 father were physicians. His mother was a woman of 
 energy and piety, who taught her son to love and to 
 repeat the hymns of Isaac Watts. She hated drunken- 
 ness and lying. The father was a born naturalist. He 
 taught his son botany and woodcraft, as well as love 
 for good literature. For the time in which he lived, 
 Doctor Bryant was a man of large and liberal mind. 
 He was for several sessions member of the lower 
 house of the Massachusetts Legislature, and once at 
 least he was a member of the Senate. His visits to 
 Boston and his acquaintance with public men made 
 him the oracle of his town, though his serene nature 
 prevented any pretense of superiority. He was careful 
 of his dress, and was sometimes taken for a city resi- 
 dent, spending his holiday in the country. His physical 
 strength was such that, though not of great stature, 
 he could put his barrel of cider over the wheel into 
 the wagon. Since his own father was a physician, his 
 ambition was to have a son who should be a physician 
 also, and with that hope he ' named his second son 
 William Cullen, after the then celebrated physician of 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 The boy was evidently well endowed in body. His 
 only defect in childhood seems to have been a bigness 
 of head, which the father sought to reduce, by plung- 
 ing him each morning into a spring of cold water. He 
 was born at Cummington, a little hamlet hid away 
 among the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts.
 
 6 BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY DISCIPLINE 
 
 The first pioneer had built his cabin there only thirty 
 years before, and it was in a log house that William 
 first saw the light. That log house has long since 
 vanished from the scene, but the tradition of it still 
 remains,, in spite of the commodious mansion which 
 after a time took its place and became the poet's coun- 
 try resort. 
 
 Robert Burns was born in a hovel, but Scottish 
 minstrelsy preceded him. William Cullen Bryant owed 
 more than Burns to his early education. His first 
 schoolhouse was built of logs, but pedagogy in those 
 days meant severe discipline, and the three R's were 
 ground into the very fiber of his being. He was in- 
 dustrious and meditative. His natural habit of seclu- 
 sion was fostered by the presence and influence, in the 
 family, of his mother's father, Ebenezer Snell, an awe- 
 inspiring patriarch, who frowned on all frivolity in 
 the children. Grandfather Snell was a magistrate, 
 under whose administration Bryant remembered seeing 
 forty lashes inflicted upon a young fellow of eighteen 
 for theft. A bundle of birchen twigs hung beside the 
 chimney of the old log house, as an indispensable part 
 of the kitchen furniture, and as a warning to evil-doers ; 
 and such rods boys often had to gather for their 
 own castigation. But there were also books. Bryant 
 traced back his poetical gift to his great-grandfather, 
 Doctor Howard, who had opportunely left a large part 
 of his library to his descendants. The boy devoured 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress " and " Robinson Crusoe." 
 Pope, Gray, and Goldsmith were his father's posses- 
 sions, and these served to mitigate the influence of 
 Anne Bradstreet and other New England poetasters.
 
 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 7 
 
 We must not forget the educational influence of the 
 times. Though Bryant was born in 1794, when the 
 war of the Revolution was over, the survivors of that 
 war were still in evidence, and stories of the Boston 
 Tea-party and of Bunker Hill, of Saratoga and Valley 
 Forge, were the chief entertainments of the fireside. 
 There was no theater or circus, but the militia-muster, 
 the husking-bee, the apple-paring, the barn-raising, and 
 the maple-sugar camp furnished healthful excitement 
 to the young folk of the community. The love of coun- 
 try flourished side by side with the love of nature. 
 The pulpit of that day dealt only with great themes. 
 Heaven and hell were realities that gave light and shade 
 to daily life. Men's thoughts of the outward world 
 and of civil government were interpenetrated by their 
 thoughts of God and of immortality. The poetry of 
 that age must needs be a serious poetry. But the ma- 
 terial was there. The beauty and grandeur of nature, 
 patriotic pride and boundless hope for the country's 
 future, gratitude to God for freedom and faith in God's 
 guidance of the individual and of the State what 
 nobler sources of poetic inspiration were ever found 
 in any land ? 
 
 Bryant was a natural linguist. At sixteen months, 
 he knew all the. letters of the alphabet. At the age of 
 fourteen he began Latin with his uncle, Rev. Dr. 
 Thomas Snell, of Brookfield, and in eighteen months 
 he had read enough Latin to fit him for admission to 
 college at an advanced standing. At fifteen he began 
 Greek with Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, and in 
 two months he had read through the whole Greek 
 Testament. This finished his preparatory studies, and
 
 8 LACK OF COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 at sixteen years of age he entered the sophomore class 
 of Williams College. But shyness of nature and 
 straitness of finance limited his stay to seven months. 
 He left college indeed with the hope of finishing his 
 course at Yale. This his father's means did not permit. 
 He contented himself with a year of the classics and 
 the mathematics with his father at home. It was no 
 bad substitute for college training, and Williams Col- 
 lege shortly afterward gave him his degree. To the 
 end of his days Bryant recognized his indebtedness to 
 his father. The father must have perceived his son's 
 bent toward literature, for we read of no more effort to 
 make him a physician. Doctor Bryant was himself 
 inclined to the making of verses, and classical study 
 had taught him correctness and compression. These 
 qualities of style the father communicated to the son. 
 In after years the poet, mourning his father's death, 
 wrote touchingly: 
 
 For he is in his grave who taught my youth 
 The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
 Offered me to the Muses. 2 
 
 That year at home, under parental tutelage, with 
 freedom to roam the woods and meditate upon their 
 lessons, was a great year for Bryant, for it witnessed 
 the dawn of his poetical ambition. His mind and heart 
 were awakening, and he himself tells us: 
 
 I cannot forget with what fervid devotion 
 I worshiped the visions of verse and of fame; 
 
 Each gaze at the glories of .earth, sky, and ocean, 
 To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame. 
 
 2 " Hymn to Death.'
 
 lt SONGS OF THE MOCKING-BIRD " 9 
 
 Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing, 
 From the gloom of the thicket that over me hung, 
 
 And the thoughts that awoke, in that rapture of feeling, 
 Were formed into verse as they rose to my tongue. 3 
 
 In his later years he gives his matured conception 
 of his calling in the verses entitled " The Poet," and 
 shows us that poetic inspiration does not exclude 
 careful elaboration : 
 
 Deem not the framing of a deathless lay 
 The pastime of a drowsy summer day. 
 
 And in the poem named " A Lifetime," he dutifully 
 connects the growth of his own mind with the teach- 
 ing of his father : 
 
 He murmurs his own rude verses 
 
 As he roams the woods alone; 
 And again I gaze with wonder, 
 
 His eyes are so like my own. 
 
 I see him next in his chamber, 
 Where he sits him down to write 
 
 The rhymes he framed in his ramble, 
 And he cons them with delight. 
 
 A kindly figure enters, 
 
 A man of middle age, 
 And points to a line just written, 
 And 'tis blotted from the page. 
 
 Bryant's earliest productions, however, were only 
 " songs of the mocking-bird," and showed no signs of 
 originality. All the more wonderful it is, that in his 
 eighteenth year he was the author of " Thanatopsis," 
 
 3 " I Cannot Forget." 
 C
 
 IO THANATOPSIS 
 
 a poem so elevated in thought and so faultless in dic- 
 tion as to give it rank with the world's best literature. 
 " Thanatopsis " was at first a fragment, and its begin- 
 nings go back to the poet's sixteenth year. Up to that 
 time he had written only school-exercises, some of 
 which he had recited to little audiences in the school- 
 house ; besides these there was one college poem, which 
 is of no great account and was apparently gotten up to 
 order. But his days of schooling were now over. He 
 could no longer be dependent upon his father ; he must 
 shift for himself. His bent to poetry did not prevent 
 him from perceiving that literature would never fur- 
 nish him with a living; penury has indeed been well 
 defined as the wages of the pen. He began the study 
 of the law at Worthington and at Bridgewater, and 
 at the age of twenty-one was admitted to the bar at 
 Plymouth. But before leaving home to begin these 
 studies, and at the age of eighteen, he completed 
 " Thanatopsis," laid it aside, and apparently forgot it. 
 In his absence, Doctor Bryant rummaged over the 
 contents of a drawer and drew forth the precious 
 document. After reading it hastily, he gave it to a 
 lady friend, and asked her to pass upon its merits. 
 She read it, and burst into tears, and in her weeping 
 the doctor soon joined. They were tears of joy, for 
 they saluted the rise above the horizon of our first poet, 
 one of God's greatest gifts to the New World. 
 
 Dana, the editor of the " North American Review," 
 thought it could not have been written by an American. 
 The wonder of it was that a youth in his teens could 
 have produced a poem so free from foreign influence, 
 yet so faultless and sublime. Stoddard has called it
 
 THANATOPSIS II 
 
 " the greatest poem ever written by so young a man." 
 President Mark Hopkins said that Bryant " had the 
 wisdom of age in his youth, and the fire of youth in 
 his age." I have spoken of " Thanatopsis " as " so 
 free from foreign influences." But I cannot wholly 
 agree with George William Curtis, when he pro- 
 nounces it " without a trace of the English masters of 
 the hour." Chadwick is more nearly correct, when he 
 says that Henry Kirke White's "Ode to the Rose- 
 mary," Bishop Porteus's " Death," and Blair's 
 " Grave " all helped to shape the mood out of which 
 " Thanatopsis " came. To my mind it owes yet more 
 to the example and inspiration of Wordsworth, who 
 began to print before Bryant was born. We know 
 that Judge Howe, at Worthington, found Wordsworth 
 in Bryant's hand, and warned him that it would spoil 
 his style. But, thanks to his own native gift, Bryant 
 had his own style, and Wordsworth only stimulated 
 and encouraged it. 
 
 " Thanatopsis " is a poet's vision of death. The 
 solemn aspects of death are in mind, but they are not 
 funereal. The coming of the inevitable day is nothing 
 dreaded. It is the appointed end of earthly life, and 
 its lesson is expressed in the closing lines of the poem : 
 
 So live, that when thy summons conies to join 
 The innumerable caravan, which moves 
 To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,
 
 12 " ODE ON BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON " 
 
 Early maturity is often the precursor of early decay. 
 But this was not the case with Bryant His genius 
 was a perennial plant, and he bore fruit even in old 
 age. In his eightieth year he wrote his " Ode on the 
 Birthday of George Washington," of which John 
 Bigelow said that these were " the finest verses ever 
 produced by one so young and yet so old." In some 
 editions this ode is entitled " The Twenty-second of 
 February." As it is brief, I quote it entire: 
 
 Pale is the February sky, 
 And brief the midday's sunny hours; 
 The wind-swept forest seems to sigh 
 For the sweet time of leaves and flowers. 
 
 Yet has no month a prouder day, 
 Not even when the summer broods 
 O'er meadows in their fresh array, 
 Or autumn tints the glowing woods. 
 
 For this chill season now again 
 Brings, in its annual round, the morn 
 When, greatest of the sons of men, 
 Our glorious Washington was born. 
 
 Lo, where, beneath an icy shield, 
 Calmly the mighty Hudson flows! 
 By snow-clad fell and frozen field, 
 Broadening, the lordly river goes. 
 
 The wildest storm that sweeps through space, 
 And rends the oak with sudden force, 
 Can raise no ripple on his face, 
 Or slacken his majestic course. 
 
 Thus, 'mid the wreck of thrones, shall live 
 Unmarred, undimmed, our hero's fame, 
 And years succeeding years shall give 
 Increase of honors to his name.
 
 WIDE STRETCH OF BRYANT'S ACTIVITY 13 
 
 This poem, written just before Bryant died, suggests 
 to us the wide stretch of his poetical activity, and its 
 remarkable influence upon American literature. That 
 influence covered a period of fifty-six years. Bryant's 
 youth was the time of Napoleon's conquests, and of 
 his final defeat at Waterloo. He lived through the 
 reigns of Louis Philippe and of Napoleon the Third; 
 through our war of 1812 and our great Civil War; 
 and through the administrations of twelve of our 
 American presidents. He celebrated Lincoln's Procla- 
 mation of Emancipation, and he expressed in pathetic 
 verse the sorrow of the nation at Lincoln's death. His 
 poetry never changed its sober and thoughtful air. 
 The lyric and the impassioned were foreign to him. 
 But interpretations of natural beauty were never lack- 
 ing. He had not the melody of Shelley, nor the intro- 
 spection of Browning, but there were a simplicity and 
 a judicial quality about his verse which made it im- 
 pressive and convincing. 
 
 Bryant's youth was past before there occurred the 
 so-called Elizabethan revival. Chaucer and Shake- 
 speare did not get their proper hold upon him. If 
 he had models at all, he found them in Cowper and 
 Wordsworth. So we do not find in him the vast 
 vocabulary and deep acquaintance with human passion 
 that are so marked in Shakespeare, nor even Chau- 
 cer's gaiety and breadth of sympathy. The stateliness 
 of Pope and the somberness of Wordsworth made their 
 mark upon him. Yet he avoided the platitudinous 
 sentiment of " The Excursion," and the artistic moral- 
 izing of the " Essay on Man." He was slow to print, 
 and quick to detect doggerel. While his verse is never
 
 14 CORYPHEUS OF AMERICAN POETS 
 
 brilliant or startling, it never lacks correctness, both 
 in form and substance. Its sincerity commends it. 
 We can never say of Bryant, as has been said of 
 Wordsworth, that his fame would be greater if nine- 
 tenths of his writing had been burned. It is this com- 
 bination of beauty and truth, of insight into nature's 
 meanings and simplicity in the expression of them, that 
 has made Bryant the teacher and corypheus of our 
 American poets. 
 
 My meaning will be more plain if I quote the words 
 of Emerson and of Longfellow. These great writers 
 had Bryant's verse before them at the very beginning 
 of their literary careers. While Bryant was born in 
 1794, Emerson's birth was in 1803, and Longfellow's 
 in 1807. Longfellow writes: " He was my master in 
 verse ten years my senior. His translations from the 
 Spanish rival the originals in beauty." Emerson adds, 
 " He has written some of the best poetry we have had 
 in America." Yet Bryant did not devote himself 
 wholly to poetry. The study of the law was followed 
 by the practice of the law, and he could undoubtedly 
 have succeeded in that profession. First at Plainfield, 
 and then at Great Barrington, legal practice occupied 
 him for nine whole years. During this period his 
 reputation secured for him both readers and hearers. 
 Harvard invited him to deliver its Phi Beta Kappa 
 address, and he responded with his poem, " The 
 Ages," a thoughtful review of the progress of human 
 society, with stirring prophecy of the coming great- 
 ness of America. He writes: 
 
 Europe is given a prey to sterner fates 
 And writhes in shackles. .
 
 THE LAW EXCHANGED FOR LETTERS 15 
 
 But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, 
 Save with thy children thy maternal care, 
 Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on all 
 These are thy fetters seas and stormy air 
 Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where, 
 Among thy gallant sons who guard thee well, 
 Thou laugh'st at enemies: who shall then declare 
 The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell 
 How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell! 
 
 But the law was not his chosen vocation. He be- 
 came disgusted with the technicality and chicanery 
 which often accompanied its practice. He saw himself 
 
 forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
 And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
 And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
 Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud.* 
 
 He longed for an opening into some form of literary 
 activity. This was furnished him in the city of New 
 York, where, after a year of work upon a purely 
 literary and short-lived review, he became, first, asso- 
 ciate editor, and then chief editor and owner, of " The 
 Evening Post." 
 
 The change from country to city was a momentous 
 one. Yet the New York of 1825 was not the New 
 York of to-day. It numbered only 180,000 inhabitants, 
 and the city extended no farther north than Fourth 
 Street. Bryant found much of country scenery within 
 easy reach, for he tells us that he delighted to ramble 
 along the wooded shores of the Hudson above Canal 
 Street. The city, indeed, was solidly built only so far 
 as Canal. City life was not yet differentiated from the 
 
 * " Green River."
 
 l6 EDITOR OF " THE EVENING POST " 
 
 life of the country. Though the poet was a lawyer, 
 with nine years' experience of litigation and of ming- 
 ling with his kind, he was by nature a modest man, 
 and he hated publicity. In Great Barrington he had 
 held the positions of tithing-man, town clerk, and 
 justice of the peace, with an aggregate compensation 
 of five dollars a year for all the three. For obvious 
 reasons he afterward declined public office. In the 
 great city he gave himself strictly to his business as 
 editor. For forty-six years he followed what he 
 regarded as his peculiar calling. He did more than 
 any other man to elevate the tone of American journal- 
 ism. It greatly needed elevating, as Dickens and Trol- 
 lope have shown us to our sorrow. 
 
 No one who has reached the age of seventy can 
 remember without shame the personalities and vulgari- 
 ties of the daily press of fifty years ago. Bryant dealt 
 with principles rather than with persons. He was at 
 first a Federalist, because he feared the Jeffersonian 
 tendency to sectionalism and individualism. After a 
 time he became an advocate of Free Trade, because 
 he detested all restrictions upon commerce; indeed, he 
 demonstrated his independence of judgment and the 
 courage of his convictions by standing many years for 
 Free Trade when in all the country he was its only 
 advocate. The same general principle of liberty under 
 law, that made him first a Federalist and then a Demo- 
 crat, led him at last, when the slavery agitation began, 
 to take sides with the Republican party, and with that 
 party he continued to act through the remainder of 
 his life. He was no doctrinaire, like Greeley, and he 
 had not the sarcastic and bitter pen of Godkin, his
 
 THE JOURNALIST AND CITIZEN 17 
 
 successor ; but he was an almost ideal editor, for sound 
 judgment and ability to guide public opinion. 
 
 We owe him a great debt. If we abhor yellow 
 journalism, it is because he set for us the true standard. 
 He did not cater to popular taste, but aimed to form 
 that taste. Not simply news, but leadership; not mere 
 reflection of the good and evil of the day, but incul- 
 cation of right views in politics, art, and conduct 
 these were his aims. He loved his work as editor, 
 because it was so impersonal. He could teach men to 
 weigh reasons, instead of being led by passion and 
 prejudice. But he could not be hid. He became 
 known as the first suggester of the present park system 
 of New York, and his statue now very properly stands 
 behind the new building of the Public Library, and 
 facing the park which bears his name. He was the 
 founder of the Century Club, and its president when 
 he died. He was also the founder of the National 
 Academy of Design. He was called upon for ad- 
 dresses in commemoration of Cole the painter, of 
 Cooper the novelist, of Washington Irving, Samuel 
 F. B. Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, Halleck, and last of 
 all, Mazzini. Indeed, it was just after his address in 
 honor of Mazzini that, on entering the house of a 
 friend, " that good gray head that all men knew " fell 
 backward and struck the stone pavement, so that four- 
 teen days afterward Bryant expired. 
 
 It is calculated that his editorial writing, during the 
 half-century of his connection with " The Evening 
 Post," would fill a hundred octavo volumes of five hun- 
 dred pages each. He wrote upon manifold subjects 
 of politics, history, biography, travel, art; but always
 
 1 8 PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF BRYANT'S ENERGY 
 
 with pellucid clearness and straightforwardness, and 
 with a view to immediate effect. He went seven times 
 to -Europe, and made one stay of two years abroad. 
 He was a scholar in several languages, and made trans- 
 lations from Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French 
 poems. He recited Dante in Italian, to match Zachos's 
 recitation of Greek. He engaged in no financial specu- 
 lations, and he never sold his editorial influence to any 
 man or to any party. But he was all the more recog- 
 nized as the leader of the American press, and his 
 business sagacity and success were so great that at his 
 death he left to his family a fortune of half -a million 
 dollars. 
 
 We cannot understand this untiring energy without 
 some knowledge of its physical conditions. Bryant 
 had one of those calm natures to which work seems 
 easy and inevitable. There were no idle hours. Indus- 
 try was bred in the bone. He tells us that his regular 
 practice was to rise at five in summer, and at half past 
 five in winter; to spend the first hour of the day in 
 gymnastic exercise ; then to bathe ; to breakfast mainly 
 on cereals; to avoid tea and coffee altogether; to walk 
 three miles each morning to his office, and to reach 
 that office by eight o'clock. The afternoon journal 
 necessitated early hours in its editor. When his edi- 
 torial work was over, he walked home again. But 
 he took no office cares with him. He lived two lives. 
 When the life of the editor closed with the day, the 
 life of the poet began. His house at Roslyn on Long 
 Island was a rural retreat, with forty acres of lawns 
 and trees and shrubs and flowers about it. But within 
 was a librarv of several thousand books, the sifted and
 
 CHARACTER FOUNDED IN BELIEF IN GOD 19 
 
 garnered wisdom and product of the ages. Here he 
 luxuriated, and received many a distinguished guest. 
 And here he continued to write poetry, though the 
 pruning-knife and the waste-basket made the final 
 product small. Toward the close of his life it was only 
 on great occasions that he spent a night in his city 
 house. Public dinners always sought him, and he fre- 
 quently attended them. He was not a vegetarian, 
 though he ate little meat; he was not a total abstainer, 
 but his taking of wine was very rare and very sparing. 
 He never used tobacco, though he provided it for his 
 friends. At the age of eighty, though " a million 
 wrinkles carved his skin," his senses of sight and of 
 hearing were as perfect as when he was a boy. He 
 never wore spectacles, and he was never confined to 
 his bed by illness. His only answer, as to the secret 
 of this wonderful endurance, was the one word, " Mod- 
 eration." 
 
 But he was more than an editor, and more than a 
 poet; he was a man. The foundation of his indomi- 
 table character was his belief in God. He was not given 
 to voluble expression of his feelings; he thought, not 
 altogether wisely, as I think, that a gentleman should 
 never talk of his religion or of his love-affairs. We 
 have few glimpses of his inner life, except those which 
 are furnished by his poems. His actions, however, 
 speak louder than words. In his family, every Sunday 
 morning, there was the reading of a chapter of the 
 Bible and of prayers. He was, from his youth to his 
 age, an invariable attendant upon the Sunday services 
 of the church. In New England he worshiped with 
 the Congregationalists, on Long Island with Presby-
 
 2O RELIGIOUS HABITS 
 
 terians, in the city of New York with Unitarians. But 
 he never ventured to make a Christian profession until 
 his later years. Mr. Curtis has told so beautifully the 
 story of this epoch in his life, that I quote his words : 
 
 "The poem called 'The Life that Is,' dated at Castella- 
 mare, in May, 1858, commemorates the recovery of his wife 
 from a serious illness. A little time before, in the month of 
 April, after a long walk with his friend, the Reverend Mr. 
 Waterston, of Boston, on the shore of the Bay of Naples, he 
 spoke with softened heart of the new beauty that he felt in 
 the old truth, and proposed to his friend to baptize him. 
 With prayer and hymn and spiritual meditation, a little com- 
 pany of seven, says Mr. Waterston, in a large upper room, as 
 in the Christian story, partook of the Communion, and with 
 his good gray head bowed down, Bryant was baptized." 
 
 In the painted window which commemorates the 
 ministry of Frederick W. Robertson in Brighton, Eng- 
 land, there is a representation of Jesus 'at the age of 
 twelve before the, doctors in the temple, and with this 
 inscription, " They were thinking about theology ; he 
 about religion." Bryant dealt with religion. He 
 was no professed theologian. Yet every man has some 
 theology, whether he be conscious of it or not. Some 
 conceptions of truth lie at the basis of his moral action, 
 and the more thoughtful and logical he is, the more 
 clear and articulate will these conceptions be. A mind 
 ' so vigorous and honest as Bryant's could not help ex- 
 pressing itself in forms of speech ; and though he was 
 shy of utterance with regard to the deepest things of 
 the soul, his poetic nature could not be satisfied with- 
 out putting into verse that which to him was most 
 fundamental. Many of his poems, indeed, seem writ- 
 ten by way of gradual approach to a Christian con-
 
 BRYANT AND WORDSWORTH 21 
 
 fession, and to be glad and solemn avenues leading on- 
 ward and upward to the holy of holies and to the 
 dwelling-place of God. 
 
 II 
 
 I regard Bryant as a more truly Christian poet than 
 even Wordsworth. Both were poets of nature. But 
 Wordsworth came near to identifying God with 
 nature: Bryant never confounded the two. Words- 
 worth would never have found delight in mountain, 
 field, and flood, if he had not recognized in them a 
 Spirit which through them manifested itself to mortals. 
 That Spirit, however, never seems to utter articulate 
 sounds, or to take personal form. But to Bryant, God 
 was never mere impersonal spirit. " It " and " which " 
 were not applicable to Him. God was transcendent, 
 even more than he was immanent. The finite was 
 never merged in the infinite. Mortal awe never be- 
 came pantheistic absorption. In all this we see the 
 abiding influence of the poet's New England training, 
 and the happy effect of those theological sermons to 
 which he listened in his youth. 
 
 What theology we find in Bryant's poetry must then 
 be gathered from occasional utterances of the overflow- 
 ing heart, rather than from any set effort to declare 
 dogmatic truth. When we do find such utterances, we 
 may be sure that they will be clear indications of his 
 inmost thought, and not diplomatic concessions to the 
 spirit of the times. He believed, first of all, in a per-
 
 22 CLEAR FAITH IN A PERSONAL GOD 
 
 sonal God, and a God of lov^e. This faith delivered 
 him from melancholy, and made him optimistic. In 
 this respect he was a contrast to Matthew Arnold, to 
 whom God was only " the power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness." One of the most astound- 
 ing announcements in all literature is Matthew Arnold's 
 assertion that this is the teaching of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures. Without a personal God, the forward-looking 
 spirit of Israel would be inexplicable. It is easy to see 
 the truth of Hutton's remark that Matthew Arnold 
 embodies in his verse " the sweetness, the gravity, the 
 strength, the beauty, and the languor of death." Bry- 
 ant's verse has sweetness and gravity, but these are the 
 sweetness and gravity of true life, derived from the 
 divine source of life, and sustained thereby. The 
 solemn joy of Bryant has its analogue, not in the noc- 
 turne of Chopin, but in the largo of Handel. 
 
 Our poet saw God in the beauty and grandeur of 
 the world. Woods, waves, and sky were vocal with 
 praise of their great Author. Bryant was not ignorant 
 of science, but he wished to join science to faith. Some 
 of his noblest poetry is the expression of spontaneous 
 emotion in presence of God's sublime manifestations in 
 nature. " A Forest Hymn " illustrates this character- 
 istic of his verse : 
 
 The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
 
 To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
 
 And spread the roof above them ere he framed 
 
 The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
 
 The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
 
 Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
 
 And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
 
 And supplication.
 
 GOD IN NATURE S GRANDEUR 23 
 
 "A Hymn of the Sea" gives us, in a similar man- 
 ner, the poet's recognition of God's presence in " old 
 ocean's gray and melancholy waste " : 
 
 The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways 
 
 His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have scooped 
 
 His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy breath, 
 
 That moved in the beginning o'er his face, 
 
 Moves o'er it evermore. 
 
 So too, there is a " Song of the Stars," in which 
 the heavenly spheres are called 
 
 The boundless visible smile of Him 
 
 To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim. 
 
 Over against God's creatorship and omnipresence, 
 Bryant recognizes the sinfulness of humanity: 
 
 When, from the genial cradle of our race, 
 Went forth the tribes of men . . . 
 
 . . . and there forgot 
 
 The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that heard 
 them not. 5 
 
 The world 
 
 Is full of guilt and misery, . . 
 Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
 To tire thee of it. 6 
 
 Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive 
 And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth 
 Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong, 
 And heaven is listening. 7 
 
 There seems to be confession of his personal sin : 
 
 6 " The Ages." 8 " Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood." 
 
 " Earth."
 
 24 SINFULNESS OF HUMANITY 
 
 For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell 
 Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; 
 And wrath has left its scar that fire of hell 
 Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 8 
 
 " The West Wind " is a symbol of human incon- 
 stancy and ingratitude : 
 
 Ah! thou art like our wayward race; 
 
 When not a shade of pain or ill 
 Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, 
 
 Thou lov'st to sigh and mutmur still. 
 
 'He regrets his forgetfulness of the "Yellow Violet": 
 
 So they, who climb to wealth, forget 
 The friends in darker fortunes tried; 
 
 I copied them but I regret 
 That I should ape the ways of pride. 
 
 " The African Chief " depicts the cruelty of the sav- 
 
 Chained in the market-place he stood, 
 A man of giant frame. 
 
 But his appeals for mercy are in vain : 
 
 His heart was broken crazed his brain: 
 
 At once his eye grew wild; 
 He struggled fiercely with his chain, 
 
 Whispered, and wept, and smiled; 
 Yet wore not long those fatal bands, 
 
 And once, at shut of day, 
 They drew him forth upon the sands, 
 
 The foul hyena's prey. 
 
 Human sinfulness touches the divine compassion in 
 Bryant's verse. He sees in " The Fountain," that 
 
 8 " The Future Life."
 
 THE DIVINE COMPASSION 2$ 
 
 springs " from the red mould and slimy roots of earth," 
 the symbol of God's grace : 
 
 Thus doth God 
 Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and bright. 
 
 And in " The Ages " he asks : 
 
 Has nature, in her calm, majestic march, 
 Faltered with age at last? . . 
 
 Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth 
 
 In her fair page. 
 
 . . . Eternal Love doth keep, 
 In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. 
 
 Will then the merciful One, who stamped our race 
 
 With his own image, . . 
 . . . leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed? 
 
 Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give 
 Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. 
 He who has tamed the elements, shall not live 
 The slave of his own passions; he whose eye 
 Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, 
 And in the abyss of brightness dares to span 
 The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, 
 In God's magnificent works his will shall scan 
 And love and peace shall make their paradise with man. 
 
 The poet's sympathy with nature is connected with 
 his Puritan belief in man's fall. The external world is 
 beautiful, because unfallen. It shares with man the 
 effects of sin; but, whenever we retreat from the 
 regions which man's folly has despoiled, we may find 
 something which reminds us of our lost paradise. 
 From the wrath and injustice of man, the Puritans fled 
 to the untrodden wilderness, and in its solitudes they
 
 26 THE BEAUTIFUL UNFALLEN WORLD 
 
 found a sanctuary. In the " Inscription for the En- 
 trance to a Wood," we read : 
 
 The primal curse 
 
 Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
 But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt 
 Her pale tormentor, misery. 
 
 And so all things work together for good, even 
 though for the present they may seem to contradict 
 the divine beneficence. Bryant's " Hymn to Death " 
 makes even that grim messenger to be the protector 
 of God's creatures : 
 
 Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been found 
 On virtue's side; the wicked, but for thee, 
 Had been too strong for the good; the great of earth 
 Had crushed the weak forever. 
 
 The " Hymn of the Waldenses " declares the justice 
 of God: 
 
 Hear, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock 
 Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock. . . 
 
 Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land 
 Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand. . . 
 
 Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth 
 Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth. 
 
 But justice is mixed with love. He translates, from 
 the Provencal of Bernard Rascas, the magnificent 
 lines : 
 
 All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, 
 Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. 
 The forms of men shall be as they had never been; 
 The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
 
 DIVINE JUSTICE AND LOVE 27 
 
 And the great globe itself, so the holy writings tell, 
 With the rolling firmament, where the starry armies dwell, 
 Shall melt with fervent heat they shall all pass away, 
 Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye. 
 
 And from Boethius, on " The Order of Nature " : 
 
 Thou who wouldst read, with an undarkened eye, 
 The laws by which the Thunderer bears sway, 
 
 Look at the stars that keep, in yonder sky, 
 Unbroken peace from Nature's earliest day. 
 
 Love binds the parts together, gladly still 
 
 They court the kind restraint, nor would be free; 
 
 Unless Love held them subject to the Will 
 That gave them being, they would cease to be. 
 
 This love cares for the individual, as well as for the 
 great whole over which it rules. The poet, in " The 
 Crowded Street," cannot think any human soul for- 
 gotten : 
 
 Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, 
 They pass, and heed each other not. 
 There is who heeds, who holds them all, 
 In his large care and boundless thought. 
 
 These struggling tides of life that seem 
 In wayward, aimless course to tend, 
 
 Are eddies of the mighty stream 
 That rolls to an appointed end. 
 
 There was a vein of humor in Bryant, which seldom 
 came to the surface, but which his associates sometimes 
 discovered. He invites his pastor, Doctor Dewey, to 
 come with Mrs. Dewey and visit him at his country- 
 seat on Long Island : 
 
 The season wears an aspect glum and glummer, 
 The icy north wind, an unwelcome comer, 
 Frighting from garden walks each pretty hummer,
 
 28 A VEIN OF HUMOR 
 
 Whose murmuring music lulled the noons of summer, 
 
 Roars in the wood.s, with grummer voice and grummer, 
 
 And thunders in the forest like a drummer. 
 
 Dumb are the birds they could not well be dumber; 
 
 The winter-cold, life's pitiless benumber, 
 
 Bursts water-pipes, and makes us call the plumber. 
 
 Now, by the fireside, toils the patient thumber 
 
 Of ancient books, and no less patient summer 
 
 Of long accounts, while topers fill the rummer, 
 
 The maiden thinks what furs will best become her, 
 
 And on the stage-boards shouts the gibing mummer. 
 
 Shut in by storms, the dull piano-strummer 
 
 Murders old tunes. There's nothing wearisomer! 
 
 This rhyming would have done credit to Browning 
 or Lowell. But Bryant's humor appeared more often 
 in his editorial work than in his poetry. A witty 
 opponent said that his articles always began with a 
 stale joke, and ended with a fresh lie an accusation 
 which only shows how greatly the journalism of the 
 day needed reformation. 
 
 No stanza of all Bryant's writing is better known 
 or more often quoted than that from the poem en- 
 titled " The Battle-field " : 
 
 Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 
 
 Th' eternal years of God are hers; 
 But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
 
 And dies among his worshipers. 
 
 This verse has been criticized, as holding to some 
 power of impersonal truth to conquer the world. In 
 the light of our poet's other utterances, I must think 
 this criticism unjust. Truth is personified only by 
 poetic license. It has power only because it has God 
 behind it, and because it is the very nature of God
 
 TRUTH AND FREEDOM NOT IMPERSONAL 2Q 
 
 himself. And so I must interpret those noble lines in 
 " My Autumn Walk," in which Bryant exclaims : 
 
 Oh, for that better season, 
 When the pride of the foe shall yield, 
 
 And the hosts of God and Freedom 
 March back from the well-won field! 
 
 The hosts of truth and freedom are only the agents 
 and instruments of God. 
 
 This persistent theism characterizes his short and 
 fanciful, as well as his longer and more serious pro- 
 ductions. I know of no more beautiful celebration of 
 divine Providence than that of Bryant's address " To 
 a Waterfowl." It brings down God's care into the 
 affairs of individual life : 
 
 Whither, midst falling dew," 
 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way? 
 
 Vainly the fowler's eye 
 
 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
 As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 
 
 Thy figure floats along. 
 
 Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 
 On the chafed ocean-side? 
 
 There is a Power whose care 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast 
 The desert and illimitable air 
 
 Lone wandering, but riot lost. 
 
 All day thy wings have fanned, 
 At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
 
 Though the dark night is near.
 
 3O " TO A WATERFOWL 
 
 And soon that toil shall end; 
 Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
 And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, 
 
 Soon, o',er thy sheltered nest. 
 
 Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
 Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
 Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 These lines were written in the poet's youth, when 
 the world was all before him where to choose, and 
 when competence and success were far away. They are 
 as perfect in diction as they are in faith. Matthew 
 Arnold agreed with Hartley Coleridge in pronouncing 
 " The Waterfowl " the finest short poem in the English 
 language. I discern the same pure and trustful spirit 
 in his poem entitled " Blessed are they that Mourn." 
 The Providence that gives us days of gladness does 
 not forget us in our days of sorrow : 
 
 Oh, deem not they are blest alone 
 
 Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep; 
 The Power who pities man, hath shown 
 
 A blessing for the eyes that weep. 
 
 The light of smiles shall fill again 
 
 The lids that overflow with tears; 
 And weary hours of woe and pain 
 
 Are promises of happier years. 
 
 There is a day of sunny rest 
 
 For every dark and troubled night: 
 
 And grief may bide an evening guest, 
 But joy shall come with early light.
 
 BRYANT A CHRISTIAN 3! 
 
 And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier, 
 
 Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, 
 Hope that a brighter, happier sphere 
 
 Will give him to thy arms again. 
 
 Nor let the good man's trust depart, 
 Though life its common gifts deny, 
 
 Though with a pierced and bleeding heart, 
 And spurned of men, he goes to die. 
 
 For God hath marked each sorrowing day, 
 
 And numbered every secret tear, 
 And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 
 
 For all his children suffer here. 
 
 William Cullen Bryant was a Christian. He de- 
 clared his entire reliance on Christ for salvation. I 
 do not know that his faith would have answered to the 
 ordinary dogmatic standards, but it was certainly 
 strong enough to lead him to confession and to bap- 
 tism. He knew his own weakness and insufficiency, 
 and he trusted in what God had done for him, and 
 what God would do for him, in Jesus Christ. In his 
 Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, he showed 
 
 How vain, 
 
 Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands, 
 Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain 
 The smile of Heaven. 
 
 It is not generally known that he wrote hymns for 
 public worship, for not all of these are included in 
 most editions of his works. But Symington, in his 
 biography, quotes for us two stanzas of a hymn 
 founded on the saying of Mary, the mother of Jesus, 
 at the marriage in Cana of Galilee :
 
 32 BRYANT A HYMN-WRITER 
 
 Whate'er he bids observe and do; 
 
 Such be the law that we obey, 
 And greater wonders men shall view 
 
 Than that of Cana's bridal day. 
 
 The flinty heart with love shall beat, 
 The chains shall fall from passion's slave, 
 
 The proud shall sit at Jesus' feet 
 
 And learn the truths that bless and save. 
 
 His published works do, however, furnish us with 
 another hymn which bears the title, " Receive Thy 
 Sight," and is a metrical version of the Gospel story : 
 
 When the blind suppliant in the way, 
 
 By friendly hands to Jesus led, 
 Prayed to behold the light of day, 
 
 " Receive thy sight," the Saviour said. 
 
 At once he saw the pleasant rays 
 
 That lit the glorious firmament; 
 And, with firm step and words of praise, 
 
 He followed where the Master went. 
 
 Look down in pity, Lord, we pray, 
 On eyes oppressed with moral night, 
 
 And touch the darkened lids and say 
 The gracious words, " Receive thy sight." 
 
 Then, in clear daylight, shall we see 
 Where walked the sinless Son of God; 
 
 And, aided by new strength from Thee, 
 Press onward in the path He trod. 
 
 There is a hymn to celebrate Christ's nativity : 
 
 As shadows cast by cloud and sun 
 
 Flit o'er the summer grass, 
 So, in thy sight, Almighty One! 
 
 Earth's generations pass.
 
 THE NATIVITY AND MISSIONS 33 
 
 And while the years, an endless host, 
 
 Come pressing swiftly on, 
 The brightest names that earth can boast 
 
 Just glisten, and are gone. 
 
 Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed 
 
 A lustre pure and sweet; 
 And still it leads, as once it led, 
 
 To the Messiah's feet. 
 
 O Father, may that holy Star 
 
 Grow every year more bright, 
 And send its glorious beam afar 
 
 To fill the world with light. 
 
 And a prayer for the regions of our own land that 
 need the gospel : 
 
 Look from the sphere of endless day, 
 
 Oh, God of mercy and of might! 
 In pity look on those who stray, 
 
 Benighted, in this land of light. 
 
 In peopled vale, in lonely glen, 
 
 In crowded mart, by stream or sea, 
 
 How many of the sons of men 
 
 Hear not the message sent from thee. 
 
 Send forth thy heralds, Lord, to call 
 
 The thoughtless young, the hardened old, 
 
 A wandering flock, and bring them all 
 To the Good Shepherd's peaceful fold. 
 
 Send them thy mighty word to speak 
 Till faith shall dawn, and doubt depart, 
 
 To awe the bold, to stay the weak, 
 And bind and heal the broken heart. 
 
 Then all these wastes, a dreary scene 
 On which, with sorrowing eyes, we gaze, 
 
 Shall grow with living waters green, 
 And lift to heaven the voice of praise.
 
 34 A PRAYER FOR THE INTEMPERATE 
 
 There is a hymn of pity for the intemperate, and a 
 prayer for their rescue : 
 
 When doomed to death, the Apostle lay 
 
 At night, in Herod's dungeon-cell, 
 A light shone round him like the day, 
 
 And from his limbs the fetters fell. 
 
 A messenger from God was there, 
 To break his chain and bid him rise, 
 
 And lo! the Saint, as free as air, 
 
 Walked forth beneath the open skies. 
 
 Chains yet more strong and cruel bind 
 
 The victims of that deadly thirst 
 Which drowns the soul, and from the mind 
 
 Blots the bright image stamped at first. 
 
 Oh, God of Love and Mercy, deign 
 To look on those, with pitying eye, 
 
 Who struggle with that fatal chain, 
 And send them succor from on high! 
 
 Send down, in its resistless might, 
 
 Thy gracious Spirit, we implore, 
 And lead the captive forth to light, 
 
 A rescued soul, a slave no more. 
 
 And even the dedication of a church draws out his 
 prayerful sympathy and poetic feeling: 
 
 O thou whose own vast temple stands, 
 
 Built over earth and sea, 
 Accept the walls that human hands 
 
 Have raised to worship thee. 
 
 Lord, from thine inmost glory send, 
 
 Within these walls to bide, 
 The peace that dwelleth without end 
 
 Serenely by thy side.
 
 MOST SIGNIFICANT RELIGIOUS POEM 35 
 
 May erring minds, that worship here, 
 
 Be taught the better way; 
 And they who mourn, and they who fear, 
 
 Be strengthened as they pray. 
 
 May faith grow firm, and love grow warm, 
 
 And pure devotion rise, 
 While, round these hallowed walls, the storm 
 
 Of earth-born passion dies. 
 
 I have yet to quote the most significant of Bryant's 
 distinctly religious poems. It is entitled " He hath 
 put all things under his feet," and this hymn declares 
 the world-wide supremacy of Christ : 
 
 O North, with all thy vales of green! 
 
 O South, with all thy palms! 
 From peopled towns and fields between 
 
 Uplift the voice of psalms; 
 Raise, ancient East! the anthem high, 
 And let the youthful West reply. 
 
 Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears 
 
 God's well-beloved Son; 
 He brings a train of brighter years: 
 
 His kingdom is begun; 
 He conies a guilty world to bless 
 With mercy, truth, and righteousness. 
 
 Oh, Father! haste the promised hour, 
 
 When, at His feet, shall lie 
 All rule, authority, and power 
 
 Beneath the ample sky; 
 When He shall reign from pole to pole, 
 The Lord of every human soul; 
 
 When all shall heed the words He said 
 
 Amid their daily cares, 
 And, by the loving life He led, 
 
 Shall seek to pattern theirs; 
 And He, who conquered Death, shall win 
 The nobler conquest over Sin.
 
 36 THE CROSS RARELY IN BRYANT'S VERSES 
 
 This hymn does not declare Christ's absolute deity, 
 nor does it indicate the poet's knowledge of that 
 spiritual union with Christ which is the source of great- 
 est joy to the believer. Joy has its root in sacrifice 
 Christ's sacrifice for us and our sacrifice to him. We 
 seldom read of the Cross, in Bryant's poetry. Yet 
 faith in the Cross is not wholly absent. In his poem, 
 " Waiting by the Gate," he seems to make all final joy 
 depend upon Christ's death : 
 
 And some approach the threshold whose looks are blank with 
 
 fear, 
 
 And some whose temples brighten with joy in drawing near, 
 As if they saw dear faces, and caught the gracious eye 
 Of Him, the Sinless Teacher, who came for us to die. 
 
 The infrequency of our poet's reference to Calvary, 
 and to the Christian's union with the crucified One, is 
 the reason why his work is so somber, so redolent of 
 duty, so given to external nature. If he had pene- 
 trated more deeply into " the mystery of the gospel," 
 which is " Christ in us," he would have had more of 
 the Christian's " hope of glory." Yet Mr. John Bige- 
 low writes of him : " Though habitually an attendant 
 upon the ministrations of the Unitarian clergy when 
 they were accessible, no one ever recognized more 
 completely or more devoutly the divinity of Christ" 
 Even here, " divinity " may not mean the same as 
 " deity." But let us be thankful for what we find. His 
 theism and his recognition of God's providence, his 
 faith in God's love and revelation, have for their 
 corollary an unwavering belief in immortality. This 
 appears conspicuously in his love-songs, which were, 
 almost without exception, addressed to his wife, with
 
 BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 37 
 
 whom he spent forty-five years of married life. Before 
 their marriage he addressed her as " fairest of the 
 rural maids," and under the pseudonym of " Gene- 
 vieve " he made her the subject of one of his lightest 
 and sweetest poems: 
 
 Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow 
 Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear, 
 
 The hunter of the West must go 
 In depth of woods to seek the deer. 
 
 His rifle on his shoulder placed, 
 
 His stores of death arranged with skill, 
 
 His moccasins and snow-shoes laced 
 Why lingers he beside the hill? 
 
 Far, in the dim and doubtful light, 
 Where woody slopes a valley leave, 
 
 He sees what none but lover might, 
 The dwelling of his Genevieve. 
 
 And oft he turns his truant eye, 
 
 And pauses oft, and lingers near; 
 But when he marks the reddening sky, 
 
 He bounds away to hunt the deer. 
 
 When in 1858 Mrs. Bryant had recovered from a 
 long and painful illness, the poet welcomed his wife in 
 the verses which he named " The Life that Is," and 
 of these I quote the first and the last : 
 
 Thou, who so long hast pressed the couch of pain, 
 Oh welcome, welcome back to life's free breath 
 
 To life's free breath and day's sweet light again, 
 From the chill shadows of the gate of death! 
 
 Now may we keep thee from the balmy air 
 And radiant walks of heaven a little space, 
 
 Where He, who went before thee to prepare 
 For His meek followers, shall assign thy place. 
 
 344943
 
 38 " A LIFETIME " 
 
 But in 1866 death finally took his wife from him. It 
 was an irremediable loss, for his reserved nature had 
 found in her his only intimate friend. His poem, " A 
 Lifetime," begins with a treatment of grief in the 
 third person, but it ends most pathetically by attribut- 
 ing all the sorrow to himself. It is the last poem 
 he composed, and it summarizes his own life: 
 
 And well I know that a brightness 
 
 From his life has passed away, 
 And a smile from the green earth's beauty, 
 
 And a glory from the day. 
 
 But I behold, above him, 
 
 In the far blue depths of air, 
 Dim battlements shining faintly, 
 
 And a throng of faces there; 
 
 See over crystal barrier 
 
 The airy figures bend, 
 Like those who are watching and waiting 
 
 The coming of a friend. 
 
 And one there is among them, 
 
 With a star upon her brow, 
 In her life a lovely woman, 
 
 A sinless seraph now. 
 
 I know the sweet calm features; 
 
 The peerless smile I know; 
 And I stretch my arms with transport 
 
 From where I stand below. 
 
 And the quick tears drown my eyelids, 
 
 But the airy figures fade, 
 And the shining battlements darken 
 
 And blend with the evening shade. 
 
 I am gazing into the twilight 
 Where the dim-seen meadows lie, 
 
 And the wind of night is swaying 
 The trees with a heavy sigh.
 
 A SORROW NOT WITHOUT HOPE 39 
 
 He did not sorrow as those without hope, for he 
 believed in Him who has brought life and immortality 
 to light in his glorious gospel. He cannot think that 
 the separation caused by death is lasting. In his poem, 
 " The Future Life," he writes : 
 
 How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
 
 The disembodied spirits of the dead, 
 When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
 
 And perishes among the dust we tread? 
 
 For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain, 
 If there I meet thy gentle presence not; 
 
 Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
 In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 
 
 The love that lived through all the stormy past, 
 
 And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 
 And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 
 Shall it expire with life, and be no more? 
 
 Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home, 
 The wisdom that I learned so ill in this 
 
 The wisdom which is love till I become 
 Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? 
 
 Indeed, he trusts that even now the separation is 
 not complete : 
 
 May we not think that near us thou dost stand 
 With loving ministrations? for we know 
 
 Thy heart was never happy when thy hand 
 Was forced its tasks of mercy to forego. 
 
 May'st thou not prompt with every coming day 
 The generous aim and act, and gently win 
 
 Our restless, wandering thoughts, to turn away 
 From every treacherous path that ends in sin? 
 
 His poem, " The Death of the Flowers," has a 
 moving pathos, from the fact that it commemorates the
 
 4O " THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS " 
 
 loss of a beloved sister who died in her twenty-second 
 year: 
 
 The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
 Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and 
 sere. . . 
 
 Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately 
 
 sprang and stood, 
 
 In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? 
 Alas, they all are in their graves! The gentle race of flowers 
 Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 
 
 And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 
 The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side: 
 In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast 
 
 the leaf, 
 
 And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: 
 Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of 
 
 ours, 
 So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 
 
 He calls one of his poems " The Past." He sees all 
 of earth's treasures sooner or later swallowed up by 
 time. But, personifying the past, he writes : 
 
 Thine for a space are they 
 Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; 
 
 Thy gates shall yet give way, 
 Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past! 
 
 All that of good and fair 
 Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, 
 
 Shall then come forth to wear 
 The glory and the beauty of its prime. 
 
 They have not perished no! 
 Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, 
 
 Smiles, radiant long ago, 
 And features, the great soul's apparent seat.
 
 FILIAL PIETY 41 
 
 All shall come back; each tie 
 Of pure affection shall be knit again; 
 
 Alone shall Evil die, 
 And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 
 
 And then shall I behold 
 Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, 
 
 And her, who, still and cold, 
 Fills the next grave the beautiful and young. 
 
 One of Bryant's noblest traits was his filial piety, 
 the love for parents and for kindred, which many 
 waters could not quench nor the floods drown, and 
 which the lapse of time and the separation of death 
 only intensified and exalted. He cannot view the 
 glory of " June," without thinking of the friends who 
 will visit his tomb : 
 
 These to their softened hearts should bear 
 
 The thought of what has been, 
 And speak of one who cannot share 
 
 The gladness of the scene; 
 Whose part, in all the pomp that fills 
 The circuit of the summer hills, 
 
 Is that his grave is green. 
 
 Rest, therefore, thou 
 
 Whose early guidance trained my infant steps 
 Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep 
 Of death is over, and a happier life 
 Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust. 9 
 
 In " The Indian Girl's Lament," the bereaved maiden 
 comforts her soul with the thought that her lover will 
 yet be hers : 
 
 9 " Hymn to Death."
 
 42 THE FRINGED GENTIAN 
 
 And thou dost wait and watch to meet 
 My spirit sent to join the blessed, 
 
 And, wondering what detains my feet 
 From that bright land of rest, 
 
 Dost seem, in every sound, to hear 
 
 The rustling of my footsteps near. 
 
 " The Fringed Gentian " suggests to Bryant an old 
 man's departure from, this earthly life : 
 
 Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 
 When woods are bare and birds are flown, 
 And frosts and shortening days portend 
 The aged year is near his end. 
 
 Then doth thy sweet and quiet .eye 
 Look through its fringes to the sky, 
 Blue blue as if that sky let fall 
 A flower from its cerulean wall. 
 
 I would that thus, when I shall see 
 The hour of death draw near to me, 
 Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
 May look to heaven as I depart. 
 
 " The Old Man's Funeral " is a poem in which Bryant 
 might seem to be describing his own end : 
 
 Why weep ye then for him, who, having won 
 The bound of man's appointed years, at last, 
 Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done, 
 
 Serenely to his final rest has passed; 
 While the soft memory of his virtues, yet, 
 Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set. 
 
 His youth was innocent; his riper age 
 Marked with some act of goodness every day; 
 And watched by eyes that loved him, calm and sage, 
 
 Faded his late declining years away. 
 Meekly he gave his being up, and went 
 To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent.
 
 IMMORTAL HOPE 43 
 
 " The Journey of Life " ends with a stanza of im- 
 mortal hope : 
 
 And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on, 
 Watching the stars that roll the hours away, 
 
 Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, 
 And, like another life, the glorious day 
 
 Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height, 
 
 With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light. 
 
 There is a " Paradise of Tears " : 
 
 There every heart rejoins its kindred heart; 
 There, in a long embrace that none may part, 
 Fulfilment meets desire, and that fair shore 
 Beholds its dwellers happy evermore. 
 
 " And I," he said, " shall sleep ere long; 
 
 These fading gleams will soon be gone; 
 Shall sleep to rise refreshed and strong 
 
 In the bright day that yet will dawn." 10 
 
 " The Flood of Years " will bring at length the con- 
 summation of all our hopes : 
 
 Old sorrows are forgotten now, 
 Or but remembered to make sweet the hour 
 That overpays them; wounded hearts that bled 
 Or broke are healed forever. In the room 
 Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be 
 A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 
 The heart, and never shall a tender tie 
 Be broken; in whose reign the eternal Change, 
 That waits on growth and action, shall proceed 
 With everlasting Concord hand in hand. 
 
 It must be acknowledged that this earliest of our 
 American poets had his limitations. He had not the 
 
 10 " The Two Travellers."
 
 44 BRYANT S LIMITATIONS 
 
 breadth of the great masters of his art. Science and 
 philosophy did not interest him, as they interested 
 Tennyson. The complexity of human nature is not 
 depicted in his verse, as we find it depicted by Brown- 
 ing. A certain narrowness of range characterizes all 
 his work. He is descriptive and meditative, but never 
 lyric or dramatic. There is an ever-recurring re- 
 membrance of death and the grave. Critics have de- 
 bated the question how a youth of seventeen could have 
 chosen " Thanatopsis " for a subject. It is even more 
 remarkable that the poetical writing of after years 
 still dealt with this as its central theme. Dr. William 
 C. Gannett, with his minute knowledge of literary his- 
 tory, has suggested an explanation both plausible and 
 interesting. The first five years of Bryant's life were 
 spent in a log house whose windows looked across the 
 road upon the stone-walled village burying-ground. 
 The child's earliest impressions of the world were con- 
 nected with man's mortality. Puritan training traced 
 this mortality to an original apostasy of the race from 
 God, and to the penalty of a broken law. The thoughts 
 of youth are long, long thoughts, and Bryant never 
 outgrew the somberness of this early view of the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Jean Paul has said that the melancholy of youth is 
 the veil which a kind Providence throws over the 
 faces of those who are to climb the dazzling Alpine 
 heights of success and fame. But it surely belongs to 
 manhood to look with unveiled face upon the realities 
 of existence. The meagerness of Bryant's schooling 
 prevented his emancipation. If he had gone to Yale, 
 as he had hoped to do, association with his equals and
 
 SOMBERNESS OF BRYANT'S VERSE 45 
 
 his superiors would have drawn him out of himself, and 
 would have made him more a man of the world. He 
 was naturally shy and seclusive. As an editor, he dis- 
 liked to meet socially those whom he might be called 
 upon to criticize. His impartiality was sometimes like 
 that of the reviewer whose freedom from prejudice 
 is due to the fact that he has not read the book he 
 criticizes. Greater variety of association would have 
 added to the number of the themes which kindled in 
 him the poetic fire. 
 
 But I must add to all this my belief that Bryant's 
 mournfulness was the result of an imperfect under- 
 standing of the Christian revelation. He was a Puri- 
 tan poet, and Puritanism too often lacked the recogni- 
 tion of a present Christ. In " The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 Christian expects to see his Saviour when he reaches 
 the heavenly city, but he is destitute of his companion- 
 ship on the journey thither. Though strong faith 
 in a future life made Bryant serene, his serenity was 
 too much like resignation he needed more of joy in 
 the present. Such joy would have enlarged the area 
 of his poetic achievement, while at the same time it 
 tempered the critical spirit of the editor. 
 
 But one thing must always be said of our poet: he 
 was sincere and pure. There is no mawkish senti- 
 mentality in his verse, no pandering to the lower in- 
 stincts of humanity, no expression of merely transient 
 and conventional religious feeling. Lord Byron could 
 write hymns in histrionic fashion, as a brilliant imper- 
 sonator; of such hypocrisy Bryant was incapable. His 
 limitations, therefore, are as instructive as his gifts. 
 Like Wordsworth, he is a poet of nature. But, while
 
 46 " LIBRARY OF POETRY AND SONG " 
 
 Wordsworth sees in nature the immanence of God, 
 Bryant sees in nature God's transcendence rather, and 
 so is the greater Puritan of the two. His reverence 
 for God's work in nature is greater than his reverence 
 for God's work in man. But he has certainly taught 
 us that poetry is no mere vers de societe, but rather 
 an embodiment of the deepest thoughts of the human 
 soul: 
 
 He let no empty gust 
 Of passion find an utterance in his lay, 
 
 A blast that whirls the dust 
 Along the crowded street and dies away; 
 But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep, 
 Like currents journeying through the windless 
 deep. u 
 
 In "The Library of Poetry and Song," the great 
 octavo volume which he edited, and which contains 
 fifteen hundred selections from four hundred authors, 
 Bryant prefaced the collection with an Introduction of 
 his own. No better summary of the history of English 
 poetry has ever been written, and no more judicious 
 choice of poems has ever been made. In his Introduc- 
 tion, the poet gives us in sober prose his theory of 
 verse. He tells us that " only poems of moderate 
 length, or else portions of the greater works, . . pro- 
 duce the effect upon the mind and heart which make 
 the charm of this kind of writing." He measured 
 his own productions by this rule. Most of his poems 
 are short, and the shortest are in general the best. Yet 
 in his seventy-second year he undertook the Herculean 
 task of putting Homer's Iliad into English verse, 
 
 11 " The Poet," paraphrased by John Bigelow.
 
 TRANSLATOR OF HOMER 47 
 
 and the success of this venture encouraged him to con- 
 tinue his work until he had accomplished the transla- 
 tion of the Odyssey. He gave five years to this 
 task, and finished it in his seventy-seventh year. We 
 cannot understand it, unless we remember that it was 
 his means of occupation and diversion after the death 
 of his wife. It was not the toil and strain of original 
 composition. Homer furnished the thought; Bryant 
 had only to give the thought new expression. Homer 
 led him out again into the open air. There was a like- 
 ness between Bryant's view of nature and that of the 
 first great classic poet. The stateliness and resonance 
 of Homer's verse appealed to him. Embodying that 
 verse in English seemed to him a service to literature. 
 And critics have agreed that no English version of the 
 Iliad or of the Odyssey, in metrical form, surpasses it 
 in value. To my mind, this five years' work of the 
 old man eloquent, accomplished in the darkness of 
 bereavement, and with the single light of an undying 
 hope, shows a strength of will which even death was 
 powerless to subdue. 
 
 One of our best American critics, Professor William 
 C. Wilkinson, has compared Bryant's lack of tropical 
 fervor to the statuesque repose of Greek art, and to 
 the calm dignity of George Washington. There is 
 emotion in his verse, but it is emotion that warms, 
 while it does not burn. Passion is controlled, rather 
 than deficient. The expression is less, not greater, 
 than the feeling. There is no violence of diction. We 
 have had but one Washington, and 'but one Bryant. 
 It is well that our line of poets begins with one so high, 
 severe, and pure. This judgment of Professor Wil-
 
 48 SUMMARY OF BRYANT'S CHARACTER 
 
 kinson I would adopt for my own, and would add the 
 verses in which he has described the poet : 
 
 Gentle in spirit as in mien severe; 
 
 Calm but not cold; strength, majesty, and grace, 
 Measure, and balance, and repose, in clear 
 
 Lines, like a sculptor's, graven on the face 
 
 Such image lovers of his verse have learned 
 To limn their poet, peaceful after strife; 
 
 A statue, as of life to marble turned? 
 
 Nay, as of marble turned to breathing life. 
 
 I have taken interest in the story of Bryant's life and 
 work, in large part because the religious and theological 
 aspects of it have seemed to me to have been hitherto 
 neglected. Our earliest American poet furnished no 
 object-lesson of unbelief to his successors. He did not 
 compass the whole range of Christian truth, any more 
 than he compassed the whole range of poetic inspi- 
 ration; but he taught his countrymen, and he taught 
 the world, of God in nature and in history, of Christ as 
 the Guide and Saviour of mankind, and of an immortal 
 life that opens for us all beyond this present transi- 
 tory scene. His teaching is all the more impressive 
 and convincing because he does not speak to us as a 
 preacher, but as a man ; and because he utters only what 
 he has seen and felt. He shows himself to be the true 
 poet, by telling us the inner meaning of the universe, 
 and by bringing us 
 
 Authentic tidings of invisible things.
 
 II 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 NINE years after Bryant, Emerson was born. Our 
 second American poet began his life in 1803, half-way 
 between the war of the Revolution and the war with 
 England in 1812. The embattled farmers had won 
 their independence, and they were ready for another 
 fray. It was a time of sturdy self-assertion. The 
 early Calvinism had been toned down by a discovery 
 of the dignity of man. Emerson was the heir of eight 
 successive generations of Puritan divines who had been 
 gradually sloughing off their Puritanism and standing 
 for what they regarded as natural freedom of thought. 
 Straitened circumstances had trained him, as they 
 trained Bryant, to plain living; his Cambridge sur- 
 roundings were more favorable than were Bryant's 
 to high thinking. His father was pastor of the 
 First Unitarian Church of Boston, a pleasing preacher 
 of somewhat latitudinarian doctrine and no stickler 
 for the mere forms of religion. When this father died, 
 he left a family of six children, all of them under ten 
 years of age, of whom Ralph was the fourth son. The 
 mother, with five hundred dollars a year from the 
 church, kept boarders in order to support and educate 
 her children. They sometimes lacked food, but then 
 
 51
 
 52 INTELLECTUAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 their aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a genius but a 
 strict Calvinist, stayed their stomachs by telling them 
 stories of heroic Endurance. 
 
 Ralph Waldo lived in an atmosphere of letters. He 
 is described as a spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, 
 angelic and remarkable. He had a lofty carriage of 
 the head, which some attributed to pride, but which 
 was wholly unconscious. There was no education of 
 the playground or the nursery. Aunt Mary frowned 
 upon mirth or frivolity in the children. The boy lived 
 a life apart, and never learned to mingle freely with 
 his fellows. School began when he was only three 
 years old. He does not appear to have been a pre- 
 cocious scholar. In his college course at Harvard, he 
 was not distinguished in his class, except for a certain 
 poetical gift. He supported himself through college 
 by serving as errand boy to the president, and by 
 waiting on the table at commons. But all this nour- 
 ished in him a habitual self-reliance, and the child 
 was father of the man, for in his diary he wrote even 
 then, " I purpose from this day to utter no essay or 
 poem that is not absolutely and peculiarly my own." 
 
 Emerson's address on " The American Scholar," 
 delivered at Cambridge in 1837, has been called " the 
 intellectual Declaration of Independence of the United 
 States." But that address was antedated by Bryant's 
 dictum, eighteen years before, that American poets 
 should seek to achieve original expression and should 
 no longer imitate. It is easy to see that freedom was 
 in the air, and that neither one of these writers had a 
 monopoly of originality. Colonial subjection, even in 
 literature, had had its day, and a new age was- opening.
 
 " THE SPHINX " 53 
 
 Both Bryant and Emerson felt the stirrings of a new 
 life, the former in his vision of the New England 
 landscape, the latter in his apprehension of the spirit 
 which moved within it. Of the two, however, we must 
 give the palm for simplicity and intelligibility to Bry- 
 ant, though we acknowledge the superiority of Emer- 
 son in breadth and insight. I speak of their poetry, 
 and I would liken Bryant's to the clear radiance of a 
 summer morning, while Emerson's is like the fitful 
 flashes which light up a summer evening cloud. 
 
 It is interesting to note that Emerson puts his poem 
 of " The Sphinx " in the forefront of his published 
 verses. This somewhat obscure and unmetrical pro- 
 duction has significance as indicating his own estimate 
 of his genius, and as boldly challenging the animad- 
 versions of his critics. Emerson is himself a sphinx. 
 His writings propound a riddle, which is still un- 
 solved. Is he philosopher, or poet, or prophet ? Mat- 
 thew Arnold denies that he is any one of these, and 
 declares rather ambiguously that he is simply " the 
 friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit." 
 Emerson is doubtful about himself, for at one time he 
 says, " It has been decided that I cannot write poetry " ; 
 at other times he writes : " I am half a bard, not a 
 poet, but a lover of poetry and poets." " I am born a 
 poet of a lower class, no doubt, yet a poet." " I am 
 not a great poet, but whatever is of me is a poet." 
 " My singing, be sure, is very husky, and is for the 
 most part in prose. Still I am a poet, in the sense of a 
 preserver and dear lover of the harmonies that are 
 in the soul and in matter, and specially of the cor- 
 respondences between these and those." But James
 
 54 A POETICAL PHILOSOPHER 
 
 Russell Lowell said of Emerson's verses, " They are 
 pure pr ; no, they are not even prose." 
 
 Perhaps it is nearest the truth to say that he was a 
 poetical philosopher. But even here we must qualify 
 our statement. If organization of material is neces- 
 sary to philosophy, Emerson was no philosopher, for 
 he had no system. He speaks of his own " formidable 
 tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of 
 boulders. Here I sit, and read and write, with very 
 little system, and as far as regards composition with 
 the most fragmentary result, paragraphs incompre- 
 hensible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." 
 What philosophy he has is infinitely eclectic also a 
 medley of all philosophies fate and free will, good 
 and evil, God and man, being inextricably combined 
 and confounded. I am more inclined to call him a 
 prophet than to call him either a poet or a philosopher. 
 The prophet utters some great and vital truth, but 
 he mixes with this so much of error that he becomes 
 too often a false prophet. What he says of Alcott is 
 even more true of himself : " Gold ore is so combined 
 with other elements that no chemistry is able to sepa- 
 rate it without great loss." 
 
 Yet there is a leading and dominant thought in all 
 his work, and we must grasp this, if we would under- 
 stand either his poetry or his prose. It is the thought 
 of the spiritual meaning of the world. Emerson, be- 
 yond all others, is the poet of transcendentalism, but of 
 transcendentalism under bonds to a naturalistic phi- 
 losophy. To explain and to justify this estimate will 
 require some reflection, and I can at present only indi- 
 cate the drift of my discussion. Since his verse is
 
 MAN EXPLAINED BY NATURE 55 
 
 exceedingly condensed and enigmatical, we can best 
 understand it if we first study the larger and plainer 
 expression of his thought in his essays. Let it suffice 
 now to point out the fact that, as Emerson prefaced 
 with " The Sphinx " the collection of his poems, so he 
 made his address on " Nature " introduce the edition 
 of his prose. Where one begins in philosophy, there 
 he is likely to end. If we begin with the seemingly 
 fixed successions of the outward world, we shall be 
 apt to apply the category of necessity to man, and 
 shall deny his freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt; 
 whereas, if we begin with man's conscience and free 
 will, we have the only possible key to the mysteries of 
 nature, for nature's laws are only the regularities of 
 freedom. Emerson makes the fundamental mistake 
 of interpreting man by nature, instead of interpreting 
 nature by man. English Unitarians were materalists, 
 and they thought of nature as consisting of dead lumps 
 and as subject to unvarying law. Emerson did not 
 wholly escape from their influence. " If you wish to 
 understand intellectual philosophy," he says, " do not 
 turn inward by introversion, but study natural science. 
 Every time you discover a law of things, you discover 
 a principle of mind." He adds, indeed, that if you 
 wish to know nature, you must study mind. But, for 
 all that, he begins with nature, and finds there his 
 key to unlock the secrets of the soul. 
 
 Cabot, in his admirable biography of Emerson, seeks 
 to mitigate any unfavorable judgment which this fact 
 may lead us to form, by explaining what our author 
 means by nature. In itself, he would say, nature is 
 blind and opaque, is equivalent to fate, is the bondage
 
 56 DEFECT IN EMERSON'S THINKING 
 
 of the spirit. Man, as a part of nature, is the victim 
 of environment. But he is not simply a part of nature ; 
 he is not mere effect; he potentially shares the cause. 
 On one side of his being" he is open to the divine Mind. 
 He may detach himself from nature, he may be a 
 finite creator. To thought and inspired will, nature is 
 transparent and plastic. When we yield to the remedial 
 force of spirit, evil is no more seen. The prerogative 
 of man is to feel this infinity within him, and to make 
 himself its willing instrument. Evil without only 
 reflects his unbelief. There is freedom to resist the 
 evil and to appropriate the powers of good. This is 
 Cabot's ingenious interpretation of Emerson's doctrine. 
 Emerson himself, in our opinion, would have smiled 
 at it, as philosophically defining what he meant to leave 
 undefined. He was no Ixion, to turn his cloud into a 
 Juno. His conception of nature was not that of some- 
 thing external and capable of management by will. 
 Nature, he would say, is itself will; but will without 
 freedom, a necessitated and deterministic will ; and the 
 only essential difference between Emerson and Scho- 
 penhauer was that, in Emerson's view, this will makes 
 for good, to Schopenhauer, for evil. 
 
 While thus indicating the fatal defect in Emer- 
 son's thinking, we may, with all the more frankness, 
 credit him with whatever is good in transcendentalism. 
 That much abused and little understood word denoted 
 a method of thought compounded of English idealism, 
 German intuitionalism, and Oriental immanence. In 
 England, Locke had declared that intellect has no 
 ideas which are not ultimately derived from the senses. 
 Leibnitz, however, had replied that intellect itself can-
 
 EMERSON S TRANSCENDENTALISM 57 
 
 not be so derived ; and Berkeley had insisted that ma- 
 terial things cannot be proved to exist apart from mind. 
 It was easy for Hume to infer that we know mental 
 substance within, as little as we know material sub- 
 stance without. Emerson did not conclude, with 
 Hume, that we need no cause for our ideas, in the 
 world, in the soul, or in God. He rather held with 
 Berkeley, that, while things do not exist independently 
 of consciousness, they do exist independently of our 
 consciousness, namely, in the mind of God, who in a 
 correct philosophy takes the place of a mindless ex- 
 ternal world as the cause of our ideas. 
 
 Emerson's transcendentalism regarded the universe 
 as spiritual rather than material, and in this he rendered 
 a great service to contemporary thought. English 
 theology had hardened into Deism God was far 
 away, an absentee God, sitting on the outside of the 
 universe ever since he made it. New England had 
 felt the influence. The old Calvinism was superseded 
 by Arminianism, and American independence recog- 
 nized the kingdom of man rather than the kingdom of 
 God. It was well that Emerson struck the note of 
 idealism. It summoned his generation to a new recog- 
 nition of the spiritual nature of the world. If his pro- 
 test against materialism had only been accompanied by 
 a deeper ethical study of man, he might have led his 
 followers into theism rather than into pantheism. Nor- 
 ton calls Emerson's essay on Nature " an outburst of 
 Romanticism on Puritan ground," and Romanticism 
 was pantheistic rather than theistic. 
 
 German intuitionalism was the second factor in 
 Emerson's transcendentalism. Kant, in his investiga-
 
 58 PERVERSION OF INTUITIONALISM 
 
 tion of our processes of knowing, had shown the ele- 
 ment of truth in the discarded doctrine of innate ideas, 
 and had declared that the mind employs, in all its exer- 
 cises, assumptions of time and space, substance and 
 cause, design and right, assumptions which never can 
 be proved, because they are the basis of all proof. The 
 categories are intuitional. We have an original and 
 unverifiable knowledge of principles which lie at the 
 basis of all thinking; and, though these principles are 
 undemonstrable, our mental and moral nature is so 
 constructed that we cannot avoid acting upon them. 
 Here, and not in mere argument, lies our reason for 
 belief in God. Emerson seized upon the element of 
 truth in intuitionalism, but he sadly exaggerated and 
 perverted it. Instead of accepting it as the regulative 
 principle of all knowledge, he transformed it into a 
 positive source of knowledge. Instead of learning 
 from it how we are to learn, he learned from it what 
 we are to learn. The inner light took the place of all 
 the outer lights which God has given us. Man became 
 a law to himself; ceased to recognize authority of any 
 sort ; had no need of revelation from without. " We 
 must not seek advantages from another," says Emer- 
 son ; " the fountain of all good is in ourselves.^.__j 
 Each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that 
 sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. . . Be lord 
 of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can 
 put up your history-books." It is as if, in virtue of our 
 eyesight, we should deny that we need external light 
 whereby to see, or require any special objects to be lit 
 up by that light, or are dependent upon the sun from 
 which that light shines upon us.
 
 AUTHORITY OF HISTORIC REVELATIONS 59 
 
 This is the proper place to state our chief objection 
 to Emerson's intuitionalism, and to point out the need 
 of that external authority which he rejected. God 
 does not leave the child or the race to build up all 
 its knowledge anew. As acquired truth finds legiti- 
 mate forms of expression, it becomes authority for 
 others than those who originally perceived it. All 
 advance in human intelligence depends upon our rev- 
 erent reception of the treasure which comes to us 
 from the past. God requires us to trust his historic 
 revelations, and to pay respect to the teaching of par- 
 ents, discoverers, and experts, in education, business, 
 science, and art. Religious truth is particularly subject 
 to this law. We are not the first who have come in 
 contact with God, since all men live, move, and have 
 their being in him. God's revelations to the individual 
 always build upon his teachings of the race. To despise 
 authority, and to set ourselves up as primary recipients 
 of revelation, is to pour contempt upon the whole proc- 
 ess of evolution and the organic connection of the 
 generations ; is, in short, to substitute individualism for 
 racial unity. Individual experiences of God and of 
 his grace have been recorded in Scripture, and the 
 Scriptures accordingly are able to make us wise unto 
 salvation. They specially and predominantly testify 
 to Christ as a divine and atoning Saviour, and show 
 how his teaching and work have made God accessible 
 to men. God bids us bow to Christ, as his representa- 
 tive, and as our supreme authority; and the witness 
 of God is this, that God gave to us eternal life, and 
 that this life is in his Son. 
 
 God is light. But light diffused cannot be seen ; we
 
 6O INTUITIONS NEED A CORRECTIVE 
 
 see by it, but we do not see it; it will not be recognized, 
 unless it is concentrated ; hence the sun, the physical 
 luminary. So no man has seen God at any time 
 " whom no man has seen or can see " ; the invisible 
 God needs to be manifested; hence the Son, the spir- 
 itual luminary. Finite beings will always need more 
 than " the light that lighteth every man," need more 
 than the diffused light of nature and conscience and 
 intuition. Even in heaven that diffused light is not 
 enough, for " though they need no candle nor light of 
 the sun " because " the Lord God gives them light," it 
 is expressly declared that " the lamp thereof is the 
 Lamb " in Christ alone is God's light concentrated 
 and made visible to his creatures. 
 
 Emerson's intuitions are not a trustworthy expres- 
 sion of the infinite Reason. They are colored by finite- 
 ness and sin. They lack the sense of the ideal. They 
 unduly magnify the physical. In Brahminism, such 
 intuitions glorify the lustful and the base. They turn 
 might into right, and the self into God. Intuition needs 
 the corrective of special revelation, and that revelation 
 is given to us in Christ. Authority is, therefore, neither 
 purely objective on the one hand, nor purely subjective 
 on the other, for man is neither permanently infantile, 
 nor fully mature; he is not wholly dependent upon 
 human teachers, nor does he discover all truth himself. 
 Christianity is, first, objective manifestation of truth, 
 in the Sun and the Son; then, secondly, subjective ap- 
 propriation of truth, by the cooperation of spirit with 
 Spirit; that is, of the human spirit with the divine 
 Spirit. 
 
 What is the place of the Bible in this revelation ? I
 
 PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN REVELATION 6 1 
 
 reply that the Bible is a telescope between man and 
 God; it is the rending of a veil. We do not worship 
 the telescope, on the one hand, nor, on the other hand, 
 do we refuse to use it. It is an authority in astron- 
 omy. Similarly, the written records of Christianity 
 are our authority in religion. Give them up, trust 
 your intuitions, and you may have Christian Science, 
 or pantheism, or Romanist worship of Virgin and 
 saints, and a hierarchy that destroys human freedom. 
 Give up historic Christianity, and you put an end to 
 Christian life and experience. Faith in the authority of 
 Scripture is perfectly consistent with free inquiry as 
 to the method of its evolution and inspiration. No 
 criticism, higher or lower, can destroy its life. The 
 total teaching of the Bible is ascertainable on all points 
 that are essential to salvation; for salvation is de- 
 pendent not on the book, but on the person of Jesus 
 Christ, who is revealed in the book. Union with Christ 
 is the one essential, and belief in Scripture and the 
 church is incidental. The Bible record of historic facts 
 and of past experience is authority for us, because it 
 makes known Christ and brings us in contact with him. 
 The Bible does not take the place of Christ; its au- 
 thority is not original ; it simply reveals Christ, who is 
 the authority. 
 
 All this throws light upon one of the great heresies 
 of modern theology, this namely, that the Bible is only 
 a record of human experiences, and not a revelation 
 from God. What is to prevent God from revealing 
 himself through those very experiences? Why may 
 he not so utter his messages that they shall be actual 
 voices from on high? Grant that the revelation is pro-
 
 62 ORIENTAL IMMANENCE 
 
 gressive. Still may we believe in the unity, sufficiency, 
 and authority of Scripture. 
 
 Oriental immanence contributed a final element to 
 Emerson's transcendentalism. The doctrine of the. 
 Over-Soul, in which every man's particular being is 
 contained, is indeed the central principle of his think- 
 ing. He regarded God as immanent, not only in na- 
 ture, but also in man ; one Mind is common to all men ; 
 and each man is a new incarnation. " I am part and 
 parcel of God," he said. " The simplest person, who 
 in his integrity worships God, becomes God." Both 
 nature and humanity were in this way so glorified that 
 strange inferences were sometimes drawn. He called 
 mandarin oranges " Christianity in apples." A story 
 is current that, at the opera, Emerson and Margaret 
 Fuller were gazing at the ballet, when Miss Fuller re- 
 marked, " Ralph, this is poetry ! " and he replied, 
 " Margaret, this is religion ! " 
 
 Doctor Harrison, of Kenyon College, has written a 
 valuable book on " The Teachers of Emerson," in 
 which he aims to disclose the sources of Emerson's doc- 
 trine. He traces it back ultimately to Plato, though 
 he grants that Neoplatonism had greater influence upon 
 Emerson than had Plato himself. Plato certainly 
 taught the ineffable unity of all being, by reason of its 
 participation in the divine ideas. But this was not the 
 peculiar doctrine of Emerson. He taught the imma- 
 nence of an active God in humanity and the mystical 
 union of humanity with Deity. He found this doctrine 
 in the Neoplatonic speculations of the Alexandrian Plo- 
 tinus, and the ecstatic utterances of the Hindu Vedas 
 fell in with his thought. He was not a profound stu-
 
 EMERSON'S ECLECTICISM 63 
 
 dent of the mystics, any more than he was a profound 
 student of the philosophers. He was no great scholar, 
 and it was mainly translations that he read. But he 
 had a way of appropriating whatever suited his pur- 
 pose; like Moliere he could say, " Je prends mon bien 
 ou je le trouve." Tauler, Fox, Swedenborg, furnished 
 him with material, and he did not disdain to borrow 
 from the Persian Saadi and Omar Khayyam. He 
 made his own whatever in all literature asserted the 
 presence and energy of God in every particle of the 
 universe and in every human soul. 
 
 If Spinoza could be called " a God-intoxicated man," 
 Emerson was even better entitled to this designation; 
 for while Spinoza's God was only Nature, Emerson's 
 God still retained some of the attributes of personality 
 derived from Calvinism. The survival of elements 
 belonging to Emerson's ancestral religion is indeed 
 all that rescues his work from gross idolatry of nature. 
 In so many words, he denied God's personality : " I say 
 that I cannot find, when I explore my own conscious- 
 ness, any truth in saying that God is a person, but the 
 reverse. . . To represent him as an individual is to 
 shut him out of my consciousness." But let us be just 
 to Emerson. By personality, he may mean nothing but 
 limitation to an individual. He also says : " I deny 
 personality to God, because it is too little, not too 
 much. Life, personal life, is faint and cold, to the 
 energy of God. For Reason and Love and Beauty, or 
 that which is all these it is the life of life, the reason 
 of reason, the love of love." Emerson should have 
 remembered that it is finiteness, and not personality, 
 that implies limitation : an infinite personality may be
 
 64 SELF-DEIFICATION 
 
 unlimited. And, as will in man is the highest and most 
 inclusive attribute of his personality, we cannot deny 
 personality to God without depriving him of will. 
 Such denial makes him identical with nature and not 
 its informing Spirit ; conterminous with nature and not 
 above it. And since all we know of nature we know 
 from the processes of our own minds, God is identified 
 with those processes; we have no knowledge of him as 
 existing apart from ourselves; we find God only within 
 our own souls; he is immanent but not transcendent. 
 Thus transcendentalism contradicts itself and becomes 
 self-deification. It is the precise opposite of the Scrip- 
 ture representation, which speaks of God as not only 
 " in all," and " through all," but also " above all." The 
 God whom the Bible recognizes as immanent is a God 
 of will, as well as of power; a God of wisdom and 
 love and holiness ; a God who can come down in special 
 ways to his creatures; and who can reveal himself in 
 Christ, as their Saviour from the penalty and the power 
 of sin. The God of Emerson, on the other hand, is a 
 mere abstraction, a mere idealization of nature. He 
 tells us that 
 
 Conscious Law is King of kings. 1 
 
 But he might also have called Law unconscious, for he 
 denied to it personality; and Doctor Ware said well, 
 in criticism of Emerson's doctrine : " Law, truth, love, 
 are no Deity. There must be some Being, to exercise 
 these attributes. There is a personal God, or there is 
 no God." 
 
 " Woodnotes," II.
 
 THE IMMANENCE OF CHRIST 65 
 
 We can appreciate the gravity of this error, if we 
 contrast Emerson's view of nature with that of another 
 Puritan, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards escapes from 
 Emerson's moral indifference, and from his blindness 
 to personality in God, by recognizing in nature the 
 presence and working of Jesus Christ, in whom all 
 things were created and in whom all things consist. 
 Edwards writes : 
 
 " He who, by his immediate influence, gives being every 
 moment, and by his Spirit actuates the world, because he 
 inclines to communicate himself and his excellencies, doth 
 doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as far as 
 there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and 
 sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the correspond- 
 ing excellencies of the mind; yet the beauties of nature are 
 really emanations or shadows of the excellencies of the Son 
 of God. So that, when we are delighted with flowery 
 meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that 
 we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of 
 Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, 
 we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and 
 singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and 
 benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines 
 are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. The crystal rivers 
 and murmuring streams are the footsteps of his favor, grace, 
 and beauty. When we behold the light and brightness of 
 the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beau- 
 teous bow, we behold the adumbrations of his glory and 
 goodness, and, in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. 
 There are also many things wherein we may behold his awful 
 majesty: in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thunder, in 
 the hovering thunder-clouds, in ragged rocks and the brows 
 of mountains. That beauteous light wherewith the world 
 is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holi- 
 ness, and happiness and delight in communicating himself. 
 And doubtless this is a reason why Christ is compared so 
 often to these things, and called by their names, as the Sun 
 of Righteousness, the Morning Star, the Rose of Sharon, and
 
 66 THE TRUE TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 Lily of the Valley, the apple tree among the trees of the 
 wood, a bundle of myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this 
 we discover the beauty of many of those metaphors and 
 similes which to an unphilosophical person do seem so un- 
 couth. In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's 
 body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of Christ's 
 divine perfections, although they do not always flow from the 
 mental excellencies of the person that has them. But we 
 see the most proper image of the beauty of Christ when 
 we see beauty in the human soul." 
 
 This is the true transcendentalism, which sees in all 
 nature Christ's manifestation of a personal and loving 
 God. But this is plainly not the transcendentalism of 
 Emerson. 
 
 Our author said to Dr. William Hague that fresh 
 readings of the Quaker writers had intensified his con- 
 viction that we must outgrow externalism. George 
 Fox always remained one of his heroes; though, as 
 Doctor Van Dyke remarks, he was himself " kept sane 
 by his New England sense and humor." He saw how 
 indistinct was the line that separated religious ecstasy 
 from hysterical frenzy. Yet the inner light seemed to 
 him the only medium of divine communication. Why 
 should we not enjoy religion by revelation to us, he 
 thought, instead of getting it through others? This 
 suggests the fundamental defect in Emerson's char- 
 acter. Both Henry James and John Morley have 
 pointed out that Emerson had no sense of sin. He 
 regarded his soul as the unresisting organ of the Over- 
 Soul, and serene self-sufficiency characterized all his 
 writing and all his action. He needed no teacher. His 
 own fmiteness and limitation never led him to distrust 
 his own powers; his own sinfulness and guilt never
 
 EMERSON WITHOUT A SENSE OF SIN 67 
 
 taught him dependence on a Redeemer. His was not 
 the humility of the little child which Jesus himself ex- 
 emplifies, and which he makes the condition of entrance 
 into his kingdom. Rather do we find in him a Stoic 
 confidence that all is well, and an ignoring of the evil 
 aspects of life, both in himself and in others. " The 
 riddle of the painful earth " human sin and shame 
 and death this has escaped the notice of the Sphinx, 
 and the result is that Emerson lacks sympathy for the 
 fallen and understanding of the world's great need. 
 He had no experience of the Inferno of guilt and retri- 
 bution, such as a keen conscience gave to Dante, and 
 therefore he could know nothing of the Paradiso of 
 the forgiven, nor of the Purgatorio of repentance and 
 faith that prepares men for blessedness and likeness 
 to God. He thought Dante " a man to put in a 
 museum, but not in his house." 
 
 Emerson's overgrown self-trust disdained to recog- 
 nize himself as a sinner. " They that are whole need 
 not a physician." He taught that man's shortcoming 
 is not sin, but only a necessary stage in this progress. 
 It is the " green apple theory " of moral evil. Sin is a 
 green apple, which needs only time and sunshine and 
 growth to bring it to ripeness and beauty and useful- 
 ness. But alas! our sin is not a green apple that can 
 be ripened by growth, but an apple with a worm at the 
 heart, whose progress, if left to itself, is toward rot- 
 tenness and ruin. Sin is apostasy and revolt of man's 
 free will, which only supernatural means can cure. 
 Emerson's false premise 'that we must look to physics, 
 rather than to ethics, for our interpretation of God's 
 being, leads him to the false conclusion that sin is
 
 68 " GREEN APPLE THEORY " OF EVIL 
 
 a necessity in the universe, and that it always results 
 in good. When man's free will is left out of the 
 account, there is no such thing as guilt or just con- 
 demnation. In all evil man is ignorantly seeking good : 
 
 " The fiend that man harries 
 
 Is love of the Best; 
 Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 
 
 Lit by rays from the Blest. 
 The Lethe of Nature 
 
 Can't trance him again, 
 Whose soul sees the perfect, 
 
 Which his eyes seek in vain. 
 
 " Pride ruined the angels, 
 
 Their shame them restores; 
 Lurks the joy that is sweetest 
 In stings of remorse." 2 
 
 Out of the good of evil born, 
 Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, 
 And a blush tinged the upper sky, 
 And the gods shook, they knew not why. 3 
 
 If these mysterious lines mean only that the forces 
 of the universe are by an omniscient and beneficent will 
 made even in spite of themselves to help the cause of 
 truth and righteousness, they might be regarded as a 
 cryptic declaration of Paul's doctrine that all things 
 work together for good to them that love God. 
 " Write it on your heart," says Emerson, " that every 
 day is the best day in the year." Yes, we reply, if this 
 means that our best days in the past have not ex- 
 hausted God's power and love. But if it asserts an 
 automatic inclination of evil toward good and that sin 
 
 " The Sphinx." 3 " Uriel."
 
 SIN ITS OWN REMEDY 69 
 
 is its own remedy, it teaches pernicious error. That 
 this, latter interpretation may be suspected to be the 
 correct one finds some justification in Emerson's poem 
 " The Park " : 
 
 The prosperous and beautiful 
 
 To me seem not to wear 
 The yoke of conscience masterful, 
 
 Which galls me everywhere. 
 
 Yet spake yon purple mountain, 
 
 Yet said yon ancient wood, 
 That Night or Day, that Love or Crime, 
 
 Leads all souls to the Good. 
 
 Give all to love- 
 Obey thy heart; 
 Friends, kindred, days, 
 Estate, good fame, 
 Plans, credit, and the Muse, 
 Nothing refuse. 
 
 Stealing grace from all alive; 
 Heartily know, 
 When half-gods go, 
 The gods arrive. 4 
 
 I cannot spare water or wine, 
 Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; 
 
 From the earth-poles to the Line, 
 All between that works or grows, 
 
 Everything is kin of mine. 
 
 Too long shut in strait and few, 
 Thinly dieted on dew, 
 I will use the world, and sift it, 
 To a thousand humors shift it, 
 As you spin a cherry. 
 
 " Give All to Love."
 
 7O DISCORD NECESSARY TO HARMONY 
 
 O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! 
 O all you virtues, methods, mights, 
 Means, appliances, delights, 
 Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, 
 Smug routine, and things allowed, 
 Minorities, things under cloud! 
 Hither! take me, use me, fill me, 
 Vein and artery, though ye kill me! 5 
 
 One thing is forever good; 
 
 That one thing is Success, 
 
 Dear to the Eumenides, 
 
 And to all the heavenly brood. 
 
 Who bides at home, nor looks abroad, 
 
 Carries the eagles, and masters the sword. 6 
 
 These quotations show how far Emerson was from 
 recognizing evil as a " body of death " which required 
 a Deliverer. It is only a discord necessary to perfect 
 harmony ; it is only the dark background without which 
 we could not appreciate the bright ; it is indeed the soil 
 from which truth and goodness must emerge. " Our 
 crimes," he says, " may be lively stones, out of which 
 we shall construct the temple of the true God." We 
 must even see in moral evil a manifestation of God's 
 nature : 
 
 Higher far into the pure realm, 
 
 Over sun and star, 
 
 Over the flickering Daemon film, 
 
 Thou must mount for love; 
 
 Into vision where all form 
 
 Into one only form dissolves; 
 
 In a region where the wheel 
 
 On which all beings ride 
 
 Visibly revolves; 
 
 Where the starred, eternal worm 
 
 8 " Mithridates." " Destiny."
 
 " EVIL GOOD, AND GOOD EVIL " 71 
 
 Girds the world with bound and term; 
 Where unlike things are like; 
 Where good and ill, 
 And joy and moan, 
 Melt into one. 7 
 
 " Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil," 
 said the ancient prophet. Yet this ignoring of sin is 
 the fundamental error of Emerson's teaching. There 
 can be no question about his sincerity, and the sweet- 
 ness and cheerfulness of his disposition. He had never 
 experienced serious conflicts with his own nature, and 
 he seldom, if ever, was conscious of moral imperfec- 
 tion. In his early life indeed he writes : " Milton was 
 enamored of moral perfection. He did not love it 
 more than I. That which I cannot declare has been 
 my angel from childhood until now. It has separated 
 me from men. It has driven sleep from my bed. It 
 has tortured me for my guilt. It has inspired me with 
 hope." And his poem entitled " Grace " has lines 
 which seem almost Christian : 
 
 How much, preventing God, how much I owe 
 To the defences thou hast round me set; 
 Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, 
 These scorned bondmen were my parapet. 
 I dare not peep over this parapet 
 To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below, 
 The depths of sin to which I had descended, 
 Had not these me against myself defended! 
 
 But the remedy is all in self and not in God. Self, 
 indeed, is an effluence and manifestation of God : 
 
 1 " The Celestial Love."
 
 72 SALVATION BY CHARACTER 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, / can. 8 
 
 " The essence of Christianity," he says, " is in its 
 practical morals." We must summon up our better 
 nature, our lofty ideals, our strength of will : 
 
 Freedom's secret wilt thou know? 
 Counsel not with flesh and blood; 
 Loiter not for cloak or food; 
 Right thou feelest, rush to do. 8 
 
 There is little comfort here for the sin-sick and 
 despairing. Emerson preaches salvation by character, 
 when man's first need is salvation from character. Yet 
 we must concede that he presents a winning picture of 
 Pelagian virtue. Father Taylor, the seaman's preacher, 
 was severely orthodox, but when Emerson died, and 
 some one intimated a doubt of his eternal fate, Taylor 
 gallantly remarked : " Well, if Emerson has gone to 
 hell, all I can say is that the climate will speedily 
 change, and immigration will rapidly set in. He might 
 think this or that, but he was more like Jesus Christ 
 than any one I have ever known. The devil will not 
 know what to do with him." But this same Father 
 Taylor gave it as his verdict that " Emerson knows no 
 more of the religion of the New Testament than 
 Balaam's ass did of the principles of Hebrew gram- 
 mar." 
 
 8 " Voluntaries.'
 
 THE POET THE EMANCIPATED MAN 73 
 
 II 
 
 All that I have said thus far is meant as an intro- 
 duction to his poetry, and to the understanding of its 
 theological significance. Emerson's conception of 
 poetry will help us here. To him the poet was the 
 emancipated man, lifted into consciousness of his divine 
 Original, with insight into the hidden meaning of the 
 world, and foresight of the end to which the world is 
 hastening : 
 
 The free winds told him what they knew, 
 Discoursed of fortune as they blew; 
 
 And on his mind at dawn of day 
 Soft shadows of the evening lay. 10 
 
 But he does not regard this elevation and ecstasy as 
 peculiar to the poet: it is only an intensification of 
 moods that belong at times to the common man : 
 
 In the deep heart of man a poet dwells 
 
 Who all the day of life his summer story tells. 11 
 
 For this reason the poet appeals to the universal 
 heart of man ; he rouses in us the same emotions that 
 swayed himself; he teaches us the habit of thinking 
 for ourselves. Emerson counted among " the traits 
 common to all works of the highest art that they are 
 universally intelligible, that they restore to us the 
 simplest states of mind." 
 
 10 " The Poet." " The Enchanter." 
 
 G
 
 74 CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE POETRY 
 
 That wit and joy might find a tongue, 
 And earth grow civil, HOMER sung. u 
 
 To clothe the fiery thought 
 In simple words succeeds, 
 For still the craft of genius is 
 To mask a king in weeds. 13 
 
 This is the first of Milton's essential characteristics 
 of poetry: it must be "simple, sensuous, passionate." 
 But Emerson is not true to his own principle. He is 
 not always simple, he is not always intelligible, and he 
 is generally cold in temper rather than impassioned. 
 The philosopher and the seer too often interfere with 
 the poet. He must needs plunge into the unknown, 
 and disclose things beyond all power of human speech : 
 
 Ever the Poet from the land 
 Steers his bark and trims his sail; 
 Right out to sea his courses stand, 
 New worlds to find in pinnace frail. u 
 
 And when he has found truth undiscovered before, 
 he must give it utterance in ways that will stir men's 
 hearts by their novelty, even though they break with 
 every tradition of meter and of rhyme. I doubt 
 whether Emerson was ever consciously sensational, but 
 his lordly method is not the method of true poetry, 
 when he writes : 
 
 Great is the art, 
 
 Great be the manners, of the bard. 
 He shall not his brain encumber 
 With the coil of rhythm and number; 
 But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 
 
 w " Quatrains." M " Quatrains."
 
 SUBSTANCE WITHOUT FORM IN EMERSON 75 
 
 He shall aye climb 
 
 For his rhyme. 
 
 ' Pass in, pass in/ the angels say, 
 
 ' In to the upper doors, 
 
 Nor count compartments of the floors, 
 
 But mount to paradise 
 
 By the stairway of surprise.' 1B 
 
 We have seen that Emerson had no ear for music. 
 It is also plain that he never grappled with metrical 
 problems, or realized that the laws of harmony are 
 laws of God. He can make such imperfect rhymes 
 as worm and form, pans and romance, feeble and peo- 
 ple, abroad and Lord, sodden and forgotten, hear and 
 are, shrine and within. There is a jerkiness and dis- 
 sonance about many of his verses which reveal a 
 fundamental artistic defect, as well as a careless au- 
 dacity. We must credit him with the substance of 
 poetry, but must deny that he has mastered its form. 
 He is a stranger to the melody of Shelley ; and, though 
 Goethe was one of his demigods, that supreme literary 
 artist did not influence him to follow his example. 
 The result is an obscure and disjointed verse, with occa- 
 sional bursts of trumpetlike and thrilling beauty ; while 
 the real power of his writing is to be found mainly in 
 his. prose. I cannot assent to Stedman's characteriza- 
 tion of him as " our most typical and inspiring poet." 
 Theodore Parker called Emerson " a poet lacking the 
 accomplishment of verse " which means that his gift 
 was that of poetical prose. Matthew Arnold said well 
 that Emerson's is the most important work of the 
 nineteenth century in prose, as Wordsworth's is the
 
 76 EMERSON'S IDEA OF GOD 
 
 most important work of that same century in poetry; 
 and to that estimate we may well subscribe. 
 
 When I seek to illustrate Emerson's theological ideas 
 by citations from his verse, I am met with the ever-out- 
 standing fact that all his poetry is an endless reiteration 
 of one great truth, together with an ignoring of the 
 other truth which prevents it from having all the effect 
 of error. There is a pendulum swing in human 
 thought. Divinity and humanity, fate and freedom, 
 each has its rights. Woe be to the age that builds its 
 system of thought upon either one to the exclusion of 
 the other ! The pendulum will certainly swing to the 
 opposite extreme. New England had become Armin- 
 ian and sterile ; the fountains of the great deep needed 
 to be broken up; Emerson showed us an open heaven 
 and a present God. In this he did a service to his 
 generation. " Unlovely, nay, frightful," he says, " is 
 the solitude of the soul without God." But this recog- 
 nition passes immediately into identification. The soul 
 that recognizes God becomes itself God, and God him- 
 self becomes another name for our human life and 
 activity : 
 
 This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 
 Floods with blessings unawares. 
 Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 Which is human, which divine. 
 
 What God is this, who cannot or will not hear the 
 prayers of his worshipers and who is indistinguishable 
 from ourselves ? This is indeed the Roman Jove ; it is 
 not our Father who is in heaven. The pagan God is 
 not God at all, but only an idol of the human imagi-
 
 EMERSON S VIEW OF PRAYER 77 
 
 nation, a creation of our human selfishness and sin. 
 The blessings with which he floods us unawares come 
 from no mind of justice or heart of love. No com- 
 munion with him is possible; he is simply the imper- 
 sonal spirit of the universe, the nature-god of panthe- 
 ism, a god who has no eye to pity and no arm to save 
 in the stern emergencies of men's need. 
 
 What was Emerson's doctrine of prayer? He cer- 
 tainly did not believe in petition for specific gifts or 
 blessings. That, to his mind, would be impudence, and 
 insult to law and Lawgiver. " Prayer that craves 
 a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is 
 vicious." " Men's prayers are a disease of the will, as 
 their creeds are a disease of the intellect." Yet prayer 
 is natural to man ; it may lift him into harmony with 
 the divine will ; it may give him new insight and cour- 
 age. It will be sheer perversion to expect any alter- 
 ation in things external to ourselves. Emerson gave 
 up public prayer, as he gave up the Lord's Supper, be- 
 cause he regarded it as encouraging superstition : 
 
 When success exalts thy lot, 
 God for thy virtue lays a plot: 
 And all thy life is for thine own, 
 Then for mankind's instruction shown; 
 And though thy knees were never bent, 
 To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent, 
 And whether formed for good or ill, 
 Are registered and answered still. 18 
 
 O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet?" 
 
 i " p ra yer." " Good-bye."
 
 78 THE " PISTAREEN PROVIDENCE " 
 
 In the name of Godhead, I 
 The morrow front, and can defy; 
 Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, 
 Cannot withhold his conquering aid. u 
 
 But God's " conquering aid " is really nothing but the 
 new determination of the human soul, and God is but 
 a figure of speech : 
 
 Around the man who seeks a noble end, 
 Not angels but divinities attend. 19 
 
 Emerson scoffs at the " pistareen Providence " of 
 George Miiller and his Orphan Houses. Piety, he 
 thinks, is here " pulled down to the pantry and the 
 shoe-closet, till we are distressed for fresh air, God 
 coming precisely as he is called for, to the hour and 
 minute." Yet Jesus said, " Ask, and ye shall receive " ; 
 and Paul urges us, " in everything by prayer and sup- 
 plication with thanksgiving," to let our " requests be 
 made known unto God." Emerson's God does not 
 hear and cannot answer prayer. 
 
 He spoke of " the burdensome doctrine of a Deity." 
 But he meant only to clear himself of definitions, and to 
 accept whatever impressions came to him, mutually 
 contradictory though they might be. This gives an 
 appearance of fairness to his writings, though it really 
 shows that he had no settled belief with regard to the 
 most serious questions that vex the soul. " Cannot 
 I trust the Goodness that has uplifted to uphold me? " 
 he says. " I cannot find in the world, without or 
 within, any antidote, any bulwark, against this fear, 
 
 18 " The Nun's Aspiration." 19 " Life."
 
 TRUTH WHAT MEN TROW 79 
 
 like this : the frank acknowledgment of unbounded de- 
 pendence. Let into the heart that is rilled with pros- 
 perity the idea of God, and it smooths the giddy preci- 
 pices of human pride to a substantial level." He can 
 even acknowledge " the wholesomeness of Calvinism 
 for thousands and thousands. I would not discourage 
 their scrupulous religious observances." Calvinism, he 
 holds, " is an imperfect version of the moral law. Uni- 
 tarianism is another." " It is well for my Protestantism 
 that there is no Cathedral in Concord. Unitarians for- 
 get that men are poets. . . I have very good grounds for 
 being a Unitarian, and for being a Trinitarian too. . . 
 The highest revelation is that God is in every man. 
 Our reason is not to be distinguished from the divine 
 essence ; and all forms of doctrine are but shadows and 
 symbols of invisible reality." 
 
 Ever the Rock of Ages melts 
 
 Into the mineral air, 
 To be the quarry whence to build 
 
 Thought and its mansions fair. 
 
 Ascending through just degrees 
 To a consummate holiness, 
 As angel blind to trespass done, 
 And bleaching all souls like the sun. 20 
 
 Oh what is Heaven but the fellowship 
 Of minds that each can stand against the 
 
 world 
 By its own meek and incorruptible will? 21 
 
 On this theory, truth is simply what men " trow," and 
 things are what men " think." All reality is subjective. 
 
 20 " Life." a " Self-reliance," lines added in 1833.
 
 80 THE INFINITUDE OF A MAN 
 
 In spite of these shortcomings, Emerson's positive 
 doctrine was a blessing to New England. " The in- 
 finitude of the private man," and the possibility of his 
 first-hand acquaintance with the Deity, were lessons 
 which the church and the world greatly needed to learn. 
 Sacraments and Bible were never intended as a substi- 
 tute for direct communion with Christ. Much that 
 our author says of God in the soul, and of the soul's 
 expression of God in the world, is capable of a Chris- 
 tian interpretation. Emerson never reaches a greater 
 height of imaginative fervor than in his poem entitled 
 " The Problem," and this alone will give him enduring 
 fame, when other works of his are forgotten, though 
 even here there is mingled with a noble recognition of 
 God's working in humanity a fatal denial of any 
 worth in the externals of religion : 
 
 I like a church; I like a cowl; 
 
 I love a prophet of the soul; 
 
 And on my heart monastic aisles 
 
 Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: 
 
 Yet not for all his faith can see 
 
 Would I that cowled chufchman be. 
 
 The hand that rounded Peter's dome 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity; 
 Himself from God he could not free; 
 He builded better than he knew; 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew. 
 
 These temples grew as grows the grass; 
 Art might obey, but not surpass. 
 The passive Master lent his hand 
 To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
 
 SLIGHTING ALLUSIONS TO CHRIST 8 1 
 
 And the same power that reared the shrine 
 Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 
 Ever the fiery Pentecost 
 Girds with one flame the countless host. 
 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world hath never lost. 
 
 And yet, for all his faith could see, 
 I would not the good bishop be. 
 
 The final test of a poet's worth must be his concep- 
 tion of Christ. By his attitude toward our Lord he 
 will be judged at the last day, and by that standard 
 Christian people must judge him now. He who does 
 not accept Christ as Lord of all fails to recognize him 
 as Lord at all. To a Christian heart, Emerson's 
 slighting and half -contemptuous allusions to Jesus are 
 deeply painful. He seems to take pleasure in tearing 
 the crown from the brow of our Redeemer. " My 
 brothers, my mother, my companions, must be much 
 more to me, in all respects of friendship, than he can 
 be." He regards the incarnation as poorly expressing 
 the eternal indwelling of God in man. He had wished 
 that his son 
 
 Might break his daily bread 
 With prophet, savior and head; 
 That he might cherish for his own 
 The riches of sweet Mary's Son, 
 Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon. 22 
 
 Christianity, he acknowledges, is " the most em 
 phatic affirmation of man's spiritual nature. But not 
 
 23 " Threnody."
 
 82 JESUS RANKED WITH THE GREAT 
 
 the only one, nor the last. There shall be a thou- 
 sand more." 
 
 For what need I of book or priest, 
 Or sibyl from the mummied East, 
 When every star is Bethlehem star? 
 I count as many as there are 
 Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, 
 So many saints and saviors, 
 So many high behaviors 
 Salute the bard who is alive 
 And only sees what he doth give. 23 
 
 Emerson ranks Jesus among the great men of the 
 races. Christian associations, he says, are " the fruit 
 of the life and teachings of the lowly Nazarene. An 
 obscure man, in an obscure crowd, brought forward 
 a new Scripture. His cross has been erected, and it 
 has been to some a pillar of cloud, and to some a pillar 
 of fire." But he puts our Lord side by side with Plato 
 and Philo and Shakespeare : 
 
 One in a Judaean manger, 
 
 And one by Avon stream, 
 
 One over against the mouths of Nile, 
 
 And one in the Academe. 24 
 
 I see all human wits 
 Are measured by a few; 
 Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits, 
 Lone as the blessed Jew. 25 
 
 If Emerson had taken conscience instead of nature 
 for his guide, he would have found the key to the 
 world's great problem, and would have appreciated 
 the solution which is furnished in Jesus Christ, for 
 
 ** " The Poet." 24 " Song of Nature," M " Shakspeare."
 
 " JESUS WOULD ABSORB THE RACE " 83 
 
 the revelation of saving love in Jesus Christ is the only 
 remedy for the world's guilt and misery. But Emer- 
 son could see in Christ only the likeness of himself. He 
 speaks condescendingly of " that best and dearest 
 saint," " that excellent teacher whom God sent," " not 
 a solitary, but still a lovely herald " ; but he discoun- 
 tenances the " noxious exaggeration of the person of 
 Jesus," and he banished that person from genuine 
 religion. He praises " the lowliness of the blessed 
 soul that walked in Judea and hallowed that land for- 
 ever " ; but he thought he could not himself be a man, 
 if he " must subordinate his nature to Christ's nature." 
 "Jesus would absorb the race," he said, "but Tom 
 Paine, or the coarsest blasphemer, helps humanity by 
 resisting this exuberance of power." He failed to see 
 that Jesus not only absorbs but transforms, and that 
 we grow, only by the impact of nobler souls than our 
 own. The age-long yearning of the human race for 
 God in human form made no impression on him. 
 " That exalted person who died on Calvary," he thinks, 
 " will be better loved by not being adored." " Only a 
 barbarous state of society thought to add to his dignity 
 by making him King, and God." 
 
 Emerson broke with his church and left the .ministry 
 because he could not celebrate the Lord's Supper it 
 implied a profounder reverence for Jesus than he could 
 give him. " It seemed to me at church to-day," he 
 says, " that the communion service, as it is now and 
 here celebrated, is a document of the dulness of the 
 race. How these, my good neighbors, the bending 
 deacons, with their cups and plates, would have 
 straightened themselves to sturdiness, if the proposition
 
 84 " MANY SAINTS AND SAVIORS " 
 
 came before them to honor thus a fellow man ! " Yes, 
 verily! And it was only common honesty on Emer- 
 son's part, when he came to regard Jesus as only one 
 of " many saints and saviors," to give up his clerical 
 office and thenceforth substitute the lecture platform 
 for the pulpit. His teaching was no longer " crip- 
 pled by making it depend on Jesus." But it also be- 
 came merely the fallible message of a human seer, 
 instead of the power of God unto salvation. Of him- 
 self he said well, " I find in me no enthusiasm, no 
 resources, for the instruction and guidance of the 
 people." 
 
 A Nature-God cannot hate evil, for it is his creation, 
 and a preliminary and partial manifestation of his own 
 being. Though Emerson has been called the teacher of 
 Puritan ethics, as Jonathan Edwards was the teacher 
 of Puritan religion, it would be difficult to mention any 
 principle more subversive of morals than is Emerson's 
 dictum that moral evil is only privative, as darkness is 
 only the absence of light. Sin is no longer the positive 
 assertion of a godless will, but is merely the absence 
 of knowledge, the effect of ignorance, to be removed 
 by education. It is not enmity to God, or even unlike- 
 ness to him. God is no longer holy, since sin is or- 
 dained by him as a means of ultimate perfection. The 
 selfishness and pride and hate and lust of man are only 
 good in the making; the stumbling of the child in order 
 that he may learn to walk. Emerson becomes, like 
 Carlyle, a worshiper of successful force. Whatever is, 
 is right, and his optimism can find good in Cain and in 
 Judas. His poem entitled " Cupido " is a practical 
 avowal of this pantheism :
 
 WORSHIP OF SUCCESSFUL FORCE 85 
 
 The solid, solid universe 
 
 Is pervious to Love; 
 
 With bandaged eyes he never errs, 
 
 Around, below, above. 
 
 His blinding light 
 
 He flingeth white 
 
 On God's and Satan's brood, 
 
 And reconciles 
 
 By mystic wiles 
 
 The evil and the good. 
 
 In his " Xenophanes " he propounds this same doc- 
 trine of absolute unity in its most extreme form : 
 
 All things 
 
 Are of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower, 
 Song, picture, form, space, thought and character 
 Deceive us, seeming to be many things, 
 And are but one. Beheld far off, they part 
 As God and devil; bring them to the mind, 
 They dull its edge with their monotony. 
 To know one element, explore another, 
 And in the second reappears the first. 
 
 Over me soared the eternal sky, 
 
 Full of light and of deity; 
 
 Again I saw, again I heard, 
 
 The rolling river, the morning bird; 
 
 Beauty through my senses i stole; 
 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 26 
 
 All this means, not that the world is the symbol of 
 spirit, but that the world is spirit. " God is the life 
 of all. Every mountain is a Sinai ; every tree a burn- 
 ing bush ; every breeze a still, small voice. Each soul is 
 an expression of the Over-Soul, and reigns supreme 
 over matter." As positive and negative are two in- 
 
 26 " Each and All."
 
 86 " BRAHMA " 
 
 separable poles of the magnet, so matter and mind, 
 good and evil, are alike manifestations of the universal 
 Spirit. The poem " Cupido," in spite of its poetical 
 beauty, and of the Christian interpretation which may 
 be given to its opening lines, is Hindu and pagan in 
 essence. The author's poem " Brahma " indeed is only 
 a rendering in English of that heathen and immoral 
 philosophy : 
 
 If the red slayer think he slays, 
 Or if the slain think he is slain, 
 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again. 
 
 Far or forgot to me is near; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same; 
 The vanished gods to me appear; 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame. 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 
 
 The strong gods pine for my abode, 
 And pine in vain the sacred Seven; 
 
 But thou, meek lover of the good! 
 
 Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. 
 
 What is this but a confounding of all moral dis- 
 tinctions? We should not wish never to have sinned, 
 for sin is necessary to the development of holiness. 
 " For the intellect," Emerson says, " there is no crime. 
 . . Saints are sad, because they behold sin from the 
 point of view of the conscience, and not of the intel- 
 lect a confusion of thought. . . Man, though in 
 brothels or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all 
 that is good and true. . . The carrion that rots in the
 
 AMALGAMATION OF HEAVEN AND HELL 87 
 
 sun, the criminal who breaks every law of God and 
 man, are on their way to blessedness. Evil is part 
 of the discipline by which the soul is restored to union 
 with the Over-Soul. The less we have to do with our 
 sins, the better. No man can afford to waste his mo- 
 ments in compunctions." All evil is undeveloped good. 
 This has been well called " the higher synthesis of 
 the Devil and the Deity." If Emerson is not worthy 
 of the title, which Carlyle invented for another, of 
 " President of the Heaven and Hell Amalgamation 
 Society," he certainly can be said to have devised an 
 excuse for all human passion, and a slander upon the 
 holiness of God. 
 
 When individual men become mere figureheads and 
 automata for the divine in working, they cease to be 
 objects of our special regard. Emerson confessed his 
 inability to enter into intimate personal relations with 
 others. His friendships were of the cool intellectual 
 sort ; " there were fences between him and his dearest 
 friends " ; he was slow to appreciate or to advocate the 
 cause of the slave; he cared for man in the abstract 
 rather than for real men. The only God he knew 
 was within his own soul. Paul declared that all things 
 are ours because we enter into Christ's inheritance; 
 Emerson held that all things are ours by original right, 
 and that Christ enters into our inheritance instead : 
 
 I am owner of the sphere, 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 Of Cassar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
 Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's 
 strain. 27 
 
 27 Motto to the " Essay on History."
 
 88 MAN WRONGED 
 
 " In self-trust," he said, " all the virtues are com- 
 pounded. Man has been wronged; men are of no 
 account. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a 
 person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this 
 unbounded, unboundable empire." He questions the 
 ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. One must not be 
 hindered by consideration for others. The true end 
 of being is development of the self. This seems 
 dangerously near to Paul's description of " the man of 
 sin," who " sits in the temple of God, setting himself 
 forth as God." It is the " Overman " of Nietzsche, 
 claiming the right to realize self and to put down all 
 that stands in his way. It is the view of Ibsen, who, in 
 " The Doll's House," makes Nora put self-realization 
 before wifehood and motherhood. " Obligation to 
 put all poor men into good situations ? " says Emer- 
 son. "Are they my poor? . . I grudge the dollar, 
 the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong 
 to me, and to whom I do not belong." The least and 
 lowest of all the sons of men had worth enough for 
 Jesus to make him willing to suffer and die in his 
 behalf. The parable of the Good Samaritan showed 
 who is my neighbor. But the evangelization of men 
 did not interest Emerson. He was greatly amused 
 that the American Baptist Missionary Union attempted 
 the conversion of France; and when asked what he 
 would do with the Hottentots of Africa, he replied, 
 " Just what I would do with one of their ant-hills 
 step on it." And in his poem " Alphonso " he writes : 
 
 Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!' 
 My counsel is, Kill nine in ten,
 
 EMERSON'S DEBT TO CHRIST 89 
 
 And bestow the shares of all 
 On the remnant decimal. 
 
 So shall ye have a man of the sphere, 
 Fit to grace the solar year. 
 
 And yet, all of Emerson's optimism, his recognition 
 of God in nature, his love of country, his hope for the 
 future, were drawn from Christ. These things were 
 not, before Christ came. It is Christ who has glorified 
 nature and man; it is he who has inspired hope for 
 the individual and for society. The classic writers 
 were pessimists ; to them the world seemed given over 
 to evil, and to be nearing destruction. Apocalypticism 
 was only the reflection in religious minds of such 
 fears as possessed Cicero and Seneca. The very- 
 dignity of man, which Emerson fancied to be his 
 peculiar message and discovery, was the revelation of 
 Him who thought each human soul of such worth that 
 he died to save it. On this ladder Emerson has climbed 
 to his calm faith in the divine indwelling and in man's 
 certainty of progress. It was blindness and ingrati- 
 tude in him to throw down the ladder by which he had 
 climbed. 
 
 Let us be thankful for the truth he utters, though 
 he is far from uttering the whole truth and nothing but 
 the truth. We owe much to him for his insight into 
 the meaning of nature. There is a spirit in matter; 
 nothing in this world is dead; every leaf and every 
 breeze is symbolic; God speaks to us in the heavens 
 above and in the earth beneath : 
 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 H
 
 QO INSIGHT INTO MEANING OF NATURE 
 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. 
 The wood is wiser far than thou; 
 The wood and wave each other know 
 Not unrelated, unaffied, 
 But to each thought and thing allied, 
 Is perfect Nature's every part, 
 Rooted in the mighty Heart. 
 
 Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 
 
 Thy churches and thy charities; 
 
 And leave thy peacock wit behind; 
 
 Enough for thee the primal mind 
 
 That flows in streams, that breathes in wind; 
 
 Leave all thy pedant lore apart; - 
 
 God hid the whole world in thy heart. 
 
 All the forms are fugitive, 
 
 But the substances survive. 
 
 Ever fresh the broad creation, 
 
 A divine improvisation, 
 
 From the heart of God proceeds, 
 
 A single will, a million deeds. 28 
 
 There are snatches and bursts of melody in the midst 
 of tame and rambling verse, such as : 
 
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky 
 Come see the north wind's masonry. 
 
 The frolic architecture of the snow. 29 
 
 For the world was built in order, 
 And the atoms march in tune; 
 Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, 
 The sun obeys them and the moon. 30 
 
 28 " Woodnotes," II. w " The Snow-storm." M " Monadnoc."
 
 BURSTS OF MELODY 9 1 
 
 Brother, sweeter is the Law 
 Than all the grace Love ever saw; 
 We are its suppliants. By it, we 
 Draw the breath of Eternity. 31 
 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Unto the thing so signified; 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits 
 Is the same Genius that creates. 32 
 
 The sun set, but set not his hope: 
 Stars rose, his faith was earlier up: 
 Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
 Deeper and older seemed his eye, 
 And matched his sufferance sublime 
 The taciturnity of Time. 33 
 
 'Tis not in the high stars alone, 
 Nor in the cup of budding flowers, 
 Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, 
 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, 
 But in the mud and scum of things 
 There alway, alway something sings. 34 
 
 What Emerson says of Goethe we may well apply 
 to himself : 
 
 Is he hapless who can spare 
 In his plenty things so rare? 
 
 With his view that man is immediately inspired by 
 God, Emerson may be expected to be an apostle of 
 human freedom. And so he is, if we look at man in 
 the abstract, for individual men did not seem to him 
 so worthy of his notice. 
 
 On prince or bride no diamond stone 
 Half so gracious ever shone, 
 As the light of enterprise 
 Beaming from a young man's eyes. 38 
 
 81 " The Poet." 3a " Fate." ffl " The Poet." 
 
 34 " Music." 35 Translations.
 
 92 APOSTLE OF ABSTRACT FREEDOM 
 
 Ever in the strife of your own thoughts 
 Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome: 
 That shall command a senate to your side; 
 For there is no might in the universe 
 That can contend with love. It reigns forever.' 
 
 The hero is not fed on sweets, 
 Daily his own heart he eats; 
 Chambers of the great are jails, 
 And head-winds right for royal sails. 37 
 
 He that feeds men serveth few; 
 He serves all who dares be true. 38 
 
 O tenderly the haughty day 
 
 Fills his blue urn with fire; 
 One morn is in the mighty heaven, 
 
 And one in our desire. . . 
 
 For He that worketh high and wise, 
 
 Nor pauses in his plan, 
 Will take the sun out of the skies 
 
 Ere freedom out of man. 38 
 
 The " Boston Hymn," read in the Music Hall, January 
 i, 1863, is a stirring eulogy of American liberty: 
 
 The word of the Lord by night 
 To the watching Pilgrims came, 
 As they sat by the seaside, 
 And filled their hearts with flame. 
 
 God said, I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more; 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor. 
 
 Written at Rome." " " Heroism." 
 
 The Celestial Love." " Ode " at Concord.
 
 EMERSON NOT A CONTROVERSIALIST 93 
 
 Come, East and West and North, 
 By races, as snow-flakes, 
 And carry my purpose forth, 
 Which neither halts nor shakes. 
 
 My will fulfilled shall be, 
 For, in daylight or in dark, 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 His way home to the mark. 
 
 He wrote an " Inscription for a Well in Memory of 
 the Martyrs of the War " : 
 
 Fall, stream, from Heaven to bless; return as well; 
 So did our sons; Heaven met them as they fell. 
 
 Though love repine, and reason chafe, 
 There came a voice without reply, 
 ' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
 When for the truth he ought to die.' * 
 
 But conflict was not our poet's native air. He was 
 no reasoner and no controversialist. It took him a 
 long time to realize that secession and rebellion in our 
 Southern States must be put down. It has some- 
 times been said that he was never angry, and his 
 unvarying serenity has been used to disparage our 
 Lord's denunciations of Scribes and Pharisees. Such 
 praise is virtual condemnation; for real love for the 
 good is inseparable from indignation against the evil. 
 The true God is not indifferent to moral relations 
 he is a God of fearful justice, of awful purity, of 
 searching love, and holiness is fundamental in his be- 
 ing. Frothingham, in his " Transcendentalism in New 
 England," intimates that Emerson was not devoid of 
 indignation against wrong, and tells us that he could 
 
 * " Sacrifice."
 
 94 SWEETNESS AND BENIGNITY 
 
 imitate Jesus' doom of the barren fig tree. He cer- 
 tainly denounced Daniel Webster and spoke of that 
 " filthy Fugitive Slave Law," which Webster com- 
 mended to New England. When Sumner was smit- 
 ten, he said, " I think we must get rid of slavery, or 
 we must get rid of freedom." But such wrath was 
 exceedingly rare. Henry James remarks that Emer- 
 son " never caught a glimpse of the cherubim and the 
 flaming sword, but put forth his hand direct to the tree 
 of life." Sweetness and benignity characterized his 
 common demeanor. He moved among men as one 
 whose head was in the clouds, and who was oblivious 
 of the petty jangling and contention of sublunary 
 affairs. He dealt with principles rather than with 
 details, with pure rather than with applied science. 
 " I live wholly from within," he said. John Morley 
 classes him with Rousseau, Robespierre, and Carlyle, 
 as " beginning with sentiment and ignoring reason " ; 
 as having " great feeling for right, but also great con- 
 tempt for the only instruments by which we can make 
 sure what right is." And we may add that Emerson 
 would have been less tranquil, but more useful, if he 
 had recognized an external divine revelation. He saw 
 " no urgent necessity for Heaven's last revelation, 
 since the laws of morality had been written before, 
 and philosophy had lively dreams of immortality." 
 Here we see that our poet conceived of Christianity, 
 not as God's gift of pardon for the violation of law, 
 nor as God's gift of power to obey law, but solely as 
 an ethical philosophy which throws men back upon 
 their own insight and ability a sorry resource for a 
 convicted sinner.
 
 VIEW OF IMMORTALITY 95 
 
 Did Emerson believe in personal immortality? It 
 is very doubtful. If God is impersonal, and man is to 
 be merged at last in God, the less faith we have in 
 individual existence beyond the grave, the better. Yet, 
 with the mystics, he did not believe in annihilation. 
 " God upholds us with his uncreated power," he says, 
 " and keeps the soul still herself." And some of his 
 interpreters, like Cooke, maintain that he rejects the 
 individual, local, and selfish, but retains the personal, 
 divine, and eternal. One can find in his writings oc- 
 casional utterances that encourage faith. " Life is not 
 long enough for art, or for friendship," he declares. 
 " The soul does not age with the body." He is " sure 
 that in the other life we will be permitted to finish the 
 work begun in this." But then he also says : " A future 
 state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It is 
 not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time." He 
 believes in the future, only because he has God in the 
 present. But whether we shall know each other beyond 
 the grave is " a school-dame question." Even the 
 " Threnody," which expresses his grief at the death 
 of his beautiful young son, gives us no certain assur- 
 ance that he ever expected to meet him again. In the 
 shadow of that affliction he wrote to Carlyle : " I 
 dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold, to in- 
 quire what relations to my departed ones I yet sus- 
 tain." He speaks of " the inarticulateness of the 
 Supreme Power," and asks : " How can we insatiate 
 hearers, perceivers, and thinkers, ever reconcile us to 
 it ? My divine temple, which all angels seemed to love 
 to build, was shattered in a night." This is surely 
 far short of the comfort which Christ gives to his dis-
 
 96 " THRENODY " 
 
 ciples, and it shows that in his sorrow our author 
 needed more than any inner light could give him. The 
 " Threnody " is painful reading to one who believes 
 that Christ has brought life and immortality to light in 
 his glorious gospel, and it reminds us of the sad and 
 uncertain inscriptions upon the monuments of the 
 dead in classic times. Listen to these words: 
 
 The South-wind brings 
 
 Life, sunshine and desire, 
 
 And on every mount and meadow 
 
 Breathes aromatic fire; 
 
 But over the dead he has no power, 
 
 The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; 
 
 And, looking over the hills, I mourn 
 
 The darling who shall not return. 
 
 Not mine, I never called thee mine, 
 
 But Nature's heir, if I repine, 
 
 And seeing rashly torn and moved 
 
 Not what I made, but what I loved, 
 
 Grow early old with grief that thou 
 
 Must to the wastes of Nature go, 
 
 'Tis because a general hope 
 
 Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. 
 
 What is excellent, 
 As God lives, is permanent; 
 Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; 
 Heart's love will meet thee again. 
 Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye 
 Up to his style, and manners of the sky. 
 
 Silent rushes the swift Lord 
 Through ruined systems still restored, 
 Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, 
 Plants with worlds the wilderness;
 
 A LIKENESS TO SCHLEIERMACHER 97 
 
 Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 
 Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. 
 House and tenant go to ground, 
 Lost in God, in Godhead found. 
 
 Schleiermacher's touching address at the funeral of 
 his only son furnishes a remarkable parallel to this 
 poem. They both exhibit a calm confidence that ajl is 
 well, without certainty of future reunion. So far as 
 Emerson was concerned, Jesus might never have lived, 
 and might never have opened the kingdom of heaven 
 to all believers. He would have been content, he said, 
 " to be a good Roman in the days of Cicero. I burn 
 after the ' aliquid immenswn infinitumque' which 
 Cicero desired." Like Marcus Aurelius, he had the 
 self-repression and the self-assertion of the Stoic. 
 Calm and benignant, a New England Brahmin, living 
 in an upper air of thought, he had no eye for the 
 tragedy of the world and for its need of redemption.. 
 He moved among men with something of Goethe's 
 majestic composure. Doctor Holmes tells us that he 
 was fully six feet in height, but spare in build and 
 weighing only one hundred and forty pounds. Blue 
 eyes, brown hair, sloping shoulders, all marked him 
 for an idealist. He had no ear for music, never in- 
 dulged in loud laughing, was no mathematician or 
 mechanic. The seeing eye was his, as he himself said, 
 but not the working hand. He was never hungry, 
 though he always had pie for breakfast, and only re- 
 plied to Oliver Wendell Holmes's remonstrance with 
 the naive question, "Why, what is pie for?" He 
 rose at seven, drank coffee and tea, and took to his 
 bed at ten in the evening. He complained of his
 
 98 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 own debility, procrastination, and inefficiency; yet he 
 was instant in season and out of season at his work 
 of reading, thinking, and writing; so that the amount 
 of his literary product, though small in poetry, is in 
 prose extraordinarily large. 
 
 Emerson was not only sincere in his thinking he 
 was also honest in his utterances. The condensation 
 and pithiness of every sentence in his conversation 
 and in his writing were the fruit of much pondering 
 of phrase. " To give the thought just and full expres- 
 sion," he says, " I must not prematurely utter it. It is 
 as if you let the spring snap too soon." We know 
 what is meant by " going off at half-cock." There was 
 something attractive and impressive in his frequent 
 waiting for the proper word, and in his triumphant 
 seizure of that word when it came to mind. This 
 painstaking, however, became too much of a habit, and 
 it led to paralysis. In his latter days he was afflicted 
 with great loss of memory. First the names of per- 
 sons, and then the names of the most familiar things, 
 passed from him. But this affliction seemed never to 
 disturb his tranquillity. He smiled at himself; took 
 the needed word from others, went on in perfect com- 
 posure. It was affecting to see him at the funeral 
 of Longfellow. He paid respect by his presence to 
 one of his lifelong friends, a poet like himself, and one 
 more widely popular. At the close of the service he 
 turned to his companion and said : " The gentleman 
 whose funeral we have been attending was a sweet and 
 beautiful soul, but I have forgotten his name." And 
 in less than a twelvemonth Emerson had followed 
 Longfellow.
 
 " TERMINUS " 99 
 
 He was what he was, and we must value the good, 
 even while we deprecate the evil. He grasped one of 
 the greatest truths, and that one truth gave him a 
 resting-place and fortress from which he could look 
 out calmly upon the world. As years increased, he 
 could write: 
 
 Spring still makes spring in the mind 
 
 When sixty years are told; 
 Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
 
 And we are never old; 
 Over the winter glaciers 
 
 I see the summer glow, 
 And through the wild-piled snow-drift, 
 
 The warm rosebuds below. 41 
 
 Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: 
 Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. 
 Long through thy weary crowds I roam; 
 A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
 Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; 
 But now, proud world! I'm going home. 42 
 
 When frail Nature can no more, 
 Then the Spirit strikes the hour; 
 My servant Death, with solving rite, 
 Pours finite into infinite. 13 
 
 And in all literature there are few anticipations of 
 death more composed and stalwart than Emerson's 
 poem entitled " Terminus " : 
 
 It is time to be old, 
 To take in sail: 
 The god of bounds, 
 Who sets to seas a shore, 
 Came to me in his fatal rounds, 
 And said, 'No more! 
 
 41 " The World-Soul" " Good-bye." " Threnody."
 
 100 A NON-ETHICAL MONIST 
 
 No farther shoot 
 
 Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. 
 
 Fancy departs: no more invent; 
 
 Contract thy firmament 
 
 To compass of a tent.' 
 
 As the bird trims her to the gale, 
 I trim myself to the storm of time, 
 I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 
 ' Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
 Right onward drive unharmed; 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 And every wave is charmed.' 
 
 This is beautiful and impressive; but it gives no 
 ground for trust to a sinner. The apostle has a better 
 hope ; knows whom he has believed ; and is persuaded 
 that he will keep that which he has committed to him 
 against the great inevitable day. Aye, more than this, 
 he has a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which 
 is far better. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson was a monist. He held that 
 there is but one substance, ground, or principle of be- 
 ing, namely, God. Scripture asserts this doctrine, when 
 it teaches, the divine omnipresence and immanence. 
 If Emerson had taught only this, he might have been 
 of unqualified benefit to his generation. But Scripture 
 teaches other truths which qualify this I mean the 
 truth of God's transcendence and personality, and the 
 truth of man's distinct personality as reflecting the per- 
 sonality of God. There are two sorts of monism 
 an ethical monism which recognizes these ethical facts 
 in God and in man, and a non-ethical monism which 
 ignores or denies them. It was a non-ethical monism
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF NATURAL IMPULSE IOI 
 
 to which Emerson held. Deity so absorbed humanity 
 that there was little roorn.^ left for freedom, or re- 
 sponsibility, or sin, or guilt, or atonement, or retribu- 
 tion. Unitarianism demonstrated its logical insuffi- 
 ciency by its lapse from ethical standards. The high 
 Arianism of Channing degenerated into the half- 
 fledged pantheism of Emerson. While we recognize 
 the great truth which Emerson proclaimed the truth 
 of metaphysical monism, or the doctrine of one sub- 
 stance, principle, or ground of being we must also 
 insist on the complementary truth which he ignored or 
 denied the truth of psychological dualism, or the doc- 
 trine that man's soul is personally distinct from matter 
 on the one hand, and from God on the other. 
 
 Emerson did not regard himself as a pantheist. He 
 cared little for names. He was bent only upon seizing 
 whatever truth there was in pantheism, while he still 
 held to the essentials of theism. But he was un- 
 consciously influenced by naturalistic prepossessions, 
 and he did not sufficiently realize that nature must be 
 interpreted by man, and not man by nature. The God 
 that nature gave him was a God devoid of moral at- 
 tributes, a God who was author of evil as well as of 
 good, a God who manifested himself only in law, a God 
 who could hold no personal intercourse with his crea- 
 tures, a God incapable of revelation or redemption. 
 Man is thrown back upon his own powers. The only 
 God he knows is in his own soul. An exaggerated 
 self-appreciation takes the place of worship; natural 
 impulse becomes the only authority; self-realization is 
 the only end. Thus a non-ethical monism is ultimate 
 deification of self, and Emerson is " the friend and
 
 IO2 THE DRIFT OF EMERSON S INFLUENCE 
 
 aider of those who would live in the spirit," not in the 
 sense of leading them to receive and obey the Spirit of 
 God, but by blinding them to the truth and giving 
 them over to the spirit of evil. 
 
 In his early days Emerson quoted with approbation 
 our Saviour's words, " If ye do my Father's will, ye 
 shall know of the doctrine." It was not an exact quo- 
 tation, but it had awakened a responsive emotion in his 
 heart. We are led to wonder what Emerson's in- 
 fluence would have been, if he had heeded that ad- 
 monition and had yielded his allegiance to him whom 
 God has sent to reveal and to save. That matchless 
 gift of fresh and incisive utterance might then have 
 been used in winning men to Christ, whereas it has 
 often drawn men away from him; it might have led 
 men through Christ to God, whereas it has often held 
 before them a vague abstraction which eludes while it 
 attracts. The God of the pantheist is no God for the 
 ignorant or the sinful or the dying. In so far as he 
 taught men of a present God in nature and in history, 
 we can apply to him the words of Christ, " He that 
 is not against us is for us." But in so far as he 
 ignored and denied Christ's deity and atonement and 
 authority, Dr. William Hague's judgment upon Em- 
 erson must be ours a judgment all the more fitting 
 because it repeats the words of Christ himself: "He 
 that is not with me is against me; and he that gather- 
 eth not with me scattereth abroad." 
 
 Emerson died on the twenty-seventh day of April, 
 1882. Cabot tells us, very simply and beautifully, that 
 on the following Sunday, April the thirtieth, in Sleepy 
 Hollow, a grove consecrated as a burial-place on the
 
 IN THE CATHEDRAL OF NATURE IO3 
 
 edge of the village of Concord, and at the foot of a tall 
 pine tree upon the top of the ridge in the highest part 
 of the grounds, Emerson's body was laid, not far from 
 the graves of Hawthorne and of Thoreau, and sur- 
 rounded by those of his kindred. His mortal remains 
 rest in the Cathedral of Nature, whose life he strove 
 to absorb and to interpret ; and since he uttered at least 
 some truth of value to his generation and to the world, 
 we may still say : 
 
 Speak no more of his renown, 
 Lay your earthly fancies down, 
 And in the vast cathedral leave him, 
 God accept him, Christ receive him!
 
 Ill 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 OF all our American poets, Whittier is the most 
 American. He is no exotic. Emerson, Holmes, 
 Lowell, and even Bryant, with all their effort to escape 
 from foreign standards, were unconsciously influenced 
 by classical or by English literature. Whittier was 
 rooted more deeply than they in the New England soil, 
 drew his sustenance from men rather than from books, 
 and bore genuinely native fruits of sincerity and free- 
 dom. Like Robert Burns, who first kindled in him the 
 ambition to be a poet, he was too poor to go to college. 
 But poverty and hardship gave him sympathy with all 
 sufferers, and made his verse the unsophisticated ex- 
 pression of common human needs and aspirations. 
 His religious nature recognized in all its impulses, not 
 so much the Over-Soul that thinks, as the Over-Heart 
 that throbs, in all humanity; and this reference of the 
 inner light to its personal divine source consecrated 
 his poetry. If Burns was the national lyrist of Scot- 
 land, then Whittier is the national lyrist of America. 
 His is a homespun verse, but it is the utterance of a 
 patriot and a prophet, even more truly than was the 
 poetry of Burns. It is profoundly and pervasively re- 
 ligious. His political poems are half-battles, because 
 
 107
 
 IO8 PURITANISM AND QUAKERISM 
 
 they are half-prayers. And the spirit of them is that 
 which he celebrates in his " Prophecy of Samuel 
 Sewall " : 
 
 Praise and thanks for an honest man! 
 Glory to God for the Puritan! 
 
 Whittier was a Quaker, and Quakerism was Puritan- 
 ism carried to its logical extreme. The Puritan had 
 renounced allegiance to the papacy, and had asserted 
 his right of immediate access to God, without interven- 
 tion of priest or sacrament. But he put Scripture in 
 the place of the church, as the infallible rule of faith 
 and practice, and this semi-deification of external au- 
 thority led to deadness of feeling. George Fox re- 
 volted from the formalism into which the church had 
 sunk. He trembled and quaked in the felt presence 
 of the living God. He found One, " even Christ 
 Jesus, who could speak to his condition." He dis- 
 covered anew the spirituality of true religion, and 
 longed to impart this discovery to others. He began 
 a public ministry, going through England on foot and 
 at his own charges, that the people " might receive 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 This was the beginning of Quakerism. Fox did not 
 deny the authority of Scripture, but he put the inward 
 testimony of the Holy Spirit side by side with Scrip- 
 ture as its supplement and interpreter. Barclay, the 
 theologian of the sect, declared that " Whatsoever any 
 do, pretending to the Spirit, which is contrary to the 
 Scriptures, should be accounted and reckoned a de- 
 lusion of the Devil." There were, however, even in 
 that day, members of the Society who so exaggerated
 
 WHITTIER AN ORTHODOX QUAKER KX) 
 
 the importance of their personal experience as to make 
 the inner light modify and even supersede the outward 
 and written revelation. The Hicksite party in America 
 was only a recrudescence of that early tendency. As 
 they could deny the special inspiration of Scripture, 
 they could also substitute Christ in the heart for the 
 historic Christ, and the very foundations of Christian 
 faith gave way. John Greenleaf Whittier never fa- 
 vored these aberrations of doctrine. He was to the 
 last an Orthodox Quaker, holding the Scriptures to be 
 " a rule, not the rule of faith and practice, which is 
 none other than the omnipresent Spirit of God a sub- 
 ordinate, secondary, and declaratory rule they testify 
 of Christ within." 1 And at his eightieth anniversary 
 he read the lines : 
 
 Scotland shall flourish while each peasant learns 
 The psalms of David and songs of Burns. 
 
 The inner promptings of the spirit, independent of 
 book or reason, are an uncertain indication of duty, 
 and a frail support in sorrow. The inner light, so far 
 as it is trustworthy, has its source outside of itself, and 
 is to be tested and corrected by God's external revela- 
 tion. We are to " try the spirits, whether they be from 
 God." As all the light of day comes from the sun, so 
 all the light of conscience comes from Christ, " the 
 Light that lighteth every man." And faith is the eye 
 which receives his light and purifies the light within. 
 Whittier was a believer in Christ. He also believed in 
 an immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. " Some- 
 thing outside of myself speaks to me and holds me to 
 
 1 Letter to Richard Nott, 1840.
 
 IIO PROTEST AGAINST PURITAN INTOLERANCE 
 
 duty, warns, reproves, and approves a revelation of 
 God." So he writes. But this mysticism is corrected 
 by recognizing the inspiration and authority of Scrip- 
 ture, and the oneness of the Christ within with the 
 historic Christ who suffered and died on Calvary. 
 
 It is no wonder that eccentricities of Quaker doc- 
 trine brought down upon many members of the Society 
 the strong arm of the law. When they were moved to 
 interrupt the worship of the churches by their de- 
 nunciations, and to defy the authorities by parading 
 naked through the streets, the inner light seemed only 
 another name for insanity. In England and in 
 America alike, they were imprisoned and exiled. Mary 
 Dyer and three male Friends were hanged on Boston 
 Common, and female members of the sect were 
 stripped to the waist, whipped unmercifully, and driven 
 out into the wilderness. To shelter them was a crime. 
 Doctor Ellis claimed that the Quakers were as much to 
 blame for being hanged as the Puritans were for 
 hanging them. But Whittier indignantly replied that 
 Puritan intolerance had turned the heads of unoffend- 
 ing Christians, and had compelled them to their strange 
 methods of testimony: 
 
 " God is our witness," the victims cried, 
 " We suffer foT Him who for all men died; 
 The wrong ye do has been done before, 
 We bear the stripes that the Master bore! " 2 
 
 The founder of the Whittier family in New England 
 was Thomas Whittier, who came to this country in 
 1638. He was not himself a Quaker, though he knew 
 
 J " How the Women Went from Dover."
 
 AN INHERITANCE OF BLOOD AND PRINCIPLES III 
 
 of George Fox and sympathized with his doctrine. 
 Haverhill, thirty miles north of Boston, was then an 
 outpost of civilization, with a hundred miles of wilder- 
 ness and roving bands of Indians beyond it. Here, 
 in its East Parish, and in a beautiful bend of the 
 Merrimac, though out of sight to any other settler, 
 Thomas Whittier made his home and reared a stal- 
 wart family of five sons and five daughters. His 
 grandson Joseph married a Greenleaf, of probably 
 Huguenot descent, since the name seems to be the 
 French Feuillevert Anglicized. Our poet was the 
 grandson of this grandson. His father was a devout 
 member of the Society of Friends, and his mother one 
 of the loveliest and saintliest of women. In her 
 veins was the blood of Stephen Bachiler, an English 
 Nonconformist and an Oxford man, who had come to 
 America to avoid persecution. Bachiler's daughter 
 Susannah was the grandmother of Daniel Webster, so 
 that John Greenleaf Whittier and Daniel Webster were 
 cousins. 
 
 It must be remembered that the Friends were men of 
 peace. They asked only the privilege of worshiping 
 God according to the dictates of their own consciences. 
 It was the same right which the Puritans claimed for 
 themselves. But the Puritans denied it to others, and 
 there grew up in Massachusetts an autocracy and a 
 hierarchy as intolerant and cruel as that from which 
 Quakers and Huguenots had fled across the sea. Our 
 poet grew up in an atmosphere of intense indignation 
 against this intolerance, while at the same time the 
 spirit of revolt was held in check by the principles of 
 peace, and by the faith that God would in due time
 
 112 QUAKER LIFE AND DOCTRINE 
 
 vindicate the right. On the nineteenth of October, 
 1658, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted that 
 " any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers " 
 should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain 
 of death, from the jurisdiction of the commonwealth. 
 On a painting by Abbey commemorating this decree 
 Whittier wrote his poem entitled " Banished from 
 Massachusetts " : 
 
 The Muse of history yet shall make amends 
 
 To those who freedom, peace, and justice taught, 
 Beyond their dark age led the van of thought, 
 
 And left unforfeited the name of Friends. 
 
 We must remember that Quakers called themselves 
 " Friends," not primarily because they were friends to 
 one another or to mankind, but because, like Abraham, 
 they were conscious of being the chosen friends of God, 
 and of living in fellowship with him. In " The Penn- 
 sylvania Pilgrim," Whittier has given us a vivid de- 
 scription of Quaker life and doctrine : 
 
 Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought 
 
 His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought 
 
 That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught 
 
 One faith alone, so broad that all mankind 
 Within themselves its secret witness find, 
 The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, 
 
 The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, 
 Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, 
 The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. 
 
 The Light of Life shone round him; one by one 
 The wandering lights, that all-misleading run, 
 Wenfout like candles paling in the sun.
 
 QUAKER HABITS OF WHITTIER 113 
 
 That Light he followed, step by step, where'er 
 
 It led, as in the vision of the seer 
 
 The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear 
 
 And terrible crystal moved, with all their eyes 
 Watching the living splendor sink or rise, 
 Its will their will, knowing no otherwise. 
 
 Within himself he found the law of right, 
 He walked by faith and not the letter's sight, 
 And read his Bible by the Inward Light. 
 
 His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold, 
 A truer idyl than the bards have told 
 Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. 
 
 Whittier was a birthright member of the Society. 
 He gloried in his ancestry, adhered to their sober 
 dress, used the " thee " and " thou " of their traditional 
 speech. He attended Quaker meetings, though he sel- 
 dom or never spoke in them; his only criticism upon 
 these meetings was indeed that " there was too much 
 speaking in them." He would not by his presence 
 countenance the marriage of a Quaker to one outside 
 of the Society, though he did send a poem to the 
 married pair. He was never in a theater or a circus. 
 When member of the legislature, he would take no 
 oath, nor address the chair. He would not wear crape, 
 nor use the ordinary dates. He owned no master but 
 the Lord. He hated priests and kings, and abhorred 
 the Puritan theocracy. But his independence was quiet 
 and unresisting, though his mother and his aunt melted 
 the wax figure of a clergyman that his soul might go 
 to its doom in hell. In the days when Puseyism was 
 rife, he wrote : " Has thee noticed the general tendency 
 toward the old trust in man in priests and sacrifices,
 
 114 WHITTIER AND EMERSON 
 
 in ghostly mummery and machinery? To me it seems 
 to bid fair to swallow up everything but Quakerism of 
 the old stamp rejection of all ceremonial, total dis- 
 belief in the power of pope, priest, or elder to give a 
 ransom for the soul of another." 
 
 The Quaker of the olden time! 
 
 How calm and firm and true, 
 Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 
 
 He walked the dark earth through. 
 
 He walked by faith and not by sight, 
 
 By love and not by law; 
 The presence of the wrong or right 
 
 He rather felt than saw. 
 
 And, pausing not for doubtful choice 
 
 Of evils great or small, 
 He listened to that inward voice 
 
 Which called away from all. 
 
 O Spirit of that early day, 
 
 So pure and strong and true, 
 Be with us in the narrow way 
 
 Our faithful fathers knew. 
 Give strength the evil to forsake, 
 
 The cross of Truth to bear, 
 And love and reverent fear to make 
 
 Our daily lives a prayer. 3 
 
 Whittier was indeed a Quaker of the olden time. 
 The inner light upon which he depended was a very 
 different light from that which was recognized by 
 Emerson. Emerson's light was the light of nature; 
 Whittier's was the light of Christ. Emerson regarded 
 the fixed successions of the physical world as the 
 
 3 " The Quaker of the Olden Time."
 
 EARLY SURROUNDINGS AND PRIVATIONS 11$ 
 
 primitive reality; Whittier thought conscience and 
 heart of more importance than all the paraphernalia 
 of planets and of suns. Emerson was influenced by 
 the materialistic philosophy of the English deists, and 
 by the Unitarian reaction from the older Calvinistic 
 theology; Whittier drew his inspiration and his doc- 
 trine from deep personal experience of sin and of re- 
 demption, and from sympathetic observation of the 
 sorrow and guilt of humanity. In short, Emerson be- 
 gan with nature ; Whittier began with man. Emerson 
 interpreted man by nature ; Whittier interpreted nature 
 by man. For this reason there is a prevailing ethical 
 element in Whittier's poetry, which Emerson's almost 
 wholly lacks ; the keynote of Whittier's is compassion, 
 while that of Emerson is speculation; Emerson's in- 
 tuitions are the uncertain utterances of his own imper- 
 fect moral being; Whittier's inner light is that of an 
 indwelling and personal God. 
 
 The poet was born and not made. Yet his sur- 
 roundings had much to do with the unfolding of his 
 genius. The handsome Quaker lad was five feet ten 
 and a half inches tall when he was only fifteen years 
 of age. But life on the Haverhill farm was one of 
 solitude and privation. There were no doors to the 
 barns, and no flannels or overcoats for men ; no buffalo- 
 robes for driving, and no fires in the meeting-house. 
 The milking of seven cows daily, and the threshing of 
 wheat with the flail, overtaxed the boy's strength, and 
 left him a lifelong prey to heart-disease and to in- 
 somnia. It was a rocky and swampy farm. Exposure 
 induced bronchitis. 'Ill-cooked food gave him the 
 dyspepsia. Yet he learned to read at home; and the
 
 Il6 REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 Bible, " Pilgrim's Progress," and a stray Waverley 
 novel devoured in secret, wakened in him an intense 
 love of literature. " I well remember," he writes, 
 "how, at a very early age, the solemn organ-roll of 
 Gray's ' Elegy ' and the lyric sweep and pathos of 
 Cowper's ' Lament for the Royal George ' moved and 
 fascinated me, with a sense of mystery and power felt 
 rather than understood." His first verses were appar- 
 ently written on the woodwork of his mother's loom; 
 later efforts he committed to a slate; and finally he 
 aspired to an album. His reminiscences of childhood 
 are peculiarly touching. Who can mistake the truth 
 of his picture of " The Barefoot Boy "? 
 
 Blessings on thee, little man, 
 Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
 With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
 And thy merry whistled tunes; 
 With thy red lip, redder still 
 Kissed by strawberries on the hill; 
 With the sunshine on thy face, 
 Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 
 From my heart I give thee joy, 
 I was once a barefoot boy! 
 
 And that same barefoot boy we see depicted as a 
 scholar, in his lines " To My Old Schoolmaster " : 
 
 I, the urchin unto whom, 
 In that smoked and dingy room, 
 Where the district gave thee rule 
 O'er its ragged winter school, 
 Thou didst teach the mysteries 
 Of those weary A B C's, 
 Where, to fill the every pause 
 Of thy wise and learned saws, 
 Through the cracked and crazy wall
 
 A NATURAL EDITOR II/ 
 
 Came the cradle-rock and squall, 
 And the goodman's voice, at strife 
 With his shrill and tipsy wife. 
 
 It was one of his crude early poems, " The Exile's 
 Departure," which attracted the attention of William 
 Lloyd Garrison, and led ultimately to their partnership 
 in the work of reform. Without Whittier's knowledge, 
 his sister had sent to the " Free Press " of Newbury- 
 port the manuscript of that poem. Garrison was but 
 little older than Whittier; but, with larger knowledge 
 of the world and of literature, he recognized the 
 promise of it's author, and made a journey of fourteen 
 miles to greet him. The father, was besought to give 
 his son an education, but at first refused, upon the 
 ground that poetry would not give him bread. His 
 scruples were overruled when the boy learned to make 
 shoes for twenty-five cents the pair and sold them to 
 pay his schooling. So Whittier had two years in the 
 Haverhill Academy. They were years of wide read- 
 ing and of constant literary production, both in prose 
 and in verse. Most of his early work indeed was 
 journalistic. His poetry was thrown off hastily to ex- 
 press some fleeting impulse or to meet some public 
 need. Whittier was a natural editor. Each new event 
 was to him a challenge, and he discussed it in print. 
 It was soon apparent that he had political insight, 
 knowledge of motives, and power to direct public 
 opinion. In his " Tent on the Beach " he describes 
 himself: 
 
 And one there was, a dreamer born, 
 
 Who, with a mission to fulfil, 
 Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 
 
 The crank of an opinion-mill,
 
 Il8 PREMONITIONS OF COMING POWER 
 
 Making his rustic reed of song 
 
 A weapon in the war with wrong, 
 Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough 
 That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring 
 and grow. 
 
 Too quiet seemed the man to ride 
 
 The winged Hippogriff Reform; 
 
 Was his a voice from side to side 
 
 To pierce the tumult of the storm? 
 A silent, shy, peace-loving man, 
 He seemed no fiery partisan 
 To hold his way against the public frown, 
 The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's 
 hounding down. 
 
 For while he wrought with strenuous will 
 
 The work his hands had found to do, 
 He heard the fitful music still 
 
 Of winds that out of dreamland blew. 
 The din about him could not drown 
 What the strange voices whispered down; 
 Along his task-field weird processions swept, 
 The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 
 
 He had not yet found himself. But vague premoni- 
 tions of coming power and reputation were there to 
 tempt and to attract. In " Moll Pitcher " there was 
 originally a closing stanza, which the poet subse- 
 quently suppressed : 
 
 Land of my fathers! if my name, 
 Now humble and unwed to fame, 
 Hereafter burn upon the lip 
 
 As one of those which may not die, 
 Linked in eternal fellowship 
 
 With visions pure and strong and high 
 If the wild dreams, which quicken now 
 The throbbing pulse of heart and brow, 
 Hereafter take a real form
 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION 119 
 
 Like specters changed to being warm; 
 And over temples worn and gray 
 
 The starlike crown of glory shine, 
 Thine be the bard's undying lay, 
 
 The murmur of his praise be thine! 
 
 And now we come to the turning-point of Whittier's 
 life, to what we must regard as a genuine conversion. 
 Hitherto he had lived with no definite aim beyond his 
 own development and success. Local incidents and 
 legends had furnished subjects for his poems. Political 
 advancement had seemed possible, and he had thought 
 seriously of running for Congress. He was a brilliant 
 editor, and he had formed literary acquaintances of 
 value. He longed to escape from the monotony of 
 farm life, and to make himself felt in public affairs. 
 Then came the anti-slavery agitation and the call of 
 God to espouse the cause of freedom. Garrison sum- 
 moned him to join the abolitionists. It was like joining 
 the anarchists of to-day. We must remember that 
 cotton-growing at the South had made slave-labor 
 profitable and apparently necessary. Northern capital 
 was invested in commerce and manufactures which de- 
 pended on Southern trade. The early acknowledgment 
 of the injustice of slavery was replaced by a defense of 
 the system. Even the Quakers were sometimes un- 
 willing to permit anti-slavery discussion in their con- 
 ferences. The whole weight of social, literary, and 
 political influence was on the side of the oppressor. To 
 be an abolitionist was to expose oneself to contempt 
 and ostracism, if not to the violence of the mob. 
 When Garrison sent his ringing appeal to Whittier, 
 acceptance of his invitation meant for our poet the
 
 I2O WHITTIER ALIGNED WITH GARRISON 
 
 giving up of all his earthly prospects and consigning 
 himself to lifelong poverty and disgrace. The lines 
 which he addressed to Charles Sumner apply quite as 
 well to himself: 
 
 God said: " Break thou these yokes! undo 
 
 These heavy burdens! I ordain 
 A work to last thy whole life through, 
 
 A ministry of strife and pain. 
 
 " Forego thy dreams- of lettered ease, 
 Put thou the scholar's promise by, 
 
 The rights of man are more than these." 
 He heard and answered: " Here- am I! " 
 
 Garrison's declaration of principles in the first num- 
 ber of " The Liberator " was as bold as the " Theses " 
 which Luther nailed to the door of the church in Wit- 
 tenberg : " Unconditional emancipation is the immedi- 
 ate duty of the master, and the immediate right of the 
 slave. . . I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising 
 as justice; I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I 
 will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I 
 will be heard." And Whittier responded to Garrison's 
 appeal : 
 
 My heart hath leaped to answer thine, 
 
 And echo back thy words, 
 As leaps the warrior's at the shine 
 
 And flash of kindred swords! 
 
 It was no mere burst of youthful* enthusiasm, but a 
 heroic consecration to duty. For the thirtieth anniver- 
 sary of the Anti-slavery Society he wrote : "I am 
 thankful to divine Providence that turned me so early 
 away from what Roger Williams calls ' the world's 
 great Trinity pleasure, profit, and honor,' to take
 
 " EXPOSTULATION " 12 1 
 
 side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible 
 to literary reputation; I love, perhaps too well, the 
 praise and good will of my fellow men; but I set a 
 higher value to my name as appended to the Anti- 
 slavery Declaration of 1833, than on the title-page of 
 any book." And to a boy seeking counsel in after 
 years he said : " My lad, if thou wouldst win success, 
 join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause." 
 
 This enlistment of Whittier was immediately fol- 
 lowed by service. He printed at his own charges a 
 pamphlet entitled " Justice and Expediency," in which 
 the whole question of slavery was calmly and learnedly 
 considered. Then too began that long succession of 
 fiery and thrilling appeals to the conscience and heart 
 of the North, which made him, more than all other 
 poets combined, a representative of freedom and a 
 power to nerve our people to defend the Union in its 
 struggle with the slaveholding aristocracy: 
 
 Our fellow-countrymen in chains! 
 
 Slaves, in a land of light and law! 
 Slaves, crouching on the very plains 
 
 Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war! 
 
 What ho! our countrymen in chains! 
 
 The whip on woman's shrinking flesh! 
 Our soil yet reddening with the stains 
 
 Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh! 
 What! mothers from their children riven! 
 
 What! God's own image bought and sold! 
 Americans to market driven, 
 
 And bartered as the brute for gold! 
 
 So read his poem, " Expostulation." He paid the 
 penalty. Poetry in those days was no selling com-
 
 122 THE BURDEN OF A PROPHETS POWER 
 
 modity. With his mother and sister he lived on little 
 more than five hundred dollars a year the salary of 
 his editorship. He gave up all thought of marriage, 
 though there is abundant evidence that he longed for 
 wedded companionship. Ill health shut him out from 
 public gatherings and from regular city life. When he 
 did venture into the field, it was to visit Garrison in 
 the Philadelphia jail where he was confined for calling 
 a slave-dealer a pirate, or to see that same Garrison 
 dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope 
 around his neck. The mob broke the windows of the 
 Haverhill church, where Whittier attended an anti- 
 slavery meeting, and he was pelted with stones and 
 rotten eggs in Concord. But he says well : 
 
 The burden of a prophet's power 
 Fell on me in that fearful hour.* 
 
 Forsaking poetry for humanity, he made both poetry 
 and humanity his own. Now first his art became cos- 
 mopolitan and commanding. Losing his life for 
 Christ's sake, he found it. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five Whittier was called " a 
 gay young Quaker," though he had " kept his inno- 
 cency." His gaiety was the expression of a sensi- 
 tive and kindly nature. But it was accompanied by a 
 deep indignation against impurity and wrong-doing. 
 " Quaker? " was the reply to one who pointed him out; 
 " he will fight ! " He certainly had fighting blood in 
 his veins, and he explained this by his inheritance from 
 a Norman ancestry. Gail Hamilton worked for him 
 
 " Ezekiel."
 
 A FIGHTING SPIRIT BUT A NON-RESISTANT 123 
 
 a pair of slippers with the effigy of an eagle whose 
 claws grasped thunderbolts. Whittier told her that 
 she was as sharp with her needle as she was with her 
 pen. When it came to the question of our dealings with 
 slavery, it was hard for him to repress his belligerent 
 instincts. Yet his peace principles made him a non- 
 resistant. He admired John Brown, but he disap- 
 proved of his methods. He refused to accept a pike 
 which was sent him as a memento of John Brown's 
 raid, saying, " It is not a Christian weapon : it looks 
 too much like murder." Though his poetry had done 
 much to infuse the fighting spirit into others, he would 
 have let the Southern States go, rather than subdue 
 them by force of arms. He would have paid slave- 
 holders for their slaves, but he scorned to catch their 
 fugitives. When our Civil War broke out, he looked 
 on in sorrow, and waited for God to determine the 
 result. Yet his sympathies were all with our Union 
 army, and he could not hide from himself the convic- 
 tion that in some great crises of history war is inevit- 
 able. His poem entitled " Italy," indeed, makes it 
 plain that war is sometimes God's messenger: 
 
 I know the pent fire heaves its crust, 
 That sultry skies the bolt will form 
 
 To smite them clear; that Nature must 
 
 The balance of her powers adjust, 
 Though with the earthquake and the storm. 
 
 God reigns, and let the earth rejoice! 
 
 I bow before His sterner plan. 
 Dumb are the organs of my choice; 
 He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 
 
 His praise is in the wrath of man!
 
 124 WHITTIERS DIFFERENCES WITH GARRISON 
 
 Whittier was more sane and practical than Garrison. 
 He was more unselfish, and he had more of tact and 
 skill. Garrison was dictatorial, and unwilling to take 
 any subordinate position. Whittier was willing to 
 humble himself for the sake of the cause. Was the 
 Bible against anti-slavery? then Garrison declared the 
 Bible to be wrong; did the church oppose? then the 
 church must be reformed ; did the Constitution forbid ? 
 then the Constitution must be destroyed; was the 
 Union impossible with slavery abolished? then death 
 to the Union ! Garrison called the Constitution " a 
 covenant with death, and an agreement with hell," 
 and he demanded that it be immediately annulled. He 
 would not vote, and he renounced all allegiance to 
 a government which was in league with slavery. 
 Whittier, on the other hand, yielded in smaller mat- 
 ters, that he might win in the greater. He remained 
 a voting Quaker. So there ensued a division between 
 these friends, which lasted for years and which greatly 
 intensified Whittier's loneliness and suffering. Yet 
 reconciliation came at last, and each respected the 
 independence of the other. Each had struck his honest 
 blow, and slavery was no more. Whittier nobly com- 
 memorates Garrison's service in the verses written 
 after his death: 
 
 The storm and peril overpast, 
 The hounding hatred shamed and still, 
 
 Go, soul of freedom! take at last 
 The place which thou alone canst fill. 
 
 Confirm the lesson taught of old 
 Life saved for self is lost, while they 
 
 Who lose it in His service hold 
 The lease of God's eternal day.
 
 ICHABOD 125 
 
 "Forget, forgive, and unite," were the words of 
 wisdom written by our poet to the meeting held by 
 his fellow townsmen to consider the outrage done to 
 Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber of the United 
 States. That advice represents the spirit of Whittier's 
 life. Garrison held that " it is a waste of politeness to 
 be courteous to the Devil." Whittier would, by fair 
 means, make even the Evil One to serve the cause of 
 righteousness. He was a good politician, and an 
 expert lobbyist. His influence was both courted and 
 feared, for he could not only warn but rebuke. Caleb 
 Gushing met defeat when he failed to take Whittier's 
 advice and resist the aggressions of slavery. And in 
 all literature there is no more scathing fulmination 
 than his " Ichabod," when Daniel Webster turned his 
 back upon his patriotic past and strove to curry favor 
 with the South by crowding upon the North the in- 
 famous Fugitive Slave Law : 
 
 So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn 
 
 Which once he wore! 
 The glory from his gray hairs gone 
 
 Forevermore! 
 
 Revile him not, the Tempter hath 
 
 A snare for all.; 
 And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 
 
 B.efit his fall! 
 
 Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 
 
 When he who might 
 Have lighted up and led his age 
 
 Falls back in night. 
 
 Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark 
 
 A bright soul driven, 
 Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 
 
 From hope and heaven!
 
 126 " THE LOST OCCASION " 
 
 Let not the land once proud of him 
 
 Insult him now, 
 Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 
 
 Dishonored brow. 
 
 But let its humbled sons, instead, 
 
 From sea to lake, 
 A long lament, as for the dead, 
 
 In sadness make. 
 
 Of all we loved and honored, naught 
 
 Save power remains; 
 A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
 
 Still strong in chains. 
 
 All else is gone; from those great eyes 
 
 The soul has fled: 
 When faith is lost, when honor dies, 
 
 The man is dead! 
 
 Then, pay the reverence of old days 
 
 To his dead fame; 
 Walk backward, with averted gaze, 
 
 And hide the shame! 
 
 But when the great man strove to drown remorse in 
 deep potations, lost his hold upon the country and 
 upon himself, and died despondent, Whittier's heart 
 went out toward him in compassion, and he wrote 
 " The Lost Occasion " : 
 
 Some die too late and some too soon, 
 At early morning, heat of noon, 
 Or the chill of evening twilight. Thou, 
 Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
 With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 
 With all the massive strength that fills 
 Thy home-horizon's granite hills,
 
 EARLY FAULTS OF WHITTIER's VERSE 1 27 
 
 Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved 
 
 Of old friends, by the new deceived, 
 
 Too soon for us, too soon for thee, 
 
 Beside thy lonely Northern sea, 
 
 Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, 
 
 Laid wearily down thy august head. 
 
 Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 
 Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; 
 The late-sprung mine that underlaid 
 Thy sad concessions vainly made. 
 
 No stronger voice than thine had then 
 Called out the utmost might of men, 
 To make the Union's charter free 
 And strengthen law by liberty. 
 
 Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee 
 The gates of opportunity! 
 
 Poe and Lanier devoted themselves to the mecha- 
 nism of verse. Art did more for them than nature. 
 Whittier thought more of substance than of form. 
 He had many defects of ear and of training. His 
 hearing was imperfect, and he was color-blind. His 
 early poems were little more than jingling common- 
 place. He became conscious of their imperfections. 
 He said facetiously that he would like to drown many 
 of them like so many unlikely kittens, and as for 
 " Mogg Megone," he would like to kill him over again, 
 for he now suggested to him " a big Indian in his 
 war-paint, strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." 
 This judgment was very just. Stedman says well that 
 only what was written after the year 1860 has won a
 
 128 WHITTIER'S FINANCIAL SUCCESS 
 
 national reputation. Before that time his writing was 
 hasty and aimed at immediate effect. Faults of rhyme 
 were frequent and glaring. But practice and reading 
 proved to be an education. After the stress of anti- 
 slavery agitation was over, he became connected with 
 the " Atlantic Monthly," and accepted the criticisms of 
 its editors. " I hope," he writes to them, " I am cor- 
 recting a little of the bad grammar and rhythmical 
 blunders which have so long annoyed Harvard gradu- 
 ates." And the quality of his verse greatly improved 
 in his later years. Its simplicity and intensity com- 
 mended it to common people. " Snow-Bound " and 
 " The Tent on the Beach " were accepted by thousands 
 as the most characteristic poems that our country had 
 yet produced. And from the time of their publica- 
 tion Whittier was free from financial care. " Snow- 
 Bound " gave him ten thousand dollars for its first 
 edition. Of " The Tent on the Beach " twenty thou- 
 sand copies were sold. The poet could not understand 
 his own success. " The swindle is awful," he writes ; 
 " Barnum is a saint to me. I am bowed down with a 
 sense of guilt, ashamed to look an honest man in the 
 face." But the " Proem," which he wrote to introduce 
 the first general collection of his poems, expresses more 
 seriously and faultlessly the feeling with which he 
 welcomed the first signs of public favor and the first 
 evidence that his work had real value : 
 
 I love the old melodious lays 
 Which softly melt the ages through, 
 
 The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
 
 Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
 Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest 
 
 morning dew.
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PUBLIC ESTEEM 129 
 
 Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
 To breathe their marvelous notes I try; 
 
 I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 
 
 In silence feel the dewy showers, 
 And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of 
 
 the sky. 
 
 Ihe rigor of a frozen clime, 
 The harshness of an untaught ear, 
 
 The jarring words of one whose rhyme 
 
 Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
 Or= Duty's rugged march through storm and 
 
 strife, are here. 
 
 Yet here at least an earnest sense 
 Of human right and weal is shown; 
 
 A hate of tyranny intense, 
 
 And hearty in its vehemence, 
 As if rny brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 
 
 O Freedom! if to me belong 
 Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 
 
 Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
 
 Still with a love as deep and strong 
 As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on 
 
 thy shrine! 
 
 " Upon the occasion of my seventieth birthday, in 
 1877," he writes : 
 
 I was the recipient of many tokens of esteem. The pub- 
 lishers of the " Atlantic Monthly " gave a dinner in my name, 
 and the editor of " The Literary World " gathered in his 
 paper many affectionate messages from rny associates in 
 literature and the cause of human progress. The lines which 
 follow were written in acknowledgment. 
 
 Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
 
 Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays 
 On word and work irrevocably done, 
 Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
 
 I hear, O friends! your words of cheer and praise,
 
 I3O FAITH IN EVANGELICAL TRUTH 
 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
 
 Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
 A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. 
 Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise 
 I see my life-work through your partial eyes; 
 Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs 
 A higher value than of right belongs, 
 You do but read between the written lines 
 The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 
 
 II 
 
 Religion is the foundation of theology, and, with- 
 out heart, intellect will go astray. Whittier was a 
 deeply religious man. His poetry had always a re- 
 ligious motive. But the religious element in it does 
 not always take doctrinal form ; to discover it we must 
 sometimes look beneath the surface. It is well that we 
 have his prose to interpret his poetry. His " Life and 
 Letters," edited by Samuel T. Picard, furnishes an ad- 
 mirable commentary upon his verse, and enables us to 
 a large extent to understand his theological views. 
 It must not be expected that a member of the Society 
 of Friends will give us elaborated dogmas that would 
 contravene the traditions of a sect which makes little 
 of form, but much of the spirit. But we can find in 
 Whittier's poems, as interpreted by his letters, an un- 
 mistakable faith in evangelical truth, and the deter- 
 mination to witness for that truth in his writing and 
 in his life. The breadth and sincerity of his faith is 
 proved by the fact that his hymns are sung in public 
 worship by all bodies of Christians, while they are 
 cherished by many thousands as sources of private
 
 A MAN OF THE ONE BOOK 13! 
 
 cheer and consolation. No modern poet has done 
 more to comfort the sorrowing, or to calm the passions 
 of our restless age. Whittier can do this, because 
 the peace of God is in his own heart. 
 
 He was a man of one book, and that one book 
 was the Bible. When Edmund Gosse visited him, he 
 was struck by the meagerness of Whittier's library. 
 But he knew the Scriptures by heart. They were not 
 to him the sole authority in Christian faith, for they 
 needed to be interpreted by the Spirit. But when hu- 
 man reason failed, Scripture was his guide, and fal- 
 lible impulses were corrected by its superior wisdom. 
 He writes of " The Book " : 
 
 Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
 A minster rich in holy effigies, 
 And bearing on entablature and frieze 
 
 The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 
 
 Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; 
 
 And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint 
 The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, 
 
 Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ! 
 
 But only when on form and word obscure 
 Falls from above the white supernal light 
 We read the mystic characters aright, 
 
 And life informs the silent portraiture, 
 
 Until we pause at last, awe-held, before 
 
 The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. 
 
 And in his poem " The Word " he describes the inner 
 voice, without which all external revelation becomes 
 as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics of Egypt : 
 
 Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known 
 
 Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, 
 Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, 
 
 Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none!
 
 132 BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 
 
 By thee the mystery of life is read; 
 
 The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, 
 The myths and parables of the primal years, 
 
 Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted 
 
 Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, 
 And in the soul's vernacular express 
 The common law of simple righteousness. 
 
 Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds 
 
 May well be felt: the unpardonable sin 
 
 Is to deny the Word of God within! 
 
 The God in whose revelation he believed is a per- 
 sonal God. It might almost seem as if he had Emer- 
 son in mind when, in his " Questions of Life," he 
 wrote : 
 
 In vain to me the Sphinx propounds 
 The riddle of her sights and sounds; 
 Back still the vaulted mystery gives 
 The echoed question it receives. 
 
 I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, 
 Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream 
 Of power, impersonal and cold, 
 Controlling all, itself controlled, 
 Maker and slave of iron laws, 
 Alike the subject and the cause; 
 From vain philosophies, that try 
 The sevenfold gates of mystery, 
 And, baffled ever, babble still, 
 Word-prodigal of fate and will; 
 From Nature, and her mockery, Art, 
 And book and speech of men apart, 
 To the still witness in my heart; 
 With reverence waiting to behold 
 His Avatar of love untold, 
 The Eternal Beauty new and old! 
 
 Nature to him is no blind guide. Winnepiseogee is 
 " the mirror of God's love " :
 
 NATURES TESTIMONY TO GOD 133 
 
 Touched by a light that hath no name, 
 
 Are God's great pictures hung. 5 
 
 So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, 
 
 Of old, the Indian trod, 
 And, through the sunset air, looked down 
 
 Upon the Smile of God. 
 To him of light and shade the laws 
 
 No forest skeptic taught; 
 Their living and eternal Cause 
 
 His truer instinct sought. 
 
 Thanks, O our Father! that, like him, 
 
 Thy tender love I see, 
 In radiant hill and woodland dim, 
 
 And tinted sunset sea. 
 For not in mockery dost Thou fill 
 
 Our earth with light and grace; 
 Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will 
 
 Behind thy smiling face. 9 
 
 The Night is mother of the Day, 
 
 The Winter of the Spring, 
 And ever upon old Decay 
 
 The greenest mosses cling. 
 Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 
 
 Through showers the sunbeams fall; 
 For God, who loveth all His works, 
 
 Hath left His hope with all! 7 
 
 The harp at Nature's advent strung 
 
 Has never ceased to play; 
 The song the stars of morning sung 
 
 Has never died away. 
 
 So Nature keeps the reverent frame 
 
 With which her years began, 
 And all her signs and voices shame 
 
 The prayerless heart of man. 8 
 
 5 " Sunset on the Bearcamp." 6 " The Lakeside." 
 
 ' " A Dream of Summer," 8 " The Worship of Nature."
 
 134 GOD'S JUSTICE DISCIPLINARY 
 
 Whittier's anti-slavery poems show that he be- 
 lieved in a God of justice, who makes suffering to 
 follow upon sin. " Ein Feste Burg 1st Unser Gott " 
 is a hymn worthy to be compared with that of Luther : 
 
 We wait beneath the furnace-blast 
 
 The pangs of transformation; 
 Not painlessly doth God recast 
 And mould anew the nation. 
 Hot burns the fire 
 Where wrongs expire; 
 Nor spares the hand 
 That from the land 
 Uproots the ancient evil. 
 
 But he believed that God's justice is one with his love, 
 and that penalty is always disciplinary and remedial. 
 In " Barclay of Ury " he writes : 
 
 Not in vain, Confessor old, 
 Unto us the tale is told 
 
 Of thy day of trial; 
 Every age on him who strays 
 From its broad and beaten ways 
 
 Pours its seven-fold vial. 
 
 Happy he whose inward ear 
 Angel comfortings can hear, 
 
 O'er the rabble's laughter; 
 And while Hatred's fagots burn, 
 Glimpses through the smoke discern 
 
 Of the good hereafter. 
 
 The dread Ineffable Glory 
 
 Was Infinite Goodness alone. 9 
 
 " Among the Hills " gives a noble picture of the 
 true relation between the two great attributes of God : 
 
 1 " The Minister's Daughter."
 
 DIVINE JUSTICE ONE WITH LOVE 135 
 
 Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
 Between the right and wrong; but give the heart 
 The freedom of its fair inheritance; 
 
 Give human nature reverence for the sake 
 
 Of One who bore it, making it divine 
 
 With the ineffable tenderness of God; 
 
 Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
 
 The heirship of an unknown destiny, 
 
 The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
 
 A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. 
 
 Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
 
 Should minister, as outward types and signs 
 
 Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 
 
 The one great purpose of creation, Love, 
 
 The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven! 
 
 Proving in a world of bliss 
 What we fondly dream in this, 
 Love is one with holiness! 10 
 
 Rejoice in hope! The day and night 
 
 Are one with God, and one with them 
 Who see by faith the cloudy hem 
 
 Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light! u 
 
 " At Eventide " sums up the blessings of the past, and 
 chief, 
 
 The kind restraining hand of Providence, 
 The inward witness, the assuring sense 
 Of an Eternal Good which overlies 
 The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives 
 All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives 
 To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes 
 Through lapse and failure look to the intent, 
 And judge our frailty by the life we meant. 
 
 " In Memory." 
 
 " Astraea at the Capitol.'
 
 136 THE TEST OF THEOLOGY THE VIEW OF SIN 
 
 " My Trust " illustrates God's dealing with our errors 
 and sins, by the kind restraint with which a mother 
 trains her child : 
 
 A picture memory brings to me: 
 I look across the years and see 
 Myself beside my mother's knee. 
 
 I wait, in His good time to see 
 That as my mother dealt with me 
 So with His children dealeth He. 
 
 I suffer with no vain pretence 
 Of triumph over flesh and sense, 
 Yet trust the grievous providence, 
 
 How' dark soe'er it seems, may tend, 
 By ways I cannot comprehend, 
 To some unguessed benignant end; 
 
 That every loss and lapse may gain 
 The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, 
 And never cross is borne in vain. 
 
 The test of a poet's theology is his view of sin. If 
 he ignores or condones sin, he shows that he has only 
 a superficial conception of human nature, and is an un- 
 trustworthy moral guide. Sin is the one blot upon 
 this fair world, the one sorrow and shame over which 
 angels weep. But excusing sin or glorying in it is so 
 much a matter of pride, that the poet's readiest path 
 to popularity is that of catering to unconscientious 
 self-esteem. When Swinburne follows natural im- 
 pulses in his " Laus Veneris," it is corrupted nature 
 that he follows. Only the Spirit of God can rectify 
 these impulses and correct man's view. Of all our
 
 WHITTIER'S CONVICTION OF SIN 137 
 
 American poets Whittier is the most sane and true, be- 
 cause at the basis of his poetry there is genuine con- 
 viction of sin. Like John Woolman, he had " felt the 
 depth and extent of the misery of his fellow creatures, 
 separated from the divine harmony and he was 
 mixed with them and henceforth might not consider 
 himself a distinct and separate being." Like Wool- 
 man, he could feel for the sins of others because he 
 had first felt the evil of sin in his own heart. " It 
 was in no mocking humility," he savs, " that I wrote 
 in 'Andrew Rykman ' " : 
 
 I, who hear with secret shame 
 Praise that paineth more than blame, 
 Rich alone in favors lent, 
 Virtuous by accident, 
 Doubtful where I fain would rest, 
 Frailest where I seem the best, 
 Only strong for lack of test. 
 
 My mind has been a good deal exercised of late on the 
 subject of religious obligation. The prayer of Cowper is 
 sometimes in my mind: "Oh, for a closer walk with God!" 
 I feel that there are many things of the world between me 
 and the realization of a quiet communion with the pure and 
 Holy Spirit. Alas for human nature in its best estate! There 
 is no upward tendency in it. It looks downward. It is, in- 
 deed, of the earth. . . I know my own weakness and frailty, 
 and I am humbled rather than exalted by homage which I do 
 not deserve. As the swift years pass, the eternal Realities 
 seem taking the place of the shadows and illusions of time. 
 
 In his later years he writes : 
 
 The unescapable sense of sin in thought and deed makes the 
 boldest of us cowards. I believe in God as Justice, Goodness, 
 Tenderness in one word, Love and yet my trust in him is 
 not strong enough to overcome the natural shrinking from
 
 138 TRUST IN THE ALL-MERCIFUL 
 
 the law of death. Even our Master prayed that, if it were 
 possible, the cup might pass from him. . . I have to lament 
 over protracted seasons of doubt and darkness, to shrink back 
 from the discovery of some latent unfaithfulness and insin- 
 cerity, to find evil at the bottom of seeming good, to abhor 
 myself for selfishness and pride and vanity, which at times 
 manifest themselves in short, to find the law of sin and 
 death still binding me. My temperament, ardent, impetuous, 
 imaginative, powerfully acted upon from without, keenly sus- 
 ceptible to all influences from the intellectual world as well as 
 to those of nature in her varied manifestations, is, I fear, ill 
 adapted to that quiet, introverted state of patient and passive 
 waiting for direction and support under these trials and diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 He felt impelled to express his trust in the mercy 
 of the All-Merciful, " yet with a solemn recognition 
 of the awful consequences of alienation from Him, 
 and a full realization of the truth that sin and suffer- 
 ing are inseparable." 
 
 These quotations from his letters enable us to under- 
 stand the more condensed expressions of his poems. 
 " What the Voice Said " is significant : 
 
 " Know'st thou not all germs of evil 
 
 In thy heart await their time? 
 
 Not thyself, but God's restraining, 
 
 Stays their growth of crime. 
 
 Earnest words must needs be spoken 
 When the warm heart bleeds or burns 
 
 With its scorn of wrong, or pity 
 For the wronged, by turns. 
 
 But, by all thy nature's weakness, 
 Hidden faults and follies known, 
 
 Be thou, in rebuking evil, 
 Conscious of thine own! "
 
 THE LOVE ETERNAL 139 
 
 " My Namesake " might well be a portrait of Whittier 
 himself : 
 
 " While others trod the altar stairs 
 
 He faltered like the publican; 
 And, while they praised as saints, his prayers 
 Were those of sinful man. 
 
 " For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, 
 The trembling faith alone sufficed, 
 That, through its cloud and flame, he saw 
 The sweet, sad face of Christ!" 
 
 And it is in Christ alone that he puts his trust either 
 for himself or for the world of sinners : 
 
 " Blind must be their close-shut eyes 
 Where like night the sunshine lies, 
 Fiery-linked the self-forged chain 
 Binding ever sin to pain, 
 Strong their prison-house of will, 
 But without He waiteth still. 
 
 " Not with hatred's undertow 
 Doth the Love Eternal flow; 
 Every chain that spirits wear 
 Crumbles in the breath of prayer; 
 And the penitent's desire 
 Opens every gate of fire. 
 
 " Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, 
 Yearns to reach these souls in prison! 
 Through all depths of sin .and loss 
 Drops the plummet of Thy cross! 
 Never yet abyss was found 
 Deeper than that cross could sound!" 12 
 
 And here is a fragment, found among his papers, in 
 his handwriting, evidently belonging to some poem 
 he never finished : 
 
 13 " The Grave by the Lake,"
 
 I4O WHITTIERS VIEW OF CHRIST 
 
 The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, 
 
 The pain of wounds which Thou alone canst heal, 
 
 To whom our weakness is our strong appeal. 
 
 From the black depths, the ashes, and the dross 
 Of our waste lives, we reach out to Thy cross, 
 And by its fullness measure all our loss! 
 
 That holy sign reveals Thee: throned above 
 No Moloch sits, no false, vindictive Jove 
 Thou art our Father, and Thy name is Love! 
 
 Whittier declares that he has become convinced 
 of the Divinity of Christ, but he adds : " I cannot look 
 on him as other than a man like ourselves, through 
 whom the Divine was made miraculously manifest. 
 Jesus of Nazareth was a man, the Christ was a God 
 a new revelation of the Eternal in time." But he also 
 speaks of Christ as " Immanuel, God with us. God is 
 one," he said ; " Christ is the same Eternal One, mani- 
 fested in our humanity, and in time; the Holy Spirit 
 is the same Christ manifested within us." No reason- 
 able Trinitarian can object to this latter statement, and 
 by it we must interpret the statement that goes before. 
 In the earlier declaration he is only solicitous to guard 
 our Lord's perfect humanity; in the latter he asserts 
 that this humanity is divine; in other words, that 
 Jesus is the Christ. Though his declaration does not 
 define the relations of the Three, nor even call them 
 persons, it is not a Unitarian statement. It may be 
 Sabellian, but it recognizes at least the Deity of Christ, 
 and gives him supreme place in affection and service. 
 
 Only once does our poet struggle with the mystery 
 of the Trinity, and the solution which he gives is 
 not a speculative, but a practical one :
 
 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE TRINITY 
 
 At morn I prayed, " I fain would see 
 How Three are One, and One is Three; 
 Read the dark riddle unto me." 
 
 In vain I turned, in weary quest, 
 
 Old pages, where (God give them rest!) 
 
 The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed. 
 
 Then something whispered, " Dost thou pray 
 For what thou hast? This very day 
 The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 
 
 " Did not the gifts of sun and air 
 
 To good and ill alike declare 
 
 The all-compassionate Father's care\? 
 
 " In the white soul that stooped to raise 
 
 The lost one from her evil ways, 
 
 Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise! 
 
 "A bodiless Divinity, 
 
 The still small Voice that spake to thee 
 
 Was the Holy Spirit's mystery! 
 
 " The equal Father in rain and sun, 
 His Christ in the good to evil done, 
 His Voice in thy soul; and the Three are One! " 
 
 And my heart answered, " Lord, I see 
 How Three are One, and One is Three; 
 Thy riddle hath been read to me!" 
 
 It may be doubted whether this solution fully an- 
 swers the demands of Scripture. We have there a 
 recognition of personal relations of the Father to the 
 Son, and of the Son to the Spirit, which go beyond 
 the terms of Whittier's statement. But all that is
 
 142. ACCEPTANCE OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE 
 
 positive in his utterance we may accept with glad- 
 ness, only adding that there is a yet larger truth 
 which he had not perceived. Enough for our present 
 purpose that he depended on Christ alone for salva- 
 tion, in -this world and in the world to come. " I am 
 no Calvinist," he says, 
 
 But I feel in looking over my life double-motived and 
 full of failures that I cannot rely upon word or work of 
 mine to offset sins and shortcomings, but upon Love alone. 
 . . Alas, if I have been a servant at all, I have been an un- 
 profitable one; and yet I have loved goodness, and have 
 longed to bring my imaginative poetic temperament into true 
 subjection. I stand ashamed and almost despairing before 
 holy and pure ideals. As I read the New Testament I feel 
 how weak, irresolute, and frail I am, and how little I can rely 
 on anything save our God's mercy and infinite compassion, 
 which I reverently and thankfully own have followed me 
 through life, and the assurance of which is my sole ground 
 of hope for myself, and for those I love and pray for. 
 
 He repudiated every moral and religious scheme 
 which makes man sufficient to himself. Neither Stoi- 
 cism nor Epicureanism could satisfy his needs. " I am 
 more and more astonished," he writes, 
 
 That such a man as Confucius could have made his appear- 
 ance amidst the dull and dreary commonplaces of his people. 
 No wiser soul ever spoke of right and duty, but his maxims 
 have no divine sanction, and his pictures of a perfect so- 
 ciety have no perspectives opening to eternity. Our Doctor 
 Franklin was quite of the Confucius order though a very 
 much smaller man. . . I cannot help believing in prayer for 
 spiritual things. Being fully possessed of Christ, then it is 
 he that prays. 
 
 And his poem " The Crucifixion " shows his accept- 
 ance of the outward sacrifice offered in his behalf, as
 
 " THE CRUCIFIXION " 143 
 
 well as of the inward renewal and help of Christ's 
 Spirit : 
 
 That Sacrifice! the death of Him, 
 The Christ of God, the Holy One! 
 Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, 
 And blacken the beholding Sun! 
 
 Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, 
 And shadows veil the Cherubim, 
 When He, the chosen one of Heaven, 
 A sacrifice for guilt is given! 
 
 And shall the sinful heart, alone, 
 
 Behold unmoved the fearful hour, 
 When Nature trembled on her throne, 
 And Death resigned his iron power? 
 Oh, shall the heart whose sinfulness 
 Gave keenness to His sore distress, 
 And added to His tears of blood 
 Refuse its trembling gratitude? 
 
 There was a time when Orthodox Quakers were 
 shy of publicly joining with abolitionists. This threw 
 Whittier in with the Hicksites, though he belonged to 
 the Orthodox. He felt that a sound belief required 
 sound practice, and in remonstrating with his brethren, 
 he took occasion to draw from that belief an argu- 
 ment for duty. " What will it avail us," he writes, 
 
 If, while boasting of our soundness and of our enmity to 
 the delusion of Hicksism, we neglect to make a practical 
 application of our belief to ourselves? if we neglect to seek 
 for ourselves that precious atonement which we are so 
 ready to argue in favor of? I do not undervalue a sound 
 belief, but at the same time I believe it may be "held" in 
 unrighteousness. I do not dare to claim to be any the better 
 for my orthodox principles. The mercy of God is my only 
 hope.
 
 144 " OUR MASTER " 
 
 His poem " The Over-Heart " seems like a reply 
 to Emerson's too intellectual doctrines of the Over- 
 Soul, and to his overstatement of man's independence : 
 
 The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
 Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; 
 It yet shall touch His garment's fold, 
 
 And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
 Transform its very dust to gold. 
 
 To a young physician, with Dore's picture of Christ 
 healing the sick, he sent his poem, " The Healer " : 
 
 So stood of old the holy Christ 
 
 Amidst the suffering throng; 
 With whom His lightest touch sufficed 
 
 To make the weakest strong. 
 
 That healing gift He lends to them 
 
 Who use it in His name; 
 The power that filled His garment's hem 
 
 Is evermore the same. 
 
 That Good Physician liveth yet 
 
 Thy friend and guide to be; 
 The Healer by Gennesaret 
 
 Shall walk the rounds with thee. 
 
 " Our Master " is a confession of faith in Christ which 
 has passed into the hymnology of all the churches : 
 
 Immortal Love, forever full, 
 
 Forever flowing free, 
 Forever shared, forever whole, 
 
 A never-ebbing sea! 
 
 Our outward lips confess the name 
 
 All other names above; 
 Love only knoweth whence it came 
 
 And comprehendeth love.
 
 WHITTIER NOT FAR FROM CALVINISM 145 
 
 We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
 To bring the Lord Christ down: 
 
 In vain we search the lowest deeps, 
 For Him no depths can drown. 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is He; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 
 And love its Galilee. 
 
 The healing of His seamless dress 
 
 Is by our beds of pain; 
 We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
 
 And we are whole again. 
 
 Through Him the first fond prayers are said 
 
 Our lips of childhood frame, 
 The last low whispers of our dead 
 
 Are burdened with His name. 
 
 Our Lord and Master of us all! 
 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by Thine. 
 
 " There is something in the doctrine of total de- 
 pravity and regeneration," Whittier wrote. He was 
 not so far away from Calvinism as he thought. " We 
 are born selfish," he continues. " The discipline of 
 life develops the higher qualities of character, in a 
 greater or less degree. It is the conquering of in- 
 nate selfish propensities that makes the saint; and 
 the giving up unduly to impulses that in their origin 
 are necessary to the preservation of life that makes 
 the sinner." He believed that, as heavenly mercy has 
 provided the sacrifice for sin, so heavenly power must 
 make the sinner willing to accept it. " Between the 
 Gates " represents a younger pilgrim as seeking from
 
 146 FAITH IN THE TRIUMPH OF GOODNESS 
 
 an older a help that can come alone from God. But 
 the elder pilgrim answers : 
 
 " Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift; 
 
 No power is mine," the sage replied, 
 " The burden of a soul to lift 
 
 Or stain of sin to hide. 
 
 " Howe'er the outward life may seem, 
 
 For pardoning grace we all must pray; 
 No man his brother can redeem 
 Or a soul's ransom pay. 
 
 " With deeper voice than any speech 
 Of mortal lips from man to man, 
 What earth's unwisdom may not teach 
 The Spirit only can." 
 
 " How much of sin and want and pain there is in 
 the world ! " so he writes. " I wonder if it is all neces- 
 sary if it cannot be helped. The terrible mystery 
 sometimes oppresses me, but I hold fast my faith in 
 God's goodness, and the ultimate triumph of that 
 goodness." 
 
 What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 
 
 And the end He knoweth, 
 And not on a blind' and aimless way 
 
 The spirit goeth. 
 
 Nothing before, nothing behind; 
 
 The steps of Faith 
 Fall on the seeming void, and find 
 
 The rock beneath. 
 
 Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness 
 
 His own thy will, 
 
 And with strength from Him shall thy utter 
 weakness 
 
 Life's task fulfil;
 
 WHITTIER NOT A UNIVERSALIST 147 
 
 And that cloud itself, which now before thee 
 
 Lies dark in view, 
 Shall with beams of light from the inner glory 
 
 Be stricken through. 13 
 
 To a letter from an inquiring friend Whittier re- 
 plied : 
 
 I am not a Universalist, for I believe in the possibility of 
 the perpetual loss of the soul that persistently turns away 
 from God, in the next life as in this. But I do believe that 
 the divine love and compassion follow us in all worlds, and 
 that the heavenly Father will do the best that is possible for 
 every creature that he has made. What that will be, must be 
 left to his infinite wisdom and goodness. I would refer thee 
 to a poem of mine, " The Answer," as containing in a few 
 words my belief in this matter. 
 
 And these are his words : 
 
 " Though God be good and free be heaven, 
 
 No force divine can love compel; 
 \nd, though the song of sins forgiven 
 May sound through lowest hell, 
 
 " The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 
 Respects thy sanctity of will. 
 He giveth day: thou hast thy choice 
 To walk in darkness still. 
 
 " Forever round the Mercy-seat 
 
 The guiding lights of Love shall burn; 
 But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
 Shall lack the will to turn? 
 
 " What if thine eye refuse to see, 
 
 Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, 
 And thou a willing captive be, 
 Thyself thy own dark jail?" 
 
 " My Soul and I."
 
 148 " THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL " 
 
 " The Vision of Echard " shows, however, that it was 
 no outward punishment, but rather inward suffering, 
 that he feared for the lost: 
 
 " The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, 
 Are with yourselves alone." 
 
 But he still had hope for all men. He believed that 
 the same inward voice that spoke to him speaks also 
 to men of every Christian sect and even to the heathen. 
 That voice is the voice of Christ, and he who trusts 
 it and obeys is saved : 
 
 All souls that struggle and aspire, 
 
 All hearts of prayer by thee are lit; 
 And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
 
 On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. 
 
 Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st, 
 
 Wide as our need thy favors fall; 
 The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
 
 Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. M 
 
 "All souls are Thine; the wings of morning bear 
 None from that Presence which is everywhere, 
 Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. 
 
 " Through sins of sense, perversities of will, 
 Through doubt and pain, through guilt and 
 
 shame and ill, 
 Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. 
 
 "Wilt Thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal! 
 In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole, 
 And change to praise the cry of a lost soul? "* 
 
 Whittier's firm faith in personal immortality has 
 made his poems a treasure of comfort to the bereaved 
 
 14 " The Shadow and the Light." *' " The Cry of a Lost Soul."
 
 FAITH IN PERSONAL IMMORTALITY 149 
 
 and sorrowing. " Emerson once said to me," he 
 writes, 
 
 " If there is a future life for us, it is well; if there is not, it 
 is well also." For myself, I trust in the mercy of the All- 
 Merciful. What is best for us we shall have, and Life and 
 Love are best. . . What a brief and sad life this of ours 
 would be, if it did not include the possibility of a love that 
 takes hold of eternity! . . There is no great use in arguing 
 the question of immortality; one must feel its truth; you 
 cannot climb into heaven on a syllogism. . . There are some 
 self-satisfied souls who, as Charles Lamb says, " can stalk 
 into futurity on stilts"; but there are more Fearings and 
 Despondencys than Greathearts, in view of the " loss of all 
 we know." . . I think my loved ones are still living and await- 
 ing me. And I wait and trust. And yet how glad and grate- 
 ful I should be to know. . . I have the instinct of immor- 
 tality, but the conditions of that life are unknown. I can- 
 not conceive what my own identity and that of dear ones 
 gone will be. . . Yet I believe that I shall have the same 
 friends in that other world that I have here, the same loves 
 and aspirations and occupations. 
 
 And in his eightieth year he writes : " The great ques- 
 tion of the Future Life is almost ever with me. I can- 
 not answer it, but I can trust." His biographer 
 tells us that there was not a shadow of doubt in his 
 mind concerning the immortality of the soul; and 
 that one day, when speaking of his own hope and ex- 
 pectation for the life to come, he sadly said : " I wish 
 Emerson could have believed this." " It saddened 
 him to feel that one whom he so deeply loved and 
 revered had not been sustained by this most passion- 
 ate longing of our human nature." 
 
 In the summer of 1882, Whittier wrote the fol- 
 lowing lines on the fly-leaf of a volume of Longfel- 
 low's poems :
 
 I5O " SNOW-BOUND " 
 
 Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue 
 Of him whose lyre the Muses strung; 
 His last low swan-song has been sung! 
 
 His last! And ours, dear friend, is near; 
 As clouds that rake the mountains here, 
 We too shall pass and disappear. 
 
 Yet howsoever changed or tost, 
 Not even a wreath of mist is lost, 
 No atom can itself exhaust. 
 
 So shall the soul's superior force 
 Live on and run its endless course 
 In God's unlimited universe. 
 
 And we, whose brief reflections seem 
 To fade like clouds from lake and stream, 
 Shall brighten in a holier beam. 
 
 In " Snow-Bound," our poet touchingly records the 
 family group that circled round the hearth of early 
 days, and wonders where the dear members of that 
 household now are : 
 
 O Time and Change! with hair as gray 
 As was my sire's that winter day, 
 How strange it seems, with so much gone 
 , Of life and love, to still live on! 
 
 Ah, brother! only, I and thou 
 Are left of all that circle now, 
 The dear home faces whereupon 
 That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
 Henceforward, listen as we will, 
 The voices of that hearth are still; 
 Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
 Those lighted faces smile no more. 
 We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
 : We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
 
 We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
 And rustle of the bladed corn;
 
 A GENIUS RUSTIC AND HOMELY 15! 
 
 We turn the pages that they read, 
 
 Their written words we linger o'er, 
 But in the sun they cast no shade, 
 No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
 
 No step is on the conscious floor! 
 Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
 (Since He who knows our need is just,) 
 That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress-trees! 
 Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 Across the mournful marbles play! 
 Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
 That Life is ever lord of Death, 
 
 And Love can never lose its own! 
 
 If Whittier had written no other poem than this, 
 he would have earned immortality as a poet. Not by 
 his worst, but by his best, must the poet be judged. 
 The defects of Whittier's poetry are easy to perceive 
 and easy to criticize. His genius was rustic and 
 homely ; he never learned compression ; he spun out 
 his verse after the divine afflatus had ceased; he 
 moralized when he should have left his story to tell its 
 own lesson. But all this is only to say that he regarded 
 poetry as a means, rather than as an end, and that he 
 sought always to serve truth and righteousness there- 
 by. There can be no more striking contrast in this 
 respect than that between him and Goethe. Art for 
 art's sake was to Whittier a prostitution of genius. 
 " A long poem," he said, " unconsecrated to religion 
 and humanity, would be a criminal waste of life." He 
 aimed to fulfil Paul's injunction to do all to the glory 
 of God, and the glory of God meant for him the good
 
 152 A NATURAL BALLADIST 
 
 of man. So he has been called " the Quaker priest " ; 
 and much of his poetry is little more than rhythmical 
 preaching. But it came from the heart, and it touched 
 the heart. It was the utterance of an uncorrupted 
 conscience, and it stirred the conscience. When Lowell 
 was a callow youth, and Longfellow was absorbed in 
 his books, and Emerson was wrapped in philosophic 
 clouds, Whittier alone gave himself body and soul to 
 the cause of freedom, and compelled all the rest to fol- 
 low. More than all other poets combined he roused 
 our people to see the evil of slavery and at unspeakable 
 cost to abolish it. 
 
 He was a natural balladist. His poetry was simple 
 and direct, like that of Burns ; his prose had the lofty 
 swell and exuberance of Milton. Indian legends at- 
 tracted him, but he never mastered the improvidence 
 of that dying race, as did Longfellow; the wit and 
 humor of New England did not impress him as it im- 
 pressed Lowell. But the courage of a humble soul 
 was never more thrillingly described than in " Barbara 
 Frietchie," nor the pathos of life more touchingly 
 than in that ballad of " Maud Muller," in which the 
 New England Judge and the village maid meet for one 
 moment and part to see each other again only as 
 memory makes recall : 
 
 Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 
 
 For rich repiner and household drudge! 
 
 God pity them both! and pity us all, 
 Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 
 
 For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
 
 The saddest are these: " It might have been! "
 
 REWARDS FOR SERVICE AND SACRIFICE 153 
 
 Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies 
 Deeply buried from human eyes; 
 
 And, in the hereafter, angels may 
 Roll the stone from its grave away! 
 
 We have had no poet more truly Christian, none 
 who laid his gifts more completely at the feet of 
 Christ, none who more completely identified himself 
 with the suffering and oppressed. His life of sacrifice 
 was not permitted to go unrewarded. After twenty 
 years of privation, in which he was regarded as a mere 
 rhymester and reformer, the world began to perceive 
 that he was a true poet, and that his homely verse 
 was most truly American. Not only the friendship of 
 the learned and the good, but an unexpected prosperity 
 and comfort, crowned his latter days. The promise 
 of " manifold more in this present time " was ful- 
 filled to him. On his eightieth birthday he was pre- 
 sented with a portfolio containing hundreds of auto- 
 graphs of Massachusetts officials, the signatures of 
 " fifty-nine United States Senators, the entire bench of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States headed by 
 Chief Justice Waite, Speaker Carlisle of the House of 
 Representatives, and three hundred and thirty mem- 
 bers of the House coming from every State and Ter- 
 ritory in the Union. To these were added the names 
 of many private citizens of distinction, such as George 
 Bancroft, Robert C. Winthrop, James G. Elaine, and 
 Frederick Douglass." This portfolio only feebly ex- 
 pressed the affection in which he was held by the whole 
 American people, and their gratitude for his influence 
 and example. Like Abraham Lincoln, he was a man
 
 154 "THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 
 
 of the people, and a man for the hour. He was hon- 
 ored because he had served. 
 
 Whittier lived to be eighty-five years of age. 
 Bachelor as he was, he was tenderly cared for by 
 relatives and friends, and his last days were quiet 
 and restful. His hymn entitled " The Eternal Good- 
 ness " is a confession of faith which has comforted 
 many of the afflicted : 
 
 I long for household voices gone, 
 
 For vanished smiles I long, 
 But God hath led my dear ones on, 
 
 And He can do no wrong. 
 
 I know not what the future hath 
 
 Of marvel or surprise, 
 Assured alone that life and death 
 
 His mercy underlies. 
 
 And if my heart and flesh are weak 
 
 To bear an untried pain, 
 The bruised reed He will not break, 
 
 But strengthen and sustain. 
 
 No offering of my own I have, 
 
 Nor works my faith to prove; 
 I can but give the gifts He gave, 
 
 And plead His love for love. 
 
 And so beside the Silent Sea, 
 
 I wait the muffled oar; 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care.
 
 THE BREWING OF SOMA 155 
 
 " The end of that man was peace." His poem 
 " The Brewing of Soma " gives his prescription for 
 all earthly care and trouble : 
 
 Dear Lord and Father of mankind, 
 
 Forgive our foolish ways! 
 Reclothe us in our rightful mind, 
 In purer lives Thy service find, 
 
 In deeper reverence, praise. 
 
 In simple trust like theirs who heard 
 
 Beside the Syrian sea 
 The gracious calling of the Lord, 
 Let us, like them, without a word, 
 
 Rise up and follow Thee. 
 
 O Sabbath rest by Galilee! 
 
 O calm of hills above, 
 Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee 
 The silence of eternity 
 
 Interpreted by love! 
 
 Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 
 
 Till all our strivings cease; 
 Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
 And let our ordered lives confess 
 
 The beauty of Thy peace. 
 
 Breathe through the heats of our desire 
 
 Thy coolness and Thy balm; 
 Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; 
 Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, 
 
 O still, small voice of calm! 
 
 " My Psalm " is a yet more convincing assurance of 
 his freedom from anxiety with regard to his own 
 future or the future of the world : 
 
 I mourn no more my vanished years: 
 
 Beneath a tender rain, 
 An April rain of smiles and tears, 
 
 My heart is young again.
 
 156 " MY PSALM " 
 
 The west winds blow, and, singing low, 
 I hear the glad streams run; 
 
 The windows of my soul I throw 
 Wide open to the sun. 
 
 No longer forward nor behind 
 
 I look in hope or fear; 
 But, grateful, take the good I find, 
 
 The best of now and here. 
 
 All as God wills, who wisely heeds 
 
 To give or to withhold, 
 And knoweth more of all my needs 
 
 Than all my prayers have told! 
 
 Enough that blessings undeserved 
 Have marked my erring track; 
 
 That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 
 His chastening turned me back; 
 
 That more and more a Providence 
 
 Of love is understood, 
 Making the springs of time and sense 
 
 Sweet with eternal good; 
 
 That death seems but a covered way 
 
 Which opens into light, 
 Wherein no blinded child can stray 
 
 Beyond the Father's sight; 
 
 That care and trial seem at last, 
 Through Memory's sunset air, 
 
 Like mountain ranges overpast, 
 In purple distance fair; 
 
 That all the jarring notes of life 
 Seem blending in a psalm, 
 
 And all the angles of its strife 
 Slow rounding into calm. 
 
 And so the shadows fall apart, 
 And so the west winds play; 
 
 And all the windows of my heart 
 I open to the day.
 
 THE HUMBLE FRIEND OF GOD 1 57 
 
 Whittier illustrates Augustine's doctrine that humil- 
 ity is the fundamental grace of the Christian character. 
 Humility is no mere self-depreciation; it is a coming 
 down to the humus, or hard-pan, of actual fact; it is 
 the estimate of self according to the divine standard, 
 which is nothing less than absolute conformity to the 
 character of God. When we compare ourselves with 
 one another, we may be proud ; when we compare our- 
 selves with infinite purity and benevolence, we must 
 be humble. Humility is the indispensable condition 
 of religious knowledge, for only the childlike spirit can 
 understand God; it is the condition of all spiritual 
 power, for only the receptive soul can be the medium 
 of divine revelation. The secret of Whittier's life and 
 work was his humble faith in God. " I believe in a 
 living God," he said. That is the quintessence of 
 Quakerism. " The Friends " took that name because 
 they were first of all God's friends, and then for God's 
 sake had become friends to suffering and sinning 
 men. Our poet had learned that God is not far away, 
 but a present God, a God here and now, a God recon- 
 ciled to men through the infinite sacrifice of his only 
 begotten Son, a God who reveals himself to the con- 
 trite spirit by an inner voice, condensing into a moment 
 his works of power, and making his servants mighty to 
 do and to endure. It is this humble faith of Whittier 
 that has conquered criticism, has made " Snow- 
 Bound " more popular than Oliver Goldsmith's " De- 
 serted Village," or Robert Burns's " Cotter's Saturday 
 Night," and has given his poetry, in spite of its defects 
 of rhyme and of compression, an imperishable fame. 
 In the last of his poems, written but a few weeks be-
 
 158 A BLAMELESS MEMORY IN DEATHLESS SONG 
 
 fore his death, and addressed " To Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes," he sums up this faith of his life : 
 
 The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, 
 
 When at the Eternal Gate 
 We leave the words and works we call our own, 
 
 And lift void hands alone 
 
 For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 
 
 Brings to that Gate no toll; 
 Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives, 
 
 And live, because He lives. 
 
 And I cannot better close my essay than by quoting 
 the words which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 
 memory of his friend : 
 
 " For thee, dear friend, there needs no high-wrought lay, 
 
 To shed its aureole round thy cherished name, 
 Thou whose plain, home-born speech of Yea and Nay 
 Thy truthful nature ever best became. 
 
 " Best loved and saintliest of our singing train, 
 
 Earth's noblest tributes to thy name belong. 
 A lifelong record closed without a stain, 
 
 A blameless memory, shrined in deathless song."
 
 IV 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN FOE
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 IN passing from Whittier to Poe, we learn how wide 
 is the realm of poetry. To use Sir William Hamil- 
 ton's phrase, the two poets are separated by " the whole 
 diameter of being." Yet the contrast is not abso- 
 lute; " being " connects the two; each of them depicts 
 life. If we note the differences, we perceive that Whit- 
 tier is the most American of our poets, while Poe is 
 well-nigh devoid of national characteristics. Whittier 
 is the poet of plain country life; Poe is airily aristo- 
 cratic, and is at home only in the town. Whittier grew 
 up amid the hardships of a New England farm and the 
 rude lessons of a New England schoolhouse ; Poe was 
 the spoiled child of a Southern household, gained in 
 England his introduction to the classics, and had some 
 part of his training in the University of Virginia and 
 in the United States Military Academy at West Point 
 Whittier was a devotee of duty ; Poe was a devotee of 
 beauty. Whittier made his poetry a lifelong protest 
 against slavery; Poe ignored all moral issues, and re- 
 garded all reformers as madmen. Whittier was a man 
 of faith, looked upon conscience as the voice of God, 
 saw the future lit up by God's love and God's prom- 
 ises, and so, held to an optimistic view of the universe 
 and to an unwavering assurance of immortal life ; Poe 
 was a soured and self-willed unbeliever, esteeming the 
 Bible to be mere rigmarole and the world to be an 
 
 161
 
 l62 POE CONTRASTED WITH WHITTIER 
 
 automatic process from nothingness to nothingness ; 
 a victim of uncontrolled appetites which alternately 
 crazed and tormented him, but without God and with- 
 out hope either for this world or for the world to come ; 
 in short, a poet already in hell and singing only of 
 despair. 
 
 These are the points of difference. Yet Poe, as well 
 as Whittier, was a poet. In certain respects he was 
 more highly endowed. His range was narrower, but 
 within that range there was more of imagination; he 
 had the critical instinct, which Whittier lacked, and he 
 was our first master of the technique of poetry; above 
 all, he was a melodist, the music of whose verse, like 
 that of Shelley, lulled the senses. 1 While Whittier 
 was immensurably the superior in the breadth and 
 substance of his utterance, Poe was the superior in 
 form. In the early day when pretentious mediocrity 
 crowded the stage, Poe both by example and by pre- 
 cept gave direction to our literary ventures, made dog- 
 gerel contemptible, and set a new and better standard 
 of poetical success. That his work was not in vain 
 is proved by the fact that some European judges, espe- 
 cially among the French, have called him our greatest 
 American poet. 
 
 It is the purpose of this essay to expand and to jus- 
 tify these statements with regard to Poe, and I can 
 best begin by briefly sketching his life. It was the 
 pitiful and tragic life of a genius consumed by vanity 
 and enslaved by drink. I would be gentle in my judg- 
 
 1 In many ways the short life, early excesses and insanity, small poet- 
 ical product and melodious elaboration of abstract and ideal qualities of 
 William Collins (1721-1759) furnish a remarkable analogy to the life and 
 work of Poe.
 
 AGREEMENT AMONG BIOGRAPHERS 163 
 
 ments, but I would be truthful also. Let us remember 
 that Poe made Rufus Wilmot Griswold his literary 
 executor, and trusted him as his biographer. Griswold 
 was the most capable compiler of his day. He was 
 nearest to the scenes, and was most familiar with the 
 facts of Poe's life. His story was so damaging to the 
 poet's reputation that later writers attributed its dark 
 colors to personal animosity. The half century that 
 has followed, however, although it has witnessed the 
 discovery of new material, has invalidated no essential 
 of Griswold's conclusions. The " Life of Edgar Allan 
 Poe," by Prof. George E. Woodberry, printed in 
 1909, the hundredth year after Poe's birth, is a most 
 complete and thorough resume of all that is really 
 known about Poe's history, and in all substantial mat- 
 ters it concedes the justice of Griswold's earlier judg- 
 ments. It is a calmer and tenderer review than Gris- 
 wold's, and the sad truth is for the most part left to 
 tell its own story. But " the archangel ruined " is 
 none the less visible, for lack of the biographer's de- 
 nunciation. 
 
 Poe's grandfather, David, was a stalwart Irish im- 
 migrant, who settled in Philadelphia. He loved free- 
 dom and hated England. He was one of the patriots 
 of our Revolution, and a quartermaster in our Con- 
 tinental Army. General Poe, as he was called, was 
 so proud and prosperous that, when his son David, 
 our poet's father, married an actress and became him- 
 self an actor, the general disinherited him and turned 
 him adrift. Three children were born of this union, 
 of whom Edgar was the second. The parents led 
 the itinerant and obscure life of second-rate players.
 
 164 EARLY TRAINING OF POE 
 
 Of the father's end nothing is known. But the mother, 
 after pitiful struggles with poverty and appeals for 
 public sympathy, died in Richmond, Virginia, leaving 
 her children in utter destitution. The heart of the 
 grandfather was apparently touched by their need, 
 for he took the elder son, William, under his care. 
 Rosalie, the youngest child, found a home with a family 
 named Mackenzie. Mr. John Allan, a Richmond to- 
 bacco-merchant of Scottish birth, and his young wife, 
 who was childless, had pity for Edgar, the beautiful 
 two-year-old orphan boy, and, without adopting him, 
 treated him in almost all respects as their son and heir. 
 
 It might have seemed that the boy's fortune was 
 made. He entered a home of comfort and even of 
 luxury; he became the pet and admiration of the 
 household; pony and dogs enlivened his hours of rec- 
 reation ; while under various teachers he learned to 
 read, to draw, to declaim, and to dance. He was an 
 apt scholar, though impulsive and dreamy. He had 
 inherited the histrionic temperament and he delighted 
 in exhibiting his talents. Mr. Allan most unwisely 
 entertained his friends at dinner by lifting the little boy 
 with his curly locks to a chair, upon which he stood 
 while he held his glass of wine, recited his verses, and 
 drank to the health of the company. He was subjected 
 to no real government; his pranks and his caprices 
 were matters of amusement; Southern hospitality did 
 little to correct his natural pride and selfishness; he 
 tells us, indeed, that he " was left to the guidance of 
 his own will." 
 
 The most peaceful, and perhaps the happiest, time 
 of his life was the lustrum which he spent at Stoke-
 
 A LUSTRUM IN ENGLAND 165 
 
 Newington, near London, under the rigorous tutelage 
 of Doctor Bransby. Mr. Allan made a long visit of 
 five years in England, and Edgar's time from his sixth 
 to his eleventh year was usefully employed in study at 
 this excellent preparatory school. His tale entitled 
 " William Wilson " is in part autobiographical, and it 
 gives us a charming picture of the boy's school life in 
 the somber hall with its oaken ceiling, and in the maze 
 of its dormitory passages. The age and gloom of 
 English architecture made deep impression upon him ; 
 then, and only then, after his earlier company with his 
 foster-mother, does he seem ever to have entered a 
 church. He was an athlete among his fellows ; a quick 
 and capable scholar ; but also a boy of moods and en- 
 mities, free with his money and on his off days given 
 to cakes and ale. The master of the school recognized 
 his talent, but regretted that his guardian provided 
 him with so much to spend. Vacations were doubtless 
 occupied in travel, for Poe's writings show familiarity 
 with a great number of famous castles and donjon- 
 keeps, as well as with their blood-curdling histories. 
 These years abroad made our poet a gentleman and a 
 scholar, so far as early training could mold a pecu- 
 liarly sensitive and wilful spirit. 
 
 The return to Richmond in 1820 was followed by 
 three years of schooling under Joseph H. Clarke, a 
 graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and then by three 
 more years under Master William Burk. Poe was 
 easily the first of his schoolmates in his Latin and his 
 French, but his accuracy and thoroughness were not 
 equal to his own powers of perception. Though 
 handsome in person, a swimmer and a boxer, he was
 
 l66 VERSES TO WOMEN 
 
 not popular among his fellows. A certain moodiness 
 and instability characterized him. This was partly 
 due to the fact that his better-born classmates looked 
 down upon the son of an actor -and the recipient of a 
 guardian's charity. Mr. Allan himself, notwithstand- 
 ing his interest and indulgence, was not a man of af- 
 fectionate nature, and it was his wife who most cared 
 for the boy. There seems indeed to have grown up 
 something like estrangement between the guardian 
 and his young charge. Edgar's leadership of a Thes- 
 pian Society may have awakened fear that he might, 
 like his parents, gravitate to the stage. Poe, however, 
 attracted women, and was attracted by them. Some 
 of his earliest verses were written in memory of a 
 married lady who had spoken like a mother to the 
 motherless boy, and who had soon after left him 
 desolate by her death. The poem " To Helen " was 
 the germ of " Lenore " and of " Irene," and we may 
 see in it the first-fruits of the poet's genius : 
 
 Helen, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Nicaean barks of yore, 
 That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 
 
 The weary, wayworn wanderer bore 
 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 
 Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home 
 To the glory that was Greece 
 And the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche 
 How statue-like I see thee stand, 
 
 The agate lamp within thy hand! 
 Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
 Are Holy Land!
 
 FIRST-FRUITS OF POE's GENIUS 167 
 
 But there were other verses to younger women also, 
 and there was an actual betrothal of the sixteen-year- 
 old poet to a seventeen-year-old girl. Parents, how- 
 ever, had not been consulted, and these youthful fancies 
 were broken off when Edgar, in 1826, was matricu- 
 lated in the University of Virginia, and the young 
 lady had married another man. 
 
 Mr. J. H. Whitty has edited the most complete 
 critical edition of Poe's poems, and has prefaced it with 
 a minute and painstaking account of the facts of the 
 poet's life. He has also done good service by ex- 
 huming from the Library of Congress and from the 
 old " Graham's Magazine " certain lost poems of our 
 author. One of these is entitled " The Divine Right 
 of Kings," and it exhibits both Poe's susceptibility to 
 female charms and his early skill in versification. I 
 venture to transcribe it : 
 
 The only King by right divine 
 
 Is Ellen King, and were she mine, 
 
 I'd strive for liberty no more, 
 
 But hug the glorious chains I wore. 
 
 Her bosom is an ivory throne 
 Where tyrant virtue reigns alone; 
 No subject vices dare interfere 
 To check the power that governs here. 
 
 Oh! would she deign to rule my fate, 
 I'd worship Kings with kingly state, 
 
 And hold this maxim all life long: 
 
 The King my King can do no wrong. 
 
 Would that our story of Poe's life might end here ! 
 But its brilliant promise was the precursor of a gradual 
 and fearful decline. Whether it was an outbreaking of
 
 1 68 POE'S DISSIPATION AT COLLEGE 
 
 innate tendencies hitherto repressed or a reaction from 
 his disappointment in love, his brief course in college 
 was marked by a recklessness of behavior which in- 
 creased with his years and ended in insanity and death. 
 He was no mean scholar, and he made some progress 
 in Greek, and Spanish, and Italian. But the love for 
 drink which he had learned at the dinner-table of his 
 guardian, and which was fostered by the convivial 
 habits of the planters' sons with whom he associated, 
 was too much for his self-control, and he gave way to 
 occasional intemperance. The draughts which his 
 friends could stand with apparent impunity deprived 
 him of reason. A single glass of wine excited him; a 
 second made him garrulous; a third turned the whole 
 world into a merry-go-round. It was not the taste 
 of liquor which tempted him, but rather its inebriating 
 effect. He would toss off a whole goblet of brandy, 
 without sugar or water, and then would be a lunatic. 
 " At Jefferson University, Charlottesville," he writes, 
 " I led a very dissipated life the college at that period 
 being shamefully dissolute." But he says long after- 
 ward : " I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants 
 in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not 
 been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life 
 and reputation and reason. It has been in the desper- 
 ate attempt to escape from torturing memories." He 
 added gambling to drunkenness, and showed such ex- 
 travagance in his wagers that he soon lost caste with 
 his college mates. Poe had entered the university in 
 February ; when its session closed in the following De- 
 cember the young man's " debts of honor," so called, 
 amounted to two thousand five hundred dollars. These
 
 TWO YEARS IN THE ARMY 169 
 
 Mr. Allan refused to pay, and Poe left the university in 
 humiliation and disgrace. But he threw the blame of 
 his discomfiture entirely upon his patron, for he says 
 of this incident : " In early youth I deliberately threw 
 away from me a large fortune, rather than endure a 
 trivial wrong." He had forfeited his birthright like 
 Esau, but he never, like Esau, repented with tears. 
 
 He was offered a clerkship in his guardian's count- 
 ing-room. But business had no attractions for him, 
 and he fled to Boston. To hide his mortification from 
 the world, to escape the stings of conscience, and per- 
 haps to subject himself to needed discipline, he enlisted 
 under an assumed name, as E. A. Perry, in the United 
 States army, and spent nearly two years in the artil- 
 lery service, first at Fort Independence, near Boston, 
 and then at Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South 
 Carolina. He was only eighteen when he became a 
 soldier, but he gave his age as twenty-two. His con- 
 duct in the service was so creditable that he was pro- 
 moted to be sergeant-major. His officers recognized 
 his superior education and refinement, and after nearly 
 two years they used their influence to secure his recon- 
 ciliation with his guardian. Mr. Allan apparently sent 
 money for a substitute in the army, which the sub- 
 stitute did not receive, and there was a report that 
 Poe forged the signature of the substitute in order to 
 appropriate it. Certain it is that Mr. Allan was obliged 
 to pay the sum twice over, and that he never, after 
 this, took the young man back into his family. He 
 did, however, procure for him an appointment to a 
 cadetship at West Point, and there, on July I, 1830, 
 Poe entered the Military Academy. But on the fol- 
 
 N
 
 I7O POES FINAL BREAK WITH HIS PATRON 
 
 lowing January twenty-eighth he was dismissed for 
 neglecting his duties as cadet, and for general con- 
 tempt of discipline. He was older than his classmates, 
 and took the highest marks in mathematics and in 
 French. But he was restless, harsh, and satirical, 
 given to drinking and to escapades, and incapable of 
 obedience as a soldier. Arrest, punishment, and ex- 
 pulsion inevitably followed. 
 
 It is no wonder that from this time Mr. Allan lost 
 all confidence in his protege, and disclaimed all respon- 
 sibility for him. Yet he seems to have paid him an 
 annuity for three following years, and to have kept the 
 wolf from the poet's door when he was first struggling 
 for a standing in the literary world. His guardian's 
 generosity was all the more creditable, since the first 
 Mrs. Allan, Poe's special friend, had died, and Mr. Allan 
 had now a child of his own by a second marriage. Poe 
 went back to Richmond after his expulsion from West 
 Point, hoping still to win back his guardian's favor. 
 Mr. Allan was ill, and forbidden to receive visitors. 
 Poe disregarded the prohibition of Mrs. Allan and 
 made his way into the sick-room. This angered Mr. 
 Allan, and he lifted his cane to chastise Poe, who re- 
 tired in complete discomfiture. It was only a fit re- 
 turn for Poe's insubordination and ingratitude, and it 
 marked the end of all relations between them. In 
 1834 Mr. Allan died, and made no mention of Poe in 
 his will. 2 From 1831 our poet lived in Baltimore with 
 
 2 Poe's contemptuous opposition to Mr. Allan's second marriage, and 
 Poe's scandalous treatment of the second wife, must be added to the 
 reasons for this neglect to provide for him. Mrs. Allan spoke of Poe's 
 " ingratitude, fraud, and deceit," and, after her husband's death at the 
 early age of fifty-two, she refused ever to meet the poet. Disparity in the 
 parties' age does not justify Poe's opposition to the marriage, for, while 
 Miss Paterson was twenty-five, Mr. Allan at the time was only forty-eight.
 
 IDOLATRY OF FAME 171 
 
 Mrs. Clemm, his deceased father's sister, and with her 
 daughter Virginia, whom he afterward married. With 
 the cutting off of his annuity his circumstances became 
 greatly straitened, and his frequent lapses into intem- 
 perance made his life wretched. Only the industry and 
 affection of his aunt carried him through the resulting 
 sicknesses and despondencies. But the winning of a 
 prize of one hundred dollars by his tale of " A Manu- 
 script Found in a Bottle " rescued him from trouble, 
 and gave him hope for the future. 
 
 Poe was a man fiercely possessed by the desire for 
 fame. "I love fame; I dote on it; I idolize it," he 
 wrote. He aimed, to use his own words, " to kick up 
 a bobbery." " I am young, not yet 20, am a poet, 
 if deep worship of all beauty can make me one, and 
 wish to be so, in the more common meaning of the 
 word. I would give the world to embody half the 
 ideal afloat in my imagination." So early as his four- 
 teenth year he had written verses, and in 1827, before 
 enlisting in the army in Boston, he published a little 
 book entitled " Tamerlane and Other Poems." " Tam- 
 erlane " is the story, in verse, of a shepherd's son who, 
 under the spur of an inordinate ambition, leaves his 
 betrothed, without explaining his purpose, and under a 
 feigned name seeks to win for her a throne. He suc- 
 ceeds ; but when he returns to lay the crown at her feet, 
 he finds that, in his absence and apparent desertion, 
 she has died of grief. In this story of the Emperor of 
 Samarcand, Poe found expression for some features 
 of his own biography. He was just about to become a 
 soldier, and under a feigned name. He was conscious 
 of great literary powers, and he fancied that he could
 
 1^2 " TAMERLANE " 
 
 make the whole world sing- his praises. He was an 
 exile from home, and had already lost a friend most 
 dear to him. The shadows of a settled melancholy 
 were gathering about him. Death and the sepulcher 
 loomed up in the distance. And the youthful poet 
 has no refuge or comforter but pride: 
 
 The passionate spirit which hath known, 
 And deeply felt the silent tone 
 Of its own self-supremacy 
 
 The soul which feels its innate right 
 
 The mystic empire and high power 
 
 Given by the energetic might 
 
 Of Genius, at its natal hour; 
 
 Which knows (believe me at this time, 
 
 When falsehood were a tenfold crime, 
 
 There is a power in the high spirit 
 
 To know the fate it will inherit) 
 
 The soul, which knows such power, will still 
 
 Find Pride the ruler of its will. 
 
 And pride brings only despair and a broken heart. 
 This earliest of Poe's verses seems now a prophecy of 
 his end : 
 
 I reach'd my home my home no more 
 For all was flown that made it so 
 I pass'd from out its mossy door, 
 In vacant idleness of woe. 
 There met me on its threshold stone 
 A mountain hunter, I had known 
 In childhood, but he knew me not. 
 Something he spoke of the old cot: 
 It had seen better days, he said; 
 There rose a fountain once, and there 
 Full many a fair flower raised its head: 
 But she who rear'd them was long dead,
 
 " AL AARAAF " 173 
 
 And in such follies had no part, 
 What was there left me now? despair 
 A kingdom for a broken heart. 
 
 The second of these youthful poems demands no- 
 tice, not only because it is his longest piece of verse, but 
 also because it represents the imagination and trans- 
 cendental style of his thinking. " Al Aaraaf," as he 
 himself says, is a star discovered by Tycho Brahe, which 
 appeared suddenly in the heavens, attained, in a few 
 days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter, then as 
 suddenly disappeared, and has never since been seen. 
 He makes this star the abode of all the loveliness that 
 perishes on earth. In a melodious rhapsody as dis- 
 jointed as a dream, he celebrates the beauty of a world 
 which earth's sorrows have never entered, and where 
 no moral restraints hinder the activity of its denizens. 
 Nesace, who seems the personified spirit of this ideal 
 realm, summons her lover to join her there : 
 
 " Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly, 
 With all thy train, athwart the moony sky, 
 Apart like fireflies in Sicilian night, 
 And wing to other worlds another light! 
 Divulge the secrets of thy embassy 
 To the proud orbs that twinkle, and so be 
 To every heart a barrier and a ban 
 Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man! " 
 
 We might well doubt whether this invocation had any 
 definite meaning, if it were not for the partial explana- 
 tion, in Part II, with regard to the ultimate destiny of 
 the lovers : 
 
 For what (to them) availeth it to know 
 
 That Truth is Falsehood, or that Bliss is Woe? 
 
 Sweet was their death with them to die was rife
 
 174 "THE ARABESQUE AND THE GROTESQUE" 
 
 With the last ecstasy of satiate life; 
 Beyond that death no immortality, 
 But sleep that pondereth and is not " to be; " 
 And there, oh, may my weary spirit dwell, 
 Apart from Heaven's Eternity and yet how far 
 from Hell! 
 
 What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim, 
 Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn? 
 But two; they fell; for Heaven no grace imparts 
 To those who hear not for their beating hearts; 
 A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover. 
 Oh, where (and ye may seek the wide skies over) 
 Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known? 
 Unguided Love hath fallen 'mid " tears of perfect 
 moan." 
 
 The lesson of the poem is manifestly this, that the 
 delights of love are to be sought even at the price of 
 annihilation. But I must leave the theology of " Al 
 Aaraaf " for later exposition, and content myself now 
 with pointing out that this juvenile poetry, though in- 
 stinct with imagination and melody, was greatly lack- 
 ing in unity and rationality. These latter merits came 
 to Poe after years of experiment, and as the result 
 of writing and reflection in other lines. Poetry with 
 him was an occasional and a rare product to use his 
 own words, " a passion, and not a purpose." The quan- 
 tity of it was exceedingly small. He wrote exceedingly 
 little, but gave endless emendation and polish to his 
 work. In his day poetry was not a selling commodity ; 
 the poet was forced to earn his living ; magazine litera- 
 ture alone furnished him a support. His imagination 
 made his first successful work to be " Tales of the Ara- 
 besque and the Grotesque." He was the forerunner of 
 Conan Doyle in his detective stories. The mystery and
 
 TALES OF THE CHARNEL-HOUSE 17$ 
 
 ingenuity of " The Gold Bug " and " The Murders of 
 the Rue Morgue " are distinctly new features of liter- 
 ary romance. We cannot too highly praise the artistic 
 skill with which the elements of his plots are mar- 
 shaled, and every stroke is made to lead to the sudden 
 and startling conclusion. But little by little Poe came 
 to think that to startle was to succeed. His romance 
 had not the realistic basis of Swift and Defoe. The 
 bizarre, the gruesome, the loathsome, the fiendish, 
 occupied his thoughts and became the subjects of his 
 pen. He aims to make our flesh creep. He appeals 
 exclusively to the nerves. Burial alive, epileptic fits, 
 the mesmerism of a dying man, the possession of one 
 soul by that of another who has departed, somnam- 
 bulism, metapsychosis, the gouging out of eyes, suicide- 
 compacts, ghosts, tombs, endless sorrow and despair 
 these have never been more fearfully portrayed than 
 by Edgar Allan Poe. " His realm," says Griswold, 
 " was on the shadowy confines of human experience, 
 among the abodes of crime, gloom, and horror, and 
 there he delighted to surround himself with images of 
 beauty and of terror, to raise his solemn palaces and 
 towers and spires in a night upon which should rise 
 no sun." In all this he depicted the lashings of his 
 own conscience, his utter lack of faith in God and in a 
 life beyond the grave, his horror in view of the death 
 to which his lost soul was hastening, and the unspeak- 
 able misery and gloom of a sinner without Christ and 
 without hope. There is a somber splendor about " The 
 Fall of the House of Usher," and a melancholy sweet- 
 ness about " Ligeia " ; but Poe's tales are tales of the 
 charnel-house, and their odor of decay is quite foreign
 
 1^6 POE AS EDITOR AND CRITIC 
 
 to the beauty which he held to be the end and aim of 
 perfect art 
 
 Poetry had a rival not only in Poe's tales, but also 
 in Poe's criticism. From being a contributor to maga- 
 zines he became an editor. Instead of writing stories 
 of his own, he came to criticize the work of others. 
 He passed successively in review all the prominent 
 authors of his day, whether American or English. 
 Much of our literature had been characterized by dull 
 mediocrity, and this dull mediocrity had been praised. 
 Poe subjected this dull work to trenchant criticism. 
 His insight was keen, he had correct principles of judg- 
 ment, and he had little mercy for those who failed to 
 satisfy his tests. We owe him a great debt, for he 
 was our first American critic. But he was too exclu- 
 sively censorious. He wielded the broadax rather 
 than the rapier. His magazine motto seemed to be, 
 " Hang, draw, and quarter," it has been wittily said. 
 His exposure of pretense and ridicule of error made 
 him many enemies. He aimed to startle even here. 
 His criticisms commanded attention indeed. Within 
 a few months he increased the circulation of a maga- 
 zine from five to forty-five thousand. But there was 
 an ill temper and arrogance in his writing which re- 
 sulted from disordered habits. His tale, " The Imp 
 of the Perverse," well describes his own mental and 
 moral unsoundness. His treatment of Longfellow can 
 hardly be explained except as an ebullition of envy and 
 malice. He prefaced his review of " The Voices of 
 the Night " with the acrimonious title, " Mr. Long- 
 fellow, and other Plagiarists " ; and he characterized 
 the poet's " Midnight Mass for the Dying Year " as
 
 ALIENATION OF FRIENDS 177 
 
 belonging " to the most barbarous class of literary rob- 
 bery." Longfellow generously replied, " The harsh- 
 ness of his criticisms I have never attributed to any- 
 thing but the irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed 
 by some indefinite sense of wrong." Those who stood 
 nearer to Poe could not form so charitable a judgment. 
 Griswold, Willis, and Lowell bore with him, but he 
 attacked them all, until forbearance was no longer a 
 virtue. Hawthorne, he thought, had stolen directly 
 from passages in " William Wilson." " Mr. Bryant 
 is not all a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Car- 
 lyle is an ass, and Emerson is his imitator." He calls 
 Miss Fuller " that detestable old maid." Lowell is 
 " a ranting abolitionist, a fanatic for the mere love 
 of fanaticism." Lowell replied that Poe sometimes 
 mistook his vial of prussic acid for his inkstand. His 
 colleagues could not forever endure his whims and his 
 abuse. One connection after another was broken ; one 
 friend after another was alienated. Brilliant promise 
 was succeeded by pitiful failure. Riotous intemperance 
 ruined his prospects even after long periods of ab- 
 stinence. The use of opium was added to indulgence 
 in drink, and under the influence of these stimulants 
 Poe was a madman. 
 
 The story of his marriage and of the illness and 
 death of his young and beautiful wife is most pathetic. 
 Virginia was the child of Mrs. Clemm, the aunt who 
 toiled for him and sheltered him through all his 
 escapades and illnesses. His tale " Eleonora " is auto- 
 biographical. It tells the story of a romantic love, 
 which seems at first to have been illicit. A license was 
 issued in September, 1835, but there is no record of
 
 1^8 " ANNABEL LEE " 
 
 marriage following until May, 1836. Then a public 
 marriage took place, when Virginia was hardly four- 
 teen, though a relative satisfied the legal requirement 
 by testifying that she was twenty-two. Her married 
 life lasted for twelve troubled years. A friend de- 
 scribes the scene as she neared her end : " There was 
 no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a 
 white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, 
 and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accom- 
 pany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the 
 straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great coat, with 
 a large tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. The wonder- 
 ful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The 
 coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of 
 warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and 
 her mother her feet." In 1847 she died, and the poet 
 wrote his memorial of her in " Annabel Lee " : 
 
 It was many and many a year ago, 
 
 In a kingdom by the sea, 
 That a maiden lived whom you may know 
 
 By the name of Annabel Lee; 
 And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
 
 Than to love and be loved by me. 
 
 I was a child and she was a child, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea, 
 But we loved with a love that was more than love, 
 
 I and my Annabel Lee; 
 With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 
 
 Coveted her and me. 
 
 And this was the reason that, long ago, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea, 
 A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 
 
 My beautiful Annabel Lee;
 
 POE TO HIMSELF A VICTIM 179 
 
 So that her highborn kinsmen came 
 
 And bore her away from me, 
 To shut her up in a sepulchre 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea. 
 
 The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 
 
 Went envying her and me; 
 Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea) 
 That the wind came out of the cloud by night, 
 
 Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 
 
 But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
 
 Of those who were older than we, 
 
 Of many far wiser than we; 
 And neither the angels in heaven above, 
 
 Nor the demons down under the sea, 
 Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
 
 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: 
 
 For the moon never beams, without bringing me 
 dreams 
 
 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
 
 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; 
 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
 Of my darling my darling my life and my bride, 
 
 In the sepulchre there by the sea, 
 
 In her tomb by the sounding sea. 
 
 This is real poetry, and it expresses at least occa- 
 sional and temporary emotion. But it is certain that 
 Poe made love to other women during the lifetime of 
 his wife. And though he clung to her for sympathy 
 and pity, he plunged her into poverty and distress. 
 He regarded himself as a victim, however, rather than 
 as a criminal, and I quote from one of his letters his 
 own self- justification :
 
 l8o " WHIM, IMPULSE, PASSION " 
 
 I can do no more than hint. This " evil " was the great- 
 est that can befall a man. Six years ago, a wife, whom I 
 loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-ves- 
 sel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of 
 her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She 
 recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of the 
 year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the 
 same scene. Then again again and even once again, at 
 varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her 
 death and at each accession of the disorder I loved her 
 more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate perti- 
 nacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive nervous in a 
 very unusual degree I became insane, with long intervals of 
 horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness 
 I drank God only knows how often or how much. As a 
 matter of course my enemies referred the insanity to the 
 drink, rather than the drink to the insanity. 
 
 To Lowell he wrote : " My life has been whim, im- 
 pulse, passion " and this is the only explanation of 
 his career. In him Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde were mixed. He was by turns industrious 
 and slothful. One of his friends touched the secret of 
 his troubles when he told Poe that " no man is safe 
 who drinks before breakfast." 
 
 Whatever we may think of Poe's defense, drink and 
 opium were his undoing. His tales, his criticism, and 
 finally the poem of " The Raven " gave him an ever- 
 increasing fame, and his connection with " The Satur- 
 day Visitor," " The Southern Literary Messenger," 
 " The Gentleman's Magazine," " Graham's Magazine," 
 " The Evening Mirror," " The Broadway Journal," 
 whether as contributor or as editor, gave successive 
 promise of pecuniary reward. But there was a demon 
 beside him that always snatched the cup of prosperity 
 from his hand when he was about to drink. Though
 
 FOE'S MISERABLE DEATH l8l 
 
 he made friends, one by one, of Wilmer, White, Ken- 
 nedy, Tuckerman, Burton, Graham, Greeley all of 
 them men who sought to aid him his ingratitude and 
 rancorous denunciation broke up every friendship, and 
 left him solitary and unhappy. He joined the Sons of 
 Temperance, and broke his vows. He sought to re- 
 pair his fortunes by marriage, and forfeited all claims 
 to his bride by drunkenness on the eve of the intended 
 wedding. He was a physical and mental wreck. The 
 end came at last. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New 
 York had been places of his temporary residence. He 
 fled from one to another, in hope to escape the fiend 
 that pursued him. He left Richmond in October, 1849, 
 to go North. But in Baltimore temptation assailed 
 him, and he succumbed. He wandered about the city 
 for five days in a state of intoxication. He was foun4 
 unconscious, clad like a beggar in soiled and tattered 
 garments, in a place of disreputable resort, and was 
 taken to a hospital, where for two whole days he suf- 
 fered the agonies of delirium tremens, and talked in- 
 cessantly to spectral and imaginary objects on the 
 walls. Then came two more days of alternate violence 
 and of collapse from exhaustion, in which he cried 
 that his best friend would be one who would blow out 
 his wretched brains. At last, at three o'clock on a 
 Tuesday morning, he moved his head gently, uttered 
 the words, " Lord, help my poor soul ! " and expired. 
 We have no other record of prayer or recognition of 
 God's existence but this, in all Poe's life. He used the 
 word " God," indeed, in his poems, but it was only as 
 a conventional and rhetorical accommodation to the 
 beliefs of his readers. :He thought himself, and, as
 
 l82 POE AN ATHEIST OF THE HEART 
 
 nearly as it was possible for any man to be, he was, 
 an atheist. But are there in this world any real 
 atheists ? Theoretically, yes ; practically, no. In prac- 
 tice, all men show by their language, actions, and ex- 
 pectations that they have the idea of a Being above 
 them, upon whom they are dependent, who is their 
 standard of truth, beauty, and goodness, and who im- 
 poses law upon their moral natures. But in theory, 
 men may ignore or even deny that they have any idea 
 of such a Being, and may believe such an idea to be 
 self-contradictory and irrational. The only way in 
 which we can convince these unbelievers is by appeal- 
 ing to their underlying convictions, and by showing 
 them that they practically admit what they theoretically 
 deny. Poe's restlessness of soul, his tormenting con- 
 science, his impotence of will, his frantic appeals to 
 women to rescue him from degradation, his dreadful 
 fears of death and the grave, were evidences that deep 
 down in his heart was an inextinguishable belief in a 
 just God with whom he was at enmity and whom he 
 feared to meet in the judgment. 
 
 Poe's atheism was an atheism of the heart, rather 
 than an atheism of the head. He lacked the will to be- 
 lieve. The secret of professed atheism is really a dis- 
 like for the character and the requirements of God. 
 Theism humbles man's pride, implies his dependence, 
 as a creature and as a sinner. He is willing to believe 
 in self; why will he not believe in God? "Belief," 
 as Emerson says, " consists in accepting the affirma- 
 tions of the soul; unbelief, in rejecting them." But 
 acceptance or rejection is determined by the will. Since 
 neither theism nor atheism can be proved, we choose
 
 BLINDED BY SELF-CONCEIT 183 
 
 the alternative which we prefer. Do we wish a God to 
 exist ? Then we may believe in his existence, and our 
 faith will justify itself by its results. We ask the 
 atheist to trust the voice of his own nature, and to 
 make experiment as to its truth. We claim that this is 
 the method of science. Science assumes nature and 
 her laws at the start, but verification comes with every 
 successive step. Religion, in like manner, assumes 
 God's existence at the beginning, but each following 
 experience furnishes new evidence that the assumption 
 is correct. Poe was too proud to take this childlike at- 
 titude toward the truth. " My whole nature utterly 
 revolts," he exclaimed, " at the idea that there is any 
 Being in the universe superior to myself!" And so 
 this confessed liar, slanderer, gambler, and drunkard, 
 if not also a forger and a seducer, deified self and 
 turned his back upon his only Lord and Redeemer. 
 Conceit of his own powers and his own worth so 
 blinded him that Infinite Truth and Goodness made no 
 impression upon him. Self was the only God he be- 
 lieved or served or worshiped. In this respect he fur- 
 nishes, among all our poets, the most perfect illustra- 
 tion of the insanity of sin. And yet he did not know 
 himself to be a sinner, for his physician quotes him as 
 saying : " By the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to 
 you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call 
 to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to 
 my cheek." 
 
 It might at first sight seem vain to speak of such a 
 man's theology. But every man has a theology. He 
 is compelled to reflect upon the facts of the universe, 
 and upon his own relations to the power above him
 
 184 FOE'S THEOLOGY IN " EUREKA " 
 
 upon which he is dependent. Even if he is a professed 
 atheist, he is driven by an accusing conscience to self- 
 justification. He must give a reason for the very 
 unbelief that is in him. Poe has declared his theology 
 in his prose poem entitled " Eureka." He regarded it 
 as the greatest work of his life, and that by which he 
 would be especially remembered. He thought it of 
 more importance than Sir Isaac Newton's discovery 
 of gravitation. It was a materialistic explanation of 
 the universe, its origin, development, and destiny. He 
 propounded it with amazing confidence, and proposed 
 an edition of fifty thousand copies as a mere begin- 
 ning. It was but the shallow and half-crazy dream of 
 a sciolist who had cribbed his slender basis of facts, 
 and from a single primitive assumption had deduced 
 a universe without a God. It deserves no prolonged 
 study, yet it furnishes such a clue to his theory of 
 poetry that I cannot avoid a brief notice of its doctrine. 
 Dreamy and unscientific as it is, it shows conclusively 
 that theories of the universe are too often constructed 
 to excuse men's practical disobedience to God. And 
 the results of Poe's theory in his own case show that, 
 instead of being God's truth, it was a devil's lie to 
 ensnare and destroy him. While the assumption of 
 God's existence ennobles and saves, the assumption 
 of a godless universe leads only to intellectual and 
 moral ruin. 
 
 Poe was an absolute materialist. He regarded mind 
 as only an etherealized and sensitive form of matter. 
 Body and mind go hand in hand, and are never sepa- 
 rated. Whenever he speaks of God, and of God's 
 volition, we must remember that it is a material God
 
 AN ABSOLUTE MATERIALIST 185 
 
 that he has in mind, and that the conception and act of 
 such a God are indistinguishable from merely physical 
 instinct. " Is not God immaterial?" he asks. He 
 replies : " There is no immateriality. That which is 
 not matter is not at all. . . There are gradations of 
 matter of which man knows nothing " and he speaks 
 of electricity as if this answered to his conception of 
 a material God. " Matter, unparticled, indivisible, one, 
 permeating all things, and impelling all things, this 
 matter is God. . . Thinking is the motion of this mat- 
 ter. . . God, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is 
 but the perfection of matter." The universe has origi- 
 nated, he declares, in the creation by this God of a 
 single particle of matter. How a material God was 
 capable of a creative volition he does not inform us. 
 This material particle had powers of radiation and mul- 
 tiplication. It was diffused through a vast though 
 limited region of space. The originating principle 
 acted continuously in each portion of the matter into 
 which the particle had become divided, and the result 
 was the various bodies, molecular and molar, of the 
 great system. The first element in the universe then 
 was repulsion ; and this is nothing but mind or spirit in 
 expression. The original unity has thus become mul- 
 tiplicity. But diffusion and multiplicity do not of 
 themselves provide for progress. Progress can be 
 secured only by partial return to unity. The original 
 diffusive or repulsive force is therefore to some extent 
 withdrawn, and attraction takes its place. Gravitation 
 follows upon radiation, and attraction is body, as re- 
 pulsion was mind or spirit. So we have multiplicity 
 resulting in mind, and unity resulting in body. But the
 
 l86 A SELF-DEIFYING SCHEME 
 
 return to the unity must go on, until all things are 
 again resolved into the original simplicity. What was 
 originally one must become one again. Separation of 
 intelligences must give place to unification of intel- 
 ligence. As each mind was only a portion of the one 
 Being whom we call God, so each mind must be ab- 
 sorbed in that One and lose its separate identity. 
 There is no such thing as personal immortality. But 
 our compensation is that, as we are now only portions 
 of God, we shall hereafter take all creation into union 
 with ourselves, and so shall ourselves become God. 
 In a note appended to his own copy of " Eureka," Poe 
 wrote: 
 
 The pain of the consideration that we shall lose our iden- 
 tity ceases at once when we further reflect that the process, 
 as above described, is neither more nor less than that of the 
 absorption, by each individual intelligence, of all other in- 
 telligences (that is, of the Universe) into its own. That God 
 may be all in all, each must become God. 
 
 This fantastic and self-deifying scheme does not 
 end with the present universe to which we belong. 
 There are many universes, both in space and in time, 
 and there are as many nature-gods to match them. 
 The tendency to unity belongs to all. But this tendency 
 is only a blind physical impulse which is misnamed 
 when it is called spiritual. It presents to us endless 
 cycles of birth and death, of growth and decay. It is 
 pantheistic and polytheistic by turns, but it is never 
 theistic. Its so-called God has no eye to pity and 
 no arm to save. The beauty which it sees in the uni- 
 verse is only the phosphorescent glow which marks in 
 the darkness a mound of corruption. It gives no real
 
 FOE CONFESSES HIS PHILOSOPHY FUTILE 187 
 
 explanation of the origin or the progress of the sys- 
 tem, since its God is only material force, without de- 
 signing intelligence and without love for his creatures. 
 It makes the universe a reaction upon will, instead of 
 being itself will. Human will is mere illusion; man is 
 a victim instead of an actor ; and Poe deals with crime 
 against man, but never with sin against God. Morality 
 becomes mere convention. In such a universe the best 
 we can do is to plod on, yielding to our every impulse 
 and bearing the penalty of mistakes. Conscience re- 
 jects such a scheme as contradicting our moral nature ; 
 our noblest aspirations rise in rebellion against such 
 hopeless subjection of the spirit; and Christ's positive 
 revelation of life and immortality make Poe's seem 
 only a madman's dream. In fact, he confesses the 
 futility of his own philosophy when he writes : " My 
 forlorn and darkened nature is full of forebodings. 
 Nothing cheers or comforts me. The future looks a 
 dreary blank. But I will struggle on and hope against 
 hope." The dreamer dwelt already in an Inferno like 
 that which Dante pictured in his " Divine Comedy," 
 and the horrors of which are portrayed by Michelangelo 
 in his " Last Judgment." 
 
 " Eureka " has been called " a prevision of the 
 modern doctrine of evolution." It certainly reminds 
 us of Herbert Spencer's process from homogeneity to 
 heterogeneity. But it is not original with Poe. It 
 merely reflects the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, and 
 the first suggestion of it may have come to Poe in his 
 childhood. Whitty, in his Memoir of Poe, tells us 
 that John Allan, Poe's guardian, was a rather liberal 
 thinker, and suggests that the germ out of which the
 
 l88 BEAUTY TO POE MERELY PHYSICAL 
 
 poet's later materialism was developed may have come 
 from this source. " There seems an autobiographical 
 hint of this in his tale ' The Domain of Arnheim,' 
 which he has said contains ' much of his soul.' Here 
 he wrote : " 
 
 Some peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the 
 nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed ma- 
 terialism all his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, 
 perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous 
 at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, 
 lies in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveli- 
 ness. 
 
 It is certain that Poe's scheme of the universe greatly 
 influenced his ideas of poetry as well as of life. He 
 was a worshiper of beauty, and in his scheme of the 
 universe beauty has no relation to truth or to good- 
 nes"s; or rather, he would say, beauty is itself truth 
 and goodness, and there is no truth or goodness be- 
 sides. Truth and goodness are merely by-products of 
 beauty; beauty is the standard by which truth and 
 goodness are to be measured; beauty itself has no 
 standard of measurement, but is to measure all things. 
 This is to reverse all right rules. Poe.'s denial of a 
 rational Ordainer and Upholder of the universe renders 
 his judgments irrational. Beauty, like truth and good- 
 ness, implies a standard to which it conforms. There 
 must be a God to justify our sense of beauty, as well 
 as our confidence in our mental processes and our con- 
 viction of moral obligation. The universe is a thought, 
 an ordered whole, a moral system; there must be a 
 Thinker, a Designer, 'a Lawgiver, as the Author, Up- 
 holder, Ruler, of our mental and moral life. And what
 
 POE'S ESSENTIALS OF POETRY 189 
 
 is true in the intellectual and moral realm is equally 
 true in the esthetic realm. Beauty is conformity to a 
 standard, and that standard is the eternal Beauty in 
 God. But in him it is " the beauty of holiness," and 
 is never separated from truth and goodness. Poe 
 sought beauty apart from God but such beauty ap- 
 peals only to transitory and irrational emotion ; it can- 
 not justify itself to reason; it is seductive and delusive; 
 it glorifies the evil as well as the good ; it is pessimistic 
 and degrading ; it ceases to be beauty, by cutting loose 
 from the true and the good, and by making itself 
 supreme. 
 
 Poe was " the wild poet " who exemplified these false 
 principles of ethics. He claimed that the awakening 
 of emotion is the sole aim of poetry. Emotion, he 
 would say, is awakened only by beauty; truth and 
 goodness are incidental, and never primary. There is 
 no thrill of emotion like that of hopeless sorrow, and 
 the death of a loved and beautiful woman marks the 
 acme of human grief. Add now the pain of parting 
 and the horror of the tomb; picture these in verse of 
 penetrating melody, and you have the essentials of 
 poetry. But who does not see that the ideal element 
 has been lost ? True poetry presupposes a divine order, 
 and a worthy end, in the universe. There can be no 
 great poetry without faith. Optimism, and not pessi- 
 mism, must be at the heart of melody, or melody be- 
 comes funereal and repulsive. I can best show what I 
 mean by quoting the poem in which Poe's philosophy 
 is most vividly and perfectly represented. The title of 
 the poem is highly significant. It is " The Conqueror 
 Worm."
 
 196 " THE CONQUEROR WORM " 
 
 Lo! 't is a gala night 
 
 Within the lonesome latter years. 
 An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
 
 In veils, and drowned in tears, 
 Sit in a theater to see 
 
 A play of hopes and fears, 
 While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
 
 The music of the spheres. 
 
 Mimes, in the form of God on high, 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly; 
 
 Mere puppets they, who come and go 
 At bidding of vast formless things 
 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their condor wings 
 
 Invisible Woe. 
 
 That motley drama oh, be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot! 
 With its Phantom chased for evermore 
 
 By a crowd that seize it not, 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self-same spot; 
 And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 
 
 And Horror the soul of the plot. 
 
 But see amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude: 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic solitude! 
 It writhes it writhes! with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food, 
 And seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbued. 
 
 Out out are the lights out all! 
 
 And over each quivering form 
 The curtain, a funeral pall, 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm,
 
 AN IMAGINATION FED ON THE ABNORMAL IQI 
 
 While the angels, all pallid and wan, 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
 That the play is the tragedy, " Man," 
 
 And its hero, the Conqueror Worm. 
 
 Here is melody and the thrill of emotion, but all in 
 the interest of a godless universe and a hopeless hu- 
 manity. Here is imagination, but only of the bizarre 
 and the gruesome. The unbelieving poet can con- 
 struct only a universe of sorrow and of death. Death 
 indeed is the annihilation of personal and conscious 
 existence, and is the only hope of mortals. In his 
 poem " For Annie " he writes : 
 
 Thank Heaven! the crisis, 
 
 The danger, is past, 
 And the lingering illness 
 
 Is over at last, 
 And the fever called "Living" 
 
 Is conquered at last. 
 
 Man is " a puppet, cast in the form of God," and 
 conquered by the " Conqueror Worm." 
 
 Foe's imagination had only limited range. His 
 moral nature was too self-centered to give him any 
 proper view of human life or destiny. He reveled in 
 the abnormal and revolting incidents of our existence. 
 The grim, the weird, the spectral, the terrible, im- 
 pressed him most. These left his appetite for beauty 
 unsatisfied ; and his best poetry is the expression of 
 disappointed hopes and of everlasting regrets. There 
 are three essays which will live when his " Eureka " 
 is forgotten essays in which he exhibits unusual 
 powers of analysis and sanity of judgment, and which 
 notwithstanding reveal the shortcomings of his art.
 
 192 POE's " POETIC PRINCIPLE " 
 
 The first is entitled " The Poetic Principle." Poetry, 
 he maintains, is the result of man's struggle to appre- 
 hend the supernal Loveliness and to penetrate into the 
 mystery that surrounds us. It is the rhythmical crea- 
 tion of Beauty. Its object is the pleasurable excite- 
 ment of the soul by our recombination of the images 
 found in nature. But, since human effort always fails 
 to realize the ideal after which it strives, there must in 
 all true poetry be an element of sorrow. A " certain 
 taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the 
 higher manifestations of true Beauty." Since poetry 
 aims to rouse and to elevate the emotions, it is " inde- 
 pendent of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the 
 Reason." The didactic and the moral are foreign to 
 the realm of poetry. It is more nearly allied to music 
 than to any other art. Poe was not a musician, like 
 Lanier; and Lanier improved upon Poe's theory. But 
 Poe exemplifies his own doctrine by verse so dainty 
 and sweet, that it enchains our attention and persuades 
 us against our wills. He dealt in " the witchery of 
 words." He caught from Negro minstrelsy the tell- 
 ing effect of the refrain. His finished poems were 
 works of endless elaboration, in which every stroke is 
 effective, and the whole product tends from the begin- 
 ning to a predestined end. His poem " The Bells " 
 shows him, at his best, as the melodist and literary 
 artist : 
 
 Hear the sledges with the bells, 
 
 Silver bells! 
 
 What a world of merriment their melody foretells! 
 How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
 
 In the icy air of night! 
 While the stars, that oversprinkle
 
 " THE BELLS " 193 
 
 All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
 
 With a crystalline delight; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
 From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells, 
 From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 
 
 Then we hear " the mellow wedding-bells." But these 
 are followed by " the loud alarum bells " : 
 
 In the startled ear of night 
 How they scream out their affright! 
 Too much horrified to speak, 
 They can only shriek, shriek, 
 
 Out of tune, 
 
 In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
 In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 
 
 Oh, the bells, bells, bells! 
 What a tale their terror tells 
 
 Of Despair! 
 
 How they clang, and clash, and roar! 
 What a horror they outpour 
 On the bosom of the palpitating air! 
 
 And finally come the funeral bells. Here Poe is at 
 home, for beyond death he has no vision of Him who 
 is the Resurrection and the Life : 
 
 Hear the tolling of the bells, 
 
 Iron bells! 
 
 What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! 
 In the silence of the night 
 How we shiver with affright 
 At the melancholy menace of their tone! 
 For every sound that floats 
 From the rust within their throats 
 Is a groan.
 
 194 " THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION " 
 
 And the people ah, the people, 
 They that dwell up in the steeple, 
 
 All alone, 
 And who tolling, tolling, tolling 
 
 In that muffled monotone, 
 Feel a glory in so rolling 
 
 On the human heart a stone 
 They are neither man nor woman, 
 They are neither brute nor human, 
 
 They are Ghouls: 
 And their king it is who tolls; 
 And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
 
 Rolls 
 
 A psean from the bells; 
 And his merry bosom swells 
 
 With the paean of the bells, 
 And he dances, and he yells: 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 
 
 The second of Poe's didactic essays has for its sub- 
 ject " The Philosophy of Composition." I regard this 
 as one of the most thoughtful and instructive papers 
 ever written by an American. It may well be set side 
 by side with Herbert Spencer's essay on style, in which 
 he propounds the principle that its greatest essential is 
 economy of the reader's or hearer's attention the 
 more energy is expended upon the form, the less there 
 remains to grapple with the substance. Poe declares 
 that every work of literary art must be written back- 
 ward; the writer must first know his terminus ad 
 quern; analysis must come before synthesis; the essay 
 must be a gradual approach to a conclusion perfectly 
 defined in the author's mind, but only by successive 
 steps made known to the reader. The element of
 
 POE S THEORY IN THE RAVEN 195 
 
 surprise is necessary to success; attention must be 
 gained, and kept, till the denouement caps the climax 
 and satisfies the mind. Here is a principle of universal 
 application, and writers of note do consciously or un- 
 consciously observe it. Poe does us a great service by 
 illustrating the principle in his composition of " The 
 Raven." I dismiss, as already considered, his theory 
 that melancholy is the noblest and most legitimate 
 of the poetical tones : that is only his inference from a 
 godless and hopeless universe. I dismiss also his view 
 that the true poem must always be a brief one, f OP this 
 view re^ts upon the premise that poetry appeals, never 
 to reason, but only to fleeting emotion: the epic may 
 satisfy our minds, not only by its successive scenes, but 
 by the unity of their sequence and development. And 
 finally I dismiss his doctrine of the refrain, as unques- 
 tionably possessing originality and value. I call at- 
 tention only to the fact that the last word of the poem 
 is the first in the poet's mind as he begins to construct 
 his work. And that word is " Nevermore." 
 
 The subject of the poem is hopeless sorrow, and the 
 word " nevermore " expresses it. But that word must 
 have a speaker. Who feels such sorrow more than the 
 lover, the object of whose affection has been snatched 
 from his side? What shall be the locality of his grief? 
 It must be the solitude of his study. How can " Never- 
 more " be uttered in an endless monotone? Only 
 a non-reasoning being is capable of such heartless re- 
 iteration. The parrot is the flippant bird of day ; only 
 the raven is the speaking bird of night. How shall the 
 lover and the raven be brought together? There must 
 be a tempestuous night, and the flapping of the raven's
 
 196 " THE RAVEN " 
 
 wings seems to be a knocking at the door. The open- 
 ing of the door admits the sable visitor. The raven 
 enters to find refuge from the storm, and perches upon 
 the bust of Pallas over the chamber door. The lover 
 begins by jesting at the strange apparition, and by ask- 
 ing questions. But soon he is mystified and solemnized. 
 To all his successive inquiries the bird makes but one 
 reply: it is the ominous "Nevermore." And the re- 
 sult is only the deepening of the mystery and the sor- 
 row of death. As a lesson in literary workmanship, 
 this poem is unique and invaluable, and that without 
 our deciding how far in Poe's case the process of com- 
 position was conscious or unconscious. " The Raven " 
 is his masterpiece, and, as uniting his melody and 
 his melancholy, it may be regarded as one of the great 
 works of American literature a work as wonderful 
 and as perfect as Gray's " Elegy in a Country Church- 
 yard." For that reason, I may be permitted to quote 
 from it several of its most significant stanzas : 
 
 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and 
 weary, 
 
 Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, 
 
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tap- 
 ping, 
 
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
 
 " 'T is some visitor," I muttered, " tapping at my chamber 
 door: 
 
 Only this, and nothing more." 
 
 Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and 
 
 flutter, 
 
 In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. 
 Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or 
 
 stayed he;
 
 " THE RAVEN " 197 
 
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber 
 
 door, 
 
 Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door: 
 Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 
 
 Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
 " Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, " art 
 
 sure no craven, 
 Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly 
 
 shore: 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian 
 
 shore! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Prophet! " said I, " thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or 
 
 devil! 
 Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here 
 
 ashore, 
 
 Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted 
 On this home by Horror haunted tell me truly, I implore: 
 Is there is there balm in Gilead? tell me tell me, I 
 
 implore! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil prophet still, if bird or 
 
 devil! 
 By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both 
 
 adore, 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant 
 
 Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore: 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend! " I shrieked, 
 
 upstarting: 
 " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian 
 
 shore!
 
 198 POE A MASTER OF TECHNIQUE 
 
 Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath 
 
 spoken! 
 
 Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! 
 Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off 
 
 my door! " 
 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dream- 
 ing, 
 
 And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on 
 the floor: 
 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the 
 floor 
 
 Shall be lifted nevermore! 
 
 Here is mastery of the technique of verse, and a 
 musical refrain, the impression of which deepens to the 
 very end. But there is also a gathering gloom that 
 chills and affrights. Is this the noblest poetry? Not 
 unless it most truly represents life. Such predeter- 
 mined sadness is irrational, for hopeless sorrow denies 
 the reality of a divine providence and gives the lie to 
 God's word. It declares that there is no " balm in 
 Gilead," and that Christ has died in vain. Poe was 
 as much a pagan, as if he had never heard of the Cross. 
 He sorrowed as those without hope. He did not 
 see that " the last enemy that shall be abolished is 
 death," and that our God and Saviour has made death 
 to be the gateway to eternal life. Poe's poetry is 
 therefore as unmoral and misleading as if written in 
 the interests of vice. It tempts men, by reaction, to 
 say, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 I acquit our poet of any conscious pandering to im- 
 morality. If there is any condoning or glorifying of
 
 THE RATIONALE OF VERSE 199 
 
 illicit passion, it is veiled and unintentional. But to 
 remove all hope from humanity is to doom it to death. 
 Despair leads men into sin as often as does the desire 
 for pleasure. And I must regard the quenching of the 
 light of hope as a vicious element in Poe's poetry. 
 
 " The Rationale of Verse " is a third essay in which 
 our poet attempts a scientific exposition of rhythm, 
 rhyme, meter, and versification. Here too, he has 
 shown his best powers, and has done great service to 
 his art. His account of the genesis of prosody is novel 
 and interesting. He holds that the rudiment of verse 
 is found in the spondee equality of sound in two 
 accented syllables. Then the perception of monotone 
 gives rise to an attempt at its relief : the iambus and 
 the trochee are results. Dactylic and anapaestic words 
 naturally follow ; and then the line, which first curtails 
 and then defines the length of a sequence. If lines are 
 to be defined to the ear, equality in sound of the final 
 syllables is needed, and hence arises rhyme. The be- 
 ginnings of rhyme are found in Aristophanes and in 
 Horace, and Dr. Charles A. Briggs has maintained 
 that it is not wanting even in Genesis 4 : 23, 24 and 
 in the Psalms. The stanza gives limitation and unity 
 to lines. The refrain relieves their monotony. It is 
 impossible in this article even to summarize Poe's doc- 
 trine. Suffice it to say that he has propounded an 
 original and profound theory of versification a theory 
 which frees the subject from much superstitious pedan- 
 try of the past, and which permits the poet to follow 
 more readily the promptings of the Muse. Of all our 
 poets he has given most scientific expression to the 
 technique of his art.
 
 2OO " THE HAUNTED PALACE " 
 
 As a last illustration of Poe's theory that poetry is 
 a metrical appeal to emotion an appeal skilfully 
 adapted to awaken yearning and regret let me quote 
 his poem entitled " The Haunted Palace " : 
 
 In the greenest of our" valleys 
 
 By good angels tenanted, 
 Once a fair and stately palace 
 
 Radiant palace reared its head. 
 In the monarch Thought's dominion, 
 
 It stood there; 
 Never seraph spread a pinion 
 
 Over fabric half so fair! 
 
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
 
 On its roof did float and flow 
 (This all this was in the olden 
 
 Time long ago), 
 And every gentle air that dallied, 
 
 In that sweet day, 
 Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 
 
 A winged odor went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, 
 
 Through two luminous windows saw 
 Spirits moving musically, 
 
 To a lute's well-tuned law, 
 Round about a throne where, sitting, 
 
 Porphyrogene, 
 In state his glory well befitting, 
 
 The ruler of the realm was seen. 
 
 And all with pearl and ruby glowing 
 
 Was the fair palace door, 
 Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, 
 
 And sparkling evermore, 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 
 
 Was but to sing, 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, 
 
 The wit and wisdom of their king.
 
 A PICTURE OF POE S SOUL 2OI 
 
 But evil things, in robes of sorrow, 
 
 Assailed the monarch's high estate; 
 (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow 
 
 Shall dawn upon him desolate!) 
 And round about his home the glory 
 
 That blushed and bloomed, 
 Is but a dim-remembered story 
 
 Of the old time entombed. 
 
 And travellers now within that valley, 
 
 Through the red-litten windows see 
 Vast forms that move fantastically 
 
 To a discordant melody; 
 While, like a ghastly rapid river, 
 
 Through the pale door 
 A hideous throng rush out forever, 
 
 And laugh but smile no more. 
 
 " The Haunted Palace " is a picture of Poe's own 
 soul. It reminds us of " The. Living Temple " by the 
 Puritan John Howe. That represents human nature 
 as originally a magnificent temple in which God dwelt 
 and manifested his glory. But the priests were faith- 
 less and the spoiler came; it was deserted by Deity, 
 and only broken column and fallen architrave re- 
 mained to show its former splendor; it came to be 
 the haunt of unclean birds, and evil spirits congre- 
 gated in its courts. But God did not forsake the work 
 of his own hands; at infinite cost he began to restore 
 the ruined temple ; he will not cease his effort until he 
 has rescued it from his foes and has filled it with his 
 praise. But the palace of Poe's soul was still in 
 possession of fiends, and he had no hope of recovering 
 the glory he had lost. Exquisite literary art witnessed 
 to the greatness of his original endowment, but with 
 this art there was bound up a pessimistic unbelief that 
 p
 
 2O2 CONFLICTING ESTIMATES OF POE 
 
 shut out all the light of heaven and left him a prey 
 to remorse and despair. His life and work teach us that 
 true poetry is born only of true character; that beauty 
 cannot be divorced from truth; that art for art's sake 
 is the ruin of art itself; and that obedience to God 
 and acceptance of his revelation in Christ are the only 
 means of restoring lost character or of opening to us 
 the treasures of the universe. 
 
 No one of our poets has had so many memoirs writ- 
 ten of him, and about no other has been waged such 
 warfare of opinion. Emerson calls him " the jingle- 
 man"; Henry James thinks his verses "valueless"; 
 Brownell regards him as " a conjurer in literature and 
 a charlatan," " our only Ishmael " among the poets, and 
 " our solitary artist." But Tennyson is quoted by 
 Brander Matthews as ranking Poe " highest among 
 American poets not unworthy to stand beside Catul- 
 lus, the most melodious of the Latins, and Heine, the 
 most tuneful of the Germans." Gosse calls Poe the 
 first of American writers ; and Beyer declares that " he 
 excels all English writers since Milton in the equality 
 of 'his artistry in both the great forms of expression, 
 prose and poetry." Each of these parties has much 
 to say for itself, and our judgment between them can- 
 not be an unqualified one. Poe is certainly great in 
 form. But a haunting melody is not the highest 
 poetry. Substance must equal form, or the mind is 
 unsatisfied. Truth and goodness must furnish that 
 substance. Every human work must ultimately come 
 before Christ. as its Judge. Let us ask how Christ 
 judges even now. It is the purpose of these essays to 
 weigh our poets in the balances of the sanctuary, and
 
 GRISWOLD S VIEW OF POE 203 
 
 to estimate their moral and religious significance. We 
 may grant to Poe a technical skill and musical cadence 
 as great as Swinburne's, while we find in him a bitter 
 and defiant melancholy like that of Byron. Lauvriere 
 calls him " the poet of the outcast soul." Andrew 
 Lang calls his poetry " the echo of a lyre from behind 
 the hills of death " yes, we add, from the Inferno 
 of sin and guilt and despair and such poetry is melody 
 without truth and without love. 
 
 I close my essay with two quotations. The first is 
 from Griswold, Poe's chosen literary executor, who 
 knew him best and formed the most unbiased judg- 
 ment of his life : Poe, says Griswold, 
 
 " Was at all times a dreamer dwelling in ideal realms peo- 
 pled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He 
 walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips 
 moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in pas- 
 sionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to 
 feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness 
 who at the moment were objects of his idolatry; or, with his 
 glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and 
 with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest 
 storms; and all night, with drenched garments and arms 
 beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits 
 that at such times only could be evoked by him from the 
 Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to 
 forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him close 
 by the Aidenn where were those he loved the Aidenn which 
 he might never see but. in fitful glimpses, as its .gates opened 
 to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny 
 to sin did not involve the doom of death. 
 
 " He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his 
 will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory 
 of some controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of 'The 
 Raven ' was probably much more nearly than has been sup- 
 posed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a 
 reflection and an echo of his own history. He was that bird's
 
 2O4 GRISWOLD S VIEW OF POE 
 
 ' unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 
 Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden 
 bore: 
 
 Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore 
 Of " Never nevermore." ' 
 
 " Every genuine author, in a greater or less degree, leaves 
 in his works, whatever their design, traces of his personal 
 character: elements of his immortal being, in which the in- 
 dividual survives the person. While we read the pages of 
 ' The Fall of the House of Usher/ or of ' Mesmeric Revela- 
 tions,' we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests 
 one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indica- 
 tions of the idiosyncrasies of what was most remarkable and 
 peculiar in the author's intellectual nature. But we see here 
 only the better phases of his nature, only the symbols of his 
 juster action; for his harsh experience had deprived him of 
 all faith, in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon 
 the numberless complexities of the social world, and the 
 whole system with him was an imposture. This convic- 
 tion gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable 
 character. Still, though he regarded society as composed 
 altogether of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not 
 of that kind which enabled him to cope with villainy, while 
 it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success 
 of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian, in 
 Bulwer's novel of ' The Caxtons.' Passion, in him, compre- 
 hended many of the worst emotions which militate against 
 human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you 
 raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his 
 cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural ad- 
 vantages of this poor boy his beauty, his readiness, the 
 daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmos- 
 phere had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an 
 arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into 
 prejudices against him. Irascible, envious bad enough, but 
 not the worst for these salient angles were all varnished 
 over with a cold repellent cynicism his passions vented 
 themselves in sneers. There seemed in him no moral sus- 
 ceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, 
 little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a
 
 " THE PALACE OF ART " 2O5 
 
 morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called 
 ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his 
 species only the hard wish to succeed not shine, not serve 
 succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world 
 which galled his self-conceit." 
 
 And my last quotation is from Tennyson's " Palace 
 of Art." His picture of the unbelieving soul who in 
 that habitation enthrones herself seems a description 
 of Foe's ambition and of Poe's end : 
 
 " ' I take possession of man's mind and deed. 
 
 I care not what the sects may brawl. 
 I sit as God holding no form of creed, 
 But contemplating all.' 
 
 " Full oft the riddle of the painful earth 
 
 Flash'd thro' her as she sat alone, 
 Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, 
 And intellectual throne. 
 
 "And so she throve and prosper'd; so three years 
 
 She prosper'd; on the fourth she fell, 
 Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, 
 Struck thro' with pangs of hell. 
 
 " Lest she should fail and perish utterly, 
 
 '.God, before whom ever lie bare 
 
 Th.e abysmal deeps of personality, 
 
 Plagued her with sore despair. 
 
 " Deep dread and loathing of her solitude 
 
 Fell on her, from which mood was born 
 Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood 
 Laughter at her self-scorn. 
 
 " ' What! is not this my place of strength,' she said, 
 
 ' My spacious mansion built for me, 
 Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid 
 Since my first memory?'
 
 2O6 THE LAST WORDS OF POE 
 
 " But in dark corners of her palace stood 
 
 Uncertain shapes; and unawares 
 On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, 
 And horrible nightmares, 
 
 " And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, 
 
 And, with dim fretted foreheads all, 
 On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, 
 That stood against the wall. 
 
 " She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, 
 
 Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, 
 Lay there exiled from eternal God, 
 Lost to her place and name; 
 
 " And death and life she hated equally, 
 And nothing saw, for her despair, 
 But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, 
 No comfort anywhere; 
 
 " She howl'd aloud, ' I am on fire within. 
 
 There comes no murmur of reply. 
 What is it that will take away my sin, 
 And save me lest I die? ' " 
 
 Did Poe, in his last hour, feel his need and beg for 
 mercy? Let us hope that this was his meaning, when 
 he cried, " Lord, help my poor soul ! " and let us hope 
 that He who had mercy upon the penitent thief had 
 mercy upon him.
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH 
 LONGFELLOW
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH 
 LONGFELLOW 
 
 THAT is a great day in one's history when he gets 
 his first view of the beauty and the mystery of poetry. 
 Far-reaching vistas open before him a new world 
 of wonder and delight. The poet who awakens his 
 soul to see what the poet himself saw, and so creates 
 in him the poetic instinct, becomes to him a sort of 
 demigod, and is worshiped forever after. I begin 
 my essay on Longfellow with vivid recollection of the 
 admiration, and even awe, with which he first inspired 
 me. He introduced me to literature, and gave me the 
 freedom of the mind. His " Psalm of Life " encour- 
 aged me to think that I too might make my life sub- 
 lime. And what he did for me he did for a multitude 
 of others. The excellent biography written by Samuel 
 Longfellow, his brother, gives extracts from many 
 letters of men well known, which show that the poet's 
 early productions were germs from which sprang a 
 great literary harvest. 
 
 My purpose in this essay, however, is to disclose 
 even a larger influence of Longfellow than this upon 
 individual writers. His influence was national. He 
 rose to fame in a time of comparative uncouthness 
 and mediocrity. We were too young for literary ele- 
 gance, and too practical to appreciate ideal creations. 
 
 209
 
 2IO THE PARENTS OF LONGFELLOW 
 
 Longfellow bridged the gulf between us and the past, 
 between us and Europe, between us and the whole 
 world of romance. He was one of the first to profit 
 by absorbing foreign culture and by importing it into 
 America. His liberal, loving, sympathetic spirit was 
 a garden-plot in which plants hitherto exotic were 
 nourished for distribution over our whole broad com- 
 monwealth. If Bryant was the father of American 
 poetry, Longfellow was as certainly its first culti- 
 vator and enricher. With a broader view of life than 
 Bryant's, a finer sense of form than Emerson's, a keener 
 apprehension of ideal beauty than Whittier's, a sounder 
 morality than Poe's, he was our first all-round poet and 
 teacher of poetry, and of all our American poets the 
 most beloved. 
 
 The true poet is born, not made, and he owes much 
 to his ancestry. Providence ordained that Longfellow 
 should come of good stock. His father was a lawyer 
 of integrity and courtesy, social and public-spirited, a 
 graduate of Harvard College and a genuine scholar. 
 He was so highly esteemed that his fellow citizens 
 chose him to be their representative in Congress. The 
 government of the family was kindly, but strict. The 
 father kept watch over his children's education, criti- 
 cizing their youthful productions, and directing their 
 thoughts to God, as their Creator, Preserver, and 
 Friend. From his mother our poet probably derived 
 his gifts of imagination and of sympathy. She was 
 beautiful in person and gracious in demeanor. In her 
 early days she was fond of gaiety. Music and dancing 
 had great attractions for her. She loved nature also, 
 even in its wilder and more sublime aspects, and thun-
 
 ENVIRONMENT OF LONGFELLOW'S BOYHOOD 21 1 
 
 der-storms were her delight. But she was, above all, 
 a woman of old-fashioned piety; though her love of 
 Bible and sermon and psalm was accompanied by in- 
 terest in romance and by endless ministrations to the 
 poor. She was the confidante of her children, the cor- 
 rector of their faults, but also the recipient of their 
 joyful and hopeful confessions. If parentage alone 
 could make a poet, Longfellow was in this respect 
 richly blest. 
 
 It is also true that the poet is made, and not born. 
 He owes as much to nurture as he owes to nature. 
 Who shall say how much of Longfellow's power was 
 the fruit of his environment and of his education? 
 His poem, " My Lost Youth," is a memorial of the 
 strong influence exerted upon him by his home in Port- 
 land, his outlook over Casco Bay, and his wandering 
 in Deering's Woods. Casco Bay, in full view of Port- 
 land, was the scene of a naval battle in the war of 
 1812, upon which the boy of five years gazed with 
 wonder, and the impression of which he never lost : 
 
 I remember the sea-fight far away, 
 How it thundered o'er the tide! 
 And the dead captains, as they lay 
 In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay 
 Where they in battle died. 
 
 And the sound of that mournful song 
 Goes through me with a thrill: 
 " A boy's will is the wind's will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 " The shadows of Deering's Woods," behind the town, 
 were remembered as the scene of " friendships old " 
 and " early loves " :
 
 212 "THE BOOKISH LONGFELLOW" 
 
 And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, 
 
 And with joy that is almost pain 
 My heart goes back to wander there, 
 And among the dreams of the days that were, 
 I find my lost youth again. 
 
 And the strange and beautiful song, 
 The groves are repeating it still: 
 " A boy's will is the wind's will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 
 
 He does well to close each stanza with two lines of 
 that old Lapland song; for " the child is father of the 
 man," and " beginnings make endings." 
 
 Nature and nurture act and react upon each other. 
 The boy Longfellow inherited from his mother a 
 sprightliness and impressibility which enamored him 
 with singing and dancing. His father seems to have 
 added a quiet and reserve of manner, which appeared 
 in his avoidance of everything noisy or violent. As a 
 schoolboy, he did work equal to that of classmates 
 twice his age. He was a lover of books, and even 
 thus early merited the characterization of a later critic 
 who called him " the bookish Longfellow." His home 
 was fairly well stocked with works of poetry and prose, 
 and the boy devoured them. But the first book that 
 fascinated him, and roused his ambition, was " The 
 Sketch Book " of Washington Irving. " Whenever 
 I open its pages," he says, " I open also that mysterious 
 door which leads back into the haunted chambers of 
 youth." And the first poet to whom he made allegiance 
 was William Cullen Bryant. In his later years he 
 acknowledges his indebtedness, and quotes Dante's ad- 
 dress of gratitude to Vergil, " Thou art my master and 
 my author."
 
 LONGFELLOW S COLLEGE CLASSMATES 213 
 
 At the age of fifteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin 
 College at an advanced standing, and there at eighteen 
 he was graduated. The institution had been founded 
 only twenty years before, at Brunswick, twenty-five 
 miles from his home in Portland. His father was one 
 of its trustees. It had begun with but eight students, 
 and a single building which was the residence of presi- 
 dent and pupils alike. In our poet's .time it was still 
 a small college, but it had been adopted by the new 
 State of Maine, and many distinguished citizens had 
 sent their sons thither. James Bowdoin had presented 
 it with a costly collection of paintings, drawings, and 
 minerals a collection which he had made in Europe, 
 and which was finer than any other that America then 
 possessed. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a member of 
 Longfellow's class. He was a shy and reserved young 
 man, then little known to his fellows, but with whom 
 in after years our poet formed one of his warmest 
 friendships. John S. C. Abbott was also a classmate; 
 and Franklin Pierce, afterward President of the 
 United States, was a student in the college. There was 
 much of emulation and ambition in that little company, 
 and it was here and now that both Longfellow and 
 Hawthorne made their first ventures into the field of 
 literature. 
 
 Biographers have not sufficiently noted the fact that 
 Maine, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was 
 still a home of the American Indian. Its lakes were 
 full of trout, and its forests full of deer. The Penob- 
 scot or Passamaquoddy chief, in his paint and wam- 
 pum and feathers, was a frequent visitor to the scat- 
 tered villages; and, though he was somewhat tamed
 
 214 LONGFELLOW S LITERARY AMBITION 
 
 and civilized, legends of his former savagery were rife 
 at every fireside. Longfellow became interested in 
 Indian life and manners ; he read Heckewelder's " Ac- 
 count " of their history and customs ; here was the 
 germ of his future " Hiawatha." Now too, he begins 
 to feel the poetic impulse and to write verses. But it 
 is not the Algonquin or Ojibway chief who furnishes 
 the theme; it is rather some maiden, of fairer com- 
 plexion and tenderer spirit, who inspires the youthful 
 poet. As a specimen of his earliest versifying, I may 
 quote the first and the last stanzas of his poem ad- 
 dressed " To lanthe " : 
 
 When upon the western cloud 
 
 Hang day's fading roses, 
 When the linnet sings aloud 
 
 And the twilight closes, 
 As I mark the moss-grown spring 
 
 By the twisted holly, 
 Pensive thoughts of thee shall bring 
 
 Love's own melancholy. 
 
 Then when tranquil evening throws 
 
 Twilight shades above thee, 
 And when early morning glows, 
 
 Think on those that love thee! 
 For an interval of years 
 
 We ere long must sever, 
 But the hearts that love endears 
 
 Shall be parted never. 
 
 The youth of eighteen was already seeking his voca- 
 tion, and love-dreams gave place to preparation for 
 the work of life. He had written many college poems, 
 and some of them had been printed in the " United 
 States Literary Gazette," published in Boston, He
 
 LONGFELLOW A PROFESSOR AT BOWDOIN 21 5 
 
 wrote to his father that he eagerly aspired after future 
 eminence in literature; "my whole soul," he says, 
 " burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought 
 centers in it." But he counted the cost, and knew that 
 acquaintance with other languages, and familiarity 
 with their best authors, were an indispensable condi- 
 tion of success. At first he aimed only at a post-gradu- 
 ate year at Cambridge, with a view to the acquisition 
 of Italian. Better things, however, were in store for 
 him. His path was brightened, at his graduation, by 
 an invitation from the board of trustees to the pro- 
 fessorship of Modern Languages, for the establishment 
 of which Madame Bowdoin had given to the college 
 one thousand dollars. The invitation was coupled with 
 a permission to spend three years in preparation, by 
 residence abroad. It shows great confidence in his 
 scholarly gifts, his teaching ability, and the soundness 
 of his character, that such an invitation should be ex- 
 tended to a young man who had yet three years to 
 spend before he reached his majority. The invitation 
 was accepted with delight, and after some months of 
 delay, during which he 'read law in his father's office, 
 he .set sail in an ocean packet for Europe. 
 
 Foreign travel was in those days far more rare 
 than now. It was all the more a mark of distinction. 
 For an American, it meant a widening of view, a re-r 
 lease from narrow prejudices, an inspiration to better 
 work. The sight of medieval cathedrals and palaces 
 made the wooden architecture of his own country seem 
 like the card-houses of children. Painting and sculp- 
 ture revealed to him for the first time the glories of 
 art. Other languages and literatures showed him
 
 216 LONGFELLOW'S FIRST STAY ABROAD 
 
 both the merits and the shortcomings of his own. 
 The poverty and oppression of vast populations roused 
 in him a new pride and gratitude, as he compared them 
 with the free and well-to-do life of his native land. Per- 
 haps the most important, however, of all the benefits 
 of a prolonged stay abroad was his introduction to the 
 past the past of literature, politics, and history, and 
 to that past the acquisition of foreign languages opened 
 the door. 
 
 No young man ever entered the great European 
 world with more of advantage than did young Long- 
 fellow. Delicate in all his tastes, a born hater of the 
 rough and unseemly, ambitious and industrious, drink- 
 ing in knowledge at every pore, provided with letters 
 which admitted him at once to the society of litterateurs 
 and diplomats, with a gentle and sincere address which 
 made friends of all who met him, he found everywhere 
 the very teachers and helpers of whom he stood in 
 need. Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, London, in turn, 
 were the scene of his studies and associations. In 
 Spain he made a bosom friend of Washington Irving; 
 in Italy he had confidential 'talks with George W. 
 Greene, the historian, whose letters are now a chief 
 source of information with regard to our poet's inner 
 life. In this historian's dedication to his friend of 
 his " Life of General Greene," we read : 
 
 " Thirty-nine years ago, this month of April, you and I 
 were together at Naples. . . We were young then, with life all 
 before us; and in the midst of the records of a great past our 
 thoughts would still turn to our own future. . . One day I 
 shall never forget it we returned at sunset from a long after- 
 noon amid the statues and relics of the Museo Bourbonico. 
 . . We went up to the flat roof of the house, where, as we
 
 LONGFELLOW AS A TEACHER 217 
 
 walked, we could look down into the crowded street and out 
 upon the wonderful bay and across to Ischia and Capri and 
 Sorrento, and over the housetops and villas and vineyards 
 to Vesuvius. . . And over all, with a thrill like that of solemn 
 music, fell the splendor of the Italian sunset. We talked and 
 mused by turns, till the twilight deepened and the stars came 
 forth to mingle their mysterious influences with the overmas- 
 tering magic of the scene. It was then that you unfolded to 
 me your plans of life, and showed me from what ' deep cis- 
 terns' you had already learned to draw. From that day, the 
 office of literature took a new place in my thoughts. I felt 
 its forming power as I had never felt it before." 
 
 Three years of this wandering yet busy life made 
 Longfellow a new man. Softened and enlarged in 
 spirit, he came back to his own country, full of am- 
 bition to impart the culture which he had himself 
 acquired. The little college became the theater of 
 prelections and conversations in which French, Ger- 
 man, and Italian were made to give up their treasures 
 to American youth. He taught by example as well 
 as by precept. He combined graciousness and dig- 
 nity, a cheerful familiarity and serious intent to teach. 
 No wonder that the stiff routine of college instruction 
 received something of a shock, and that the new pro- 
 fessor became exceedingly popular. In that day real 
 comradeship between teachers and students was al- 
 most unknown. It was a great gain to have one pro- 
 fessor who could sufficiently unbend to talk familiarly 
 with his pupils about the things in which they were 
 interested. Longfellow did something to introduce 
 an improved method into American pedagogy. 
 
 He was not satisfied with, influencing the narrow 
 circle of the college. Wider fields invited him. An 
 inner impulse to literary production had long possessed 
 Q
 
 2i8 LONGFELLOW'S FIRST PROSE WORK 
 
 him. It had been repressed by the thought that he 
 lacked both ideas and power to express them. Now 
 he determined to trust his destiny and to make the ven- 
 ture. His first impulse was to make his appeal to the 
 public in prose, and Irving's " Sketch Book " suggested 
 the general plan. It was in 1833, during the last of his 
 five and a half years at Bowdoin, that he published 
 " Outre-Mer." It crystallized what his years of travel 
 had left in solution. The jottings of his diary fur- 
 nished most of the material. We read " Outre-Mer " 
 to-day with a sort of admiring curiosity ; it has interest 
 as a chapter in the history of literature ; it would seem 
 only an effusion of callow youth but for the occa- 
 sional apparition in it of original genius. It is a 
 medley of impressions, incidents, descriptions, and 
 stories, with no more organic unity than that of Boc- 
 caccio's " Tales." But Longfellow, like Milton, had 
 dedicated himself to literature, and this was his first 
 offering to the Muse. It showed receptiveness of no 
 ordinary sort; but the constructive period was yet to 
 come. 
 
 Until now, his college experiences had been those of 
 the courteous and popular schoolmaster. He looked 
 upon his profession, he writes, " from a far nobler and 
 more elevated point of view than many do. I take an 
 inexpressible delight in watching the gradual dawn 
 of intellect in the youthful mind." Little by little, 
 however, the routine of teaching became burdensome, 
 and he longed for greater freedom. His literary 
 aspirations demanded more of leisure for original 
 composition. He was forced to teach grammar, he 
 says, when he would fain have written poems. A
 
 LONGFELLOW'S FIRST GREAT SORROW 219 
 
 larger outlook, with less of drudgery, presented itself 
 when, in December, 1834, he was invited to succeed 
 George Ticknor as Professor of Modern Languages 
 at Harvard. Here too, he was permitted to spend a 
 year in preparatory study abroad, and he accepted 
 the new position gladly. But now he did not go to 
 Europe alone. He had married Miss Mary Storer 
 Potter, a Portland acquaintance of his earlier years, 
 a young lady who knew her Greek and Latin, and 
 whose gentle and affectionate disposition combined 
 with beauty of countenance to make her markedly 
 attractive. The one mishap of Longfellow's second 
 stay in foreign ports was her sad death in Rotter- 
 dam. It was the first great sorrow of his life, and he 
 has fitly commemorated it in his poem entitled " The 
 Footsteps of Angels " : 
 
 When the hours of Day are numbered, 
 
 And the voices of the Night 
 Wake the better soul, that slumbered, 
 
 To a holy, calm delight; 
 
 Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
 And, like phantoms grim and tall, 
 
 Shadows from the fitful firelight 
 Dance upon the parlor wall; 
 
 Then the forms of the departed 
 
 Enter at the open door; 
 The beloved, the true-hearted, 
 
 Come to visit me once more; 
 
 They, the holy ones and weakly, 
 Who the cross of suffering bore, 
 
 Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
 Spake with us on earth no more!
 
 22O TURNING-POINT IN LONGFELLOW S LIFE 
 
 And with them the Being Beauteous, 
 Who unto my youth was given, 
 
 More than all things else to love me, 
 And is now a saint in heaven. 
 
 With a slow and noiseless footstep 
 Comes that messenger divine, 
 
 Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
 Lays her gentle hand in mine. 
 
 And she sits and gazes at me 
 
 With those deep and tender eyes, 
 
 Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 
 Looking downward from the skies. 
 
 Uttered not, yet comprehended, 
 Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, 
 
 Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 
 Breathing from her lips of air. 
 
 Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, 
 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 If I but remember only 
 
 Such as these have lived and died! 
 
 The death of Long-fellow's wife was the turning- 
 point in his literary history. It gave him deeper views 
 of life, and made him more original and constructive 
 in his thinking. There is a marked difference between 
 " Outre-Mer," published before his second European 
 tour, and " Hyperion," printed after his return. The 
 former has a careless if not a flippant gaiety, which 
 often seems a mere overflow of youthful spirits. The 
 latter is the serious attempt to depict a young man's 
 striving after ideal excellence in thought and action. 
 " Outre-Mer " is a chance collection of matters sepa- 
 rately interesting, but bound together by no thread but
 
 THE RISE OF UNITARIANISM 221 
 
 that of personal adventure. " Hyperion " is a con- 
 nected tale; it rises to a much higher level of aspira- 
 tion; it has a unity of conception, to which each part 
 is subordinate and contributory. This change evinces 
 in the author not only an intellectual but also a moral 
 progress. Affliction has sobered and enriched him. 
 He can now become the poet of domestic affection, 
 and can describe joys and sorrows that are universal. 
 To be a great poet, however, requires more than this; 
 only the highest truth can enable him to understand 
 the lowest; he needs to appreciate the facts of sin and 
 redemption ; in other words, to know' human nature in 
 its normal, and in its abnormal, relations to God. 
 
 It was the old Congregational Calvinism that pre- 
 vailed at Brunswick and that dominated the college. 
 We must concede that the federal theology, unaccom- 
 panied by an experience of vital union with Christ, 
 was a theory of religion puzzling to the intellect and 
 repugnant to the moral sense. Regarded as a merely 
 forensic and governmental expression of historical and 
 biological facts, it has justification; and, in the light of 
 these, the Pauline doctrine of Scripture is comprehen- 
 sible. But doctrine always tends to become traditional. 
 After the religious revival under Jonathan Edwards 
 had spent its force, there grew up a new scholasticism, 
 which was more speculative than religious. Minor 
 and incidental points of belief came to be insisted on, 
 as if they were fundamental and essential tp salvation. 
 The younger generation refused to accept them. The 
 result was the Unitarian defection. At the beginning, 
 it might have been prevented by a greater tolerance 
 and a less bigoted dogmatism on the part of orthodox
 
 222 LONGFELLOW UNEVANGELICAL 
 
 theologians. In the end, the movement reached its 
 logical goal, and denial of inspiration, Trinity, and 
 atonement, followed. 
 
 Longfellow's home influences had been those of the 
 liberal sort. Traditional doctrine was already some- 
 what modified in the ministrations of the Portland 
 pulpit, and his father had succeeded in securing some 
 changes in the church's creed. Above all, that creed 
 was interpreted by the Christlike lives of his father 
 and his mother. At Bowdoin College, he was brought 
 for the first time into an atmosphere of traditional 
 orthodoxy, yet at the same time an atmosphere of in- 
 quiry. The young intellect of that day asked reasons 
 for its faith. The minutiae of theology did not interest 
 our eager student. He lacked as yet the inner experi- 
 ence that would make such questions absorbing. A 
 sort of religious indifference took possession of him. 
 His attendance at religious services became somewhat 
 perfunctory. He longed for a more mild and ethical 
 preaching; and when a Unitarian church was organ- 
 ized at Brunswick, he gave it whatever support lay 
 within his power. There is little doubt that his en- 
 thusiastic willingness to accept a Harvard professor- 
 ship was to some extent influenced by his desire to 
 emerge into a freer theological, as well as a freer in- 
 tellectual, field. From this time, Longfellow was an 
 avowed Unitarian. 
 
 In his Inaugural Address at Bowdoin, he had given 
 utterance to a far-reaching truth, in his characteriza- 
 tion of the work he hoped to do. He perceived the 
 religious bearings of that work, and spoke of the feel- 
 ing that prompted it:
 
 LONGFELLOW A CHRISTIAN POET 223 
 
 It is this religious feeling, this changing of the finite for 
 the infinite, this grasping after the invisible things of another 
 and a higher world, which marks the spirit of modern litera- 
 ture. 
 
 What he thought that " religious feeling " to be, seems 
 indicated in one of his early letters : 
 
 Human systems have done much to deaden the true spirit 
 of devotion and to render religion merely speculative. Would 
 it not be better for mankind if we should consider it as a 
 cheerful and social companion, given us to go through life 
 with us from childhood to the grave, and to make us hap- 
 pier here as well as hereafter; and not as a stern and chid- 
 ing taskmaster, to whom we must cling at last through mere 
 despair, because we have nothing else on earth to which we 
 can cling? I love that view of Christianity which sets it in 
 the light of a cheerful, kind-hearted friend, and which gives 
 its thoughts a noble and a liberal turn. The doctrines of 
 men have long been taught as the doctrines of an infinitely 
 higher authority, and many have been led to think that faith 
 without works is an active and saving principle. 
 
 Longfellow was by nature and by education a Pela- 
 gian. The problem of moral evil never seriously vexed 
 him. Born and nurtured amid peaceful and moral 
 surroundings, with a quiet and studious disposition, 
 gentle and social in his ways, he never knew any deep 
 conviction of sin, never felt the need of an atoning 
 Saviour, never shrank from the holiness of God. Love, 
 compassion, pity these divine attributes seemed to 
 him all-inclusive. That God is righteous, and that man 
 is fallen, never made him tremble. The self-condem- 
 nation of Augustine, and his ecstatic praise for re- 
 demption, had no place in his experience. And yet, 
 in a certain unevangelical way, he was a Christian 
 poet. One of his earliest ambitions was that of writ-
 
 224 KAVANAGH AND HYPERION 
 
 ing a poem, the title of which should be " Christus," 
 and in which apostolic, medieval, and modern Chris- 
 tianity should be exhibited in one great trilogy. This 
 ambition haunted him for nearly half a century, but 
 was not realized until 1873. The translation of Dante's 
 " Divina Comedia " is another indication that our poet 
 was in love with Christian themes. He never reached 
 Dante's heights, because he had never sounded Dante's 
 depths. It was only the superficial aspects of Chris- 
 tianity which he described. He did not understand 
 the plan of God ; but he did accept its results. Let us 
 be thankful that, even so, he could give comfort to 
 multitudes of God's children. 
 
 I have said that the death of Mrs. Longfellow, in 
 the midst of his preparation abroad for his work at 
 Harvard, was the turning-point in his career. From 
 this time his literary activity is constructive and orig- 
 inal. " Kavanagh " is an idyl, full of poetic mate- 
 rial, but with so little of plot and with so much of sen- 
 timent, that novel-writing seems beyond our author's 
 powers. Its motto, however, taken from Shakespeare, 
 is significant : 
 
 " The flighty purpose never is o'ertook 
 Unless the deed go with it." 
 
 This intimates that the writer is now bent on actual 
 achievement. " Hyperion," though printed before 
 " Kavanagh," is really his last work of importance in 
 prose. Its motto is suggested by his recent affliction : 
 
 Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back 
 again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to
 
 " THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT " 225 
 
 meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly 
 heart. 
 
 These exercises in prose show industry and learning, 
 together with the delicacy and skill of a literary artist, 
 but they were only preparatory studies. Longfellow's 
 real work was yet to come. 
 
 On his second European journey, the Rhine, Heidel- 
 berg, Switzerland, Paris, in succession, diverted him; 
 but in 1836, after fifteen months of travel, he returned 
 to Cambridge, where he taught for the next seventeen 
 years, and where he lived until his death in 1882. 
 With his residence in Cambridge began a new period 
 in his history. He seems now to have discovered his 
 vocation, and to have devoted to it all his powers. 
 It was the vocation of the poet. Its public inaugura- 
 tion consisted in the printing of his first book of poems, 
 " The Voices of the Night." It is doubtful whether 
 any other work of a poetical sort has ever had so im- 
 mediate recognition and success, or so great an in- 
 fluence in the shaping of future literary production, in 
 America at least, as had this first venture of Longfel- 
 low. " A Psalm of Life " became the quickener of 
 ten thousand youthful hearts, who thereafter repeated 
 to themselves the poet's words of courage : 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 Footprints on the sands of time; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 Seeing, shall take heart again.
 
 226 INFLUENCE OF LONGFELLOW'S POEMS 
 
 Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labor and to wait. 
 
 These poems are soothing as well as inspiring. Long 
 labor has made them simple. They are faultless in 
 point of taste. They appeal not only to the heroic, 
 but also to the pathetic, elements of human nature. 
 Some of them are the author's efforts to relieve his 
 own deep depression, and they naturally minister com- 
 fort to others. They are not distinctly Christian 
 poems, but they are by-products of Christianity, and 
 we cannot imagine them as written in ante-Christian 
 times. We may apply to them Longfellow's own 
 words in " The Day is Done " : 
 
 Such songs have power to quiet 
 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 And come like the benediction 
 
 That follows after prayer. 
 
 Then read from the treasured volume 
 
 The poem of thy choice, 
 And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
 
 The beauty of thy voice. 
 
 And the night shall be filled with music, 
 And the cares, that infest the day, 
 
 Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away. 
 
 From this time forward our poet's life was one of 
 almost uninterrupted prosperity and of ever-increasing 
 fame. His second marriage, to Frances Elizabeth 
 Appleton, soon put him in possession of the Craigie
 
 AMERICA S TRULY NATIONAL POET 22? 
 
 House, the noblest mansion in Cambridge, the former 
 headquarters of General George Washington at the 
 beginning of the Revolutionary war. Here he dis- 
 pensed a liberal hospitality. He entertained, and was 
 entertained. The social side of his nature was quick- 
 ened, and he was inspired to literary production. He 
 was ready for his task; and, though somewhat handi- 
 capped by his college duties, he managed to derive even 
 from them new stimulus and inspiration. He came 
 gradually to be recognized as our most representative 
 American poet; and that, because he combined the 
 broadest literary outlook with the deepest knowledge 
 of the human heart. If we are asked to name the chief 
 poet of America, we must answer that Longfellow is 
 our poet most truly national; and this verdict is ren- 
 dered not only by Americans, but by the literary world 
 at large. This place in the world's esteem he won by 
 right ; because, with all his knowledge of foreign litera- 
 tures and authors, he avoided the sentimentality of 
 European romanticism, while at the same time he glori- 
 fied the sweet and tender instincts of human nature. 
 Culture had broadened his views of life, but he had 
 learned that the sources of true poetry are not without, 
 but within. We may almost say that the last stanza of 
 the " Prelude," in this first published book of poetry, 
 lays down the program of his future life : 
 
 "Look, then, into thine heart, and write! 
 
 Yes, into Life's deep stream! 
 All forms of sorrow and delight, 
 All solemn Voices of the Night, 
 That can soothe thee, or affright, 
 
 Be these henceforth thy theme!"
 
 228 DEATH OF LONGFELLOW'S SECOND WIFE 
 
 It is a long stride forward, but I must here take 
 account of the second great sorrow of Longfellow's 
 life. After eighteen years of happy wedlock, his beau- 
 tiful and accomplished wife met with an agonizing 
 death. She had been sealing up in separate packages 
 the clippings of her children's hair, when a lighted 
 match fell to the floor and set her dress on fire. Her 
 husband came to her relief, and was himself severely 
 burned. His help was vain ; she died next day ; he was 
 left in a distress so deep, that for months he could 
 not speak of it; the effect of it indeed never left him; it 
 colored all his views of life. To one who exhorted him 
 to " bear his cross," he replied, " Yes, but what if one 
 be stretched upon it ! " And to George William Curtis 
 he made answer : " I can write no word. God's 
 will be done! I am too utterly wretched and over- 
 whelmed, to the eyes of others, outwardly, calm ; but 
 inwardly, bleeding to death." In his journal, many 
 days after, he added these lines of Tennyson : 
 
 "Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace; 
 
 Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, 
 While the stars burn, the moons increase, 
 And the great ages onward roll." 
 
 " Known and unknown, human, divine; 
 Sweet human hand and lips and eye; 
 Dear heavenly friend that canst not die; 
 Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine." 
 
 Like Bryant, Longfellow strove to console himself 
 by translating one of the great poets, choosing Dante. 
 The first sonnet prefixed to this work, which was com- 
 pleted in 1866, contains the suggestive words:
 
 LONGFELLOW'S PRODUCTIVE YEARS 229 
 
 I enter here from day to day, 
 And leave my burden at this minster gate. 
 
 It was a long time before he plucked up courage to 
 write any verses of his own. Among the verses then 
 written, there was found in a portfolio after his death, 
 the poem entitled " The Cross of Snow " ; and that 
 poem is the best proof of his depth of feeling, and at 
 the same time his inability, with all his gifts of ex- 
 pression, to put that feeling into words : 
 
 In the long, sleepless watches of the night, 
 
 A gentle face the face of one long dead 
 Looks at me from the wall, where round its head 
 The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. 
 
 Here in this room she died; and soul more white 
 Never through martyrdom of fire was led 
 To its repose; nor can in books be read 
 The legend of a life more benedight. 
 
 There is a mountain in the distant West 
 That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines 
 Displays a cross of snow upon its side. 
 
 Such is the cross I wear upon my breast 
 
 These eighteen years, through all the changing 
 
 scenes 
 And seasons, changeless since the day she died. 
 
 The years that intervened between these two great 
 sorrows, the years from 1843 to 1861, were our poet's 
 most productive years. Providence had favored him 
 with every advantage and facility. He had passed 
 from adolescence to manhood; he had mastered the 
 languages and literatures of Europe; he was the idol 
 of a notable literary circle ; Agassiz, Hawthorne, Hil- 
 lard, Felton, Sumner, Prescott, were his friends; in 
 fact, association with them was so close, that there was
 
 230 " THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH " 
 
 talk of a " Mutual Admiration Society " ; and, when 
 his work was reviewed by one of its members, a critic 
 wrote after its title, " Insured in The Mutual." But 
 Longfellow was never led astray, either by criticism or 
 by applause. He was an industrious and conscientious 
 workman, and even the slightest of his poems bore 
 marks of scrupulous care and artistic skill. A stanza 
 of " The Village Blacksmith " well expresses the spirit 
 of his work : 
 
 Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 
 
 Onward through life he goes; 
 Each morning sees some task begin, 
 
 Each evening sees it close; 
 Something attempted, something done, 
 
 Has earned a night's repose. 
 
 During this comparatively youthful period, Long- 
 fellow gave to the world the best fruits of his brain 
 and heart. No products of his later years, for purely 
 poetic merit, surpass " Excelsior," " The Belfry of 
 Bruges," " The Rainy Day," and " Mezzo Cammin." 
 This last sonnet, written at Boppard on the Rhine in 
 1842, just before leaving for home, so nobly expresses 
 the spirit of his life, that I cannot refrain from quot- 
 ing it : 
 
 Half of my life is gone, and I have let 
 
 The years slip from me and have not fulfilled 
 The aspiration of my youth, to build 
 Some tower of song with lofty parapet. 
 
 Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret 
 Of restless passions that would not be stilled, 
 But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, 
 Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; 
 
 Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
 
 " EVANGELINE 23! 
 
 Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights, 
 A city in the twilight dim and vast, 
 With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming 
 
 lights, . 
 
 And hear above me on the autumnal blast 
 The cataract of Death far thundering from the 
 heights. 
 
 Here is true poetry, and with it a modesty equal to 
 ihat of the youthful Milton. Was this lofty ambition 
 ever realized? With all our admiration 'for Long- 
 fellow's gifts, we must hold that he was most success- 
 ful in his shorter poems, and that he lacked the genius 
 to construct an epic. His technical skill increased with 
 years, but his creative power waned. Nor was he a 
 dramatic poet. I do not now have in mind " The 
 Spanish Student," which is a comparatively juvenile 
 production, with romantic reminiscences of Byron and 
 of Goethe, though it lacks the sentiment of the one and 
 the fire of the other. I refer to such works as " Evan- 
 geline," " Hiawatha," " The Courtship of Miles Stand- 
 ish," and most of all, to what Longfellow intended 
 to make the great and final work of his life, his poem 
 entitled " Christus." Let me say a word of each of 
 these in succession. " Evangeline " is an idealization 
 of true love, with its patience and faithfulness. The 
 Acadian maiden, separated from her lover on their 
 marriage day, seeks him for years, only to find him at 
 last an old man dying in a hospital : 
 
 Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents 
 
 unuttered 
 Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue 
 
 would have spoken. 
 
 Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him, 
 Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom.
 
 232 " THE SONG OF HIAWATHA " 
 
 Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into 
 
 darkness, 
 As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. 
 
 " Evangeline " is probably the most popular of our 
 poet's works. It stirs deep founts of feeling, and the 
 pathos of the story is undeniable. Hawthorne gave 
 Longfellow the theme, but our poet worked it out in 
 verse. The hexameter has never been better domes- 
 ticated in English. Goethe's " Hermann and Doro- 
 thea " is its only poetical rival, and the work of Goethe 
 is inferior in its direct appeal to the heart. The power 
 of " Evangeline " is proved by an ever-increasing in- 
 flux of pilgrims into Nova Scotia, and an ever-increas- 
 ing interest in the haunts of Gabriel and Evangeline. 
 Grand-Pre and the Basin of Minas are consecrated 
 localities. Though the " forest primeval " has now 
 disappeared, the traveler still imagines the scene as it 
 was two centuries ago, and repeats to himself the words 
 with which the poet begins his story : 
 
 This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the 
 
 hemlocks, 
 Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the 
 
 twilight, 
 
 Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, 
 Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their 
 
 bosoms. 
 
 " The Song of Hiawatha," more than any other 
 work of literature, more even than the novels of 
 Cooper, preserves to us the spirit and the life of the 
 American Indian. The Finnish poem of " Kalevala " 
 suggested the meter, and Schoolcraft's " Algic Re- 
 searches " furnished most of the legends. There is a
 
 " THE SONG OF HIAWATHA " . 233 
 
 religious element in the story, which shows the bent 
 of Longfellow's mind in matters of theology, and 
 which we must not fail to take account of. In his 
 " Introduction," he makes appeal to the reader: 
 
 Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
 Who have faith in God and Nature, 
 Who believe that in all ages 
 Every human heart is human, 
 That in even savage bosoms 
 There are longings, yearnings, strivings 
 For the good they comprehend not, 
 That the feeble hands and helpless, 
 Groping blindly in the darkness, 
 Touch God's right hand in that darkness 
 And are lifted up and strengthened; 
 Listen to this simple story, 
 To this Song of Hiawatha! 
 
 The story of Hiawatha's Childhood, his Fasting, his 
 Friends, his Sailing, his Fishing, his Wooing, his 
 Wedding-feast, of the Ghosts, the Famine, the White 
 Man's Foot, and of Hiawatha's Departure, is an ideal- 
 ized picture of Indian life and Indian religion. The 
 poet has contradicted the dreadful doctrine that the 
 only good Indian is a dead Indian, and has taught us 
 anew that " in every nation he that feareth God and 
 worketh righteousness is acceptable unto him " : 
 
 Thus departed Hiawatha, 
 Hiawatha the Beloved, 
 In the glory of the sunset, 
 In the purple mists of evening, 
 To the regions of the home-wind, 
 Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, 
 To the Islands of the Blessed, 
 To the Kingdom of Ponemah, 
 To the Land of the Hereafter.
 
 COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH " 
 
 " The Courtship of Miles Standish " is a kind of 
 Puritan pastoral, the scene of which is laid, as the 
 poem relates, " In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth, 
 the land of the Pilgrims." John Alden undertakes to 
 win the heart of Priscilla for Miles Standish, although 
 John himself loves her, and only out of loyalty to his 
 friend has undertaken to speak for another : 
 
 But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent 
 
 language, 
 
 Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival, 
 Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes overrunning with 
 
 laughter, 
 
 Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak for yourself, 
 John?" 
 
 And so, all unexpectedly, John Alden wins his bride, 
 and takes her to his home. The hard life of the Pil- 
 grims is seen to have had its sunshine as well as its 
 shadows : 
 
 Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages, 
 Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and 
 
 Isaac, 
 
 Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, 
 Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. 
 So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal 
 
 procession. 
 
 All these longer poems fail to reach the highest 
 mark, by reason of their very profuseness and facility. 
 There is in them too much of merely superficial out- 
 flow. They lack intensity and condensation. This 
 is particularly true in that poem which Longfellow 
 wished to be his greatest the poem entitled " Chris- 
 tus." It was to be an idealized history of Christianity,
 
 " CHRISTUS " 235 
 
 in apostolic, medieval, and modern times, and was to 
 illustrate successively the virtues of faith, hope, and 
 charity. The apostolic portion of the work is called 
 " The Divine Tragedy." This is little more than a 
 somewhat commonplace versification of the story of 
 the Gospels. The second part is entitled " The Golden 
 Legend." It aims to show that, through the darkness 
 of the Middle Ages, there ran a stream of faith, which 
 preserved the apostolic tradition. The third part is 
 called " The New England Tragedies," and this pre- 
 sents to us Puritans and Quakers, as still aiming 
 to subdue the world, and to bring in the kingdom of 
 God. The conception is noble, and the execution is 
 often interesting. Yet we must confess that our atten- 
 tion sometimes flags. No paraphrase, whether metrical 
 or prosaic, can improve upon the simple narrative of 
 the Gospels. " The Golden Legend " is an imitation, 
 possibly unconscious, of the second part of Goethe's 
 " Faust," with its symbolic and supernatural para- 
 phernalia a diffuse and dreary application of the 
 Christian " Legend " to actual life. " The New Eng- 
 land Tragedies " come nearest to reality, and seem 
 the only permanently valuable part of the lengthy poem. 
 The fundamental defect in this trilogy is its in- 
 sufficient estimate of Jesus Christ. He is the gentle 
 and sympathizing friend, the model of virtue, the 
 worker of wonders, yes, even the man of sorrows ; but 
 he is not what the New Testament represents him to 
 be Immanuel, God with us, in whom dwelleth all 
 the fulness of the Godhead bodily. His preexistence, 
 incarnation, atonement, and omnipresence with his 
 people, are ignored. One might read " Christus "
 
 236 DEFECTS OF LONGFELLOW'S THEOLOGY 
 
 from beginning to end, and never learn that it is he 
 through whom alone God is revealed, and that only he 
 is the medium through whom God creates, upholds, 
 and redeems. The result is that Christianity is only a 
 " Golden Legend," and there is no personal and pres- 
 ent Christ in Christian history. A mythological atmos- 
 phere envelops the whole story, and it seems only a 
 poet's dream. The fortitude and faith of Puritan and 
 Quaker have no sufficient justification. Our poet's plan 
 is too large for his material. His " Christus " is in- 
 deed a " Mystery " ; for it gives no real explanation of 
 Christianity, or of its permanence and progress in the 
 world. Michelangelo had more insight into the secret, 
 when he painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 
 that majestic figure of the Creator in human form, and 
 filled the whole end of that same chapel with the pic- 
 ture of Christ's Final Judgment. And Jonathan Ed- 
 wards had greater insight still, when he planned a 
 " History of Redemption," which began with eternity 
 past, and concluded with eternity to come, but in which 
 Christ was the only Revealer of God, the only Lord 
 and King. 
 
 Longfellow had neither the genius, nor the faith, of 
 Michelangelo or of Jonathan Edwards. His insuf- 
 ficient estimate of Jesus Christ was the logical conse- 
 quence of his ignorance of the holiness of God, and of 
 the deep damnation of human sin. Sin to him is a mis- 
 fortune and a disease, but never guilt and ruin. The 
 green apple needs only sunshine and rain to ripen it, for 
 there is no worm at the heart. There needs no divine 
 Saviour to redeem, no suffering of the Son of God to 
 reveal the heart of the Father or to win the hearts of
 
 LONGFELLOW S SHORTER POEMS 237 
 
 men. The accusations of conscience and the fearful 
 looking for of judgment are illusions of the unenlight- 
 ened mind. Little sin means a belittled Christ; and of 
 this belittled Christ Longfellow is the apostle. 
 
 Let us remember that the apostles of old were once 
 in Longfellow's state of mind, and even in that state of 
 mind did some preaching of the gospel. They were 
 sent out on a trial-mission, before the resurrection and 
 before Pentecost. They were Christians of an infantile 
 sort, and they had learned some lessons in Christ's 
 kindergarten. In spite of its defects, their message 
 was good news, and it brought comfort to many hearts. 
 So we are thankful for the elements of truth in the 
 poetry of Longfellow, and we doubt not that his 
 poetry has blessed the world. How much greater 
 would have been its power, if he had grasped the truth 
 that Christ is God manifest in the flesh, the atoning 
 and omnipresent Saviour, the guiding force in human 
 history, the arbiter of human destinies, before whom 
 every knee in heaven and earth shall bow ! 
 
 We betake ourselves to Longfellow's shorter poems 
 for a more detailed account of his theology. . His 
 " Hymn for My Brother's Ordination " seems, at first 
 sight, to be an expression of the common Christian 
 faith : 
 
 Christ to the young man said: " Yet one thing more- 
 
 If thou wouldst perfect be, 
 Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, 
 
 And come and follow me!" 
 
 Within this temple Christ again, unseen, 
 
 Those sacred words hath said 
 And his invisible hands to-day have been 
 
 Laid on a young man's head.
 
 238 LONGFELLOW NEITHER SKEPTIC NOR MYSTIC 
 
 And evermore beside him on his way 
 
 The unseen Christ shall move, 
 That he may lean upon his arm and say, 
 
 "Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?" 
 
 Beside him at the marriage feast shall be, 
 
 To make the scene more fair; 
 Beside him in the dark Gethsemane 
 
 Of pain and midnight prayer. 
 
 O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! 
 
 Like the beloved John 
 To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, 
 
 And thus to journey on! 
 
 This is not a prayer to Christ nor an assurance of 
 his personal presence. It is rather an imaginative con- 
 cession to traditional Christian feeling. Longfellow 
 was no critic and no skeptic. He had no sympathy 
 with agnosticism. His bent was rather toward the 
 mystical element in Christianity. But the lack of an 
 inward experience of the power of sin made all his 
 religious conceptions ideal and poetical, rather than 
 definite and practical. Whatever was sweet and beau- 
 tiful pleased him, but he took no particular care to in- 
 vestigate its scientific value. He could appropriate, 
 for purposes of poetry, much of the gospel idea of 
 union with Christ, although he would have been un- 
 willing to grant that this Christ is anything more 
 than are other dear friends who have been long de- 
 parted, but who, as we love to think, are still invisibly 
 ministering to our good. He was as far from the true 
 Christian mysticism as he was from sheer agnosticism. 
 We may well compare his " Hymn for my Brother's 
 Ordination " with the opening lines of Tennyson's " In
 
 LONGFELLOW TENDS TO PAGAN VIEWS 239 
 
 Memoriam," in which are asserted so strongly a faith 
 in Christ's Creatorship and Lordship in the Universe, 
 his possession of the Truth of which human philoso- 
 phies are only fitful gleams, and his rightful claim to 
 the absolute submission of every human will : 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove; 
 
 " Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
 Thou madest Life in man and brute; 
 Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot 
 Is on the skull which thou hast made. 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou. 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 
 
 " Our little systems have their day; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be; 
 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 
 
 Longfellow could never have subscribed to this utter- 
 ance, and still less could he have taken upon his lips 
 the sublime confession of the apostle Paul : " It is no 
 longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and the 
 life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the 
 faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and 
 gave himself up for me." Paul believed in Christ's 
 deity and atonement, as Longfellow did not. 
 
 Indeed, we mark a growing tendency toward a pagan 
 view of the world and of religious things, as the years
 
 24O THE MASQUE OF PANDORA 
 
 go on. German influences were strong, and to some 
 extent Goethe was the poet's model. Unevangelical 
 theology, in cutting loose from Christ's control, tends 
 ever to a liberalism which denies special revelation, and 
 regards Christianity as only one of many natural re- 
 ligions, no one of which has proper claim to inspira- 
 tion or supremacy. The classical mythology becomes 
 even more satisfying, to this abnormal taste, than are 
 the definite and authoritative demands of a historic 
 revelation. " The Masque of Pandora " is the heathen 
 version of the Fall of Man. When Pandora is tempted 
 to open the box in which are imprisoned all the future 
 ills of humanity, she speaks to her own heart : 
 
 No one sees me, 
 
 Save the all-seeing Gods, who, knowing good 
 And knowing evil, have created me 
 Such as I am, and filled me with desire ^ 
 Of knowing good and evil like themselves. 
 I hesitate no longer. Weal or woe, 
 Or life or death, the moment shall decide. 
 
 She lifts the lid, and the evil is done : 
 
 Fever of the heart and brain, 
 Sorrow, pestilence, and pain, 
 Moans of anguish, maniac laughter, 
 All the evils that hereafter 
 Shall afflict and vex mankind, 
 All into the air have risen 
 From the chambers of their prison; 
 Only Hope remains behind. 
 
 Now Pandora is a prey to anguish and to fear. Con- 
 science witnesses against her, and the Eumenides, the 
 Furies, threaten. Pandora resigns herself to their chas- 
 tisement :
 
 THE MASQUE OF PANDORA 24! 
 
 Me let them punish. 
 
 Only through punishment of our evil deeds, 
 Only through suffering, are we reconciled 
 To the immortal Gods and to ourselves. 
 
 But the Eumenides reply : 
 
 Never by lapse of time 
 
 The soul defaced by crime 
 Into its former self returns again; 
 
 For every guilty deed 
 
 Holds in itself the seed 
 Of retribution and undying pain. 
 
 Evangelical theology does not grant that God created 
 men such as they now are, or that he " filled them 
 with desire of knowing good and evil like himself." 
 It holds that this longing for that which is forbidden is 
 the consequence and the penalty of man's free choice 
 to disobey, instead of letting God's will rule within 
 him. And evangelical theology does not grant that 
 suffering the punishment of his evil deeds of itself 
 reconciles man either to God or to himself. There 
 must be also God's own suffering on man's account, and 
 the renewing of man's spirit by the Spirit of God. 
 If by " Helios," in this poem, is meant " the Sun 
 of Righteousness," Jesus Christ, we may subscribe to 
 its last stanza, and give it a Christian interpretation : 
 
 Never shall be the loss 
 
 Restored, till Helios 
 Hath purified them with his heavenly fires; 
 
 Then what was lost is won, 
 
 And the new life begun, 
 Kindled with nobler passions and desires. 
 
 " Hermes Trismegistus " seems to be a confession 
 that the poet despaired of any solution of the mysteries 
 of existence, and that his final attitude was that of the
 
 242 HERMES TRISMEGISTUS 
 
 agnostic. Only Christ holds in his girdle the key to 
 those mysteries, and to call him only a human being 
 like ourselves is to leave ourselves in mental and moral 
 darkness. This poem of " Hermes Trismegistus " is 
 one of the last which our poet wrote, and it shows that 
 he needed greater light. His " Hermes " is apparently 
 identical with himself : 
 
 By the Nile I see him wandering, 
 
 Pausing now and then, 
 On the mystic union pondering 
 
 Between gods and men; 
 Half believing, wholly feeling, 
 
 With supreme delight, 
 How the gods, themselves concealing, 
 
 Lift men to their height. 
 
 Who shall call his dreams fallacious? 
 
 Who has searched or sought 
 All the unexplored and spacious 
 
 Universe of thought? 
 Who, in his own skill confiding, 
 
 Shall with rule and line 
 Mark the border-land dividing 
 
 Human and divine? 
 
 Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately 
 
 Found I in the vast, 
 Weed-encumbered, sombre, stately, 
 
 Grave-yard of the Past; 
 And a presence moved before me 
 
 On that gloomy shore, 
 As a waft of wind, that o'er me 
 
 Breathed, and was no more. 
 
 Longfellow's faith was simply a faith in the his- 
 toric value of Christ's human example. This is a 
 minor point in Christian doctrine, yet it is an essential
 
 LONGFELLOW'S " POEMS ON SLAVERY " 243 
 
 point, and such faith as this, though fragmentary, may 
 have great influence over life and conduct. I see the 
 influence of it in our poet's own life, and in his writing. 
 Without this faith, I doubt whether his " Poems on 
 Slavery " could ever have been written. They came 
 short of the fire and fury which abolitionists like Gar- 
 rison demanded. But they appealed to the Christian 
 conscience on behalf of the oppressed, and their very 
 calmness and sympathy moved many who, like Sum- 
 ner, could not be revolutionists. It is almost amusing 
 to remember that Whittier urged Longfellow to be a 
 candidate for Congress, as he himself once proposed 
 to be. The poet declined, with the words : " Partisan 
 warfare becomes too violent, too vindictive, for my 
 taste." He could praise Channing's denunciations of 
 slavery, and his prophecies of its downfall, and could 
 entreat him to 
 
 Go on, until this land revokes 
 
 The old and chartered Lie, 
 The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes 
 
 Insult humanity. 
 
 But he himself could better serve the cause by such 
 pathetic verses as those in which he describes the sell- 
 ing to a slave-dealer, by her own father, of " The 
 Quadroon Girl " : 
 
 His heart within him was at strife 
 
 With such accursed gains: 
 IJor he knew whose passions gave her life, 
 
 Whose blood ran in her veins. 
 
 But the voice of nature was too weak; 
 
 He took the glittering gold! 
 Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek, 
 
 Her hands as icy cold.
 
 244 " THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP " 
 
 The Slaver led her from the door, 
 
 He led her by the hand, 
 To be his slave and paramour 
 
 In a strange and distant land. 
 
 If Whittier was our poet of Liberty, Longfellow was 
 our poet of Union. In the days that were to come, 
 it was quite as important that national solidarity should 
 be preserved, as that freedom should be given to the 
 slave. No utterance in our literature has had more 
 lasting influence than Longfellow's poem, " The Build- 
 ing of the Ship." The closing stanza of it is one of his 
 noblest : 
 
 Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 
 
 Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! 
 
 Humanity with all its fears, 
 
 With all the hopes of future years, 
 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 
 
 We know what Master laid thy keel, 
 
 What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
 
 Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 
 Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
 
 Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
 
 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 
 
 And not a rent made by the gale! 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 
 
 Our hearjs, our hopes, are all with thee, 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Are all with thee, are all with thee! 
 
 And to this chant in praise of Union must be added 
 his prophecy of universal Peace. " The Arsenal at
 
 LONGFELLOW THE POET OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 245 
 
 Springfield " has ever since been quoted by those 
 who are " warlike against war " : 
 
 Down the dark future, through long generations, 
 The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; 
 
 And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
 
 I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace! " 
 
 Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals 
 The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! 
 
 But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
 The holy melodies of love arise. 
 
 The peace which Longfellow desired was not simply 
 peace within our own borders. It was world-wide and 
 universal peace. He was not, and he did not desire 
 to be, a merely national poet. In " Kavanagh " he said : 
 
 Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but univer- 
 sality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all 
 countries is not what is national in them, but what is univer- 
 sal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches 
 wave in unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language to all 
 men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that 
 pervades all lands. 
 
 In this somewhat florid and rather obscure utterance 
 of his youth, Longfellow wisely held that the true 
 poet appeals to the universal instincts of humanity. He 
 brings men back to nature. But can Art redeem? 
 There are poems in which our poet seems to intimate 
 this, and so, to magnify his office. " Keramos " gives 
 us his conception of Art : 
 
 Art is the child of Nature; yes, 
 
 Her darling child, in whom we trace 
 
 The features of the mother's face,
 
 246 LONGFELLOW'S GENIUS REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 Her aspect and her attitude; 
 All her majestic loveliness 
 Chastened and softened and subdued 
 Into a more attractive grace, 
 And with a human sense imbued. 
 
 He is the greatest artist, then, 
 
 Whether of pencil or of pen, 
 
 Who follows Nature. Never man, 
 
 As artist or as artisan, 
 
 Pursuing his own fantasies, 
 
 Can touch the human heart, or please, 
 
 Or satisfy our nobler needs, 
 
 As he who sets his willing feet 
 
 In Nature's footprints, light and fleet, 
 
 And follows fearless where she leads. 
 
 To this we reply that our true nature can be under- 
 stood and interpreted only when we recognize our sin, 
 and accept God's remedy for sin in Christ. The lack of 
 this fundamental knowledge makes Longfellow's poetry 
 comparatively weak and superficial. He deals with 
 results, but not with causes. His Christianity has no 
 Cross of divine sacrifice, and so furnishes no refuge for 
 the guilty, and no dynamic for the saved. He has not 
 grappled with the deepest problems, and he cannot stir 
 the deepest emotions. Creative power in the poet is 
 inseparable from religious experience; Longfellow's 
 genius therefore is representative rather than creative ; 
 he cannot be ranked with the great poets of all time; 
 he must be counted only the chief sweet singer of 
 America. 
 
 The poem entitled " Michael Angelo " is interesting, 
 in this connection, and that for two reasons. It is a 
 posthumous work, found in the author's desk after 
 his decease, and it is almost autobiographical. It cer-
 
 " MICHAEL ANGELO " 247 
 
 tainly gives us his latest views with regard to the phi- 
 losophy of art in general, and by inference, the philos- 
 ophy of poetry in particular. There are intimations 
 in it that our poet realized the nearness of his end, 
 and was eager to improve every passing hour. We can 
 hear him speaking, in the words he puts into the mouth 
 of the great painter, sculptor, and architect, as he 
 meditates upon the glories of old Rome: 
 
 Malaria? 
 
 Yes, malaria of the mind, 
 Out of this tomb of the majestic Past; 
 The fever to accomplish some great work 
 That will not let us sleep. I must go on 
 Until I die. 
 
 How will men speak of me when I am gone, 
 
 When all this colorless, sad life is ended, 
 
 And I am dust? They will remember only 
 
 The wrinkled forehead, the marred countenance, 
 
 The rudeness of my speech, and my rough manners, 
 
 And never dream that underneath them all 
 
 There was a woman's heart of tenderness; 
 
 They will not know the secret of my life, 
 
 Locked up in silence, or but vaguely hinted 
 
 In uncouth rhymes, that may perchance survive 
 
 Some little space in memories of men! 
 
 Each one performs his life-work, and then leaves it; 
 
 Those that come after him will estimate 
 
 His influence on the age in which he lived. 
 
 Not events 
 
 Exasperate me, but the funest conclusions 
 I draw from these events; the sure decline 
 Of art, and all the meaning of that word; 
 All that embellishes and sweetens life, 
 And lifts it from the level of low cares 
 Into the purer atmosphere of beauty.
 
 248 " MICHAEL ANGELO " 
 
 In the " Dedication " to this poem, I find one of the 
 best statements of Longfellow's conception of his- own 
 work. He was rebuilding the ruins of a noble past, 
 and reviving for his own generation the beauty and the 
 pathos that had stirred the hearts of men in olden time. 
 This particular sonnet has a literary charm which ranks 
 our poet among the most finished workmen of the 
 world, and for that reason also I take pleasure in 
 quoting it at length : 
 
 Nothing that is shall perish utterly, 
 But perish only to revive again 
 In other forms, as clouds restore in rain 
 The exhalations of the land and sea. 
 
 Men build their houses from the masonry 
 Of ruined tombs; the passion and the pain 
 Of hearts, that long have ceased to beat, remain 
 To throb in hearts that are, or are to be. 
 
 So from old chronicles, where sleep in dust 
 
 Names that once filled the world with trumpet tones, 
 I build this verse; and flowers of song have thrust 
 
 Their roots among the loose disjointed stones, 
 Which to this end I fashion as I must. 
 Quickened are they that touch the Prophet's bones. 
 
 " The faith in the Ideal," of which Longfellow speaks 
 in this poem, was the faith that led him on. The words 
 of his " Michael Angelo," modest as they are, seem to 
 express his own modest feeling, as he looked back to 
 his working days: 
 
 Pleasantly 
 
 Come back to me the days when, as a youth, 
 I walked with Ghirlandajo in the gardens 
 Of Medici, and saw the antique statues, 
 The forms august of gods and godlike men, 
 And the great world of art revealed itself
 
 LONGFELLOW AND TENNYSON 249 
 
 To my young eyes. Then all that man hath done 
 Seemed possible to me. Alas! how little 
 Of all I dreamed of has my hand achieved! 
 
 In many ways, " Michael Angelo " is the most 
 mature work of the poet, although it lacks the spon- 
 taneity and simplicity of his youth. In learning and 
 in thought, he was never so well equipped as when 
 he wrote this poem. After eighteen years of service in 
 his chair at Harvard, he had resigned his professor- 
 ship, and had devoted himself exclusively to poetry. 
 Europe as well as America had come to recognize 
 Tennyson and himself as the two greatest poets of the 
 nineteenth century. England and the United States 
 were united by a new tie, when Longfellow's name 
 became a household word in both countries. He 
 achieved this fame and influence by being, not provin- 
 cial in his sympathies, but universal. I find the proof 
 of this in his generous estimate of the works of others, 
 and specially in the noble tribute which he renders 
 to Tennyson, his only rival in the suffrages of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world : 
 
 Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine; 
 Not as a knight, who on the listed field 
 Of tourney touched his adversary's shield 
 In token of defiance, but in sign 
 
 Of homage to the mastery, which is thine, 
 
 In English song; nor will I keep concealed 
 And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed, 
 My admiration for thy verse divine. 
 
 Not of the howling dervishes of song, 
 
 Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, 
 Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! 
 
 Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, 
 To thee our love and our allegiance, 
 For thy allegiance to the poet's art. 
 
 S
 
 250 LONGFELLOW'S KINDLY SPIRIT 
 
 Longfellow's kindly spirit was shown in his recep- 
 tion of criticism. There was much to try a vain or 
 rancorous soul. " Hiawatha " was easily parodied, 
 and its hero was dubbed " Milgenwatha." Twice our 
 poet was accused of plagiarism ; once for having stolen 
 the tale of " Martin Franc, or the Monk of St. An- 
 thony," from George Colman's " Knight and Friar " ; 
 and again by Edgar Allan Poe, for having passed off 
 a ballad of Motherwell, " The Bonnie George Camp- 
 bell," as his own translation from the German. Our 
 author replied to the first accusation that he had, with- 
 out knowledge of Colman's work, simply used the same 
 material that Colman himself had used. To the sec- 
 ond accusation, accompanied by Poe's declaration that 
 " Longfellow will steal, though perhaps he cannot help 
 it," he replied that he had found the ballad in a Ger- 
 man collection, with no indication of its being a trans- 
 lation, and that he had simply put it into English, with- 
 out claiming authorship. Poe was informed of his 
 error, but he never made reparation. 
 
 I am specially interested in our poet's relations with 
 Emerson. The two were never intimate, though they 
 were never on unfriendly terms. Longfellow could not 
 sympathize with Emerson's transcendentalism, or 
 with the disjointedness of his thinking. He speaks of 
 Emerson's " Essays," as " full of prose poetry, mag- 
 nificent absurdities, and simple truths." " But it is 
 impossible," he adds, " to see any connection in the 
 ideas." In his diary he writes : 
 
 Hear Emerson's lecture on Holiness, which he defines 
 to be " the breath of the Soul of the world." This lecture 
 is a great bugbear to many pious, feeble souls. Not exactly
 
 DEATH OF LONGFELLOW'S CHILD 251 
 
 comprehending it (and who does?) they seem to be sitting 
 in the shadow of some awful atheism or other. . . This eve- 
 ning Emerson lectured on the " Affections "; a good lecture. 
 He mistakes his power somewhat, and at times speaks in 
 oracles, darkly. He is vastly more of a poet than a philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 Received from Emerson a copy of his Poems. F. read 
 it to me all the evening and until late at night. It gave us 
 the keenest pleasure; though many of the pieces present 
 themselves Sphinxlike, and, " struggling to get free their 
 hinder-parts," offer a very bold front and challenge your 
 answer. Throughout the volume, through the golden mist 
 and sublimation of fancy, gleam bright veins of purest poetry, 
 like rivers running through meadows. Truly a rare volume; 
 with many exquisite poems in it, among which I should cull 
 out " Monadnock," " Threnody," " The Humble-Bee," as con- 
 taining much of the quintessence of poetry. 
 
 Longfellow was a man of deep feeling, but he did 
 not wear his heart on his sleeve. Affectionate and 
 gentle in his nature, he could not be demonstrative 
 about the things that touched him most. One of the 
 most pathetic experiences of his life was the loss of his 
 little daughter Fanny. He had comforted himself with 
 the hymn : 
 
 Give to the winds thy fears; 
 
 Hope, and be undismayed; 
 God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears; 
 
 God shall lift up thy head. 
 
 But after a day of agony, in which the child lay motion- 
 less, with only a little moan now and then, 
 
 At half past four this afternoon she died. F. and M. sat 
 with me by her bedside. Her breathing grew fainter, fainter, 
 then ceased without a sigh, without a flutter, perfectly quiet, 
 perfectly painless. The sweetest expression was on her face.
 
 252 SCANTY MATERIAL FOR LONGFELLOW S THEOLOGY 
 
 The room was full of angels where she lay; 
 And when they had departed she was gone. 
 
 And a full month after, he writes in his diary : 
 
 I feel very sad to-day. I miss very much my dear little 
 Fanny. An inappeasable longing to see her comes over me 
 at times, which I can hardly control. 
 
 It is not to be expected that we should find, either 
 in his prose or in his poetry, any very definite state- 
 ments of his theological or religious beliefs. He was 
 no dogmatist he rather doubted the possibility of 
 expressing the mysterious relations of the finite spirit 
 with the infinite Spirit from whom it came, and in 
 whom it lives. If he had had a more pronounced be- 
 lief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, or had had a 
 more profound Christian experience, he could have left 
 to us more material from which to construct his theo- 
 logical system. Both Bryant and Whittier have given 
 us many hymns for our Christian worship. Longfel- 
 low is not so prolific. But who can fail to recognize 
 the Christian spirit of his early poem, " Blind Bar- 
 timeus " ? 
 
 Blind Bartimeus at the gates 
 Of Jericho in darkness waits; 
 He hears the crowd; he hears a breath 
 Say, " It is Christ of Nazareth! " 
 And calls, in tones of agony, 
 fis ! 
 
 The thronging multitudes increase; 
 Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace! 
 But still, above the noisy c.owd, 
 The beggar's cry is shrill and loud; 
 Until they say, " He calleth thee! "
 
 CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LONGFELLOW^ POEMS 253 
 
 Then saith the Christ, as silent stands 
 The crowd, " What wilt thou at my hands? " 
 And he replies, " Oh, give me light! 
 Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight!" 
 And Jesus answers, "Ynays 
 
 Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, 
 In darkness and in misery, 
 Recall those mighty Voices Three, 
 
 0dpffi, systpat, uTraye / 
 'H itiffTis sou aiatuxi ff / 
 
 I know of no poet who has written so little that 
 is professedly Christian, and whose poetry is not- 
 withstanding so shot through and through with the 
 Christian spirit. It seems as if the same Saviour who 
 had cleansed him had also bidden him, " See that 
 thou tell no man ! " He had undoubtedly a prejudice 
 against a forthputting and demonstrative evangelicism. 
 But the atmosphere of his poems is the atmosphere of 
 gospel truth. There is a tenderness and compassion 
 not to be found in pagan or agnostic literature. The 
 last stanza of " Christus " best expresses the inner- 
 most thought of the poet: 
 
 From all vain pomps and shows, 
 
 From the pride that overflows, 
 
 And the false conceits of men; 
 
 From all the narrow rules 
 
 And subtleties of Schools, 
 
 And the craft of tongue and pen; 
 
 Bewildered in its search, 
 
 Bewildered with the cry: 
 
 Lo, here! lo, there, the Church! 
 
 Poor, sad Humanity 
 
 Through all the dust and heat
 
 254 LONGFELLOW'S FAITH IN PROVIDENCE 
 
 Turns back with bleeding feet, 
 By the weary road it came, 
 Unto the simple thought 
 By the great Master taught, 
 And that remaineth still: 
 Not he that repeateth the name, 
 But he that doeth the will! 
 
 I am persuaded that in the First Interlude of " Chris- 
 tus," our poet is in like manner expressing his own 
 religious convictions: 
 
 My work is finished; I am strong 
 In faith, and hope, and charity; 
 For I have written the things I see, 
 The things that have been and shall be, 
 Conscious of right, nor fearing wrong; 
 Because I am in love with Love, 
 And the sole thing I hate is Hate; 
 For Hate is death; and Love is life, 
 A peace, a splendor from above; 
 And Hate, a never-ending strife, 
 A smoke, a blackness from the abyss 
 Where unclean serpents coil and hiss! 
 Love is the Holy Ghost within; 
 Hate the unpardonable sin! 
 Who preaches otherwise than this, 
 Betrays his Master with a kiss! 
 
 This is not Epicureanism or Stoicism, but faith in 
 an overruling divine Providence, and in the Christ who 
 has manifested God to men. On a visit to his old 
 home in Portland, he wrote, in his diary, of the sil- 
 very reflection of the moonlight on the sea: 
 
 Among other thoughts we had this cheering one, that the 
 whole sea was flashing with this heavenly light, though we 
 saw it only in a single track; the dark waves are the dark 
 providences of God; luminous, though not to us; and even to 
 ourselves in another position.
 
 " MORITURI SALUTAMUS " 255 
 
 I am therefore not willing to take the closing words 
 of " Michael Angelo " as the final expression of the 
 poet's feeling in view of his approaching end. " Michael 
 Angelo" is called, in its very title, "A Fragment"; 
 and it was unfinished at the poet's death. It certainly 
 gives us a dark picture of unfulfilled ambition : 
 
 Life hath become to me 
 An empty theater, its lights extinguished, 
 The music silent, and the actors gone; 
 And I alone sit musing on the scenes 
 That once have been. I am so old that Death 
 Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him; 
 And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, 
 And my last spark of life will be extinguished. 
 Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! 
 So near to death, and yet so far from God! 
 
 " Morituri Salutamus " is a notable poem, both for 
 its occasion and for its expression of Longfellow's 
 thoughts in view of death. Its title is the words of the 
 Roman gladiators, as they came to their final fight in 
 the arena. It was written for the fiftieth anniversary 
 of his college class, and it was actually delivered be- 
 fore them: 
 
 " O Caesar, we who are about to die 
 Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry 
 In the arena, standing face to face 
 
 With death and with the Roman populace. 
 
 Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high, 
 We who are old, and are about to die, 
 Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours, 
 And crown you with our welcome as with flowers.
 
 256 LONGFELLOW'S BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 What then? Shall we sit idly down and say 
 The night hath come; it is no longer day? 
 The night hath not yet come; we are not quite 
 Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
 Something remains for us to do or dare; 
 Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; 
 Not CEdipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, 
 Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode 
 Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, 
 But other something, would we but begin; 
 For age is opportunity no less 
 Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
 And as the evening twilight fades away 
 The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. 
 
 When he revisited Brunswick in the summer of 1875, 
 he wrote a sonnet as he viewed the funeral-stone that 
 marked the resting-place of Parker Cleaveland, one of 
 the best of his early friends. The closing lines of that 
 sonnet declare Longfellow's firm belief in immortality : 
 
 With fond affection memory loves to dwell 
 On the old days, when his example made 
 A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen; 
 And now, amid the groves he loved so well 
 
 That naught could lure him from their grateful 
 
 shade, 
 
 He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath 
 said, Amen! 
 
 And yet I turn to Longfellow's earliest poems for 
 my clearest proofs that he believed in another life be- 
 yond the grave. In his later years he grew more 
 thoughtful, but also more reticent, with regard to the 
 great problems of existence. The day for easygoing 
 faith had passed. Controversy had raged around him. 
 He had little interest in theological discussion it 
 seemed to him of less importance to define what is be-
 
 " THE BELEAGUERED CITY " 257 
 
 yond us, than to practise what we already know. But 
 he would have been more or less than human, if he had 
 been unaffected by the strife. It made him less and 
 less inclined to dogmatic utterance, or to express the 
 deepest feelings of his soul. The poems of his early 
 days, however, were never withdrawn or disavowed ; 
 and they remain to us as spontaneous and genuine ex- 
 pressions of religious feeling though they are entirely 
 free from hackneyed phraseology and from sentimen- 
 tal exaggeration. In " The Beleaguered City " he 
 wrote : 
 
 I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, 
 
 That strange and mystic scroll, 
 That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
 
 Beleaguer the human soul. 
 
 And, when the solemn and deep church-bell 
 
 Entreats the soul to pray, 
 The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 
 
 The shadows sweep away. 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled; 
 Faith shineth as a morning star, 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead. 
 
 If we seek evidence of our poet's belief in an im- 
 mortal life beyond the grave, we may find it in that 
 " Psalm of Life " which, more than any other of 
 Longfellow's poems, drew to him first of all the ad- 
 miration and affection of his youthful contemporaries : 
 
 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
 
 Life is but an empty dream! 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 
 And things are not what they seem.
 
 258 " THE LIGHT OF STARS " 
 
 Life is real! Life is earnest! 
 
 And the grave is not its goal; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 In " The Reaper and the Flowers," he comforts the 
 mother who has lost her child : 
 
 There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, 
 
 And; with his sickle keen, 
 He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, 
 
 And the flowers that grow between. 
 
 " My Lord, has need of these flowerets gay," 
 
 The Reaper said, and smiled; 
 " Dear tokens of the earth are they, 
 Where He was once a child." 
 
 And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 
 
 The flowers she most did love; 
 She knew she should find them all again 
 
 In the fields of light above. 
 
 " The Light of Stars " witnesses that even in the midst 
 of earthly losses and trials the soul may be hopeful 
 and quiet : 
 
 The star of the unconquered will, 
 
 He rises in my breast, 
 Serene, and resolute, and still, 
 
 And calm, and self-possessed. 
 
 And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 
 
 That readest this brief psalm, 
 As one by one thy hopes depart, 
 
 Be resolute and calm. 
 
 Oh, fear not in a world like this, 
 
 And thou shalt know ere long, 
 Know how sublime a thing it is 
 
 To suffer and be strong.
 
 " COPLAS DE MANRIQUE " 259 
 
 " Flowers " teach lessons of symbolic lore to those who 
 can read them : 
 
 Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, 
 One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, 
 
 When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, 
 Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. 
 
 Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, 
 God hath written in those stars above; 
 
 But not less in the bright flowerets under us 
 Stands the revelation of his love. 
 
 And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, 
 Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part 
 
 Of the self-same, universal being, 
 Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. 
 
 And with childlike, credulous affection, 
 We behold their tender buds expand; 
 
 Emblems of our own great resurrection, 
 Emblems of the bright and better land. 
 
 Longfellow translated from other languages many 
 poems which he would not have ventured to write in 
 his own name. What shall we say of the verses in 
 " Coplas de Manrique " which follow ? 
 
 To One alone my thoughts arise, 
 
 The Eternal Truth, the Good and Wise, 
 
 To Him I cry, 
 
 Who shared on earth our common lot, 
 
 But the world comprehended not 
 
 His deity. 
 
 Yes, the glad messenger of love, 
 To guide us to our home above,
 
 26O " SONG OF THE SILENT LAND " 
 
 The Saviour came; 
 Born amid mortal cares and fears, 
 He suffered in this vale of tears 
 A death of shame. 
 
 " O thou, that for our sins didst take 
 A human form, and humbly make 
 Thy home on earth; 
 Thou, .that to thy divinity 
 A human nature didst ally 
 By mortal birth, 
 
 " And in that form didst suffer here 
 Torment, and agony, and fear, 
 So patiently; 
 
 By thy redeeming grace alone, 
 And not for merits of my own, 
 Oh, pardon me! " 
 
 And what shall we say of such sweet and reposeful 
 words as those in which our poet has translated, from 
 the German of Salis-Seewis, his " Song of the Silent 
 Land " ? 
 
 Into the Silent Land! 
 
 Ah! who shall lead us thither? 
 
 Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, 
 
 And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. 
 
 Who leads us with a gentle hand 
 
 Thither, oh, thither, 
 
 Into the Silent Land? 
 
 Into the Silent Land! 
 
 To you, ye boundless regions 
 
 Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions 
 
 Of beauteous souls! The Future's pledge and band! 
 
 Who in Life's battle firm doth stand, 
 
 Shall bear Hope's tender blossoms 
 
 Into the Silent Land.
 
 LIMITS OF LONGFELLOW'S THEOLOGY 261 
 
 O Land! O Land! 
 
 For all the broken-hearted 
 
 The mildest herald by our fate allotted, 
 
 Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand 
 
 To lead us with a gentle hand 
 
 To the land of the great Departed, 
 
 Into the Silent Land. 
 
 These translations show a comprehensive apprecia- 
 tion of other faiths, even if they do not show the drift 
 of the poet's own beliefs. His kindly and sympathetic 
 nature entered into the feelings of others, and inter- 
 preted them as efforts to grasp and express the truth. 
 " He that is not against us is for us," might have been 
 his motto. He was a poet of humanity, but not of 
 divinity. Humanity, to some extent, indeed, reveals 
 divinity. Unfortunately, our present humanity is 
 neither normal nor true. It is only a partial revela- 
 tion of God. We need the perfect humanity of Christ 
 to instruct us; and, without knowledge of our sin, we 
 cannot fully appreciate him. Longfellow did see Christ, 
 in some of his most winning attributes ; and, because of 
 this vision of a human ideal, he could interpret a peo- 
 ple's heart, and could win their love. He would have 
 been a greater poet, if he had apprehended Christ's 
 divine nature, his revelation of God's righteousness, 
 and his atonement for our sin. But he saw the beauty 
 and the pathos of life. The gentle and tender elements 
 in humanity he could appropriate and express. The 
 background of divine holiness, which would have made 
 life more solemn and significant, was beyond his ken. 
 
 Like Bryant, Longfellow found diversion and solace, 
 after the death of his wife, in translating one of the 
 great poets. But while Bryant took Homer, Long-
 
 262 LONGFELLOW'S TRANSLATION OF DANTE 
 
 fellow dealt with Dante. It would at first sight appear 
 incongruous that so sweet and mellow a poet should 
 put into English the horrors of the " Inferno " ; and 
 we must confess that Rossetti has, in that part of 
 " The Divine Comedy," achieved a greater triumph 
 than has Longfellow. But it can be said for our poet, 
 that the smoothness and melody of the terza-rima 
 found in him a grateful response, and he loved the 
 very softness with which Dante clothes his images of 
 terror. It is also true that Longfellow looked beneath 
 the surface, and perceived that even Dante had no 
 thought of mere physical torment as constituting the 
 essences of punishment, either in this world or in the 
 next ; the " Inferno " is only a vast allegory, which 
 describes eternal pangs of conscience under the figure 
 of literal fire. So our poet could see, even in eternal 
 suffering, the discipline of eternal love. All this be- 
 comes more manifest in his versions of the " Purga- 
 torio " and of the " Paradise." Here Longfellow's 
 style favors his subject, and critics have declared his 
 work to be without a superior, in faithful rendering 
 of both the substance and the form of the original. 
 We can easily imagine the old man eloquent, cheering 
 his days, as he drew near his end, with the spiritual 
 and soul-subduing strains of Dante's " Purgatory " and 
 " Paradise." 
 
 Our poet was sunny and genial to the last, though 
 he was afflicted with rheumatism, and his days were 
 never free from pain. When confined to his room, he 
 delighted to receive and to entertain children. Charles 
 Kingsley declared that his " face was the most beau- 
 tiful he had ever seen," It was the noble expression
 
 LONGFELLOW A POET OF THE ENGLISH RACE 263 
 
 of a noble soul. When he died in 1882, at the age of 
 seventy-five, America mourned his loss, as it had 
 mourned the loss of no other of its literary sons. 
 And the mourning was not confined to our own land. 
 In the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, the bust 
 of only one American has a place. It is the bust of 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The benignant coun- 
 tenance looks down upon the tomb of Chaucer, and is 
 midway between the memorials to Cowley and to 
 Dryden. Its admission to that Valhalla is proof that 
 Longfellow was recognized not simply as an American 
 poet, but also as a poet of our whole English-speaking 
 race. Another monument, less public but more affect- 
 ing, is the tribute which James Russell Lowell wrote 
 on Longfellow's sixtieth birthday, and which sums up 
 most admirably the spirit of his life and work: 
 
 " I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 
 
 Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds 
 Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong 
 The new moon's mirrored skiff, he glides along, 
 Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds. 
 
 " With loving breath of all the winds his name 
 Is blown about the world, but to his friends 
 A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, 
 And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim 
 To murmur a God bless you! and there ends."
 
 VI 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL is our chief poetical moral- 
 ist. Not our greatest poet; for, in simplicity and 
 range of sentiment, Longfellow excels him. He is 
 not a melodist, like Poe; nor a politician, like Whit- 
 tier; nor a somber lover of nature, like Bryant But 
 ethics is bred in the very bone. From early manhood, 
 abstract right fired his imagination, took the place of 
 divinity as a study, became the real subject of all his 
 poetry. In two respects, Lowell made his work an 
 important contribution to human progress : On the one 
 hand, he added wit and humor to the forces of reform ; 
 and, on the other hand, his breadth and sanity of judg- 
 ment in politics and literature gave enduring value to 
 his criticism. Yet he was hampered by the brilliancy 
 of his genius. He was so fertile in ideas that images 
 ran over one another in his brain and entangled his 
 expression of them. Only in occasional snatches do we 
 find pure poetry. But the sincerity of the man makes 
 all his writing impressive. To him literature was a 
 ministry; and he could always, without rebuke, apply 
 to himself the poet's words : 
 
 " He serves the Muses erringly and ill, 
 Whose aim is pleasure, light and fugitive." 
 
 Lowell was a typical man of letters ; but, with all his 
 wit and humor, he was a profoundly serious writer. 
 
 267
 
 268 PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD OF LOWELL 
 
 His ethics took the form of patriotism. There never 
 was a more complete American. He put his literary 
 gifts at the service of his country and of humanity. He 
 gloried in our national greatness, while at the same 
 time he recognized and labored to cure our national 
 defects. His poetry greatly helped the cause of free- 
 dom and unity in the time of our Civil War. It is 
 an interesting coincidence that he was born on the 
 twenty-second of February, 1819, just eighty-seven 
 years after the birth of George Washington. George 
 William Curtis calls attention to this fact; and, as 
 illustrations of patriotic service, he blends the names 
 of Lowell and of Washington together. 
 
 The father of our poet was a clergyman of literary 
 tastes, and of a benignant disposition. His mother 
 had in her nature a tincture of romance. James was 
 her youngest child, and her darling. Handsome and 
 affectionate, he responded to her admiration of fields 
 and flowers, and to her stories of heroism on land and 
 sea. The father took the boy with him, in- his long 
 journeys in the one-horse chaise, whenever he made 
 his frequent exchange of pulpits with ministers of the 
 neighboring towns. Eastern Massachusetts had then 
 an almost unmixed native population. Then and there 
 could be heard the genuine Yankee dialect. Lowell 
 declared in after years that, of all languages on the 
 face of the earth, he was most certain that he knew 
 the Yankee; and it is probable that these clerical in- 
 roads into the country gave to the susceptible and f un- 
 loving child the inimitable vocabulary and grammar 
 which " The Biglow Papers " afterward immortalized. 
 
 The bright boy was a lover of books ; but he loved
 
 LOWELL AT COLLEGE 269 
 
 regular study and discipline much less. It was well 
 for him that William Wells, an Englishman, " of good 
 breeding as well as good learning," taught him his 
 Latin. Lowell never lost the benefit of that severe in- 
 struction. His favorite occupation, however, was his 
 voluntary and miscellaneous foraging in fields of Eng- 
 lish literature. When he entered Harvard College at 
 the age of fifteen, he was widely read. In his sopho- 
 more year he writes to a friend that Milton has excited 
 his " ambition to read all the Greek and Latin clas- 
 sics which he " that is, Milton himself " did." The 
 same letter shows that Lowell had more than ordinary 
 acquaintance with the Satires of Horace, as well as the 
 Bucolics of Vergil. Butler's " Hudibras," Beattie's 
 " Minstrel," together with Akenside, Byron, Cole- 
 ridge, Cowley, Pope, and Spenser, are casually men- 
 tioned as parts of his English acquisitions. The mathe- 
 matics of the regular course, however, did not attract 
 him. He was somewhat neglectful of college prayers. 
 Popular with his classmates, he was not equally popu- 
 lar with the faculty. In fact, though chosen by his 
 class as their poet, he was not permitted by the author- 
 ities to deliver his poem, or even to graduate. For sev- 
 eral months he was suspended from all college exercises, 
 and was required to absent himself from the neighbor- 
 hood of the institution. Mr. Norton, however, relates 
 that " in the autumn, having received his degree with 
 his classmates, he returned to his home in Cambridge." 
 Reflection upon his waywardness, and upon the sor- 
 row it caused to his parents, was apparently the turn- 
 ing-point in his career. He spent his days of " rus- 
 tication " in Concord, where he met Emerson, of whom
 
 27O LOWELL S LITERARY AND ETHICAL BENT 
 
 he writes : " He is a good-natured man, in spite of his 
 doctrines." Up to this time Lowell was neither a 
 transcendentalist nor an abolitionist. The class-poem, 
 which he wrote in Concord and distributed to his class- 
 mates in print after their graduation, speaks rather 
 slightingly of both these great movements of the time. 
 But he was gradually and unconsciously changing. He 
 accuses himself of indolence and of dreaming. He 
 reads Blackstone, but soon renounces the law: 
 
 They tell me I must study law. 
 
 They say that I have dreamed, and dreamed too long; 
 
 That I must rouse, and seek for fame and gold; 
 That I must scorn this idle gift of song, 
 
 And mingle with the vain and proud and cold. 
 Is then this petty strife 
 The end and aim of life, 
 All that is worth the living for below? 
 O God, then call me hence, for I would gladly go! 
 
 Literature is his real idol. Yet increasing maturity 
 gives to his thoughts an ethical bent. He aims to write 
 a poem on Cromwell, whom he admires more than he 
 admires the dashing Cavaliers. He becomes " ultra- 
 democratic " ; calls the Church of England an " in- 
 cubus " ; declares that the abolitionists are the only 
 party with which he sympathizes. He thinks seriously 
 of going into the divinity school, as a preparation for 
 the ministry; but he gives this up, for the reason that 
 he has not money enough to be independent, as a min- 
 ister ought to be. He records a vow to read a chapter 
 in the Bible every night. " Only fools," he says, " de- 
 spise religion." But he cares little for outward re- 
 ligious observances :
 
 LOWELL'S MARRIAGE DIRECTS HIS GENIUS 271 
 
 What is religion? 'Tis to go 
 
 To church one day in seven, 
 And think that we, of all men, know 
 
 The only way to heaven. 
 
 But he that hath found, as the holy apostle did at Athens 
 of the heathens, an altar to the unknown God in his heart, 
 and who in a spirit of love and wonder offereth up accept- 
 able offerings thereon in the Temple of Nature, doth not he, 
 of the twain, walk with God? 
 
 This turmoil and uncertainty are signs of a vigor- 
 ous mind, eager for action, and desirous of doing the 
 best that is possible; but they also show that as yet 
 Lowell is little acquainted with his own powers or 
 with the needs of the world. Out of this seething 
 caldron, however, there slowly rises the shape of a 
 definite ambition an ambition that masters him and 
 compels his following through all his after-life : 
 
 Above all things should I love to be able to sit down and do 
 something literary for the rest of my natural life. . . Before 
 I die, your heart shall be gladdened by seeing your wayward, 
 vain, and too often selhsh friend do something that shall 
 make his name honored. As Sheridan once said, " It's in me, 
 and" (we'll skip the oath) "it shall come out!" I shall let 
 my fate be governed by circumstance and influence. . . A 
 man should regard not only what is in him, but also what is 
 without, acting on that within. 
 
 It is doubtful whether this ambition would have been 
 absorbingly ethical, as well as literary, if his marriage 
 to Miss Maria White had not directed his genius to 
 the highest aims. She had been his next-door neigh- 
 bor and his playmate from their childhood ; she had 
 poetical gifts which Lowell delighted to recognize; she
 
 272 " A YEAR'S LIFE " 
 
 was beautiful in person, calm and commanding in man- 
 ner; above all, her moral nature ruled, and she sym- 
 pathized with every righteous and suffering cause. She 
 stimulated the moral impulses of her husband, and 
 turned what might have been merely light literature 
 into a mighty influence for reform. 
 
 The woman's influence in this case was so .great that 
 we may be pardoned for introducing here the dedica- 
 tion of Lowell's first book of poems, published in 1841, 
 and entitled " A Year's Life." It was addressed, really 
 though not formally, to his future bride: 
 
 The gentle Una have I loved, 
 The snowy maiden, pure and mild, 
 Since ever by her side I roved 
 Through ventures strange, a wondering 
 
 child, 
 
 In fantasy a Red Cross Knight 
 Burning for her dear sake to fight. 
 
 If there be one who can, like her, 
 Make sunshine in life's shady places, 
 One in whose holy bosom stir 
 As many gentle household graces, 
 And such I think there needs must be, 
 Will she accept this book from me? 
 
 The little book was full of allusions to his inamorata. 
 One of its poems was indeed an elaborate and long 
 drawn-out description of her. " Irene," in spite of its 
 youthful effervescence, is a production of much prom- 
 ise; and, as disclosing one of the great influences that 
 shaped his mental and moral development, it deserves 
 our special attention. I quote only its first and last 
 stanzas :
 
 EARLY STRAITS AND BEREAVEMENTS 2/3 
 
 Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear; 
 Calmly beneath her earnest face it lies, 
 Free without boldness, meek without a fear, 
 Quicker to look than speak its sympathies; 
 Far down into her large and patient eyes 
 I gaze, deep-drinking of the infinite, 
 As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night, 
 I look into the fathomless blue skies. 
 
 Like a lone star through riven storm-clouds seen 
 By sailors, tempest-tost upon the sea, 
 Telling of rest and peaceful heavens nigh, 
 Unto my soul her star-like soul hath been, 
 Her sight as full of hope and calm to me; 
 For she unto herself hath builded high 
 A home serene, wherein to lay her head, 
 Earth's noblest thing, a Woman perfected. 
 
 The poet had need of a patient and strong com- 
 panion, for his father's loss of property made marriage 
 impracticable for three whole years, and threw him 
 after his graduation from college entirely upon his 
 own resources. He lived on the meager returns of 
 hack-work for newspapers and magazines ; and, since 
 these gave him no more than four hundred dollars 
 yearly, he was often in real straits for money. When 
 at last, in December, 1844, he married, the pair lived 
 for a twelvemonth on less than one thousand dollars, 
 although from the first the wife was frail in health. 
 Their married life was not free from sorrow. In 1847 
 death took from them their little daughter Blanche, 
 and in 1850 their daughter Rose. In this latter year 
 they were made happy by the birth of a beautiful son, 
 Walter; but he too died during their tour in Italy in 
 1852. Mrs. Lowell never recovered from these dread- 
 ful blows, and she followed her children in 1853.
 
 274 LOWELLS BRILLIANCY AND VERSATILITY 
 
 Lowell's financial circumstances had so improved 
 that he could go abroad with his family. But sorrow 
 did its work; his writing gained in depth and sym- 
 pathy; he braced himself, not only to meet whatever 
 might come to him individually, but to stand for truth 
 and right in public affairs. The spirit of his wife 
 influenced him, not only while she lived, but long after 
 her departure. What has been well called " the steady 
 and relentless progress of the slave-power " challenged 
 his abhorrence and his opposition. As early as 1846 
 he engaged to write for " The Anti-slavery Standard " 
 a weekly contribution in prose or verse, and this for a 
 pitiful five hundred dollars a year. This connection 
 lasted for four years. His work was not exclusively 
 reformatory. Some of his poems, like " Eurydice " 
 and " The Parting of the Ways," were revelations of 
 his inner life. In " The Boston Miscellany " he wrote 
 on " The Old English Dramatists " and began a 
 series of prose essays which has put him in the fore- 
 front of English stylists and critics. But it was only 
 in 1848 that he scored his greatest triumph and won 
 universal applause, by his publication of the first series 
 of " The Biglow Papers." That this remarkable pro- 
 duction should have appeared in the same year with his 
 " Fable for Critics " and " Sir Launfal," is proof of 
 Lowell's astonishing brilliancy and -versatility. 
 
 The earlier poems merit consideration, since they 
 show signs of genuine human feeling and flashes of 
 poetic inspiration. But in them the poet is strug- 
 gling with his material, and, like Milton's beasts at 
 the creation, is not yet free from his earthly mold. In 
 " The Vision of Sir Launfal " he reaches his greatest
 
 LOWELL'S GENIUS ETHICAL AND PATRIOTIC 275 
 
 height in pure poetry. That poem, indeed, has been 
 called the finest idyl ever written by an American. 
 Lowell's forte, however, was not pure poetry. It was 
 not till he printed his " Biglow Papers " that he re- 
 vealed his true nature, and gave full rein to his genius. 
 That genius was ethical and patriotic. It was states- 
 manlike in its breadth and sanity. In his " Com- 
 memoration Ode " it appears at its best. But the 
 poetry of this " Ode " is involved and obscure ; and 
 that of "The Cathedral" is even more so. In both 
 these poems there is an air of overelaborateness. 
 Never to the end of his days did Lowell achieve real 
 simplicity. Only in " The Biglow Papers " does he 
 write with abandon. In them his whole nature finds 
 expression, as nowhere else. Wit and humor are his 
 true weapons; when he uses them, his appeal is ir- 
 resistible. In " The Biglow Papers " he reached the 
 culmination of his powers, and exerted his largest in- 
 fluence. But, before we analyze these most character- 
 istic of his productions, let us glance at the poems 
 which preceded them, and which represent Lowell in 
 the realm of pure poetry. 
 
 Let us begin with the poems suggested by domestic 
 sorrow. His second daughter, Rose, died after a 
 week's illness. " Dear little child'" lie writes, " she 
 had never spoken, only smiled." " After the Burial " 
 is Lowell's answer to- a letter of condolence : 
 
 Immortal? I feel it and know it, 
 
 Who doubts it of such as she? 
 But that is the pang's very secret, 
 
 Immortal away from me.
 
 2/6 POEMS OF DOMESTIC SORROW 
 
 It is pagan; but wait till you feel it, 
 That jar of our earth, that dull shock 
 
 When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
 Tears down to our primitive rock. 
 
 Communion in spirit! Forgive me, 
 
 But I, who am earthly and weak, 
 Would give all my incomes from dreamland 
 
 For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 
 
 That little shoe in the corner, 
 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
 
 With its emptiness confutes you, 
 And argues your wisdom down. 
 
 The frail health of his wife makes her presence more 
 precious, and he offers this tribute to her ennobling 
 influence : 
 
 I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away, 
 
 Whose life to mine is an eternal law, 
 
 A piece of nature that can have no flaw, 
 
 A new and certain sunrise every day; 
 
 But, if thou art to be another ray 
 
 About the Sun of Life, and art to live 
 
 Free from what part of thee was fugitive, 
 
 The debt of Love I will more fully pay, 
 
 Not downcast with the thought of thee so high, 
 
 But rather raised to be a nobler man, 
 
 And more divine in my humanity, 
 
 As knowing that the waiting eyes which scan 
 
 My life are lighted by a purer being, 
 
 And ask high, calm-browed deeds, with it agreeing. 
 
 The "Ode," written in 1841, reveals the ambition 
 of Lowell's youth. He aims to be nothing less than 
 a new voice of Almighty God to suffering and sorrow- 
 ing men :
 
 GROWTH OF LOWELL'S ETHICAL PRINCIPLE 277 
 
 In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder, 
 The Poet's song with blood-warm truth was rife; 
 
 He saw the mysteries which circle under 
 The outward shell and skin of daily life. 
 
 But now the Poet is an empty rhymer 
 Who lies with idle elbow on the grass, 
 
 And fits his singing, like a cunning timer, 
 To all men's prides and fancies as they pass. 
 
 Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking 
 For who shall bring the Maker's name to light, 
 
 To be the voice of that almighty speaking 
 Which every age demands to do it right. 
 
 " The Parting of the Ways " shows the growth of the 
 ethical principle in the poet's mind, and his own de- 
 cision to follow Duty : 
 
 Who hath not been a poet? Who hath not, 
 With life's new quiver full of winged years, 
 Shot at a venture, and then, following on, 
 Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways? 
 
 There once I stood in dream, and as I paused, 
 Looking this way and that, came forth to me 
 The figure of a woman veiled, that said, 
 " My name is Duty, turn and follow me." 
 
 There was a chill in that voice, and for a time the poet 
 was attracted by the meretricious form of Pleasure, 
 who proposed Beauty, instead of Duty, as his guide. 
 But Death laid hold of Beauty, and buried her under 
 a heap of ashes. Duty at last removed her veil, and 
 the poet perceived that she alone was fair. It is an 
 allegory of Lowell's life, and it indicates his final 
 choice.
 
 278 " THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL " 
 
 Virtue seems to have been its own reward, for this 
 choice was followed by his greatest success in poetry. 
 " The Vision of Sir Launfal " is the first fruit of his 
 new consecration to the cause of humanity, and it is 
 also the most perfect of all his poems. More of its 
 lines than of any other work of his have become parts 
 of our common speech, and are quoted by those who 
 know nothing of their author. Indeed, when we have 
 once heard them, how impossible it is to banish them 
 from memory ! I can mention only two or three ; and 
 these I take the liberty of putting together in a new 
 order, so as to connect what otherwise would be only 
 scattered fragments: 
 
 What is so rare as a day in June? 
 Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
 No price is set on the lavish summer; 
 June may be had by the poorest comer. 
 
 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: 
 
 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 
 'Tis only God may be had for the asking. 
 
 Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, 
 To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 
 
 As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome 
 
 gate, 
 
 He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, 
 Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; 
 And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, 
 So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 
 The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 
 " Better to me the poor man's crust, 
 Better the blessing of the poor, 
 Though I turn me empty from his door."
 
 A FABLE FOR CRITICS 279 
 
 An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
 He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 
 But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
 The badge of the suffering and the poor. 
 
 The leper once more confronts him, and asks an alms : 
 
 And Sir Launfal said, " I behold in thee 
 An image of Him who died on the tree; 
 Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
 Behold, through him, I give to thee! " 
 
 The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
 But stood before him glorified, 
 Himself the Gate whereby men can 
 Enter the temple of God in Man. 
 
 And he hears the voice of Christ, saying: 
 
 " The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 In whatso we share with another's need; 
 Not what we give, but what we share, 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 
 
 " A Fable for Critics " is amazingly sprightly. It is 
 the first gush of Lowell's wit. Its novel rhymes would 
 do credit to Byron. Yet, in spite of its constant 
 hilarity, imagination and learning go hand in hand. 
 It is a serious review of American literature, and it 
 did excellent service in correcting the faults of our 
 writing. We mistake, if we regard it as mere satire. 
 There are, it is true, occasional touches of sarcasm, as 
 in the mention of Bryant's chilly " iceolation." But in 
 general the tone is kindly, as became a young man's 
 criticism of his elders. Lowell makes Apollo the real
 
 280 " STANZAS ON FREEDOM " 
 
 speaker, and before him pass in review all the main 
 writers of the day : 
 
 " There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, 
 Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, 
 Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, 
 Is some of it pr No, 'tis not even prose." 
 
 The comparison of Emerson with Carlyle is both sane 
 and instructive : 
 
 " C. labors to get at the centre, and then 
 Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; 
 E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted 
 And, given himself, has whatever is wanted." 
 
 Alcott, Brownson, Willis, Parker, Whittier, Dana, 
 Neal, Hawthorne, Cooper, Halleck, Franco, Poe, Mar- 
 garet Fuller, Holmes, all pass under this rollicking and 
 spicy review. Their little peculiarities and shortcom- 
 ings are so gently and amusingly indicated, that the 
 honor of mention far outweighs the pain of criticism, 
 and the sufferers must themselves acknowledge that 
 " faithful are the wounds of a friend." 
 
 Lowell's interest, however, was gradually turning 
 from literature to politics. In public affairs he saw 
 the greatest wrongs to be righted, and recognized his 
 most natural field of action. His first remonstrance 
 against slavery is found in his " Stanzas on Freedom " : 
 
 Men! whose boast it is that ye 
 Come of fathers brave and free, 
 If there breathe on earth a slave, 
 Are ye truly free and brave? 
 If ye do not feel the chain,
 
 INDIGNATION AT POLITICAL WRONGS 28l 
 
 When it works a brother's pain, 
 Are ye not base slaves indeed, 
 Slaves unworthy to be freed? 
 
 They are slaves who fear to speak 
 
 For the fallen and the weak; 
 
 They are slaves who will not choose 
 
 Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
 
 Rather than in silence shrink 
 
 From the truth they needs must think; 
 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 
 In the right with two or three. 
 
 " Prometheus " is a like appeal for justice to the op 
 pressed : 
 
 Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, 
 Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 
 Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, 
 And see that Tyranny is always weakness, 
 Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, 
 Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain 
 Which their own blindness feigned for adamant. 
 Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right 
 To the firm centre lays its moveless base. 
 
 And his indignation culminates in " The Present 
 Crisis," in which he urges the sons of the Pilgrims to 
 war against the curse that then desolated our land : 
 
 Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the 
 
 Word; 
 
 Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un- 
 known, 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his
 
 282 " THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 
 
 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched 
 
 crust, 
 Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be 
 
 just; 
 Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands 
 
 aside, 
 
 Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 
 And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 
 
 For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr 
 
 stands, 
 
 On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands, - 
 Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots 
 
 burn, 
 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 
 
 New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 
 uncouth; 
 
 They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast 
 of Truth; 
 
 Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pil- 
 grims be, 
 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 
 winter sea, 
 
 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted 
 key. 
 
 When Wendell Phillips quoted this last stanza in his 
 Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard, it thrilled his au- 
 dience, and it has ever since been a veritable battle- 
 cry of freedom. 
 
 All this leads us up to what we must consider the 
 greatest achievement of Lowell's life I mean the 
 publication of " The Biglow Papers." I call these his 
 greatest work, for several reasons: their subject was 
 great; their occasion was great; and both subject and
 
 LOWELL AND MRS. STOWE 283 
 
 occasion engaged his greatest powers, and all his 
 powers. Let us consider for a moment the situation 
 of affairs a decade before our great Civil War. Slavery 
 had ceased to be passive and remorseful, and had be- 
 come aggressive and triumphant. Although Washing- 
 ton, in his will, had provided for the emancipation of 
 his own slaves, and Jefferson had said, " I tremble for 
 my country, when I reflect that God is just," the ac- 
 quisition of Louisiana had opened so vast an area for 
 slave labor, and the cotton crop had made that labor so 
 profitable, that slavery was now justified as a divine 
 institution, and all opposition to its extension was 
 resented as an invasion of the rights of the South. 
 Northern manufacturers and merchants who cultivated 
 Southern trade were required to abstain from criticism 
 of the peculiar institution. Even preachers in the 
 churches saw new light with regard to God's decree of 
 servitude for the black race, and the old freedom-loving 
 spirit of the North was slowly but surely undermined. 
 But there was slowly but surely rising a moral indig- 
 nation before which slavery was ultimately destined to 
 succumb, and Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and 
 Lowell's " Biglow Papers " were both effects and pro- 
 moters of that indignation. 
 
 Lowell had the advantage of Mrs. Stowe, not only 
 in being the earlier, but also in being the more amus- 
 ing writer. Mrs. Stowe drew upon men's sympathy; 
 Lowell drew upon their conscience. Mrs. Stowe had 
 more of humor; Lowell had more of wit. And wit 
 played a part in this controversy that humor never 
 could. Wit gave a sword-thrust, which showed that 
 the author could fight, as well as write. It was
 
 284 "THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 
 
 needed to convince the South that the North could 
 not always be cajoled or intimidated. Southern lead- 
 ers were sons of the early Cavaliers who settled 
 Virginia, and whose conception of freedom was 
 feudalistic. The king was free, they thought, and his 
 lords were free, but not the king's subjects, or the 
 lord's retainers. In our Southern States, the few slave- 
 holders who managed the affairs of a whole county 
 looked down upon the voters of a Northern town meet- 
 ing very much as the Cavaliers of old England had 
 looked down upon the Roundheads. Southern free- 
 dom was theoretical, but not real. Yet these slave- 
 holders were convinced of their own superiority, and 
 declared that one Southerner could whip five Yankees. 
 Nothing but ridicule could pierce their pachydermatous 
 sides. Lowell brought ridicule to bear upon them ; but, 
 in this very ridicule, he showed the true greatness of 
 the Yankee stock, the thoroughness of its education, 
 the soundness of its morality, and the fighting force 
 of its theory of government. In this demonstration of 
 Northern principle and efficiency, the dialect poem was 
 a mere instrument, invented for a purpose; and that 
 purpose, to prove that the despised Yankee, however 
 humble he might be, towered far above the defenders 
 of slavery, in every true attribute of manhood. While 
 " The Biglow Papers " were Yankee in form, they 
 were universal in spirit. They were products of the 
 American soil, and they breathed the American inde- 
 pendence, while at the same time they were nobly and 
 profoundly human. They have no predecessors or 
 rivals in literature, unless it be in the Scottish, yet 
 human, poems of Robert Burns, They ran like wild-
 
 " THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 285 
 
 fire through the country. They were copied with ap- 
 plause in every newspaper at the North, and with ob- 
 jurgation in every newspaper that dared print them at 
 the South. Lowell might have published poems by the 
 hundred, of the ordinary sort, and might have found 
 no great number of readers. But when these papers 
 were issued in 1846, he woke one morning and found 
 himself famous. I can quote only a stanza here and 
 there, to show how perfectly they combine wit and 
 sense, ethics and amusement. Let me begin with the 
 utterances of Birdofredum Sawin, who represents the 
 claims of the South, stripped to nakedness and reduced 
 to language which the humblest can understand. They 
 expose to everlasting contempt the flamboyant patriot- 
 ism that can praise freedom in the abstract, while it 
 grinds the slave under its heel. Mr. Sawin has enlisted 
 as a soldier in the Mexican war, and is intent upon 
 justifying that effort to extend the bounds of slavery: 
 
 Thet our nation's bigger'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, 
 An' thet it's,all to make 'em free thet we air pullin' trigger, 
 Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee's abreakin' 'em to pieces, 
 An' thet idee's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; 
 Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I 
 
 can, 
 
 I know thet " every man " don't mean a nigger or a Mexican; 
 An' there's another thing I know, an' thet is, ef these creeturs 
 Thet stick an Anglosaxon mask onto Stateprison feeturs, 
 Should come to Jaalam Centre fer to argify an' spout on't, 
 The gals 'ould count the silver spoons the minnit they cleared 
 
 out on't. 
 
 But Hosea Biglow refuses to enlist, and scorns the en- 
 ticements of the recruiting sergeant in the following 
 vigorous language:
 
 286 "THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 
 
 Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle 
 
 On them kittle-drums o' yourn, 
 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle 
 
 Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; 
 Put in stiff, you fifer feller, 
 
 Let folks see how spry you be, 
 Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 
 
 'Fore you'll git a hold o' me! 
 
 'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers 
 
 Make the thing a grain more right; 
 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers 
 
 Will excuse ye in His sight; 
 Ef you take a sword an' dror it, 
 
 And go stick a feller thru, 
 Guv'ment aint to at swer for it, 
 
 God'll send the bill to you. 
 
 Aint it cute to see a Yankee 
 
 Take sech everlastin' pains, 
 All to get the Devil's thankee 
 
 Helpin" on 'em weld their chains? 
 Wy, it's jest ez clear ez figgers, 
 
 Clear ez one an' one make two, 
 Chaps thet make black slaves o' niggers 
 
 Want to make wite slaves o' you. 
 
 " I'll return ye good fer evil 
 
 Much ez we frail mortils can, 
 But I wun't go help the Devil 
 
 Makin' man the cus o' man; 
 Call me coward, call me traiter, 
 
 Jest ez suits your mean idees, 
 Here I stand a tyrant-hater, 
 
 An' the friend o' God an' Peace! " 
 
 " What Mr. Robinson Thinks " is a telling satire 
 upon the slippery and mercenary policy of many North- 
 ern statesmen. It angered them, and for many year?
 
 " THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 287 
 
 Lowell was shut out from all places of honor to which 
 they had the key: 
 
 Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: 
 
 He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; 
 But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, 
 He's ben true to one party, an' thet is himself; 
 So John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 
 
 Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life 
 
 Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats, 
 An' marched round in front of a drum and a fife, 
 To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes; 
 But John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee. 
 
 Wai, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us 
 
 The rights and the wrongs o' these matters, I vow, 
 God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, 
 To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough; 
 Fer John P. 
 Robinson he 
 Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee! 
 
 And Increase D. O'Phace, Esquire, undoubtedly ut- 
 tered the sentiments of many such, when he averred : 
 
 A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler 
 
 O' purpose thet we might our princerples swaller. 
 
 But Peace comes at last, and Mr. Hosea Big-low salutes 
 it, with sorrow for those who have gone to the war 
 never to return, and yet with joy in the great future 
 that now opens before our country :
 
 288 " THE BIGLOW PAPERS " 
 
 Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street 
 
 I hear the drummers makin' riot, 
 An' I set thinkin' o' the feet 
 
 Thet follered once an' now are quiet, 
 White feet ez snowdrops innercent, 
 
 Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, 
 Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, 
 
 No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'. 
 
 Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed 
 
 For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, 
 But proud, to meet a people proud, 
 
 With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! 
 Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, 
 
 An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! 
 Longin' fer you, our sperits wilt 
 
 Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water. 
 
 Come, while our country feels the lift 
 
 Of a gret instinct shoutin' " Forwards! " 
 An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift 
 
 Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! 
 Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when 
 
 They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, 
 An' bring fair wages for brave men, 
 
 A nation saved, a race delivered! 
 
 His lines on " International Copyright " might almost 
 be thought a summing up of the whole doctrine of 
 " The Biglow Papers," and they well describe his own 
 work and influence as a poetical moralist : 
 
 In vain we call old notions fudge, 
 And bend our conscience to our dealing; 
 
 The Ten Commandments will not budge, 
 And stealing will continue stealing. 
 
 It would not be fair to Lowell, as we take our leave 
 of his work in dialect, if we omitted mention of a little
 
 " THE COURTIN' " 289 
 
 poem which was originally composed merely to fill in a 
 vacant page of " The Biglow Papers." " The Court- 
 in' " is a New England idyl, deserving of a place side 
 by side with " The Vision of Sir Launfal," though 
 written in an entirely different vein. Nothing can sur- 
 pass the description of the Yankee lover's trembling 
 and embarrassment, as he entered the house of his 
 beloved : 
 
 Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
 
 An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
 An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
 
 'ith no one nigh to hender. 
 
 He kin' o' 1'itered on the mat, 
 
 Some doubtfle o' the sekle; 
 His heart kep' go in' pity -pat, 
 
 But hern went pity Zekle. 
 
 He stood a spell on one foot fust, 
 
 Then stood a spell on t'other, 
 An' on which one he felt the wust 
 
 He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. 
 
 Says he, " I'd better call again; " 
 Says she, " Think likely, Mister: " 
 
 Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 
 An' . . . Wai, he up an' kist her. 
 
 Then her red come back like the tide 
 
 Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
 An' all I know is they was cried 
 
 In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 
 
 In January, 1855, Lowell was appointed " Professor 
 of French and Spanish Languages and Literatures, and 
 of Belles Lettres " in Harvard College, thus succeeding
 
 2QO PROSE WORKS OF LOWELL 
 
 Ticknor and Longfellow. He had written much for 
 " The North American Review," and he had given a 
 series of Lowell Lectures. " The Old Dramatists " 
 had been followed by prose essays on many of the 
 great names of literature, and he had won the reputa- 
 tion of our chief American critic. From this time, in- 
 deed, his main literary work was in prose. While 
 its tone was more and more ethical and statesmanlike, 
 there was an affluence of learning and a brilliancy 
 of wit which made all his writings entertaining and 
 memorable. Its defect was an overabundance of these 
 very qualities. Wit is a very good servant, but a very 
 poor master. Constant coruscations in the trolley car 
 show that the electric current is not under complete 
 control. Lowell is too much dominated by his wit and 
 learning. Some of his articles remind one of Macau- 
 lay's earliest essay the essay on Milton which fair- 
 ly bristled with antithesis and eloquence. The real 
 thought is hidden beneath the analogies that are sug- 
 gested by it. And yet Lowell is vastly interesting. 
 " My Study Windows " look out upon a wide pros- 
 pect, and one cannot read these papers without admira- 
 tion and instruction. 
 
 On two great occasions Lowell was chosen to de- 
 liver poems, though his time of youthful spontaneity 
 had passed. Harvard College sought to celebrate the 
 valor and devotion of her sons who had fallen in de- 
 fense of our American Union, and no one so fit as 
 Lowell was found to deliver the Commemoration 
 Ode. He spent upon it the labor of weeks, as he 
 thought, in vain. At last a mighty impulse seized him, 
 and in two days he produced an elaborate and noble
 
 THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION ODE 2QI 
 
 poem. Yet it lacked simplicity. Lowell's real vein 
 had been exhausted. There was no place here for wit. 
 Not all his powers could enter into the result The 
 poem won applause; but the applause was qualified. 
 He was more statesman than poet, and more moralist 
 than statesman. Yet the opening lines were worthy of 
 the occasion, and worthy of him who uttered them : 
 
 Weak-winged is song, 
 Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
 Whither the brave deed climbs for light: 
 
 We seem to do them wrong, 
 Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse 
 Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, 
 Our trivial song to honor those who come 
 With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, 
 And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, 
 Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 
 
 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, 
 A gracious memory to buoy up and save 
 From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave 
 
 Of the unventurous throng. 
 
 His description of Abraham Lincoln may be put side 
 by side with Walt Whitman's " My Captain," as ex- 
 pressing the grief and reverence of the North : 
 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
 
 But at last silence comes; 
 
 These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame. 
 
 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American. 
 
 And the closing lines of the " Ode " attribute to God 
 the victory over our great national curse :
 
 292 LOWELL'S MOST PRODUCTIVE YEARS 
 
 Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! 
 Thy God, in these distempered days, 
 Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, 
 
 And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! 
 Bow down in prayer and praise! 
 
 No poorest in thy borders but may now 
 
 Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow. 
 
 The second important occasion for the recitation of 
 a poem was the hundredth anniversary of the fight at 
 Concord Bridge. This too was an improvisation, writ- 
 ten only two days before the celebration. It ends with 
 a lofty appeal to the Spirit that nerved the men of 
 Seventy-six : 
 
 Freedom, not won by the vain, 
 Not to be courted in play, 
 Not to be kept without pain. 
 Stay with us! Yes, thou wilt stay, 
 Handmaid and mistress of all, 
 Kindler of deed and of thought, 
 . Thou that to hut and to hall 
 Equal deliverance brought! 
 Souls of her martyrs, draw near, 
 Touch our dull lips with your fire, 
 That we may praise without fear 
 Her our delight, our desire, 
 Our faith's inextinguishable star, 
 Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, 
 Our present, our past, our to be, 
 Who will mingle her life with our dust 
 And makes us deserve to be free! 
 
 The years between 1857 and 1877 were the most 
 productive of Lowell's life. His circumstances were 
 favorable. He had contracted a second marriage with 
 Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, in Maine. Elm- 
 wood, near Cambridge, was his commodious and beau-
 
 LOWELL AS EDITOR, DIPLOMAT, AND WIT 293 
 
 tiful home. He was for two years the editor of " The 
 Atlantic Monthly," and for ten years afterward was, 
 with Charles Eliot Norton, the editor of " The North 
 American Review." To this Review he contributed 
 most of his essays. They were political as well as 
 literary. They attracted attention by their breadth of 
 historical outlook, as well as by their soundness of 
 political judgment. In fact, the country had come to 
 look upon him as its chief representative in literature; 
 and when, in 1877, President Hayes made him min- 
 ister to Madrid, and when, in 1880, he was transferred 
 to London, the appointments were received with uni- 
 versal applause. Our country was never more nobly 
 represented abroad. Lowell's wit and learning, his 
 tact and sense, made him a favorite in society, the 
 chosen speaker at public dinners, and at the same time 
 the careful conductor of diplomatic negotiations. The 
 British universities paid him their highest honors. His 
 wife died in 1885, and he returned to this country, to 
 spend his remaining years in comparative retirement, 
 though he was still engaged in literary work. His 
 death occurred in 1891, and his loss was mourned as 
 that of our foremost man of letters. 
 
 Lowell's wit was so large a part of his endow- 
 ment, that specific mention needs to be made of it. 
 Its spontaneity was refreshing. It irradiated his 
 speeches, his letters, and all his private intercourse. 
 What can be more charming than the description of 
 his trials in learning the German language ! 
 
 What a language it is, to be sure! with nominatives sending 
 out as many roots as that witch-grass which is the pest of 
 all child-gardens, and sentences in which one sets sail like an
 
 294 " THE CATHEDRAL " 
 
 admiral with sealed orders, not knowing where the devil he 
 is going to, till he gets out into mid-ocean! After tea, we 
 sit and talk German or what some of us take to be such 
 and which I speak already like a native of some other coun- 
 try. . . The confounded genders! If I die, I will have en- 
 graved on my tombstone that I died of der, die, das, not be- 
 cause I caught 'em, but because I couldn't. . . The next day 
 I was up before sunrise, and got into a habit of early rising 
 that lasted me all that day. . . I have joined an Alpine Club, 
 the members of which ascend the highest peaks by proxy, 
 using an achromatic telescope to see others do it. 
 
 When Lord John Russell, with some fear that he might 
 decline, invited him as " the most engaged man in 
 London," he accepted the invitation as coming from 
 " the most engaging man in London." Nothing could 
 surpass his poise and mastery of a social occasion, so 
 that his friends, on both sides of the Atlantic, were 
 numberless. And yet his nature, lavish as it was, had 
 depth as well as richness. At bottom there was a seri- 
 ous view of life, which qualified him to be one of the 
 moralists of his generation. It was this gift which 
 was most conspicuous in his address on " Democracy " 
 at Birmingham, in England, and in his address in com- 
 memoration of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniver- 
 sary of the founding of Harvard University. 
 
 " The Cathedral," originally called " A Day at Char- 
 tres," is Lowell's last notable contribution to poetry. 
 It is full of thought and feeling, but the verse is in- 
 tricate, and the meaning sometimes as obscure as 
 Browning's " Sordello." The poet sees in the century- 
 growth of the cathedral the type of all historic prog- 
 ress. That progress is rooted in the faith of the past : 
 it witnesses to the need of such faith in these times 
 which boast advance but may mistake the key :
 
 LOWELL S CONFESSION OF FAITH 
 
 I stood before the triple northern port, 
 Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, 
 Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, 
 Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say, 
 Ye come and go incessant; we remain 
 Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; 
 Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, 
 Of faith so nobly realized as this. 
 
 And its later lines recognize the indwelling God as the 
 source of such faith, imparting it to every child, and 
 helping every man in its expression : 
 
 O Power, more near my life than life itself 
 (Or what seems life to us in sense immured), 
 Even as the roots, shut in the darksome earth, 
 Share in the tree-top's joyance, and conceive 
 Of sunshine and wide air and winged things 
 By sympathy of nature, so do I 
 Have evidence of Thee so far above, 
 Yet in and of me! Rather Thou the root 
 Invisibly sustaining, hid in light, 
 Not darkness, or in darkness made by us. 
 
 This poem forms the natural transition to a con- 
 sideration of Lowell's theology. It was printed in 
 1869, before his public life began. He himself called 
 it " a kind of religious poem." It is indeed a confes- 
 sion of faith, noble in many respects, yet lacking 
 some of the best elements of Christian belief. " The 
 Cathedral " will furnish us with material both for 
 praise and for criticism. We may begin by pointing 
 out that Lowell, while recognizing an immanent God, 
 has no faith in a God who is transcendent, and there- 
 fore can believe in no miracle or special revelation. 
 The closing lines of the poem make this plain :
 
 296 LOWELL'S ERROR AS TO GOD 
 
 If sometimes I must hear good men debate 
 
 Of other witness of Thyself than Thou, 
 
 As if there needed any help of ours 
 
 To nurse Thy flickering life, that else must cease, 
 
 Blown out, as 't were a candle, by men's breath, 
 
 My soul shall not be taken in their snare, 
 
 To change her inward surety for their doubt 
 
 Muffled from sight in formal robes of proof: 
 
 While she can only feel herself through Thee, 
 
 I fear not Thy withdrawal; more I fear, 
 
 Seeing, to know Thee not, hoodwinked with dreams 
 
 Of signs and wonders, while, unnoticed, Thou, 
 
 Walking Thy garden still, commun'st with men, 
 
 Missed in the commonplace of miracle. 
 
 Truth and error are so interwoven here that some in- 
 sight is needed to disentangle them. The great truth 
 that God is in all, and through all, is made to imply 
 that this is his only being, and his only method of 
 manifestation, and so to involve what Scripture would 
 call a limitation of the Holy One of Israel. The 
 apostle Paul avoids this error, when he declares that 
 God is not only " in all," and " through all," but also 
 " above all." " But a whisper is heard of Him," says 
 the book of Job ; " the thunder of his power who can 
 understand ! " To limit God to mere Nature is vir- 
 tually to deny his omnipotence, and even his person- 
 ality. But if God is above Nature, and not simply one 
 with Nature, he can act upon Nature and apart from 
 Nature, whenever there is need ; and miracle and spe- 
 cial revelation are possible. 
 
 The real question, then, is the question of need. Is 
 there a moral need, which it is becoming that God 
 should supply? Is the enlightenment, which the uni- 
 versal presence of God in nature gives, a sufficient en-
 
 LOWELL IGNORES SIN 2Q7 
 
 lightenment in man's actual moral condition? The 
 answer to this question is given to us in John's Gospel, 
 When the apostle asserts that before Christ came in the 
 flesh " the light shone in the darkness, and the dark- 
 ness apprehended it not." In other words, man's sin 
 prevented God's light from having its normal and 
 proper effect. Lowell's error with regard to miracle 
 and revelation, then, is an error with regard to man's 
 moral condition. He ignores man's, sin and perversity, 
 which " hinder the truth in unrighteousness," and 
 which necessitate special revelation to awaken con- 
 science and to draw forth repentant love. Such a reve- 
 lation must make plain God's personality, his holiness, 
 his self-sacrificing desire to save; and such a revelation 
 is actually given us in Christ's atoning death and in his 
 offer to deliver the sinner from the bondage of his 
 sins. But Lowell seems to have no personal experience 
 of his need as a sinner. He has no proper conception 
 of God as the hater and punisher of sin, nor of Christ 
 as the divine Saviour from its guilt and defilement 
 He rather prefers the pagan way of salvation, and 
 trusts that man, 
 
 unconscious heir 
 
 To the influence sweet of Athens and of Rome, 
 And old Judaea's gift of secret fire, 
 Spite of himself shall surely learn to know 
 And worship some ideal of himself, 
 Some divine thing, large-hearted, brotherly, 
 Not nice in trifles, a soft creditor, 
 Pleased with his world, and hating only cant. 
 
 In other words, Lowell's God will be a God of infinite 
 good nature, who makes no moral distinctions. Such 
 a God will be no terror to the ungodly, and no Mediator 
 v
 
 298 LOWELL MAKES THE CROSS AN EXAMPLE 
 
 will be needed to make propitiation for men's sins. 
 Christ is not " the fulness of the Godhead bodily," but 
 only one of many guides and saviors, whose life and 
 example have made the path of duty easier for our 
 feet; and his Cross becomes only a model of patience 
 in suffering the ills that afflict us all : 
 
 Whatsoe'er 
 
 The form of building or the creed professed, 
 The Cross, bold type of shame to homage turned, 
 Of an unfinished life that sways the world, 
 Shall tower as sovereign emblem over all. 
 
 With no inner experience of the grace of God in 
 Jesus Christ, it is no wonder that the beliefs of the 
 fathers should seem only the useful incidents of an 
 historic past, and quite inapplicable to the improved 
 conditions of the present day: 
 
 'Tis irrecoverable, that ancient faith, 
 Homely and wholesome, suited to the time, 
 With rod or candy for child-minded men. 
 
 Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought. 
 And Truth defensive hath lost hold on God. 
 
 Each age must worship its own thought of God, 
 More or less earthy, clarifying still 
 With subsidence continuous of the dregs. 
 
 But each man has within him the infinite Source, from 
 whom have proceeded all the revelations of the past, 
 and who is ready to give to us new evidences of his 
 presence :
 
 LOWELLS VIEW OF PRAYER 2Q9 
 
 This life were brutish did we not sometimes 
 Have intimations clear of wider scope, 
 Hints of occasion infinite, to keep 
 The soul alert with noble discontent 
 And onward yearnings of unstilled desire; 
 Fruitless, except we now and then divined 
 A mystery of Purpose, gleaming through 
 The secular confusions of the world, 
 Whose will we darkly accomplish, doing ours. 
 
 And he does not deem himself recreant to his fathers' 
 faith, although 
 
 Its forms to me are weariness, and most 
 
 That drony vacuum of compulsory prayer, 
 
 Still pumping phrases for the Ineffable, 
 
 Though all the valves of memory gasp and wheeze. 
 
 I, that still pray at morning and at eve, 
 Loving those roots that feed us from the past, 
 And prizing more than Plato things I learned 
 At that best academe, a mother's knee, 
 Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, 
 Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt 
 That perfect disenthralment which is God. 
 
 But never has he prayed in sole dependence upon 
 Christ, or other than as one who comes directly into 
 the presence and favor of his Father. " Every man's 
 his own Melchisedek " his own priest and his own 
 savior : 
 
 I think man's soul dwells nearer to the east, 
 Nearer to morning's fountains than the sun; 
 Herself the source whence all tradition sprang, 
 Herself at once both labyrinth and clue. 
 The miracle fades out of history, 
 But faith and wonder and the primal earth 
 Are born into the world with every child.
 
 3OO LOWELL IN CONTRAST WITH BROWNING 
 
 This may be theism, but it is not Christianity. The 
 vagueness of its conception of God, its ignorance of 
 God's holiness and of man's sin, the absence of faith in 
 God's appointed way of salvation through Christ, show 
 it to be a man-made scheme, incapable of giving relief 
 to a burdened conscience, or of comforting a weak and 
 afflicted soul. Man needs to see his own nature in God, 
 or rather, needs to see God in human form. Hero- 
 worship, emperor-worship, Mithras-worship, are all 
 of them efforts of mankind to find a human heart in 
 the Godhead. This universal instinct is satisfied only 
 by Christianity, which shows us the eternal Word 
 made flesh, yet exalted to be King of kings and Lord 
 of lords. With James Russell Lowell's " Cathedral " 
 I would contrast Robert Browning's " Saul " ; and 
 would maintain that this latter poem furnishes a far 
 better' basis for communion with a personal God, for 
 comfort amid the' struggles of our earthly life, and for 
 courage in the performance of social and civic duty, 
 than does the poem we have been considering. Listen 
 to David's heartening appeal to Saul : 
 
 "Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I 
 
 seek 
 
 In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this 
 
 hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the 
 
 Christ stand! " 
 
 What help did Lowell's religion give him in time of 
 bereavement, and when he drew near to the gates of 
 death ? We have already seen that after the loss of his
 
 LOWELL ON IMMORTALITY 3OI 
 
 child he confessed himself a pagan. He derived no 
 comfort from the thought of a present Christ, into 
 whose loving arms he could commit his loved one, with 
 the assurance that she should be restored to him, when 
 life's short day was past, but cleansed from the dis- 
 honors of the tomb and clad with immortality. When 
 his wife dies, he can only write : 
 
 I can only hope and pray that the sweet influences of thir- 
 teen years spent with one like her may be seen and felt in 
 my daily life henceforth. At present I only feel that there is 
 a chamber whose name is Peace, and which opens towards the 
 sun-rising, and that I am not in it. 
 
 He seems to have no definite expectation of seeing her 
 again. His poem, " She Came and Went," expresses 
 thankfulness for the past, but no joy in the present, and 
 no hope for the future : 
 
 An angel stood and met my gaze, 
 
 Through the low doorway of my tent; 
 
 The tent is struck, the vision stays; 
 I only know she came and went. 
 
 Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, 
 
 And life's last oil is nearly spent, 
 One gush of light these eyes will brim, 
 
 Only to think she came and went. 
 
 Christ has brought life and immortality to light in 
 his glorious gospel. When Jonathan Edwards died, 
 his wife, that saintly woman, was so filled with the 
 joy of her Lord, that she had to hide herself from 
 visitors, lest they should fancy that her submission to 
 God's will, and her certainty of future reunion, indi- 
 cated gladness at her husband's death. Thousands of
 
 3O2 " EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS " 
 
 Christians have rejoiced that not only life, but also 
 death, was theirs, and have been able to sing : 
 
 " Do we count the star lost that is hidden 
 
 In the great light of morn? 
 Or fashion a shroud for the young child 
 In the day it is born? 
 
 "Yet behold! that were wise, to their sorrow 
 
 Who mourn, sore distressed, 
 When a soul, that is summoned believing, 
 Enters into its rest." 
 
 But the best utterance of Lowell's hope for the future 
 is found in his " Epistle to George William Curtis." 
 An indefinite " Otherwhere " is his conception of the 
 future life, and it has in it no connection with Christ, 
 and no hint that there is "none other name under 
 heaven among men, wherein we must be saved " : 
 
 I muse upon the margin of the sea, 
 
 Our common pathway to the new To Be, 
 
 Watching the sails, that lessen more and more, 
 
 Of good and beautiful embarked before; 
 
 With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bear 
 
 Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, 
 
 Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes see, 
 
 By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me, 
 
 Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun, 
 
 My moorings to the past snap one by one. 
 
 Lowell was a moralist, and not a theologian ; a theist, 
 and not a Christian. It is an interesting question how 
 far his conceptions of God affected his ideas of duty. 
 What is the normal relation of morality to religion? 
 I reply that religion is morality toward God, as moral- 
 ity is religion toward men. The two are meant to be
 
 MORALITY AND RELIGION 303 
 
 obverse sides of one and the same great fact of life. 
 But human perversity has separated them; the one 
 seems at times to exist without the other; we see re- 
 ligion without morality, and morality without religion. 
 When thus separated, neither one is of real or per- 
 manent value. Religion without morality is a tree 
 without fruits ; morality without religion is a tree with- 
 out roots. Human progress consists in the ever- 
 increasing union of the two ; human perfection will be 
 attained only when love to God is the source of love 
 to man, and love to man is the constant result and 
 proof of love to God. 
 
 The moralist builds securely, only when the founda- 
 tion of his system is laid upon the Rock of Ages. In 
 just the proportion that he constructs his edifice with- 
 out this foundation, he builds upon the sand, and time 
 undoes his work. Or, to change the simile, ethics 
 without God, by which I mean ethics which ignores the 
 Christian revelation, is an orchid-growth, that lives- on 
 air; while Christian ethics is like the rose, which has 
 deep root in virgin soil. The orchid has its beauty; 
 but that beauty fades, and the light wind of passion 
 sweeps it away; while the rose has a permanent love- 
 liness, and a fragrance which the orchid never pos- 
 sesses. To apply my illustrations to the present case, 
 I would say that Lowell, with all his moral earnestness, 
 has missed the true theory of morals, and so has given 
 us only detached maxims, truths which are the proper 
 fruit of Christianity alone, and which, without con- 
 nection with their source, lack both motive and life. 
 
 The ethics of the mere moralist are like the fruits 
 seen on the Christmas tree. Apples and oranges, pears
 
 304 LOWELL'S VIRTUES FRUITS OF CALVINISM 
 
 and lemons, bananas and peaches are there. But they 
 never grew there; they are only tacked on; when 
 they disappear, no others will ever take their places. 
 Lowell's social and civic virtues never grew upon the 
 theologic stock which he cultivated. They were grown 
 upon the old Calvinistic tree. When New England 
 broke away from evangelical doctrine and swung off 
 into Unitarianism, many of the fruits of the old re- 
 ligion still survived, and our poet made good use of 
 them. It was not his theology that conquered in our 
 Civil War; it was the old faith in a personal God, and 
 in his ordinance of civil government, that nerved the 
 hearts of our people. It was Bible preaching, and not 
 moralistic poetry, that carried our country through 
 the struggle for freedom of the slave and union of the 
 States. And when faith in the Scriptures, and in 
 Christ as our divine Lord and Redeemer, dies out of 
 American hearts, no poetry of Lowell's will save us 
 from national collapse and ruin. 
 
 I say these things with all proper admiration for 
 Lowell's gifts and services. But let the moralist 
 know his place. He is second, not first ; the echoer of 
 a tradition, not an original authority; and whatever 
 of good is in him is due to the modicum of religious 
 faith, which, consciously or unconsciously, expresses 
 itself in his ethics. Something of that early faith still 
 lingers in the verse of our poet; though lack of faith 
 causes much of his work to come short of its proper 
 depth and value. In what follows of this essay, I de- 
 sire to point out the merit, and yet the demerit, of cer- 
 tain of Lowell's poems, resulting from the mixture 
 of truth and errox in his theology.
 
 LOWELL DENIES SPECIAL INSPIRATION 305 
 
 Take the matter of inspiration. In his early days, 
 the poet had no faith in any impact of a superior 
 Power upon .the minds of men. All knowledge must 
 come from within. In 1839 he wrote: 
 
 I have wondered whether you believed in the divine inspi- 
 ration of the Hebrew prophets. Do you? I don't. I once 
 thought it an argument in their favor that, in all the world, 
 there has not, before or since, been any writing that com- 
 pared with theirs in poetic sublimity. Now that I am older, 
 this very thing seems to me against them. I think that if you 
 compare it with that of our Saviour (whose inspiration I 
 would be more willing to admit), you will perceive my mean- 
 ing. His, you will notice, is prose; theirs poetic sublimity 
 and herein lies the difference between inspiration, or percep- 
 tion of real truth, and enthusiasm, or longing after ideal truth. 
 
 Yet, not long after, he himself had a revelation, and 
 got a clue to a whole system of spiritual philosophy : 
 
 The whole system rose up before me like a vague Destiny 
 looming from the abyss. I never before so clearly felt the 
 spirit of God in me and around me. The whole room seemed 
 to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro 
 with the presence of Something, I knew not what. I spoke 
 with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. 
 
 As is often the case, from one extreme he went to 
 another; from denial of all inspiration, he came to 
 believe in the inspiration of all men, at least in favored 
 moments of their existence. In " The Cathedral," 
 Lowell declares his confidence that God manifests him- 
 self to all : 
 
 Man cannot be God's outlaw if he would, 
 Nor so abscond him in the caves of sense 
 But Nature still shall search some crevice out 
 With messages of splendor from that Source 
 Which, dive he, soar he, baffles still and lures.
 
 306 LOWELL IDENTIFIES GOD WITH NATURE 
 
 In that noble poem, " A Winter-Evening Hymn to my 
 Fire," he shows how God's gifts in the past may be 
 utilized in the present, and may be made our own. 
 Addressing his Fire, as if it were a living person, he 
 tells of the wisdom which men divinely stirred have 
 given to us : 
 
 Therefore with thee I love to read 
 
 Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs 
 
 Life in the withered words! how swift recede 
 
 Time's shadows! and how glows again 
 
 Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, 
 
 As when upon the anvils of the brain 
 
 It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought 
 
 By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's thought! 
 
 How plain it is that Lowell's objection to inspiration 
 is due to his identification of God with Nature! If 
 God is only another name for Nature, he is immanent, 
 but not transcendent, and he can manifest himself only 
 within us, and in the way of natural cause and effect. 
 We can deny the special inspiration of any, or we can 
 affirm the inspiration of all. But if God is not -con- 
 fined to Nature, he can produce effects for which 
 Nature is herself incompetent. Nature is not God, but 
 only the partial expression of God. God is not con- 
 fined to Nature ; he can " cut short his work in right- 
 eousness " ; with him " one day is as a thousand years." 
 Lowell is right in affirming that God manifests him- 
 self inwardly; for there is a " Light that lighteth every 
 man," and even conscience is an echo of his voice. But 
 Lowell is wrong when he affirms that this is the only 
 method of divine revelation. In every man there is a 
 capacity for greater insight than he now possesses;
 
 LOWELL FATALLY INDIFFERENT TO SIN 307 
 
 we all have occasional flashes of genius; telepathy and 
 premonition show that there are hidden powers which 
 are now unused. Inspiration is only the intensification 
 of natural faculties, under the special influence of the 
 divine Spirit; even prophetic inspiration is only the 
 lifting of man up to heights of prescience and prediction 
 which belong to him by nature, but which he has lost 
 by his sin. Inspiration then is both natural and super- 
 natural. The universal presence of God in humanity 
 does not prevent, but rather makes possible, a special 
 influence of God's enlightening Spirit in times of need. 
 Again the question presents itself: Is there need? It 
 is Lowell's insufficient understanding of man's blind- 
 ness and sin that prevents him from seeing the pos- 
 sibility and the reality of special divine revelation. 
 And what is true of inspiration is also true of miracle. 
 The God of Nature can work apart from Nature, and 
 can condense into a single act of incarnation or of 
 atonement the whole meaning of the universe and the 
 whole manifestation of his mind and heart and will. 
 
 Emerson has very properly been criticized for his 
 " fatal indifference to moral considerations." It may 
 seem harsh to accuse Lowell, our moralistic poet, of 
 similar error. But his ignorance of sin and his mis- 
 understanding of the character of God have sad effects 
 in practical morals as well as in abstract theology. The 
 moralist should, above all else, believe in the supremacy 
 of the Right. Fiat justitla, ruat coelum, should be his 
 motto. The demand of conscience that penalty should 
 follow wrong-doing should never be ignored or ex- 
 plained away. Love should always ,be the servant of 
 righteousness, and never its servant or master. God
 
 3O& LOWELL AND WORDSWORTH CONTRASTED 
 
 has made death to be the sign of his estimate of sin. 
 Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the 
 body, is the outward symbol of spiritual death, or the 
 separation of the soul from God. To abolish the 
 penalty of death, in the case of the murderer, is to 
 break down God's instruction of the race both in nature 
 and in Scripture, to weaken the sense of mutual ob- 
 ligation, and to give free rein to human passion and 
 hatred. Yet this is what Lowell does, when he con- 
 demns the poet Wordsworth for his defense of capital 
 punishment I need only quote a sonnet from each of 
 these, to show how superior in moral earnestness is the 
 poem of Wordsworth. Let me, however, begin with 
 Lowell: 
 
 The love of all things springs from love of one; 
 
 Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows, 
 
 And over it with fuller glory flows 
 
 The sky-like spirit of God; a hope -begun 
 
 In doubt and darkness "neath a fairer sun 
 
 Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth; 
 
 And to the law of meekness, faith, and ruth, 
 
 By inward sympathy, shall all be won: 
 
 This thou shouldst know, who, from the painted 
 
 feature 
 
 Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turn 
 Unto the love of ever-youthful Nature, 
 And of a beauty fadeless and eterne; 
 And always 't is the saddest sight to see 
 An old man faithless in Humanity. 
 
 The " old man " was wiser than his youthful critic. 
 He believed in Deity even more than he believed in 
 humanity. And so Wordsworth has condensed into 
 a single one of his " Sonnets upon the Punishment of 
 Death" more of truth than can be found in all of 
 Lowell's poetry :
 
 THE CROSS IN LOWELL'S THEOLOGY 309 
 
 " Is Death, when evil against good has fought 
 With such fell mastery that a man may dare 
 By deeds the blackest purpose to lay bare? 
 Is Death, for one to that condition brought 
 For him or any one, the thing that ought 
 To be most dreaded? Lawgivers, beware, 
 Lest, capital pains remitting till ye spare 
 The murderer, ye, by sanction to that thought 
 Seemingly given", debase the general mind; 
 Tempt the vague will tried standards to disown, 
 Nor only palpable restraints unbind, 
 But upon Honour's head disturb the crown, 
 Whose absolute rule permits not to withstand 
 In the weak love of life his least command." 
 
 Lowell's theology appears most defective when he 
 alludes to the doctrine of the atonement He cannot 
 understand that doctrine, because he has no proper 
 faith in the holiness of God, or in trie necessity of God's 
 nature which makes suffering to follow sin. A holy 
 God, who, for the sake of creaturely freedom and 
 virtue, permits the existence of sin, must not only 
 visit that sin with penalty, but must himself suffer 
 with and for the sinner. Only love leads the divine 
 Being to undertake this suffering; only holiness makes 
 that suffering necessary. The Cross of Christ is the 
 exhibition in space and time of this eternal suffering 
 of the divine nature. The atonement is a substitution 
 of God's suffering for ours, only as it is a sharing of 
 our guilt and penalty by One who is the very life of 
 humanity. Lowell's wit was never so misapplied as 
 when, in "A Fable for Critics," he put in the pil- 
 lory of his derision what he conceived to be the doc- 
 trine of the atonement as preached by an orthodox 
 divine.
 
 3IO A MISPLACING OF LOWELLS WIT 
 
 [Doctor] Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar 
 Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter; 
 And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, 
 Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows. 
 
 Yes, the Cross was the Roman gallows ! It was the 
 deepest ignominy that man could suffer; and, because 
 it was the very acme of earthly penalty, divine holiness 
 bore it in our nature and in our stead, that we might 
 go free. That Cross has moved human hearts to peni- 
 tence, as no maxims of the sages ever could. It is the 
 central fact of Christianity. Paul will know nothing 
 but Christ, and him crucified; God forbid that he 
 should glory, save in the Cross of Jesus, his Lord ! 
 When Lowell travesties the suffering love of a holy 
 God, he not only goes beyond the bounds of rational 
 criticism, but he discredits the only effective appeal to 
 sinful hearts. How infinitely superior to this ridicule, 
 as a merely ethical instrument for man's betterment, is 
 the Christian hymn : 
 
 " Weary of earth, and laden with my sin, 
 I look at heav'n and long to enter in; 
 But there no evil thing may find a home; 
 And yet I hear a voice that bids me ' Come.' 
 
 It is the voice of Jesus that I hear; 
 
 His are the hands stretched out to draw me near, 
 
 And his the blood that can for all atone, 
 
 And set me faultless there before the throne. 
 
 [ Yes, thou wilt answer for me, Righteous Lord! 
 Thine all the merits, mine the great reward! 
 Thine the sharp thorns, but mine the golden crown; 
 Mine the life won, but thine the life laid down! "
 
 ARE RELIGION AND POETRY ANTITHETICAL? 3! I 
 
 It is fortunate that, in spite of these defects, we can 
 praise so large a portion of Lowell's work. Though 
 evangelical theology had lost its hold upon him, its 
 ethics still survived. He felt their pull, and fancied 
 that they drew him away from poetry. In 1865 he 
 writes : 
 
 I shall never be a poet till I get out of the pulpit; and New 
 England was all meeting-house when I was growing up. 
 But I assure you I am never dull, but in spite of myself. . . 
 Believe me, I was lively once, and may recover it; but I fear 
 me I have suffered a professor-change that has gone too 
 deep for healing I am perfectly conscious of it, and cannot 
 yet help it. 
 
 All this suggests the question whether ethics and 
 poetry, or religion and poetry, are antithetical to each 
 other. Can a great poet have a moral purpose in his 
 writing? Is the greatest poetry free from all intent 
 to benefit mankind and to honor God? Was the 
 " Paradise Lost " less of a poem, because it treated 
 
 " Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat?" 
 
 Was " The Divine Comedy " less worthy of praise be- 
 cause it professed to show the way from hell to heaven ? 
 Is Hebrew poetry less, or more, poetical, because it is 
 full of the divine Spirit, and aims at bringing man into 
 communion with God? It really is the old question of 
 " Art for Art's sake," or " Art for God's sake." I 
 think we can make but one answer : Poetry is great, 
 just in proportion as it reflects the innermost reality;
 
 312 LOWELL A GREATER POET IF A GREATER MAN 
 
 and no poetry is great that does not bring the finite 
 mind into contact and communication with the infinite 
 Intelligence. Poetry indeed is the vision of the ideal 
 which lies at the basis of the real, and the expression 
 of that ideal in answering forms of melody and num- 
 ber. Poetry demands for its organ a complete man- 
 hood, and an atrophied religious nature is shorn of 
 its proper insight and power. Only a coal from off 
 the altar of sacrifice can touch the lips with heavenly 
 fire. Lowell would have been a greater poet if he 
 had been a greater theologian and a greater man. His 
 influence will be fleeting, just in proportion as he 
 lacked knowledge of himself and of God. 
 
 The essence of religion is humility a humility that 
 confesses its sinfulness and its dependence upon the 
 divine mercy, and that submissively accepts pardon and 
 renewal in God's appointed -way. Such penitence and 
 faith, in- Jew or Gentile, whether conscious or uncon- 
 scious, are really faith in Christ, the Way, the Truth, 
 and the Life ; and they make the soul receptive to the di- 
 vine Spirit. Self-righteousness and self-dependence, on 
 the other hand, while they may attract the praise and 
 even the loyalty of men, are a bar to the entrance of the 
 divine Spirit. Receptivity ceases, when a Stoic pride 
 vaunts its own sufficiency. The great poets have al- 
 ways courted the Muses the pseudonym for God 
 and have attributed their best work to a higher Power 
 than themselves. Yet human faculties still work on, 
 when this connection with God is broken; a sort of 
 mental inertia keeps the machinery in motion ; and we 
 have poetry written by ungodly men. Let us be thank- 
 ful that so much of it is helpful, though it conies short
 
 LOWELL'S SERVICE FROM INHERITED FAITH 3*3 
 
 of the highest excellence. I make no doubt that 
 Lowell's stand for American democracy is a valuable 
 contribution to literature and to politics. We are more 
 independent of foreign opinion, and more ready to fight 
 for our principles, by reason of his appeals. That the 
 United States has come to be a world-power, and is 
 conscious of its rights and dignity in the family of na- 
 tions, is in some measure due to Lowell. This sense 
 of civic dignity, like that of old when to be a Roman 
 was to be greater than a king, rests, in Lowell's case, 
 in spite of some theological aberrations, upon his an- 
 cestral and inherited theistic faith. In his " Ode for 
 the Fourth of July, 1876," the concluding verses make 
 this plain : 
 
 God of our fathers, Thou who wast, 
 
 Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout 
 
 Thy secret presence shall be lost 
 
 In the great light that dazzles them to doubt, 
 
 We, sprung from loins of stalwart men 
 
 Whose strength was in their trust 
 
 That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling in their dust 
 
 And walk with those a fellow-citizen 
 
 Who build a city of the just, 
 
 We, who believe Life's bases rest 
 
 Beyond the probe of chemic test, 
 
 Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, 
 
 Sure that, while lasts the immutable decree, 
 
 The land to Human Nature dear 
 
 Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. 
 
 I have been dealing with Lowell simply as a poet, 
 and have endeavored to show how his training and his 
 religious beliefs influenced his verse. We must remem- 
 ber that his later life was not that of the poet, but 
 rather that of the student of politics and the man of
 
 314 " T0 JOHN GORHAM PALFREY " 
 
 public affairs. He was greater as an essayist than as a 
 poet. The instincts of the poet, however, never de- 
 serted him. The warmth of his affection was almost 
 ideal, and it best expressed itself in memorial verses in 
 honor of his friends. These verses show how greatly 
 he valued courage and faithfulness in defense of the 
 right, and they have a distinctly ethical character. 
 The first of these poems is addressed " To John Gorham 
 Palfrey," who had bolted from his party rather than 
 support a candidate submissive to the encroachments 
 of slavery : 
 
 There are who triumph in a losing cause, 
 Who can put on defeat, as 't were a wreath 
 Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, 
 
 Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 
 
 'T is they who stand for freedom and God's laws. 
 
 And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, 
 Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed 
 To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws. 
 
 Oh for a whiff of Naseby, that would sweep, 
 With its stern Puritan besom, all this chaff 
 From the Lord's threshing-floor! Yet more than 
 
 half 
 
 The victory is attained, when one or two, 
 Through the fool's laughter and the traitor's 
 
 scorn, 
 
 Beside thy sepulchre can bide the morn, 
 Crucified Truth, when thou shalt rise anew! 
 
 Lowell sided with the weak who seemed to have no 
 helper. His verses " To W. L. Garrison " depict the 
 pitiful resources, but the indomitable will, of the first 
 anti-slavery reformers :
 
 LOWELL'S TRIBUTES TO HIS FRIENDS 315 
 
 In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 
 Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young 
 man; 
 
 The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean; 
 Yet there the freedom of a race began. 
 
 O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, 
 Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain! 
 
 Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 
 Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain. 
 
 There is a sonnet which must not be omitted, if we are 
 to give any proper account of Lowell's friends. It is 
 addressed to " Wendell Phillips " : 
 
 He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide 
 
 The din of battle and of slaughter rose; 
 
 He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 
 
 That sank in seeming loss before its foes: 
 
 Many there were who made great haste and sold 
 
 Unto the cunning enemy their swords, 
 
 He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, 
 
 And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
 
 Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went 
 
 And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
 
 Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
 
 So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
 
 And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 
 
 Through all the widespread veins of endless good. 
 
 And I must also, in all fairness, quote parts of the 
 poem which he wrote to his best friend, his lifelong 
 companion and colleague, and the editor of his " Life 
 and Letters " I refer of course to Charles Eliot Nor- 
 ton, from whom much of my material has been taken, 
 and whose dominating intelligence and friendly criti- 
 cism had greater influence with Lowell than those of
 
 3l6 THE MODESTY OF LOWELL 
 
 any other. This poem is the poet's humble confession 
 of his own shortcoming at the age of forty-nine, when 
 poetry began to seem a thing of the past, and his more 
 strenuous public life was opening before him : 
 
 The wind is roistering out of doors, 
 
 My windows shake and my chimney roars; 
 
 My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me, 
 
 As of old, in their moody, minor key, 
 
 And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, 
 
 As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes. 
 
 "O dream-ship-builder! where are they all, 
 Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall, 
 That should crush the waves under canvas piles, 
 And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles? 
 There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes, 
 While you muse in your arm-chair, and toast your 
 toes." 
 
 I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, 
 
 My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar; 
 
 If much be gone, there is much remains; 
 
 By the embers of loss I count my gains, 
 
 You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows 
 
 In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes. 
 
 Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships, 
 
 To send a child's armada of chips! 
 
 Instead of the great guns, tier on tier, 
 
 A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere! 
 
 " Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes," 
 
 I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes. 
 
 It is the natural modesty of the man which sees, in 
 what has been accomplished, only the suggestion of the 
 greater work that might have been. One of the most 
 pleasing indications, indeed, of Lowell's real character 
 is to be found in his criticism of himself. It was in-
 
 THE SHORTCOMINGS OF LOWELL 317 
 
 eluded in " A Fable for Critics," in order to prevent 
 the public from suspecting him as its author. I have 
 already pointed out the elements of truth and of error 
 which it represents, and with it my essay may close : 
 
 " There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
 With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, 
 He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
 But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, 
 The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
 Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and 
 
 preaching; 
 
 His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
 But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, 
 And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, 
 At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem." 
 
 This is a modest estimate of himself. But he does not 
 understand the reason for his shortcomings. It was 
 not his preaching that spoiled his poetry, but rather 
 the fact that he had so little truth to preach. He was 
 a moralist and a patriot, but his morality and patriotism 
 were not sufficiently grounded in religious faith. God 
 was to him too much of a Nature-God, and too little 
 the God of the Christian revelation. The result was 
 narrowness of range and deficiency in depth. He saw 
 that " the powers that be are ordained of God " ; but 
 he did not see in Christ's sacrifice the motive for obedi- 
 ence, or the power to make men loyal. His appeals to 
 good men are stirring, but when they fall upon unwill- 
 ing ears they are drowned by the outcries of selfishness. 
 His poetry would be more impressive and more last- 
 ing, if there were in it that vision of the Holy One 
 which he lacked, and that inspiration of the Hebrew 
 prophets which he denied.
 
 VII 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 LORD MACAULAY defines wit as the power of per- 
 ceiving analogies between things which appear to have 
 nothing in common. We ought to add a second power 
 of apt expression, such as creates surprise or pleasure. 
 How shall we distinguish wit from humor? Mainly 
 by the difference in their intellectual and emotional 
 accompaniments. Both wit and humor are products 
 of the imagination. But wit is often cynical, while 
 humor is compassionate; wit can discharge stinging 
 shafts, while humor is always kindly; wit is more a 
 matter of intellect, humor a matter of affection. 
 Thackeray called humor a mixture of love and wit, 
 and named Dickens as its representative. We have 
 seen how greatly James Russell Lowell was indebted 
 to wit, as his instrument in poetry. We may with 
 equal truth speak of humor as the chief gift of Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. As we called Lowell our poetical 
 moralist, we may call Holmes our poetical humorist. 
 
 Our poet was a great believer in heredity; and, in 
 spite of his dislike to Calvinism, he furnished in him- 
 self a demonstration of its doctrine with regard to the 
 transmission of hereditary traits. The element of 
 vivacity in his mental composition was almost certainly 
 derived from his mother, Sarah Wendell ; and his bent 
 to poetry may be plausibly explained as an inheritance 
 from Anne Bradstreet, who was called " the tenth 
 
 321
 
 322 " DOROTHY Q. ' 
 
 Muse " in New England, and who was a remoter an- 
 cestor. Dorothy Quincy came nearer to Oliver in 
 point of time; and he possessed a portrait of her 
 which he has made famous in his verses entitled 
 " Dorothy Q." verses so sweet and so characteristic 
 of his genius, that a few of their lines at least must 
 not be omitted : 
 
 Grandmother's mother; her age, I guess, 
 Thirteen summers, or something less; 
 Girlish bust, but womanly air; 
 Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; 
 Lips that lover has never kissed; 
 Taper fingers and slender wrist; 
 Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; 
 So they painted the little maid. 
 
 O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! 
 Strange is the gift that I owe to you; 
 Such a gift as never a king 
 Save to daughter or son might bring, 
 All my tenure of heart and hand, 
 All my title to house and land; 
 Mother and sister and child and wife 
 And joy and sorrow and death and life! 
 
 What if a hundred years ago 
 
 Those close-shut lips had answered No, 
 
 When forth the tremulous question came 
 
 That cost the maiden her Norman name, 
 
 And under the folds that look so still 
 
 The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? 
 
 Should I be I, or would it be 
 
 One tenth another, to nine tenths me? 
 
 Our poet's father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, was a man of 
 very different type from his wife. While she was 
 bright, and full of the modern views then current in
 
 THE PARENTS OF HOLMES 323 
 
 New England, he represented the old-fashioned Cal- 
 vinism. He was born in Connecticut, and he gradu- 
 ated at Yale. He married for his first wife the 
 daughter of Doctor Stiles, the president of the college. 
 For several years he exercised his ministry in Georgia, 
 the most conservative region of the South. Then he 
 returned to the North, and became pastor of the First 
 Congregational Church of Cambridge. Ten years 
 afterward he married his second wife, and nine years 
 after that Oliver Wendell Holmes was born. " The 
 Old Gambrel-roofed House " which he has so feelingly 
 commemorated, was the scene of solemn lessons in the 
 Westminster Catechism, which were given by his 
 mother, although on her part with many a mental 
 reservation for she declared in later years to an old 
 friend and servant, " Well, Mary, I don't know, but 
 I am as good an Universalist as any of you ! " Her 
 son seems to have her in mind when he writes : " She, 
 too, is the New England elm with the iron band welded 
 round it when it was a sapling! But how she has 
 grown in spite of it ! " 
 
 The father was a handsome man, of gracious man- 
 ners but quiet dignity. He wrote some dull verses, as 
 many clergymen of his day innocently did. He was 
 the author of a book entitled " Annals of America,"- an 
 accurate and trustworthy narrative of our national 
 history. But those were days of theological contro- 
 versy. Doctor Holmes thought himself set for the 
 defense of orthodox doctrine. His chief aim was to 
 preach what he regarded as Scripture truth, whether 
 men would hear or forbear. He did this with com- 
 parative mildness, and his son might possibly have
 
 324 HOLMES S EARLY DISLIKE FOR CALVINISM 
 
 remained a believer, if it had not been for the oc- 
 casional visits of clergymen who went to hyper-Cal- 
 vinistic extremes. Their minatory preaching and 
 their lugubrious demeanor repelled the sprightly boy, 
 and he vowed to oppose and deride their doctrine. He 
 outgrew the teaching of his father. From subordi- 
 nation he achieved complete independence, yet without 
 sundering the filial bond which united them. 
 
 In his " Autobiographical Notes," which unfortu- 
 nately do not extend beyond his college days, he has 
 given us a very interesting account of his boyish read- 
 ing. His father had a library of from one to two 
 thousand volumes. The great English classics his- 
 torians, poets, and preachers were there, and Rees's 
 " Encyclopaedia " gave a summary of all human knowl- 
 edge. Into all these the boy dipped, without attempt- 
 ing to read any one of them through. Scott's " Family 
 Bible," and Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," wakened 
 his antipathy, by what he thought their narrowness 
 and exclusiveness. An original " Paradise " and the 
 " Fall of Man " to him became fables. Already the 
 study of physical science interested him more than 
 did the views of theologians. Unitarianism showed its 
 ill effects in his case, by making him a materialistic 
 rather than an idealistic skeptic. In giving account of 
 himself in those early days he writes : 
 
 The effect of Calvinistic training on different natures va- 
 ries very much. The majority take the creed as a horse 
 takes his collar; it slips by his ears, over his neck, he hardly 
 knows how, but he finds himself in harness, and jogs along as 
 his fathers and forefathers have done before him. A certain 
 number become enthusiasts in its behalf, and, believing them- 
 selves the subjects of divine illumination, become zealous
 
 THE SCHOOL DAYS OF HOLMES 325 
 
 ministers and devoted missionaries. Here and there a 
 stronger-minded one revolts with the whole strength of his 
 nature from the inherited servitude of his ancestry, and gets 
 rid of his whole harness before he is at peace with himself, 
 though a few shreds may hold to him. 
 
 Oliver's earliest memory was of the Declaration of 
 Peace between England and the United States, in 1815, 
 when he was six years old. He threw up his cap at 
 the illumination of the colleges, as he was coming 
 from the dame-school. A little later he came under 
 the tutelage of William Biglow, the Master of the Bos- 
 ton Latin School. The boy seems to have been an apt 
 scholar, in spite of his constant whispering; for the 
 master, in passing, tapped him on the forehead with 
 his pencil as his only punishment, saying that he 
 couldn't help it, " if I would do so well." After the 
 Boston Latin School came the Phillips Andover 
 Academy. His poem " The School-Boy," read in 1878, 
 at the Centennial Celebration of the founding of the 
 Academy, tells us the feelings with which he began 
 his studies away from home : 
 
 My cheek was bare of adolescent down 
 When first I sought the academic town;' 
 Slow rolls the coach along the dusty road, 
 Big with its filial and parental load; 
 The frequent hills, the lonely woods are past, 
 The school-boy's chosen home is reached at last. 
 
 Homesick as death! Was ever pang like this? . . 
 Too young as yet with willing feet to stray 
 From the tame fireside, glad to get. away, 
 Too old to let my watery grief appear, 
 And what so bitter as a swallowed tear!
 
 326 THE HARVARD CLASS OF 1829 
 
 You were a school-boy what beneath the sun 
 So like a monkey? I was also one. 
 
 In 1825, at the age of sixteen, he entered Harvard 
 College. The Class of 1829 was a notable one. It 
 had fifty-nine members. Among them were G. T. 
 Bigelow, afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of Massachusetts ; F. B. Crowninshielcl, Speaker 
 of the Massachusetts House of Representatives ; G. VV. 
 Richardson, Mayor of Worcester ; G. F. Davis, Mem- 
 ber of Congress; James Freeman Clarke, the well- 
 known preacher and writer; Benjamin Peirce, the 
 famous professor, whom Holmes describes as the " boy 
 with a grave mathematical look " ; B. R. Curtis, of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, the "boy 
 with a three-decker brain " ; S. F. Smith, author of 
 " My Country, 'tis of Thee," " nice youngster of excel- 
 lent pith." It was a day of rollicking good-fellowship, 
 and the use of alcoholic stimulants, which was still 
 common, made this fraternity the easier. Then began 
 a series of class-songs and class-poems, in which the 
 bacchanalian element is more pronounced than we find 
 it in our latter days ; it was even then, indeed, more of 
 a pretense than a reality. Holmes was chosen class- 
 poet, and he magnified his office, for I find forty-four 
 successive poems which he read at the annual reunions 
 of his class, until at the last meeting, in 1889, only 
 three survivors were present. I quote from the poem 
 which introduces, and from the poem which closes the 
 series. The first is entitled " Bill and Joe " : 
 
 Come, dear old comrade, you and I 
 Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
 The shining days when life was new,
 
 CLASS-POEMS OF HOLMES 327 
 
 And all was bright with morning dew, 
 The lusty days of long ago, 
 When you were Bill and I was Joe. 
 
 And shall we breathe in happier spheres 
 The names that pleased our mortal ears; 
 In some sweet lull of harp and song 
 For earth-born spirits none too long, 
 Just whispering of the world below 
 Where this was Bill and that was Joe? 
 
 No matter; while our home is here 
 No sounding name is half so dear; 
 When fades at length our lingering day, 
 Who cares what pompous tombstones say? 
 Read on the hearts that love us still, 
 Hie jacet Joe. Hie jacet Bill. 
 
 The last of these class-poems is entitled " After the 
 Curfew " : 
 
 The Play is over. While the light 
 
 Yet lingers in the darkening hall, 
 I come to say a last Good-night 
 
 Before the final Exeunt all. 
 
 We gathered once, a joyous throng: 
 The jovial toasts went gayly round; 
 
 With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, 
 We made the floors and walls resound. 
 
 We come with feeble steps and slow, 
 
 A little band of four or five, 
 Left from the wrecks of long ago, 
 
 Still pleased to find ourselves alive. 
 
 Alive! How living, too, are they 
 Whose memories it is ours to share! 
 
 Spread the long table's full array, 
 There sits a ghost in every chair!
 
 328 EARLY VERSES OF HOLMES 
 
 So ends " The Boys," a lifelong play. 
 
 We too must hear the Prompter's call 
 To fairer scenes and brighter day: 
 
 Farewell! I let the curtain fall. 
 
 Holmes has told us that with him versifying began 
 even before he had learned to write. His ideas shaped 
 themselves in metrical form so early that he did not 
 know when the poetic impulse first seized him. The 
 first verses which appeared in print, however, seem to 
 have been a translation from Vergil's " yEneid," made 
 when Oliver was a student in the academy at Andover. 
 They are a vigorous rendering of the passage in which 
 Neptune is described as rising to quell the storm: 
 
 The god looked out upon the troubled deep 
 Waked into tumult from its placid sleep; 
 The flame of anger kindles in his eye 
 As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky. 
 
 Thus by the power of his imperial arm 
 The boiling ocean trembled into calm; 
 With flowing reins the father sped his way 
 And smiled serene upon rekindled day. 
 
 " Old Ironsides," however, was the first production 
 which drew attention to him as a poet. That was the 
 name popularly given to the frigate Constitution, 
 which had fought so gallantly and successfully in the 
 war of 1812, but which our Navy Department now 
 proposed to dismantle and destroy. Holmes was 
 angered by this proposition ; he dashed off some indig- 
 nant stanzas, and sent them to the " Daily Advertiser." 
 They ran like wildfire through the newspaper press of 
 the country, and with such effect that the tattered
 
 " OLD IRONSIDES " 329 
 
 ensign of the old battleship was not torn down. The 
 spirit of their patriotic lines our poet never after- 
 ward surpassed : 
 
 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 That banner in the sky; 
 Beneath it rung the battle shout, 
 
 And burst the cannon's roar; 
 The meteor of the ocean air 
 
 Shall sweep the clouds no more! 
 
 Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 
 
 Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
 When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
 
 And waves were white below, 
 No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
 
 Or know the conquered knee; 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 
 The eagle of the sea! 
 
 Oh, better that her shattered hulk 
 
 Should sink beneath the wave; 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
 
 And there should be her grave; 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 
 The lightning and the gale! 
 
 But it was not in epic or heroic poetry that Holmes 
 excelled. The distinctly humorous was his forte, and 
 it is noticeable that some of his best work in this line 
 was done in his very early manhood. Even in his 
 latest years he never surpassed .the sprightliness and 
 pathos of " The Last Leaf," which was written only 
 two years after his graduation from college :
 
 330 " THE LAST LEAF " 
 
 I saw him once before, 
 As he passed by the door, 
 
 And again 
 
 The pavement stones resound, 
 As he totters o'er the ground 
 
 With his cane. 
 
 They say that in his prime, 
 Ere the pruning-knife of Time 
 
 Cut him down, 
 Not a better man was found 
 By the Crier on his round 
 
 Through the town. 
 
 But now he walks the streets, 
 And he looks at all he meets 
 
 Sad and wan. 
 
 And he shakes his feeble head, 
 That it seems as if he said, 
 
 " They are gone." 
 
 The mossy marbles rest 
 
 On the lips that he has prest 
 
 In their bloom, 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb. 
 
 My grandmamma has said 
 Poor old lady, she is dead 
 
 Long ago 
 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was like a rose 
 
 In the snow; 
 
 But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 
 Like a staff, 
 
 And a crook is in his back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 
 In his laugh.
 
 HOLMES A MEDICAL STUDENT IN PARIS 33! 
 
 I know it is a sin 
 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here; 
 
 But the old three-cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer! 
 
 And if I should live to be 
 "The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 
 Let them smile, as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling. 
 
 For a twelvemonth after his graduation from col- 
 lege Holmes studied law. But with no heartiness. 
 "The seductions of verse-writing/' as he says, made 
 the year " less profitable than it should have been." 
 From the law he turned to 'medicine. After two 
 courses of lectures at a private medical school in Bos- 
 ton, he spent two years in Paris, the necessary funds 
 being furnished by his well-to-do mother, the daughter 
 of a prosperous Boston merchant. He seems tc have 
 been reasonably industrious, and to have made good 
 use of his opportunities for medical education. Liter- 
 ature had not yet appeared to him as a possible voca- 
 tion. The physical and mechanical always interested 
 him more than did the philosophical or the religious. 
 In Paris he saw the great actors, singers, and dancers ; 
 he afterward regretted that he did not seek out the 
 celebrities in politics, letters, and science. But he de- 
 voted himself to his profession; stored up as much 
 learning as good health and good spirits would permit; 
 had some vacation experiences on the Rhine, in Italy, 
 and in England ; and returned to America with a small
 
 332 " NUX POSTCGENATICA " 
 
 but select professional library, with a modest stock of 
 surgical instruments, and " with two skeletons and 
 some skulls." 
 
 Then began twelve years of medical practice. He 
 was somewhat handicapped by what seemed to many a 
 lack of seriousness. When he invited the patronage 
 of his friends by saying that the smallest fevers were 
 thankfully received, they doubted the propriety of 
 putting their families under the care of a jesting physi- 
 cian. In his poem entitled " Ntix Postcoenatica," he 
 alluded to this bar in the way of his success : 
 
 Besides my prospects don't you know that people won't 
 
 employ 
 
 A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy? 
 And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
 As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root? 
 
 It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a 
 
 laugh, 
 
 That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, 
 And a little boy trips barefoot that your Pegasus may go, 
 And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow. 
 
 But he made few efforts to extend his list of pa- 
 tients. Whether influenced by tenderness of heart 
 in view of suffering, or by disinclination to endure 
 watching and irregular hours, he contented himself 
 with jogging on in a quiet way and letting others do 
 the hard work. He thought the greatest advantage he 
 derived from his official duties was the comfort of 
 riding around, after a rather lively animal, in a " one- 
 hoss-shay." 
 
 Seemingly careless and indolent, Holmes was not- 
 withstanding a reader and observer, and he gradually
 
 HOLMES THE LECTURER, ESSAYIST, AND POET 333 
 
 won his way to recognition in his profession. He gave 
 a few lectures at Dartmouth College. Harvard at 
 length offered him its chair of anatomy. Then he set- 
 tled down into the regular lecturing which lasted for 
 thirty-five years, and ended only when he gave himself 
 wholly to literature in 1882. His standing in the scien- 
 tific world is certified by his three " Boylston Prize 
 Dissertations," and by his essays on malarial and 
 puerperal fevers. His humor found play in a spicy 
 attack on homeopathy, and in frequent poems read at 
 the banquets of medical societies. Some of these 
 poems seem gruesome to the laity; but I venture to 
 quote from one of the most pleasing I mean the poem 
 which the author read at the dinner given him at the 
 age of seventy-four by the medical profession of the 
 city of New York: 
 
 How can I tell you, O my loving friends! 
 
 What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends 
 
 To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung, 
 
 Its fading accents falter on my tongue. 
 
 Sweet friends, if, shrinking in the banquet's blaze, 
 
 Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise, 
 
 Speak not too well of one who scarce will know 
 
 Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; 
 
 Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true, 
 
 Remembering always he belongs to you; 
 
 Deal with him as a truant, if you will, 
 
 But claim him, keep him, call him brother still! 
 
 Holmes's poetry would never have made him 
 famous, if it had not been for his prose. It was his 
 prose which first drew general attention to his poetry; 
 some of his best poetry, indeed, was embedded in his 
 prose, and illuminated it. Let us review the situation
 
 334 " THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE " 
 
 when our poet reached the age of forty-eight. For 
 seventeen years he had been happily married, and 
 there were three children. Life had moved steadily 
 on; he had an assured position in the scientific and 
 educational world; but he was scarcely known outside 
 of Boston. A great change came in 1857, when Phil- 
 lips, Sampson and Company determined to establish a 
 new magazine, and invited James Russell Lowell to be 
 its editor. He desired to make it a purely literary 
 publication of the highest order, and he " made it a 
 condition precedent " of his own acceptance that 
 Doctor Holmes should be " the first contributor en- 
 gaged." Holmes himself declares that this flattering 
 proposition waked him from a literary lethargy into 
 which he had fallen. He rose to the occasion; gladly 
 entered into this literary partnership; gave to the 
 new periodical its name of " The Atlantic Monthly." 
 Lowell afterward asserted that Holmes " not named, 
 but made, ' The Atlantic.' " His first contribution at- 
 tracted wide and favorable notice. It was the first 
 instalment of " The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." 
 Holmes was probably greatest in his conversation, 
 and " The Autocrat " most perfectly represented this 
 phase of his genius. Charles Eliot Norton writes of 
 his " vivacious wit, throwing off sparks like an elec- 
 trical machine." The company in which he mingled 
 was most favorable for brilliant and gossipy talk. 
 Norton calls that particular epoch " the pleasantest 
 little oasis of space and time " in New England. Its 
 spirit was embodied in Emerson, in Longfellow, in 
 Holmes, and in Lowell. It was an inexperienced and 
 youthful spirit; but it was a happy one; it had the
 
 " THE AUTOCRAT " A REVIVAL 335 
 
 charm of youth, its hope, its simplicity, its sweetness. 
 Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were men of the 
 world, but they were optimists. They were pro- 
 foundly contented with themselves. Religion had a 
 traditional hold upon them; but its creeds and forms 
 had come to seem a bondage; and they took to ethics 
 in place of theology. They were lovers of Boston, and 
 worshipers of New England. They cultivated " the 
 Boston dialect of the English language," and strove to 
 make it universal. It was Holmes who named Bos- 
 ton " the Hub of the Universe." He was the center of 
 this influential circle that thought to liberalize and 
 civilize the whole land, and " The Autocrat " was the 
 quintessence of his wit and wisdom. 
 
 Yet even " The Autocrat " was a revival. At least 
 twenty years before the beginnings of " The Atlantic," 
 Holmes had contributed to " The New England 
 Magazine " two articles with the same title. At the 
 time they were little read, and they passed into 
 oblivion. When Lowell asked Holmes to be his co- 
 adjutor, the latter was seized with the happy thought 
 of " shaking the same bough again," to see whether 
 more fruit could not be gotten from it. He began his 
 new work with the words: "I was just going to say, 
 when I was interrupted," and thus resumed the talk 
 of two decades past. The result was an astonishing 
 success. The future of " The Atlantic " was assured, 
 no less than the fame of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 This success was due to his letting loose of a natural 
 gift, which up to that time had been repressed. His 
 mind was discursive, rather than philosophic; more 
 jocular than serious ; while yet his large stores of read-
 
 336 " THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 
 
 ing and of observation furnished abundant material 
 for talk upon every subject in heaven or earth. The 
 brightness of his ideas, and the lightness of his touch 
 made his articles telling. He disclosed the secret of 
 his popularity when he said that these papers were 
 " dipped from the running stream of my thoughts." 
 The papers tingled with life; and they themselves will 
 live, as the noblest product of their author's genius. 
 
 Yet we must not forget that two, at least, of his 
 most charming poems formed a part of " The Auto- 
 crat's " stock. I quote first from " The Deacon's 
 Masterpiece," as the best specimen of his humor : 
 
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
 
 That was built in such a logical way 
 
 It ran a hundred years to a day, 
 
 And then, of a sudden, it ah, but stay, 
 
 I'll tell you what happened without delay, 
 
 Scaring the parson into fits, 
 
 Frightening people out of their wits, 
 
 Have you ever heard of that, I say? 
 
 The poem gives the history of the vehicle through 
 the whole century, until at last the appointed day of 
 its decease arrives : 
 
 First of November, 'Fifty-five! 
 This morning the parson takes a drive. 
 Now, small boys, get out of the way! 
 Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
 Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
 "Huddup!" said the parson. Off went they. 
 The parson was working his Sunday's text, 
 Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 
 At what the Moses was coming next. 
 All at once the horse stood still, 
 Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
 
 " THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS " 337 
 
 First a shiver, and then a thrill, 
 
 Then something decidedly like a spill, 
 
 And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 
 
 At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, 
 
 Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! 
 
 What do you think the parson found 
 
 When he got up and stared around? 
 
 The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
 
 As if it had been to the mill and ground! 
 
 You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, 
 
 How it went to pieces all at once, 
 
 All at once, and nothing first, 
 
 Just as bubbles do when they burst. 
 
 End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. 
 Logic is logic. That's all I say. 
 
 The Autocrat's stock included also the best specimen 
 of Holmes's serious work I mean " The Chambered 
 Nautilus." If he is to be judged by the standard of 
 pure poetry, this certainly is his highest achievement. 
 I must therefore differ from his entertaining biog- 
 rapher, Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., who gives his pref- 
 erence to " The Last Leaf." Holmes was ambitious to 
 be thought a poet, and not merely a writer of vcrs 
 de societe. Of all his poems, " The Chambered Nauti- 
 lus " was his favorite. He copied it into a hundred 
 albums, as the poem which best represented him. His 
 own account of its production is psychologically inter- 
 esting: 
 
 In writing the poem I was filled with . . . the highest state 
 of mental exaltation and the most crystalline clairvoyance, 
 as it seemed to me, that had ever been granted to me I mean 
 that lucid vision of one's thought, and of all forms of ex- 
 pression which will be at once precise and musical, which is 
 the poet's special gift, however large or small in amount or 
 value.
 
 338 HOLMES'S NOVELS 
 
 Here too I can quote only the first and the last stanza : 
 
 This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
 
 Sails the unshadowed main, 
 
 The venturous bark that flings 
 On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
 In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 
 
 And coral reefs lie bare, 
 Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their 
 streaming hair. 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll! 
 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
 sea! 
 
 Some implications of this generally noble poem I 
 must criticize, when I come to speak of our author's 
 theological views. But before I can do this effectively, 
 it will be necessary to acquaint the reader with cer- 
 tain other prose writings of Holmes. The success of 
 "The Autocrat," of "The Professor," and of "The 
 Poet," at " the Breakfast Table," encouraged him to 
 make ventures into the field of novel literature. In 
 the years between 1861 and 1885 he wrote and printed 
 three works of fiction : " Elsie Venner," " The Guard- 
 ian Angel," and " A Mortal Antipathy." These novels 
 gave him opportunity to express his religious as well 
 as his ethical convictions in a more thorough way than 
 had previously been possible. Some utterances of 
 " The Professor at the Breakfast Table " had pro- 
 voked orthodox criticism. In his novels, Doctor
 
 HOLMES A HATER OF CALVINISM 339 
 
 Holmes undertook to answer these criticisms and to 
 enforce his own views. His novels are " novels with 
 a purpose." He confesses that " Elsie Venner " was 
 written " as the outcome of a theory " ; and he tells 
 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe that he desired in it " to 
 stir the mighty question of automatic agency in its 
 relation to self-determination." Holmes is the most 
 consciously and intentionally theological of all our 
 poets; and I do him no injustice when I depend upon 
 his novels for explanation of what is often enigmat- 
 ical in his poetry. 
 
 Our poet was the inveterate hater of Calvinism, or 
 of what he regarded as Calvinism. The particular 
 tenet of Calvinism to which he objected was its asser- 
 tion of inherited moral tendencies to evil. He main- 
 tained that inborn tendencies are physical, and not 
 moral ; due to outward influences and not to individual 
 volition; irresponsible, and involving no moral ob- 
 liquity. Calvinism holds that there is a universal 
 hereditary selfishness which originated in a voluntary 
 apostasy of the race from God at the beginning of 
 human history, and that the solidarity of mankind 
 has transmitted this moral taint to all subsequent 
 generations. Holmes endeavored in his novels to 
 furnish a merely physical explanation, which would 
 eliminate the element of morality and responsibility. 
 " Elsie Venner " is the story of a girl who all her 
 life was the innocent victim of a prenatal rattlesnake 
 bite, inflicted upon her mother. The snake-look in 
 her eyes was a deformity and a hindrance to her 
 moral growth and influence, but it was not her fault, 
 nor the penalty of any evil decision. " The Guardian
 
 34O CALVINISM MISUNDERSTOOD BY HOLMES 
 
 Angel " attributes Myrtle Hazard's escapade, and her 
 sudden paroxysm of murderous anger, to the strain 
 of Indian blood in her veins and to the pride of an 
 aristocratic ancestry; while the good impulse that 
 saves her is derived from one of her forbears who suf- 
 fered martyrdom under Bloody Mary. " A Mortal 
 Antipathy " explains Maurice Kirkwood's misogyny 
 by the misfortune he suffered when as a baby he was 
 accidentally dropped by the pretty girl who carried 
 him. His lifelong antipathy to young women was 
 something for which he was not responsible it was 
 simply the reaction of his nervous centers against all 
 creatures similar to her who caused his fall. 
 
 It needs no great knowledge of Calvinism to per- 
 ceive that Holmes misunderstood the system, and that 
 his own explanations of native abnormality were far 
 less satisfactory than those of Calvin himself. Holmes 
 regarded inherited evil states as the natural result of 
 some infliction from without; whereas Calvin held 
 them to be the moral result of an apostasy from within. 
 Holmes explained them as effects of prenatal influ- 
 ences derived from our immediate ancestors ; Calvin 
 referred them to a fault on the part of the first 
 father of the race, which transmitted a congenital 
 selfishness to all his descendants. Holmes thought 
 these tendencies to be merely physical ; Calvin saw in 
 them moral unlikeness to God, non-conformity to his 
 holy law, and the germs of possible and even of actual 
 transgression. Our poet's scientific studies here led 
 him astray. He thought of evil as something physical. 
 Man, in his view, is diseased, but not guilty. Man is 
 not by nature alienated from God and in need of re-
 
 HEREDITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 34! 
 
 demption; and God is not the hater and punisher of 
 sin, but only the compassionate Father who pities and 
 saves. 
 
 We must concede that New England Puritanism 
 had hardened into an unpleasing creed. But it was 
 hyper-Calvinistic, rather than Calvinistic; and it was 
 this hyper-Galvinism, rather than Calvinism, which 
 Holmes combated. Calvin himself never maintained 
 that we are responsible for the sins of our immediate 
 ancestors; and Holmes's argument, if directed against 
 real Calvinism, encountered only a man of straw. The 
 federal theory of imputation, indeed, was expressly 
 designed to connect hereditary evil and responsibility 
 altogether with the disobedience of our first progenitor. 
 That disobedience was a moral decision, and it gave 
 a congenital bias to his posterity. Subsequent sins 
 manifest, but they do not increase, the hereditary taint. 
 Holmes ignored its moral quality and the need of re- 
 newal which it implied. His own scheme attributed 
 evil tendencies to unthinking nature, and gave no 
 remedy for them, either in atonement or in regener- 
 ation. Calvin had a better explanation of hereditary 
 evil traits than had Holmes an explanation more con- 
 sonant with Scripture and with reason. On the one 
 hand, Ezekiel declares that the son shall not bear the 
 iniquity of the father, and Jesus 'says that the blind 
 man was not born blind because of his father's sin. 
 On the other hand, the Psalmist sees in suffering and 
 death God's appointed penalty of sin; Jesus calls Sa- 
 tan a murderer from the beginning; and Paul asserts 
 that by one man sin came into the world, and death by 
 sin. The great philosophers seem independently to
 
 342 SCRIPTURE AND PHILOSOPHY AGAINST HOLMES 
 
 repeat the. teaching" of Scripture. Aristotle says " there 
 is in the soul somewhat besides the reason, which is 
 opposed to this, and fights against it." Kant speaks 
 of " the indwelling of an evil principle, side by side 
 with the good one; or, the radical evil of human na- 
 ture." And Bergson traces all back to the beginnings 
 of the race. In his " Creative Evolution," he writes : 
 
 " Where does the vital principle of the individual begin or 
 end? Gradually we shall be carried further and further back, 
 up to the individual's remotest ancestors; we shall find him 
 solidary with each of them, solidary with that little mass of 
 protoplasmic jelly which is probably at the root of the proto- 
 plasmic tree of life. Being, to a certain extent, one with this 
 primitive ancestor, he is also solidary with all that descends 
 from that ancestor in divergent directions. In this sense each 
 individual may be said to remain united with the totality of 
 living beings by invisible bonds." 
 
 And I may also quote from Francis Darwin's address 
 as President of the British Association in 1908: 
 
 " The view upheld by Galton and Weismann that ontogeny 
 can only be changed by a fundamental upset of the whole sys- 
 tem namely, by an alteration occurring in its first stages, 
 the germ-cell is now very generally accepted." 
 
 Our poet believed most heartily in the physical 
 solidarity of the human race, but he had no faith in its 
 moral solidarity. Yet the latter is quite as demon- 
 strable as the former. Without the explanation of 
 inborn se 1 fishness and suffering which an original 
 transgression gives, the long catalogue of human ills 
 must be regarded as the work of a blind nature and 
 the proof of a godless universe. A good God per- 
 mitting man's revolt is more credible than is man
 
 HOLMES'S VIEW OF GOD AND OF CHRIST 343 
 
 mastered by evil impulses which have no moral im- 
 port. Holmes hated Calvinism, because it held God 
 to be the ordainer of all things. He accepted a ma- 
 terialistic idealism which subjected all things to an 
 irrational and fatal necessity. If we must have pre- 
 destination, we ought to prefer the predestination of 
 a righteous and loving God, and not the predestination 
 of a godless nature. Calvinism has nerved the hearts 
 of men to fight for liberty; fatalism has made them 
 cowards, that hugged their chains. If God is really an 
 omniscient Creator, we must believe that he foreknew 
 and permitted sin. But we can also believe that he 
 did this in the interests of freedom and virtue, and 
 that he will in the end justify his ways to men. The 
 predestination of fatalism has no such comfort. Its 
 God is a Juggernaut that ignorantly and ruthlessly 
 destroys. 
 
 We cannot properly estimate Holmes's view of hu- 
 man sin, unless we connect it with his view of Christ. 
 He understood neither the evil nor the remedy. His 
 Unitarianism handicapped him at every step. He is 
 a proof that Christianity without Christ becomes 
 agnosticism and paganism. Dethroning Christ and 
 counting him mere man, the Unitarian is left with a 
 conception of God so vague and unmoral, that Stoicism 
 and self-righteousness take the place of humility and 
 faith. The Cross of Christ is no longer the symbol of 
 God's holy suffering on account of sin ; it becomes the 
 mere witness to a martyr's endurance, and an encour- 
 agement to suffer for righteousness' sake. Christ, to 
 the Unitarian, is an example, but not a Saviour; not 
 one who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and
 
 344 UNITARIANISM RETROGRESSIVE 
 
 by whose stripes we are healed; but only one who 
 showed us how we may bear our own burden of sin 
 and suffering. This throws us back upon ourselves; 
 puts us where the whole world was in classic times. 
 Unitarianism is not progressive but retrogressive 
 thought; it returns to Judaism and paganism; so far 
 as its hope of salvation is concerned, 'Christ has lived 
 and died in vain. His life and death, indeed, are 
 regarded as the unintended starting-point of an 
 idealization of humanity. But that this idealization 
 has ever been realized in history, or can ever be 
 realized in a human life, we have no evidence. The 
 Virgin-birth and Santa Claus, the Ascension of Christ 
 and the ascent of Jack the Giant-killer, are equally 
 idyllic dreams of the race's childhood, utterly dis- 
 carded since it has reached maturer years. Christianity 
 is a matter of imagination; it is poetry; there has 
 been no incarnation of God, and no redemption by the 
 Cross. 
 
 When New England broke away from evangelical 
 theology, no real theology was left to it, and its gravi- 
 tation was downward. The high Arianism of Chan- 
 ning gave place to the half-fledged pantheism of 
 Parker ; and Parker's faith or lack of faith was followed 
 by the full-fledged pantheism of Emerson. More and 
 more the spirit of materialism and agnosticism has 
 taken possession of the Unitarian body, until President 
 Eliot declares that other religions have equal claims 
 with Christianity, and that Christian missions are need- 
 less and absurd. This downward progress is equally 
 visible in literary history. The Unitarian poets prove 
 its reality. Longfellow and Lowell succumbed in their
 
 A THEOLOGICAL DESCENSUS AVERN1 345 
 
 later years to the influence of Emerson, and became 
 more or less agnostic; although, as Norton observes, 
 Lowell tried in spite of himself to hold to his old 
 beliefs. But in Oliver Wendell Holmes a new influ- 
 ence was added to the general literary and theological 
 atmosphere of his time, namely, that of modern sci- 
 entific research. Holmes was a physicist and a 
 physician. The body dominated and explained the 
 soul. Spiritual things were the outcome and efflo- 
 rescence of the material. And so the theology of 
 Holmes is practically the theology of Herbert 
 Spencer. 
 
 Congregationalists furnish still another illustration 
 of this lapse from the true faith. They once were stout 
 opposers of Unitarianism, but they are now on the 
 same road to skepticism. In " The Outlook," Lyman 
 Abbott is asked how a soul seeking after God is to 
 find him. The answer should have been the answer 
 of Christ : " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father " ; "I am with you alway, even unto the end 
 of the world " ; "I will come to you, and will manifest 
 myself unto you " ; " Come unto me, and I will give 
 you rest" In other words, the living and omnipresent 
 Christ is God, manifested in human form, as the ob- 
 ject of worship and source of power. But Doctor 
 Abbott apparently sees in Christ no such present Sav- 
 iour, for he does not point the sinner to Christ, nor 
 urge him to address Christ in prayer for forgiveness 
 and transformation. In other writings Doctor Abbott 
 asserts his " faith in Jesus Christ as a giver of life 
 by his presence and companionship with those who 
 love him and desire to be like him." But can we
 
 346 EVANGELICAL FAITH OR AGNOSTICISM ? 
 
 rightfully call Christ's presence a personal presence, 
 without ourselves addressing him and sending others 
 directly to him ? However Doctor Abbott may answer 
 this question, I find in modern Congregationalists a 
 tendency to look upon Christ as one outside of us, 
 while Paul regards Christ in us as the central secret 
 of the gospel. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 
 only by proxy only by being the beginner of these 
 when he was here in the flesh. Congregationalism is 
 at the parting of the ways. It must either go forward 
 to Unitarianism and agnosticism, or backward to the 
 evangelical faith in Christ's deity, omnipresence, and 
 living union with the believer. This is the essence 
 of Christianity, and to give it up is to give up Chris- 
 tianity itself. 
 
 I have kept the reader too long from the poems of 
 Holmes which illustrate these criticisms. I find even 
 in " The Chambered Nautilus " the traces of a self- 
 depending spirit, that trusts its own powers in the 
 building up of character. There is no intimation that 
 human nature needs renewal, or even assistance from 
 above. No confession of sin is breathed upon the air. 
 Regeneration is a word unknown. No suffering on 
 the part of the holy God is needed to make reparation 
 for sin, or to show the sinner the evil of his ways. 
 No divine Redeemer brings him back to duty. Chris- 
 tianity without a Christ appears yet more plainly in the 
 hymns which our poet wrote for public worship. They 
 are hymns of praise to the God of Nature, and their 
 poetical merit has gained them admission to the books 
 of many Christian denominations. But they could be 
 sung as well by Parsees or Buddhists. In the best of
 
 HYMNS TO THE GOD OF NATURE 347 
 
 them there is a mention of sin; but it is so expressed 
 as to imply that sin is something outside of us, which 
 veils heaven from our gaze, but which is our mis- 
 fortune rather than our fault: 
 
 Lord of all being! throned afar, 
 Thy glory flames from sun and star; 
 Centre and soul of every sphere, 
 Yet to each loving heart how near! 
 
 Sun of our life, thy quickening ray 
 Sheds on our path the glow of day; 
 Star of our hope, thy softened light 
 Cheers the long watches of the night. 
 
 Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; 
 Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; 
 Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; 
 All, save the clouds of sin, are thine! 
 
 Lord of all life, below, above, 
 
 Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, 
 
 Before thine ever-blazing throne 
 
 We ask no lustre of our own. 
 
 Grant us thy truth to make us free, 
 And kindling hearts that burn for thee, 
 Till all thy living altars claim 
 One holy light, one heavenly flame! 
 
 The God of Nature is recognized as dwelling also in 
 the soul. But there is no recognition of his revelation 
 in Jesus Christ, or of the need of any such revelation 
 to procure pardon or help. The hymn claims favor 
 without sacrifice. 
 
 Holmes called this " A Sun-Day Hymn," and it cer- 
 tainly expresses the consciousness of fellowship with 
 God. We must believe that the poet's inner experi- 
 ence was better than his creed. Hyper-Calvinism so
 
 348 " HYMN OF TRUST " 
 
 repelled him that he gave little weight to the evan- 
 gelical argument, and little weight to the testimony of 
 Scripture itself. The words of Jesus, " Ye must be 
 born again," never seemed to him applicable to him- 
 self. Regeneration was not needed by the Brahmin 
 caste, any more than by Pharisees like Nicodemus. 
 Or, shall we say that he was regenerate, without know- 
 ing it subject of a second spiritual birth so early in 
 life as to have lost all remembrance of the change ? We 
 must leave the question for a higher Wisdom to decide. 
 Meantime we may appropriate the poetical fruitage 
 of his better life, as it is given to us in his " Hymn of 
 Trust " : 
 
 O Love Divine, that stooped to share 
 Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, 
 
 On Thee we cast each earth-born care, 
 We smile at pain while Thou art near! 
 
 Though long the weary way we tread, 
 And sorrow crown each lingering year, 
 
 No path we shun, no darkness dread, 
 
 Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near! 
 
 When drooping pleasure turns to grief, 
 And trembling faith is changed to fear, 
 
 The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, 
 Shall softly tell us, Thou art near! 
 
 On Thee we fling our burdening woe, 
 
 O Love Divine, forever dear, 
 Content to suffer while we know, 
 
 Living and dying, Thou art near! 
 
 Here it is Nature, and not revelation, which gives 
 assurance of God's nearness and willingness to bless. 
 And our assent is yet further qualified, when we find 
 the poet excusing sin as the necessity of finiteness and
 
 HOLMES* S MISAPPREHENSION OF CALVINISM 349 
 
 ignorance, as he does in his poem of " The Crooked 
 Footpath " : 
 
 Nay, deem not thus, no earthborn will 
 
 Could ever trace a faultless line; 
 Our truest steps are human still, 
 
 To walk unswerving were divine! 
 
 Truants from love, we dream of wrath; 
 
 Oh, rather let us trust the more! 
 Through all the wanderings of the path 
 
 We still can see our Father's door! 
 
 The apostle Paul declares that " the wrath of God 
 is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and 
 unrighteousness of men." Holmes, however, con- 
 ceives that we only " dream of wrath," when we ought 
 instead to " trust the more." This suggests a third 
 misapprehension of Calvinistic doctrine into which he 
 has fallen. The first, we remember, was that Calvin- 
 ism holds men responsible for the sins of their immedi- 
 ate ancestors. The second was that Calvinism holds 
 to a merely physical transmission of hereditary evil. 
 The third misapprehension, which we now proceed to 
 notice, is that Calvinism leaves no room for human 
 freedom, but makes our destiny depend wholly upon 
 the foreordination of God. Calvin himself, however, 
 declares that " the perdition of the wicked depends 
 upon the divine predestination in such a manner that 
 the cause and matter of it are found in themselves " ; 
 in other words, the relation of God to the origin of sin 
 is not efficient, but permissive. Calvin held to the 
 divine sovereignty and foreordination, for the reason 
 that the creating God knew all that would come to 
 pass, and therefore must be said in a certain sense to
 
 35O BITTERNESS OF HOLMES S PREJUDICE 
 
 have purposed it. But he also asserted the freedom 
 of man to obey or to disobey, and he maintained 
 that for the abuse of his freedom man alone is re- 
 sponsible. While all are involved in the sin of the 
 race, the atonement is made for all, and " whosoever 
 will may come." God's sovereignty and man's freedom 
 are complementary poles of the globe of truth, and 
 while it is impossible to see both of them at the same 
 time, neither one of the two can be ignored without 
 violence to reason as well as to Scripture. In thus 
 vindicating Calvin, we charge Holmes with main- 
 taining a fatalistic inheritance of physical evil, which 
 deprives it of all moral quality, condones our con- 
 scious sinfulness, throws the blame of it back upon 
 God, and so denies both God's holiness and his love. 
 
 How bitter and prejudiced Holmes can be, when he 
 attacks what he regards as Calvinistic doctrine, can 
 be seen in " The Poet at the Breakfast Table," who 
 permits himself to write: 
 
 Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, 
 
 Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes? 
 
 Fit object for a tender mother's love! 
 
 Why not? It was a bargain duly made 
 
 For these same infants through the surety's act 
 
 Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, 
 
 By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well 
 
 His fitness for the task, this, even this, 
 
 Was the true doctrine only yesterday 
 
 As thoughts are reckoned, and to-day you hear 
 
 In words that sound as if from human tongues 
 
 Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past 
 
 That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth 
 
 As would the saurians of the age of slime, 
 
 Awaking from their stony sepulchres 
 
 And wallowing hateful in the eye of day!
 
 HYPER-CALVINISM AN EXCUSE FOR HOLMES 351 
 
 The essay on " Jonathan Edwards" is also a notable 
 specimen of our poet's theological animus. In keen- 
 ness of satire it rivals his diatribe on " Homoeopathy." 
 Jonathan Edwards unfortunately represents hyper- 
 Calvinism, rather than Calvinism; and much of our 
 poet's criticism is unjust, if urged against the essentials 
 of the Calvinistic system. Holmes shows how nearly 
 he liimself comes to admitting those essentials, when 
 he says : 
 
 We are getting to be predestinarians as much as Edwards 
 or Calvin was; only, instead of universal corruption of nature 
 derived from Adam, we recognize inherited congenital ten- 
 dencies some good, some bad for which the subject of them 
 is in no sense responsible. 
 
 The real question at issue is whether these tendencies 
 are moral. That they are moral seems to be the ver- 
 dict of conscience and of Scripture. That verdict is 
 supported by our conviction of the solidarity of the 
 race, and by our inability otherwise to reconcile the 
 existence of these tendencies with the holiness of a 
 foreknowing and creating God. Shall we say that 
 God visits suffering and death upon creatures who are 
 without fault? Shall we not rather say that these 
 evils are consequences and penalties of human sin ? 
 
 We would not deny that Holmes had some excuse 
 for his denunciations, in the extravagancies of cer- 
 tain hyper-Calvinists. His writing has perhaps soft- 
 ened the utterances of Calvinistic theologians. But 
 conscience and Scripture stand just where they were 
 before. Calvinism still recognizes the guilt of race- 
 sin ; while at the same time it acknowledges that actual 
 sin, in which the personal agent reaffirms the under-
 
 352 ETHICAL FRUITS OF HOLMES S DOCTRINE 
 
 lying determination of his will, is more guilty than 
 original sin alone; that no human being is finally con- 
 demned solely on account of original sin, but that all 
 who, like infants, do not commit personal transgres- 
 sions, are saved through the application of Christ's 
 atonement; that our responsibility for inborn evil dis- 
 positions, or for the depravity common to the race, 
 can be maintained only upon the ground that this de- 
 pravity was caused by an original and conscious act of 
 free will, when the race revolted from God in Adam; 
 that the doctrine of original sin is only the ethical in- 
 terpretation of biological facts the facts of heredity 
 and of universal congenital ills, which demand an 
 ethical ground and explanation; and that the idea of 
 original sin has for its correlate the idea of original 
 grace, or the abiding presence and operation of Christ, 
 the immanent God, in every member of -the race, in 
 spite of his sin, to counteract the evil and to prepare 
 the way, so far as man will permit, for individual and 
 collective salvation. 
 
 Theology must be judged by its fruits. A theology 
 that objects to justice as the fundamental attribute 
 of God, and that substitutes love for righteousness, 
 ought to be more than usually philanthropic. I do 
 not find that Holmes gave this proof that his faith 
 was well founded. He was an industrious and trust- 
 worthy lecturer on anatomy. For thirty-five years 
 literature was his recreation, until at last he was able 
 to make it his one pursuit. But he always shrank from 
 the reform movements of his time; and, except by his 
 bright conversation and jovial humor, he did next 
 to nothing to help on any struggling cause. James
 
 HOLMES TOUCHES THE SURFACE OF LIFE 353 
 
 Russell Lowell wrote him a most serious letter, in 
 which he complained of Holmes's slighting allusion to 
 " the abolition men and maids," in his Phi Beta Kappa 
 address, and intimated that he would " expurgate the 
 conscience altogether." Holmes made a long and 
 rather weak reply, in which he declared that abolition- 
 ism was not his line of work, and that he was no re- 
 former. As one glances over the welter of poems 
 which he read at celebrations and public dinners, one 
 is reminded of the lines of a somewhat similar poet, 
 Thomas Moore: 
 
 " I feel like one 
 
 Who treads alone 
 Some banqtiet-hall deserted, 
 
 Whose lights are fled, 
 
 Whose garlands dead, 
 And all but he departed! " 
 
 Society-verse has small meaning after a generation 
 has passed. Holmes had little depth of character, 
 and little sense of duty to his kind. His genius was 
 pleasure-loving and pleasure-giving, and beyond the 
 present he cared not to look. He touched only the 
 surface of human life, and he could not permanently 
 stir the heart or' nerve the will. The homeopathic 
 treatment which he so much derided in medicine he 
 depended upon for the cure of the constitutional 
 malady of human nature. But neither esthetics nor 
 sociology will here suffice. Holmes's work was like the 
 effort to kindle a coal-fire from the top. Christianity 
 begins lower down ; puts its fire at the bottom ; touches 
 the springs of action; kindles the heart. Holmes 
 could not reach any great depth of truth, nor could he
 
 354 TO CANAAN 
 
 exert any great force of influence, because he ignored 
 the teaching of Scripture with regard to human need. 
 " Deep calleth unto deep " the infinite deep of man's 
 sin and ruin to the infinite deep of God's mercy. Re- 
 generation implies a sinful nature, inherited yet guilty ; 
 and such a nature Holmes derided and denied. It was 
 the old story of the Fox and the Grapes. The grapes 
 hung altogether too high for his short-legged under- 
 standing. 
 
 Holmes was no abolitionist. He connected himself 
 with no anti-slavery societies. He could not forget his 
 relationship to a patriarchal Southern planter, who 
 treated his slaves as fellow beings, and attended to 
 their religious welfare. Before our Civil War, Mrs. 
 Stowe and he had some correspondence upon the sub- 
 ject of slavery, but Holmes could not be persuaded to 
 take sides in the controversy which agitated the nation. 
 When war actually broke out, however, he began to 
 realize the danger of disunion, and he wrote a Puritan 
 War-Song, which he entitled " To Canaan." I quote 
 the first and the last of its stanzas : 
 
 Where are you going, soldiers, 
 
 With banner, gun, and sword? 
 We're marching South to Canaan 
 
 To battle for the Lord! 
 What Captain leads your armies 
 
 Along the rebel coasts? 
 The Mighty One of Israel, 
 His name is Lord of Hosts! 
 To Canaan, to Canaan 
 The Lord has led us forth, 
 To blow before the heathen walls 
 The trumpets of the North!
 
 " NEVER OR NOW " 355 
 
 When Canaan's hosts are scattered, 
 
 And all her walls lie flat, 
 What follows next in order? 
 The Lord will see to that! 
 We'll break the tyrant's sceptre, 
 
 We'll build the people's throne, 
 When half the world is Freedom's, 
 Then all the world's our own! 
 To Canaan, to Canaan 
 The Lord has led us forth, 
 To sweep the rebel threshing-floors, 
 A whirlwind from the North! 
 
 In 1862, his song " Never or Now " appealed to young 
 men to enlist in the army of the Union : 
 
 Listen, young heroes! your country is calling! 
 
 Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true! 
 Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, 
 
 Fill up the ranks that have opened for you! 
 
 You whom the fathers made free and defended, 
 Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame! 
 
 You whose fair heritage spotless descended, 
 Leave not- your children a birthright of shame! 
 
 From the hot plains where they perish outnumbered, 
 Furrowed and ridged by the battle-field's plough, 
 
 Comes the loud summons; too long you have slumbered, 
 Hear the last Angel-trump, Never or Now! 
 
 These songs were not, like Luther's, " half-battles." 
 It was said that " he wrote war-lyrics with too much 
 finish to please; they were over the heads of soldiers." 
 He was more felicitous in his patriotic hymns. One 
 of these he wrote for the great central Fair in Phila- 
 delphia, in 1864; another after the Emancipation 
 Proclamation, in 1865. This last witnesses to a con- 
 sciousness of the justice of God, which his previous
 
 356 " THOU GOD OF VENGEANCE " 
 
 writings had not shown, and which was perhaps 
 awakened by the terrible carnage of our battle-fields. 
 His journey to the South to care for his own son, who 
 had been wounded in the Federal service, was possibly 
 the occasion of this new lesson in theology. It seems 
 wonderful that Holmes could ever have put into a 
 prayer the words, " Thou God of vengeance ! " But, 
 in those days, to many a Quaker, hell began to seem 
 a military necessity. However we may explain the 
 origin of the hymn, it gives us the most satisfactory 
 theological utterance of our poet : 
 
 Giver of all that crowns our days, 
 With grateful hearts we sing thy praise; 
 Through deep and desert led by Thee, 
 Our promised land at last we see. 
 
 Ruler of Nations, judge our cause! 
 If we have kept thy holy laws, 
 The sons of Belial curse in vain 
 The day that rends the captive's chain. 
 
 Thou God of vengeance! Israel's Lord! 
 Break in their grasp the shield and sword, 
 And make thy righteous judgments known 
 Till all thy foes are overthrown! 
 
 Then, Father, lay thy healing hand 
 In mercy on our stricken land; 
 Lead all its wanderers to the fold, 
 And be their Shepherd as of old. 
 
 So shall one Nation's song ascend 
 To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend, 
 While Heaven's wide arch resounds again 
 With Peace on earth, good-will to men! 
 
 Holmes was as far from being a transcendentalist as 
 he was from being an abolitionist. It is almost amus-
 
 HOLMESS " LIFE OF EMERSON 35/ 
 
 ing that he should have been selected to write the 
 " Life of Emerson." That memoir is sketchy and 
 entertaining, but its author lacked sympathy with its 
 subject, and had little knowledge of his philosophy. 
 In fact, the tendency of his thought was in quite the 
 opposite direction from that of Emerson. Holmes's 
 biographer says truly that " he found it easier to get 
 at the cranial bones and the brain-cells than at thoughts 
 and mental processes." Emerson was fundamentally 
 an idealist, while Holmes was fundamentally a ma- 
 terialist. Neither one of them was a philosopher, in 
 the sense of having a consistent and completed system. 
 The result, in Holmes's " Life of Emerson," is a bril- 
 liant but superficial survey of his subject, without per- 
 ception of its deeper relations to literature or to life. 
 The intercourse of the two men had never been fre- 
 quent or intimate. They understood one another, 
 only as occasional guests at the same table learn of 
 their companions from the talk of the dinner. They 
 agreed in their deterministic creed, and in their aversion 
 to organized societies for reform. But they were far 
 apart in their conceptions of the universe : Holmes was 
 more of a theist ; Emerson more of a pantheist. Holmes 
 had more of fancy, Emerson more of imagination. 
 The New England conscience was still alive in Holmes, 
 while intellect was the main characteristic of Emerson. 
 Yet Holmes has done us good service in perpetuat- 
 ing the memory of Emerson's personal traits and pe- 
 culiarities. It almost seems as if Emerson's lofty 
 idealism had smitten Holmes with inquiring but hope- 
 less awe. In the Introduction to " A Mortal Antip- 
 athy," Holmes writes of Emerson:
 
 358 HOLMES'S " MEMOIR OF MOTLEY " 
 
 It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of 
 such a man. "He nothing common" said, "or mean." He 
 was always the same pure and high-souled companion. After 
 being with him, virtue seemed as natural to man as its oppo- 
 site did accoiding to the old theologies. But how to let one's 
 self down from the high level of such a character to one's 
 own poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long 
 intellectual and spiritual companionship never absolutely 
 leaves one who has lived in it. It may come to him in the 
 form of self-reproach that he falls so far short of the superior 
 being who has been so long the object of his contemplation. 
 
 " This long intellectual and spiritual companion- 
 ship," it must be remembered, was a companionship 
 with Emerson's books and relics after Emerson's death. 
 Holmes was the recipient of a posthumous influence 
 from Emerson's writings far greater than any which 
 he received while Emerson was alive. One other 
 biography was written with more intimate knowl- 
 edge I mean Holmes's " Memoir of Motley." John 
 Lothrop Motley was for years a trusted correspondent 
 of Holmes not even Lowell was so much his con- 
 fidant. Our poet indeed was not a great letter-writer ; 
 but upon Holmes both Lowell and Motley, during their 
 diplomatic service abroad, depended for information 
 with regard to society and politics at home. Holmes's 
 letters show much sagacity, in spite of the narrow 
 round of his occupations. The " Memoir of Motley " 
 lacks the breadth of view which foreign life and travel 
 would have given, but it is a praiseworthy effort to 
 make known the merits of a friend who had suffered 
 unjust reproach. No other work of Holmes reveals 
 so fully the sympathy of his heart, as do the letters 
 he wrote to Motley upon the death of his wife. I 
 quote from them only a few sentences :
 
 HOLMES S TRIBUTES TO HIS FRIENDS 359 
 
 My dear Motley, I read your letter with feelings I could 
 not restrain how could I read such a letter unmoved? . . 
 Every word you say goes to my heart as to that of a friend 
 who knows better than most can know what she was who 
 was the life of your life. . . I dare not attempt to console a 
 grief like yours. . . If you were here, I might sit by you in 
 silence, just to give you the feeling that some one was with 
 you in the shadow for the moment. . . We never know each 
 other until we have come together in the hour of trial. . . I 
 cannot tell you all that I feel I owe to you for making life 
 more real, more sincere, more profound in its significance, 
 during those hours I spent with you. To be told, as I have 
 been, that they were comforting to you is a great happiness 
 to me. . . My life has run in a deeper channel since the hours 
 I spent in your society last summer. They come back to me 
 from time to time, like visitations from another and higher 
 sphere. No, I never felt the depths and the heights of sor- 
 row so before; and I count it as a rare privilege that I could 
 be with you so often at one of those periods when the sharp- 
 est impressions are taken from the seal of friendship. 
 
 Holmes did not write many memorial verses; the 
 elegiac and the funereal were not natural to him. But 
 now and then the beauty of a life that had just passed 
 from earth so challenged his admiration that he could 
 not resist the impulse to commemorate it. He lived to 
 see many noble friends precede him to their burial. 
 He wrote poems or hymns in memory of Everett, 
 Garfield, Sumner, Howe, Peirce, Andrew, Parkman, 
 Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell. But his best pro- 
 ductions were those of welcome or farewell to living 
 men of note, delivered at public dinners in their honor. 
 Such were the tributes given to Peabody, Hedge, Gould, 
 Collins, Clarke, Agassiz, Farragut, Hayes, and Grant. 
 Each of these memorials is noteworthy for its subtle 
 delineation of character, or for its revelation of the 
 poet's geniality and sympathy. In my selection of
 
 360 " A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ " 
 
 specimen verses I must confine myself to three, and 
 first of all must quote the poet's " Parting Health " to 
 Motley, upon his return to England in 1857, after his 
 publication of the " History of the Dutch Republic " : 
 
 Yes, we knew we must lose him, though friendship may 
 
 claim 
 
 To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; 
 Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
 'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 
 
 So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
 When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed; 
 THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING, the world holds him dear, 
 Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 
 
 In 1865, Holmes wrote " A Farewell to Agassiz," 
 on the eve of the great naturalist's journey to Brazil : 
 
 How the mountains talked .together, 
 
 Looking down upon the weather, 
 
 When they heard our friend had planned his 
 
 Little trip among the Andes! 
 
 How they'll bare their snowy scalps 
 
 To the climber of the Alps 
 
 When the cry goes through their passes, 
 
 " Here comes the great Agassiz! " 
 
 " Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, 
 
 " But I wait for him to say so, 
 
 That's the only thing that lacks, he 
 
 Must see me, Cotopaxi! " 
 
 Till the fossil echoes roar; 
 While the mighty megalosaurus 
 Leads the palaeozoic chorus, 
 God bless the great Professor, 
 And the land his proud possessor, 
 Bless them now and evermore!
 
 POEMS TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 361 
 
 And on the seventieth birthday of Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, in 1882, Holmes addressed to her two poems. 
 The first was entitled " At the Summit," and it began : 
 
 Sister, we bid you welcome, we who stand 
 
 On the high table-land; 
 
 We who have climbed life's slippery Alpine slope, 
 And rest, still leaning on the staff of hope, 
 Looking along the silent Mer de Glace, 
 Leading our footsteps where the dark crevasse 
 Yawns in the frozen sea we all must pass, 
 
 Sister, we clasp your hand! 
 
 The second of these poems is named " The World's 
 Homage." Its first lines are: 
 
 If every tongue that speaks her praise 
 For whom I shape my tinkling phrase 
 
 Were summoned to the table, 
 The vocal chorus that would meet 
 Of mingling accents harsh or sweet, 
 From every land and tribe, would beat 
 
 The polyglots at Babel. 
 
 And the last stanza is the following: 
 
 When Truth herself was Slavery's slave, 
 Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave 
 
 The rainbow wings of fiction. 
 And Truth who soared descends to-day 
 Bearing an angel's wreath away, 
 Its lilies at thy feet to lay 
 
 With Heaven's own benediction. 
 
 Holmes well knew how fleeting was the significance 
 of poems such as these. " You understand," he said, 
 " the difference between fireworks on the evening of 
 July Fourth, and the look of the frames the next morn- 
 ing." He was content to give even temporary pleasure. 
 
 7,
 
 362 HOLMES A POET OF THIS LIFE 
 
 Let me not be understood as depreciating his peculiar 
 gift. He was an entertainer, rather than a teacher. He 
 added to the gaiety of life. He cheered and comforted, 
 lightened care, diverted the sorrowing. His was the 
 ministry of humor. Shall we say that our chief po- 
 etical humorist has no proper place in the great singing 
 choir ? Rather let us be thankful that poetry is so wide 
 a realm that it can include innocent mirth. John Mil- 
 ton was a serious poet, yet he wrote : 
 
 " Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
 Jest, and youthful Jollity, 
 Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
 Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, 
 Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
 And love to live in dimples sleek; 
 Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, 
 And Laughter holding both his sides." 
 
 Holmes was a chronic protest against the narrow- 
 ness of Puritan religion. True religion aims to 
 possess and to develop the whole man, to stimulate 
 and ennoble all his powers, to bring these powers to 
 full flower and expression. The one defect of Shake- 
 speare is not his consecration of humor, but his neglect 
 of the spiritual element in man. The defect in Holmes 
 is not his effervescent humor, but his ignorance of 
 spiritual realities, and his consequent overvaluation of 
 the seen and temporal. To this was added a positive 
 fault of which Shakespeare was not guilty, namely, an 
 attack upon the teaching of Scripture and the settled 
 beliefs of the Christian church. Like Shakespeare, 
 he was a poet of this life, but not of the life to come. 
 We turn to him in vain for words that will give hope
 
 HOLMES'S HUMOR FRESH IN HIS AGE 363 
 
 to the conscious sinner, or assurance to the dying. 
 He lived a long life, and died at the age of eighty-five. 
 Deafness interfered with his social enjoyments, but an 
 abstemious diet and regular habits of sleep and exer- 
 cise made him industrious to the end. His " Hun- 
 dred Days in Europe " is the spicy record of a con- 
 tinuous ovation abroad, during which he was honored 
 with the highest degrees of the British universities, 
 and was made the lion of London society. At Cam- 
 bridge, the undergraduates saluted with the song, 
 " Holmes, sweet Holmes " ; and at Oxford a student 
 cried out, " Did you come in your One-Hoss-Shay " ? 
 This English tour was his only period of travel since 
 his first stay abroad fifty-three years before. But to all 
 observers he seemed as fresh and sparkling as in the 
 days of his youth. Some of his latest poems indeed 
 give proof that his humor was an endowment that 
 age could not stale or wither. 
 
 I cannot complete this picture of the poet without 
 furnishing evidence that this last statement is 'true. 
 Let me quote from a few of Holmes's last produc- 
 tions to prove my point. The poem entitled " The 
 Broomstick Train ; or, The Return of the Witches," 
 commemorates the terrible witchcraft delusion of 
 1692: 
 
 Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! 
 The witches are here! They've all come back! 
 They hanged them high, No use! No use! 
 What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? 
 They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, 
 For cats and witches are hard .to kill; 
 They swore they should n't and would n't die, 
 Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!
 
 364 " THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN " 
 
 A couple of hundred years or so, 
 
 They had knocked about in the world below, 
 
 When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, 
 
 And a homesick feeling seized them all; 
 
 For he came from a place they knew full well, 
 
 And many a tale he had to tell. 
 
 They longed to visit the haunts of men, 
 
 To see the old dwellings they knew again, 
 
 And ride on their broomsticks all around 
 
 Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. 
 
 The poet humorously sees the witches now at work in 
 the modern motor-car, with its mysterious motion 
 without mule or horse : 
 
 Since then on many a car you '11 see 
 
 A broomstick plain as plain can be; 
 
 On every stick there 's a witch astride, 
 
 The string you see to her leg is tied. 
 
 She will do a mischief if she can, 
 
 But the string is held by a careful man, 
 
 And whenever the evil-minded witch 
 
 Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. 
 
 As for the hag, you can't see her, 
 
 But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, 
 
 And now and then, as a car goes by, 
 
 You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye. 
 
 Often you've looked on a rushing train, 
 
 But just what moved it was not so plain. 
 
 It couldn't be those wires above, 
 
 For they could neither pull nor shove; 
 
 Where was the motor that made it go 
 
 You could n't guess, but now you know. 
 
 Remember my rhymes when you ride again 
 On the rattling rail by the broomstick train! 
 
 " Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle " 
 might almost persuade us that Holmes was himself a 
 looker-on at that famous fight :
 
 " STORY OF BUNKER HILL BATTLE " 365 
 
 ' Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers 
 All the achings and the quakings of " the times that tried 
 
 men's souls "; 
 
 When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story, 
 To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. 
 
 Grandmother had nursed a young Continental soldier 
 who had been wounded in the battle : 
 
 For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round 
 
 him crying, 
 And they said, " Oh, how they'll miss him! " and, " What will 
 
 his mother do? " 
 Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's that has been 
 
 dozing, 
 He faintly murmured, "Mother!" and I saw his eyes were 
 
 blue. 
 
 " Why, grandma, how you're winking! " Ah, my child, it sets 
 
 me thinking 
 
 Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along; 
 So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a 
 
 mother, 
 Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and 
 
 strong. 
 
 And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer 
 
 weather, 
 "Please to tell us what his name was?" Just your own, my 
 
 little dear, 
 There's his picture Copley painted: we became so well 
 
 acquainted, 
 That in short, that's why I'm grandma, and you children all 
 
 are here. 
 
 " How the Old Horse won the Bet " is the story of a 
 parson's " lean and bony bay " which, " lent to the sex- 
 ton " to attend an alleged funeral, surprised the crowd 
 at the race-track :
 
 366 " THE IRON GATE " 
 
 The parson's horse had won the bet; 
 It cost him something of a sweat; 
 Back in the one-horse shay he went; 
 The parson wondered what it meant, 
 And murmured, with a mild surprise 
 And pleasant twinkle of the eyes, 
 " That funeral must have been a trick, 
 Or corpses drive at double-quick; 
 I should n't wonder, I declare, 
 If brother Jehu made the prayer! " 
 
 And this is all I have to say 
 About that tough old trotting bay, 
 Huddup! Huddup! G'lang! Good day! 
 
 Moral for which this tale is told: 
 A horse can trot, for all he's old. 
 
 At the breakfast given in honor of Doctor Holmes's 
 seventieth birthday by the publishers of " The Atlantic 
 Monthly," in 1879, he read his poem " The Iron Gate." 
 It so well represents the spirit of his closing years, 
 that I reproduce some fragments of it : 
 
 Where is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? 
 
 Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, 
 Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting 
 
 In days long vanished, is he still the same? 
 
 Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, 
 Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, 
 
 Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, 
 Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought? 
 
 Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, 
 Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, 
 
 Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers 
 That warm its creeping life-blood till the last.
 
 LOWELL " TO HOLMES " 367 
 
 Dear to its heart is every loving token 
 That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, 
 
 Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, 
 Its labors ended and its story told. 
 
 Time claims his tribute: silence now is golden; 
 
 Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; 
 Though to your love untiring still beholden, 
 
 The curfew tells me cover up the fire. 
 
 And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, 
 And warmer heart than look or word can tell, 
 
 In simplest phrase these traitorous eyes are tearful 
 Thanks, Brothers, Sisters, Children, and farewell! 
 
 And on his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1884, Lowell 
 inscribed " To Holmes " some verses which may well 
 serve for a final characterization of the poet and the 
 man: 
 
 " Dear Wendell, why need count the years 
 Since first your genius made me thrill, 
 If what moved then to smiles or tears, 
 Or both contending, move me still? 
 
 " What has the Calendar to do 
 
 With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth 
 With gay immortals such as you 
 
 Whose years but emphasize your youth? 
 
 Master alike in speech and song 
 Of fame's great antiseptic Style, 
 
 You with the classic few belong 
 Who tempered wisdom with a smile. 
 
 Outlive us all! Who else like you 
 Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, 
 
 And make us with the pen we knew 
 Deathless at least in epitaph?"
 
 VIII 
 SIDNEY LANIER
 
 SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 POETRY and Music have always been a wedded pair. 
 Both are forms of imaginative expression, though 
 poetry is the more intellectual, and music the more 
 emotional. It is claimed by some that music is the 
 original and fundamental reality. The word " Muse " 
 seems to favor that contention. Certain it is that 
 children and childlike peoples strive to put their feel- 
 ings into melodic form, even before they can give 
 them words. With growing maturity there comes 
 more definite thought. Emotion becomes conscious. 
 Ideas, in turn, blossom into song. " Maxwelton Braes 
 Are Bonnie " and " The Marseillaise Hymn " are 
 poetry so full of emotion that nothing but music can 
 give it utterance. Music thus becomes the handmaid 
 and helper of poetry. Rhythm and melody, however, 
 react upon the thought that called them forth. The 
 servant sometimes gives law to the master, and the 
 rules of musical art stifle spontaneity of invention. If 
 poetry is to be truly great, it must insist upon inde- 
 pendence. Inspiration must make its own rules. The 
 melodist must not impose his rhythm too inexorably 
 upon the poet; while at the same time the poet must 
 never lose sight of his need of musical expression. He 
 may use discords, but it must always be with a view to 
 a larger harmony. 
 
 Sidney Lanier was primarily a musician, and sec- 
 
 371
 
 372 OUR CHIEF POETICAL MUSICIAN 
 
 ondarily a poet. He is the only one of our American 
 poets who was master of a musical instrument, and 
 who also evolved a complete theory of the structure of 
 poetry. While as a poet he had originality and depth 
 of emotion, his musical tastes and thoughts tended 
 to dominate his poetical composition, and to make it 
 too rigid and mechanical. With great sensitiveness 
 of organization he united an extraordinary and even 
 a heroic devotion to principle. To be true to his con- 
 victions with regard to art and life, he was ready to 
 make the greatest sacrifices. His history furnishes us 
 with an illustration of conscious surrender to duty, 
 both in the esthetic and in the moral realms. And 
 yet, in his efforts to subject poetry to the trammels of 
 a system, his musical instincts lorded it over his genius, 
 and prevented his most complete poetical development. 
 We must therefore call him our chief poetical musician 
 rather than our chief musical poet. 
 
 The life of Lanier was brief and pathetic. Born 
 in 1842, he died in 1881. But Keats lived to be only 
 twenty-six, and Shelley to be only thirty, while Lanier 
 died at thirty-nine. Poe died at forty. There are 
 curious resemblances between Lanier and Poe, and 
 even more instructive differences. They are our two 
 Southern poets, both of them breathing the emotion 
 and the passion of the South. But Poe's English 
 schooling emancipated him completely from Southern 
 ideals and traditions. In only one of his tales does 
 he show any acquaintance with Negro character or 
 dialect; and as for slavery, it is as if he had never 
 known of its existence; he thought all reformers in- 
 deed to be madmen; he was as complete a cosmo-
 
 LANIER AND POE 373 
 
 politan as if he had always lived in Great Britain. 
 Lanier, on the other hand, was in spirit bound up 
 with the South; he practically gave his life to the 
 Confederate cause; though misguided, he was a true 
 patriot; some of his most effective poems are in the 
 Negro dialect; he sympathized with many forms of 
 labor and reform. Poe's conception of poetry was 
 exclusively emotional; to him poetry was only music, 
 designed to stir the feelings with the vague sense 
 of beauty, but with no intent to influence the will. 
 Lanier was equally an artist, but with truth at the 
 basis of his art ; he aimed to make beauty an inspira- 
 tion to noble and heroic action; he said, " The trouble 
 with Poe was, he did not know enough." In short, 
 while Poe was a poetical melodist, Lanier was more; 
 he was a poetical musician, whose intellectual appre- 
 hension of rhythm and number brought mere emo- 
 tion into subjection, and made it the instrument of 
 truth and duty. 
 
 Materials for the life of Lanier are not abundant. 
 The memorial by William Hayes Ward prefixed to 
 the standard edition of Lanier's " Poems," and the 
 biography of Lanier by Edwin Mims in " American 
 Men of Letters," are our best sources of information. 
 The former, though succinct, is remarkably compre- 
 hensive and sympathetic. The latter fills in the outline 
 with valuable details, drawn from Lanier's letters and 
 the reports of his friends, while it adds much in the 
 way of critical estimate. From both these sources we 
 learn that our poet was the son of Robert S. Lanier, 
 a reputable lawyer of Macon, Georgia, and of Mary 
 J. Anderson, a Virginia lady of Scotch-Irish descent.
 
 374 LANIERS PASSION FOR MUSIC 
 
 The father carne of Huguenot ancestry, and on both 
 sides of the family there were far back in the line 
 both gentle blood and artistic gifts. Sidney, from a 
 child, had a passion for music. He played all sorts 
 of instruments piano, organ, violin, guitar, banjo, 
 flute almost by instinct, and was often so carried 
 away by harmony as to be lifted into a trancelike rap- 
 ture. His father feared the influence of the violin 
 upon him ; its human quality was too engrossing ; for 
 it was substituted the flute, which the boy played with 
 a spirituality of expression exceedingly unique and 
 penetrating. In after days, as first flute in the Pea- 
 body Symphony Orchestra at Baltimore, he never 
 lacked for support or admiration. 
 
 Lanier's flute and Lanier himself were so inseparable 
 that they will go down into history, and we must 
 give a moment to tracing the connection between them. 
 The first instrument of the sort which he possessed 
 was of his own manufacture. When he was only 
 seven years old, he cut a reed from the river-bank, 
 stopped its ends with cork, and dug six finger-holes 
 in its sides. On this he would practise passionately, 
 going into the woods to imitate bird-trills, and lead- 
 ing an orchestra of his playmates. All through his 
 college days the flute was his recreation, and through 
 his army life its companionship helped him to endure 
 hardship and suffering. Natural facility, however, 
 did not blind him to the need of technical skill. He 
 made himself master of his art by unending study. 
 His beautiful silver flute became a central point of 
 interest in every concert. The director of the Pea- 
 body Orchestra writes of him :
 
 LANIER S EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS 375 
 
 " His playing appealed alike to the musically learned and to 
 the unlearned for he would magnetize the listener; but the 
 artist felt in his performance the superiority of the momentary 
 living inspiration to all the rules and shifts of mere technical 
 scholarship. His art was not only the art of art, but an art 
 above art. I will never forget the impression he made upon 
 me when he played the flute concerto of Emil Hartmann at a 
 Peabody Symphony concert in 1878, his tall, handsome, 
 manly presence; his flute breathing noble sorrows, noble joys; 
 the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spell- 
 bound. Such distinction, such refinement! He stood, the 
 master, the genius! " 
 
 I have sketched thus briefly Lanier's musical de- 
 velopment, not only because it enables us better to 
 understand the peculiarities of his poetry, but also be- 
 cause it long preceded his recognition of poetry as 
 the all-inclusive art, and his consequent determination 
 to make it the object of his supreme devotion. It 
 was not until he had reached the age of thirty-two 
 that this change became complete. How gradual 
 was the poetical development, can only be real- 
 ized when we go back to his educational beginnings, 
 and trace from those beginnings the growth of his 
 mind and heart. In his father's house he had received 
 the liberal culture which was furnished by a well- 
 stocked library, and by traditions of Southern hos- 
 pitality. Nearly six feet in height, and of dignified 
 but winning manners, he was known by all as a typical 
 Southern gentleman. When only fourteen he entered 
 Oglethorpe College, and at eighteen he was graduated 
 at the head of his class. After his graduation he was 
 tutor in the college, and this position he held until the 
 outbreak of our Civil War. With all his musical 
 gifts, he shared the opinion of his parents that music
 
 376 LANIER'S STRUGGLES TO LEARN HIS DUTY 
 
 was not a worthy profession for life. Yet he felt 
 that music was his chief endowment. The result was 
 a struggle to learn the way of duty a struggle which 
 could be decided only by a larger knowledge of litera- 
 ture and of life. Not until fourteen years after, when 
 poetry had risen before him as the 'highest work of 
 human imagination, did he determine to give him- 
 self to poetry, and to make his musical gifts minister 
 to a higher and broader poetical art. 
 
 His nature was religious, but he was conscious of 
 genius, and he desired to make the most of his talents. 
 When he was a college boy of eighteen, he wrote in 
 a penciled note-book the following significant words : 
 
 The point which I wish to settle is merely, by what method 
 shall I ascertain what I am fit for, as preliminary to ascer- 
 taining God's will with reference to me; or what my inclina- 
 tions are, as preliminary to ascertaining what my capacities 
 are, that is, what I am fit for. I am more than all perplexed by 
 this fact, that the prime inclination, that is, natural bent 
 (which I have checked, though) of my nature is to music; 
 and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, 
 for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, 
 and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any 
 composer. But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was 
 intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business 
 in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I 
 might do. Question here, What is the province of music in 
 the economy of the world? 
 
 Here are great questions suggested. That they oc- 
 curred to him thus early is proof of a thoughtful and 
 serious mind. He never forgot the Calvinistic and 
 Presbyterian training he had received in Macon, 
 though exuberant spirits and wider knowledge modi- 
 fied his practice. Long afterward he wrote :
 
 INFLUENCE OF JAMES VVOODROW ON LANIER 3/7 
 
 If the constituents and guardians of my childhood those 
 good Presbyterians who believed me a model for the Sunday- 
 school children of all times could have witnessed my acts 
 and doings this day, I know not what groans of sorrowful 
 regret would arise in my behalf. 
 
 But how intensely conscientious he was during his 
 college life may be judged from a letter of penitence 
 written to his father, when on one occasion he had 
 broken his father's rule never to borrow money from 
 a college mate : 
 
 My father, I have sinned. With what intensity of thought, 
 with what deep and earnest reflection, have I contemplated 
 this lately! My heart throbs with the intensity of its anguish. 
 . . If by hard study and good conduct I can atone for that, 
 God in heaven knows that I shall not be found wanting. . . 
 Not a night passes but what the supplication, God bless my 
 parents, ascends to the great mercy-seat. 
 
 It was an orthodox college which Lanier attended. 
 But James Woodrow was its Professor of Science. 
 He was a pupil of Agassiz, and he had studied in 
 Germany. He maintained that science is a revelation 
 from God, and he accepted the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion. For this he was ultimately tried and condemned 
 by the Southern Presbyterian Church. He made 
 Lanier a frequent companion, and after his gradua- 
 tion secured for him the tutorship. Woodrow never 
 gave up his Christian faith, but rather held that science 
 confirmed it. His influence on Lanier was powerful. 
 It enabled our poet to realize that nature and art, 
 genius and religion, are not powers hostile to each 
 other, but that each represents an aspect of God's 
 truth which must have its place and influence in 
 
 2A
 
 37^ LANIER A SOUTHERN VOLUNTEER 
 
 human life. He became an independent thinker, while 
 at the same time he remained a genuinely religious 
 man. The old conflict between musical taste and 
 ethical demands was reconciled, since both had a divine 
 origin. He learned the supremacy of reason over 
 emotion, of thought over melody. He sought to reen- 
 force his thought-life by science and literature, and 
 so to fit himself for the largest possible service. He 
 planned to study in Europe, as Longfellow had already 
 done. Poetry was to be enriched by all his gifts of 
 music, scholarship, and travel. We wonder what the 
 result would have been if he had been permitted to 
 carry out his plan. With sadness we must record, in- 
 stead, a long period of arrested development. War 
 had sounded his brazen trumpet, and Lanier's con- 
 science bade him stand for the South. 
 
 The story of his valor and suffering in our Civil 
 War is a thrilling though sorrowful one. He had 
 the boyish love for military life. He had led mimic 
 battalions of his schoolfellows. When Southern youth 
 were summoned, as the proclamations ran, to defend 
 their institutions against the despotism and fanaticism 
 of the North, every college closed its doors and sent 
 its students to the front. Lanier was only nineteen, 
 a stripling, but a model of health and energy. With 
 his brother Clifford, still younger than himself, he 
 enlisted as a private in the Macon Volunteers, the 
 first company that went to Virginia from Georgia. 
 Three times, it is reported, he refused promotion, in 
 order that he might be near his brother and care for 
 him. During the first year, encamped near Norfolk, 
 he saw the attractive side of army life, the pomp and
 
 LANIER S HEALTH BROKEN BY ARMY LIFE 379 
 
 circumstance of war. The proximity of the prosper- 
 ous city gave him congenial society. There was op- 
 portunity for reading and for music, and Lanier's 
 flute made him in constant request. The daily drilling 
 of raw recruits was followed by nightly dances and 
 serenades. The second year of his service saw his 
 company mounted as scouts on good horses, and pa- 
 trolling the banks of the James. But war now began 
 to reveal its horrors. Lanier was engaged in the 
 battles of Seven Pines and of Drewry's Bluffs. He 
 went through the seven days of fighting about Rich- 
 mond, which culminated at Malvern Hill. Exposure 
 gave him his first premonitions of consumption. But 
 a two-weeks' visit on furlough to his home in Macon 
 made life bright again, for there he met and became 
 engaged to Miss Mary Day, whom four years after- 
 ward he married, and who proved to be the guardian 
 angel of his life. 
 
 Both he and his brother served in the army for 
 three years, but during the last of the three they were 
 separated, though only that each might, as signal-of- 
 ficer, take charge of a blockade-runner which brought 
 rebel supplies. On one of these expeditions, only 
 fourteen hours after leaving harbor, he was captured, 
 and for four months was confined in Point Lookout 
 prison. His already weakened constitution never out- 
 grew the shock of that imprisonment. To it he at- 
 tributed the permanent loss of his health. In the 
 biography by Mims, we are told that he secured his 
 release through some gold which a friend of his had 
 smuggled into the prison in his mouth. " He came 
 out emaciated to a skeleton, downhearted for want
 
 380 LANIER'S DESPERATE ILLNESS 
 
 of news from home, downhearted for weariness." 
 Mims quotes from Baskervill the story of his rescue 
 from death, as told by the lady herself, who was the 
 good Samaritan on this occasion: 
 
 " She was an old friend from Montgomery, Alabama, re- 
 turning from New York to Richmond; and her little daughter, 
 who had learned to call him Brother Sid, chanced to hear that 
 he was down in the hold of the vessel dying. On application 
 to the colonel in command, permission was promptly given her 
 to minister to his necessity, and she made haste to go below. 
 ' Now my friends in New York,' continued she, ' had given 
 me a supply of medicines, for we had few such things in 
 Dixie, and among the remedies were quinine and brandy. I 
 hastily took a flask of brandy, and we went below, where we 
 were led to the rude stalls provided for cattle, but now 
 crowded with poor human wretches. There in that horrible 
 place dear Sidney Lanier lay wrapt in an old quilt, his thin 
 hands tightly clinched, his face drawn and pinched, his eyes 
 fixed and staring, his poor body shivering now and then in a 
 spasm of pain. Lilla fell at his side, kissing him and calling: 
 " Brother Sid, don't you know me? Don't you know your 
 little sister?" But no recognition or response came from the 
 sunken eyes. I poured some brandy into a spoon and gave it 
 to him. It gurgled down his throat at first with no effort 
 from him to swallow it. I repeated the stimulant several 
 times before he finally revived. At last he turned his eyes 
 slowly about until he saw Lilla, and murmured: "Am I dead? 
 Is this Lilla? Is this heaven?" . . To make a long story 
 short, the colonel assisted us to get him above to our cabin. 
 I can see his fellow prisoners now as they crouched and 
 assisted to pass him along over their heads, for they were so 
 packed that they could not make room to carry him through. 
 Along over their heads they tenderly passed the poor emaci- 
 ated body, so shrunken with prison life and benumbed with 
 cold. We got him into clean blankets, but at first he could 
 not endure the pain from the fire, he was so nearly frozen. 
 We gave him some hot soup and more brandy, and he lay 
 quiet till after midnight. Then he asked for his flute and 
 began playing. As he played the first few notes, you should
 
 DAWN OF POETICAL AMBITION 381 
 
 have heard the yell of joy that came up from the shivering 
 wretches down below, who knew that their comrade was alive. 
 And there we sat entranced about him, the colonel and his 
 wife, Lilla and I, weeping at the tender music, as the tones 
 of new warmth and color and hope came like liquid melody 
 from his magic flute.' " 
 
 His release from Point Lookout occurred in Feb- 
 ruary, 1865. Within a few weeks the Confederacy 
 was at an end, and Lanier, with only his twenty-dollar 
 gold-piece and his flute, walked all the way from Rich- 
 mond to his home in Georgia. Six weeks of desperate 
 illness followed, and not long after his recovery his 
 beloved mother died of consumption. He was by 
 turns a clerk and a schoolmaster for three years, and 
 during these years he married. Then came his first 
 hemorrhage, settled cough, and steady decline. But 
 out of these troubled days he emerged with a new 
 sense of his vocation. Though for several years he 
 strove to make both ends meet, by studying and prac- 
 tising law with his father, it gradually dawned upon 
 him that literature was his real calling. Indeed, when 
 death most threatened him, he became most conscious 
 of genius and most determined to fight for life. So 
 early as 1864, in a letter to his father, he wrote: 
 
 Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into 
 this business of writing, and especially of writing poetry. I 
 am going to try it; and am going to test, in the most rigid 
 way I know, the awful question whether it is my vocation. 
 
 If this was his ambition in the very stress and strain 
 of his war experiences, it is not wonderful that the 
 law practice of a country attorney did not satisfy him. 
 In 1873 he wrote from Texas to his wife:
 
 382 LANIER'S CONFESSION OF HIS CALLING 
 
 Were it not for some circumstances which make such a 
 proposition seem absurd in the highest degree, I should think 
 that I am shortly to die, and that my spirit hath been singing 
 its swan-song before dissolution. All day my soul hath been 
 cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable 
 deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody. 
 
 And in another letter to his wife he makes frank 
 confession of his faith in himself and in his calling: 
 
 Know, then, that disappointments were inevitable, and will 
 still come, until I have fought the battle which every great 
 artist has had to fight since the world began. This dimly 
 felt while I was doubtful of my own vocation and powers is 
 clear to me as the sun, now that I know, through the fiercest 
 tests of life, that I am in soul, and shall be in life and utter- 
 ance, a great poet. 
 
 All this might seem but the dream of an overwrought 
 imagination, if it were not for the religious faith in 
 which it is grounded, and the humble sense of his 
 dependence upon God. Let us read some later words 
 of this same letter : 
 
 Now this is written because I sit here in my room daily, and 
 picture thee picturing me worn, and troubled, or disheartened; 
 and because I do not wish thee to think up any groundless 
 sorrow in thy soul. Of course I have my keen sorrows, mo- 
 mentarily more keen than I would like any one to know; 
 but I thank God that in a knowledge of Him and of myself 
 which cometh to me daily in fresh revelations, I have a stead- 
 fast firmament of blue, in which all clouds soon dissolve. 
 
 The utter collapse of the Confederacy and the ruin 
 of the South, added to his own ill health, gave a 
 somber tone to his earliest poetry. He was naturally 
 cheerful, yet there seemed to hang over his spirit 
 the premonition of future sorrow. He refused to
 
 LANIER'S LOVE-POEMS 383 
 
 print his first poems, for the very reason that their 
 sadness of tone was not consistent with the highest 
 art. In this he was the opposite of Poe, who welcomed 
 and echoed the most doleful voices of humanity, pro- 
 vided they were moving and melodious. We find in 
 Lanier's early works a sweetness and maturity which 
 more than make up for their occasional mournful- 
 ness. His love-poems belong mostly to this period, 
 and they are addressed to his wife. There is a dainti- 
 ness of touch in his " Song for the Jacquerie," which 
 gives promise of the future: 
 
 May the maiden, 
 
 Violet-laden 
 Out of the violet sea, 
 
 Comes and hovers 
 
 Over lovers, 
 Over thee, Marie, and me, 
 
 Over me and thee. 
 
 Day the stately, 
 
 Sunken lately 
 Into the violet sea, 
 
 Backward hovers 
 
 Over lovers, 
 Over thee, Marie, and me, 
 
 Over me and thee. 
 
 Night the holy, 
 
 Sailing slowly 
 Over the violet sea, 
 
 Stars uncovers 
 
 Over lovers, 
 Stars for thee, Marie, and me, 
 
 Stars for me and thee. 
 
 " My Springs," written long after, when struggle and 
 sorrow had given new sacredness to their affection,
 
 384 " THE JACQUERIE " 
 
 must be quoted to show how nobly ripened was the 
 expression of that affection in his poetry: 
 
 In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know 
 Two springs that with unbroken flow 
 Forever pour their lucent streams 
 Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams. 
 
 O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, 
 
 My springs from out whose shining gray 
 
 Issue the sweet celestial streams 
 
 That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams. 
 
 Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete 
 Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, 
 I marvel that God made you mine, 
 For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine! 
 
 " The Jacquerie," the longest of his poems, is also 
 one of his earliest. Its subject is the uprising of the 
 French peasantry against feudal oppression in the mid- 
 dle of the fourteenth century. Lanier's readings of 
 history in college drew his attention to this theme, 
 and enlisted his sympathy with the poor and down- 
 trodden. He sought to glorify in verse the advent of 
 Trade, which first set limits to the domination of the 
 nobles; and then sought equally to glorify the advent 
 of Brotherhood, which now promises to restrict the 
 aggressions of Trade. His plan was too large, and 
 it required too much of learning, to reach comple- 
 tion. " The Jacquerie " always remained " A Frag- 
 ment." But it contains some dignified and impressive 
 stanzas, and it shows rare powers not yet under per- 
 fect control. Its opening lines are a poetical descrip-
 
 " RESURRECTION " 385 
 
 tion of that great popular outbreak which began so 
 hopefully, but which came to so speedy and so fear- 
 ful an end : 
 
 Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright 
 Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night, 
 And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world, 
 Then back into the historic moat was hurled 
 And Night was King again, for many years. 
 Once on a time the Rose of Spring blushed out 
 But Winter angrily withdrew it back 
 Into his rough new-bursten husk, and shut 
 The stern husk-leaves, and hid it many years. 
 
 Even in this poem the dominant note is not that of 
 sadness, but of joy. And in his whole poetic develop- 
 ment the element of joy became more and more pro- 
 nounced as he went on. His Calvinistic training was 
 in a measure outgrown, but faith in a divine ordering 
 of human life and destiny remained, the change being 
 only in the new emphasis given to God's love. In the 
 first poems, pain and death are more plain to view; 
 in the last, He who conquered pain and death. In 
 proof of this, let us set in juxtaposition two poems, 
 one from the beginning of his career, and the other 
 from the end. The first is " Resurrection " : 
 
 Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river 
 Where in the early fall long grasses wave, 
 
 Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver 
 And sigh as if just blown across a grave. 
 
 And then I pause and listen to this sighing. 
 
 I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream. 
 I hear wild birth-cries uttered by the dying. 
 
 I know men waking who appear to dream.
 
 386 "A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER" 
 
 Then from the water-lilies slow uprises 
 The still vast face of all the life I know, 
 
 Changed now, and full of wonders and surprises, 
 With fire in eyes that once were glazed with snow. 
 
 For eighteen centuries ripple down the river, 
 
 And windy times the stalks of empires wave, 
 Let the winds come from the moor and sigh and 
 
 shiver, 
 Fain, fain am I, O Christ, to pass the grave. 
 
 Here seems to be a vision of Him who is " the Resurv 
 rection and the Life," and who has brought " life and 
 immortality to light" Compare with this the poem 
 next to the last Lanier wrote a poem, in our judgment 
 inimitably expressing the method by which that " life 
 and immortality " were won, namely, by our Lord's 
 loving surrender to death, " for the joy that was set 
 before Him." It is "A Ballad of Trees and the 
 Master": 
 
 Into the woods my Master went, 
 
 Clean forspent, forspent. 
 
 Into the woods my Master came, 
 
 Forspent with love and shame. 
 
 But the olives they were not blind to Him, 
 
 The little gray leaves were kind to Him: 
 
 The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 
 
 When into the woods He came. 
 
 Out of the woods my Master went, 
 
 And He was well content. 
 
 Out of the woods my Master came, 
 
 Content with death and shame. 
 
 When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 
 
 From under the trees they drew Him last: 
 
 Twas on a tree they slew Him last 
 
 When out of the woods He came.
 
 LANIER A LECTURER ON LITERATURE 387 
 
 It was not until December, 1873, that Lanier ob- 
 tained employment sufficiently steady to support his 
 growing family and to permit any regular devotion 
 to literary work. At that time his great musical 
 talent secured for him a permanent position in the 
 Peabody Symphony Orchestra of Baltimore. With 
 this encouragement he felt that he must put forth 
 every energy of his being to do his work while strength 
 remained. Then began a heroic fight with death 
 a fight which lasted for eight long years, and in which 
 the frail body at last succumbed. He was cheered by 
 being appointed Lecturer on English Literature in the 
 Peabody Institute in 1878, and in the Johns Hopkins 
 University in 1879. But these encouragements came 
 late, when he was greatly weakened. His lectures 
 seemed like the struggles of an indomitable spirit to 
 resist a tide that was bearing him to another shore. 
 His courses on Shakespeare and on the English 
 Novel were admired. They revealed rare powers of 
 criticism and an unexpected wealth of learning. In 
 truth, the access to great libraries and to cultivated 
 society had stimulated him to omnivorous reading, and 
 had given his faculties a wonderfully rapid growth. 
 The world had come to believe in him as the rising 
 poet of the South, and the atmosphere of praise, after 
 long depression, was grateful and quickening. 
 
 It was his poem entitled " Corn " that first brought 
 his poetry into public notice. After his first winter's 
 work as musician in Baltimore he spent the summer 
 near his old home. The waving fields of corn which 
 alternated with deserted farms stirred the fountains 
 of poetry within him. He saw in the multiplication
 
 388 " CORN " 
 
 of homesteads, and the cultivation of the soil by free 
 labor, the restoration of prosperity in the South. 
 Manufactures had not yet impressed their claims upon 
 him. The beauty of the woods and of all natural 
 growths seemed to him God's appeal to man to till 
 the soil. So in this poem we have the contrast be- 
 tween desolation and fertility, and the prophecy of 
 harvests yet to come : 
 
 To-day the woods are trembling through and through 
 With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, 
 Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. 
 
 The leaves that wave against my cheek caress 
 Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express 
 
 A subtlety of mighty tenderness; 
 The copse-depths into little noises start, 
 That sound anon like beatings of a heart, 
 Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. 
 
 He sees all this promise turned to naught by unthrift 
 and avarice, yet believes in the better future which 
 industry may insure : 
 
 Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, 
 
 And bring thee back into thy monarch state 
 
 And majesty immaculate. 
 
 Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, 
 Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn 
 Visions of golden treasuries of corn 
 Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart 
 That manfully shall take thy part, 
 And tend thee, 
 And defend thee, 
 With antique sinew and with modern art. 
 
 The publication of " Corn " in " Lippincott's Maga- 
 zine " made many friends for the poet. To one of these
 
 " THE SYMPHONY " 389 
 
 friends, Mr. Peacock, he wrote, in 1875, of another 
 poem, based upon the same idea that agriculture was 
 the hope of the South not the agriculture of great 
 plantations, but of innumerable farms tilled by free- 
 men. As in his earlier poem of " Jacquerie," with a 
 still lingering prejudice against workmen and fac- 
 tories, he regards Trade as stifling individual develop- 
 ment, and welcomes the new Brotherhood of labor. 
 Of this new poem he writes: 
 
 I call it "The Symphony": I personify each instrument in 
 the orchestra, and make them discuss various deep social 
 questions of the times, in the progress of the music. It is 
 now nearly finished; and I shall be rejoiced thereat, for it 
 verily racks all the bones of my spirit. 
 
 The program was a bold one ; whether it was wise to 
 make musical instruments actually speak, may well be 
 doubted. The poet's skill in executing his scheme, 
 however, was considerable, as may be seen from the 
 following quotations : 
 
 "O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! 
 The Time needs heart 'tis tired of head: 
 We're all for love," the violins said. 
 
 But presently 
 
 A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly 
 Upon the bosom of that harmony, 
 And sailed and sailed incessantly, 
 As if a petal from a wild-rose blown 
 Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone. 
 
 Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, 
 Breathes through life's strident polyphone 
 The flute-voice in the world of tone,
 
 39 LANIER S CANTATA FOR THE CENTENNIAL 
 
 Sweet friends, 
 
 Man's love ascends 
 To finer and diviner ends 
 Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends. 
 
 And then the hautboy played and smiled, 
 And sang like any large-eyed child, 
 Cool-hearted and all undented. 
 
 "Huge Trade!" he said, 
 " Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head 
 And run where'er my finger led! 
 Once said a Man and wise was He 
 Never shalt thou the heavens see, 
 Save as a little child thou be." 
 
 "And yet shall Love himself be heard, 
 Though long deferred, though long deferred: 
 O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: 
 Music is Love in search of a word." 
 
 This poem, when published in " Lippincott's Maga- 
 zine," won the praise of Bayard Taylor, and led, 
 through his recommendation, to the choice of Lanier 
 to compose the Cantata for the Opening of the Cen- 
 tennial World's Fair at Philadelphia, in 1876. Our 
 poet merited his appointment, for he represented the 
 reconstructed South, and the new consciousness of 
 our national unity. The days of bitterness had passed ; 
 slavery was no more; let the blue and the gray clasp 
 hands and vow fidelity to the Union. It was a large 
 task to put all this into song. Lanier's conception 
 of his work was that of Pindar's Odes. His Cantata 
 was not a poem, to be read ; it was a song, to be sung, 
 and sung by a thousand voices, with majestic or- 
 chestral accompaniment. Judged simply as a poem, 
 it seems flighty and hysterical It was received by
 
 LANIER S CANTATA FOR THE CENTENNIAL 39! 
 
 the press with ridicule. But when actually rendered, 
 it proved to be the one and only part of the program 
 that completely held the attention and won the applause 
 of the vast audience. We cannot deny the startling 
 energy and poetic insight of the following passages: 
 
 From this hundred-terraced height, 
 Sight more large with nobler light 
 Ranges down yon towering years. 
 Humbler smiles and lordlier tears 
 
 Shine and fall, shine and fall, 
 While old voices rise and call 
 Yonder where the to-and-fro 
 Weltering of my Long-Ago 
 Moves about the moveless base 
 Far below my resting-place. 
 
 This opening stanza is accompanied by the following 
 Musical Annotations : " Full chorus, sober, measured 
 and yet majestic progressions of chords." Then comes 
 a second " Chorus : the sea and the winds mingling 
 their voices with human sighs " : 
 
 Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying, 
 Trembling westward o'er yon balking sea, 
 Hearts within Farewell dear England sighing, 
 Winds without But dear in -vain replying, 
 Gray-lipp'd waves about thee shouted, crying 
 "No! It shall not be!" 
 
 After a musical representation of the famine and 
 savagery of Jamestown, and an allusion to the " wild 
 brother-wars " from which our country had just 
 emerged, comes a " Chorus of jubilation " : 
 
 Now Praise to God's oft-granted grace, 
 Now Praise to man's undaunted face, 
 Despite the land, despite the sea,
 
 392 DEFECTS AND HANDICAP OF LANIER 
 
 I was: I am: and I shall be 
 
 How long, Good Angel, O how long? 
 
 Sing me from Heaven a man's own song! 
 
 And in a " basso solo " the Good Angel replies to this 
 importunity : 
 
 " Long as thine Art shall love true love, 
 Long as thy Science truth shall know, 
 Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove, 
 Long as thy Law by law shall grow, 
 Long as thy God is God above, 
 Thy brother every man below, 
 So long, dear Land of all my love, 
 Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!" 
 
 Our national Centennial fairly launched our poet in 
 his literary career. Music now became the servant of 
 poetry. He had won his way to public notice. He 
 had given promise of great achievements. While suc- 
 cess made him more sure of his vocation, it also gave 
 him a new sense of his defects as a writer. So early 
 as 1864, indeed, he had written to his father: 
 
 I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse 
 style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employ- 
 ing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, 
 and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault 
 copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, 
 and others of that ilk. 
 
 Twelve years had passed since then, and the defects 
 still remained ; indeed, they were never fully corrected, 
 and to some extent they mar even his best work. But 
 he now had new encouragement and new determina- 
 tion to remedy them. He strove diligently to perfect 
 his style. How great the strain of the effort was can
 
 " PSALM OF THE WEST " 393 
 
 be appreciated only when we remember that he was 
 handicapped by a gnawing and fatal disease, and by 
 the devotion of a large part of his time to the re- 
 hearsals and concerts of the orchestra. The deep in- 
 spirations of his flute-playing did something to pro- 
 long his life, but the meagerness of its financial 
 returns almost counterbalanced this advantage. Only 
 during the last two years of his life was he sufficiently 
 free from monetary cares to devote himself exclusively 
 to literature. He deserved all the more credit for the 
 progress which he made. His poem " Psalm of the 
 West " is vague and prolix, though it is lit up by 
 two stanzas referring to our Civil War, in which the 
 contestants are pictured as two knights in a medieval 
 tournament : 
 
 "They charged, they struck; both fell, both bled; 
 
 Brain rose again, ungloved; 
 Heart fainting smiled, apd softly said, 
 My love to my Beloved." 
 
 Heart and Brain! no more be twain; 
 Throb and think, one flesh again! 
 Lo! they weep, they turn, they run; 
 Lo! they kiss: Love, thou art one! 
 
 " The Marshes of Glynn " is often called Lanier's 
 best production. It is spontaneous and simple, while 
 at the same time it is mature and profound. The poet 
 enters into the life of Nature, and in that life finds 
 another life revealed, even the life of God. As the 
 tide comes in, he seems to himself possessed of new 
 purity and freedom, because he can put his weakness 
 and sin into the care of limitless mercy and love : 
 
 2B
 
 394 
 
 A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in 
 
 the blade, 
 Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a 
 
 shade, 
 
 Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 
 To the terminal blue of the main. 
 
 Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? 
 
 Somehow my soul seems suddenly free 
 From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, 
 By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes 
 of Glynn. 
 
 Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding 
 
 and free 
 Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the 
 
 sea! 
 
 Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, 
 Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily 
 
 won 
 
 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 
 And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 
 
 As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 
 
 Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 
 
 I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 
 
 In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the 
 
 skies: 
 
 By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 
 I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: 
 Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within 
 The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. 
 
 Here is not only insight into the meaning of Nature 
 which would do credit to Wordsworth, but also a 
 mastery of form which would do credit to Shelley. 
 The " Psalm of the West " seems to have been out- 
 grown, and a larger vision of truth to have been 
 gained. Lanier's lectures at Johns Hopkins Univer-
 
 INDIVIDUALITY 395 
 
 sity confirm our impression that the last years were 
 years of moral and religious as well as of intellectual 
 and esthetic progress. He believed in a moral self- 
 hood which was no mere product of Nature, but which 
 dominated Nature instead, and this faith he expressed 
 in his poem entitled " Individuality " : 
 
 What the cloud doeth 
 The Lord knoweth, 
 The cloud knoweth not. 
 What the artist doeth, 
 The Lord knoweth; 
 Knoweth the artist not? 
 
 Well-answered! O dear artists, ye 
 Whether in forms of curve or hue 
 
 Or tone your gospels be 
 Say wrong This work is not of me, 
 But God: it is not true, it is not true. 
 
 Awful is Art because 'tis free. 
 The artist trembles o'er his plan 
 
 Where men his Self must see. 
 Who made a song or picture, he 
 Did it, and not another, God nor man. 
 
 My Lord is large, my Lord is strong: 
 Giving, He gave: my me is mine. 
 
 How poor, how strange, how wrong, 
 To dream He wrote the little song 
 I made to Him with love's unforced design! 
 
 We fortunately have Lanier's own interpretation 
 of this poem. The enormous generalizations of mod- 
 ern science had filled him with dreams like those of 
 his boyhood. In a letter to a friend he writes : 
 
 It is precisely at the beginning of that phenomenon which is 
 the underlying subject of this poem, " Individuality," that the
 
 396 THE HIGH MORAL SPIRIT IN LANIER's ART 
 
 largest of such generalizations must begin; and the doctrine 
 of evolution when pushed beyond this point appears to me, 
 after the most careful examination of the evidence, to fail. 
 It is pushed beyond this point in its current application to 
 the genesis of species; and I think Mr. Huxley's last sweep- 
 ing declaration is clearly parallel to that of an enthusiastic 
 dissecter who, forgetting that his observations are upon dead 
 bodies, should build a physiological conclusion upon purely 
 anatomical facts. For whatever can be proved to have been 
 evolved, evolution seems to me a noble and beautiful and 
 true theory. But a careful search has not shown me a single 
 instance in which such proof as would stand the first shot of 
 a boy lawyer in a moot-court, has been brought forward in 
 support of an actual case of species-differentiation. A cloud 
 (see the poem) may be evolved; but not an artist; and I find, 
 in looking over my poem, that it has made itself into a pas- 
 sionate reaffirmation of the artist's autonomy, threatened alike 
 from the direction of the scientific fanatic and the pantheistic 
 devotee. 
 
 So human individuality, with its correlates of con- 
 science and will, enables us to interpret the poetic 
 merging of man in God which we find in " The 
 Marshes of Glynn." In God we " live and move and 
 have our being " ; but it is nevertheless true that we 
 are still free and responsible creatures. 
 
 William Hayes Ward has done us great service by 
 pointing out that, like Milton and Ruskin, Lanier was 
 dominated by the beauty of holiness. He loved indeed 
 to reverse the phrase, and to speak also of " the holi- 
 ness of beauty." But a high moral spirit informed 
 all his art. In one of his lectures to the students of 
 Johns Hopkins University he declared true beauty 
 and true holiness to be one : 
 
 Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination 
 of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for 
 woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the
 
 SCIENCE OF ENGLISH VERSE 397 
 
 flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the 
 physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor un- 
 less he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose 
 may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, 
 whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his 
 work. For, indeed, we may say that he who has not yet per- 
 ceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent 
 lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who 
 therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic 
 beauty that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of 
 quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and 
 the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine 
 as one light within him he is not yet the great artist. 
 
 This is an utterance worthy to be written in letters 
 of gold and posted upon the walls of every studio of 
 art. It shows that Lanier was finding in his own 
 work a moral development and education. He wished 
 to subject his own art to eternal principles, and to 
 make a conscience of poetry. In no other way can 
 I understand the long thought and labor which he 
 gave to the composition of his " Science of English 
 Verse." He would master the theory, before he ven- 
 tured further upon practice. That volume is proof of 
 his wide reading, but also of his philosophical acute- 
 ness. Whether we accept its conclusions or not, we 
 must acknowledge the keen insight and the judicial 
 spirit with which it is written. 
 
 Lanier's " Science of English Verse " is an effort to 
 interpret the forms of poetry in terms of music. He 
 would substitute time-measurement in place of stress- 
 measurement. Poe had maintained that accent makes 
 a syllable always long. Lanier's musical instinct re- 
 jected this doctrine, and while, like Poe, he insisted 
 on melody as indispensable to poetry, he held that
 
 398 " SPECIAL PLEADING " 
 
 this melody is the product of rhythm, tone, and color, 
 rather than of mere stress of sound. He began in 
 " Special Pleading " to work out his theory. We 
 must acknowledge that this poem hardly justifies his 
 contention. Its compound substantives, " now-time," 
 " lonesome - tree," " star - consummate," " rose - com- 
 plete," " dusk-time," " noon-time," seem made to 
 order, and to have in them little of poetic beauty. 
 The rhythm itself sounds broken and unmusical, and 
 the thought is not of sufficient value to make up for a 
 certain ambitious thrusting into notice of the merely 
 formal element of the verse : 
 
 Time, hurry my Love to me: 
 Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company? 
 Here's but a heart-break sandy waste 
 'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste 
 Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee! 
 
 Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me: 
 Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree 
 And broods as gray as any dove, 
 And calls, When wilt thou come, O Love? 
 And pleads across the waste to thee. 
 
 Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time, 
 
 I ask but one small boon, Time: 
 Come thou in night, come thou in day, 
 I care not, I care not: have thine own way, 
 
 But only, but only, come soon, Time. 
 
 While Lanier sought to rescue poetry from the law- 
 lessness of mere accent, he ran the risk of enslaving 
 it to mere rhythm. Shakespeare is greatest of poets, in 
 large part, because he unites the most delicate sense
 
 CHRISTIAN FAITH IN LANIER's POEMS 399 
 
 of time-measurement with the greatest freedom of 
 accent. In his later work, indeed, there is the most 
 of spontaneity, with the least of mere mechanism. The 
 rule for the tyro ceases to bind the master. Lanier's 
 music too much dominated his poetry. " Sunrise," 
 for example, while noble in conception, is exceedingly 
 faulty in execution. The effort after form leads to dis- 
 play of words with little meaning. " The Science of 
 English Verse" is a useful manual for the beginner, 
 but it presents only one side of the truth, and it needs 
 to be supplemented by considerations drawn from the 
 realm of the ideal, rather than from the realm of 
 musical notation. 
 
 Our poet's conscientiousness appeared more and 
 more clearly as his days drew near to their end. His 
 sense of duty was grounded in religion. While in 
 Oglethorpe College he had professed his Christian 
 faith, and had united with the Presbyterian Church. 
 In his college note-book he wrote : 
 
 Liberty, patriotism, and civilization are on their knees be- 
 fore the men of the South, and with clasped hands and strain- 
 ing eyes are begging them to become Christians. 
 
 This Christian faith he never disowned. He learned 
 to criticize the forms of religion, as he criticized the 
 forms of poetry, without ever giving up their spirit. 
 We find him in his later life skeptical with regard to 
 churches and denominations and creeds, while yet he 
 clung to his old beliefs with regard to sin and Christ 
 and salvation. The external gave way to the internal. 
 There was less and less of dependence upon self and 
 upon human aid, but more and more dependence upon
 
 4<X> " REMONSTRANCE " 
 
 the infinite pity and love of God, as they are made 
 known to us in Jesus Christ. He did not express his 
 faith in any dogmatic way, but this theology is implicit 
 in his poems, as I shall proceed to illustrate. Let me 
 begin with his poem entitled " Remonstrance " : 
 
 " Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. 
 Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear 
 
 To feature me my Lord by rule and line. 
 Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, 
 
 Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, 
 Would'st count the strings upon an angel's harp? 
 Forbear, forbear. 
 
 " Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep 
 Than there is line to sound with: let me love 
 My fellow not as men that mandates keep: 
 Yea, all that's lovable, below, above, 
 
 That let me love by heart, by heart, because 
 (Free from the penal pressure of the laws) 
 I find it fair. 
 
 " I would thou left'st me free, to live with love, 
 And faith, that through the love of love doth find 
 
 My Lord's dear presence in the stars above, 
 The clods below, the flesh without, the mind 
 
 Within, the bread, the tear, the smile. 
 Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, 
 Let me alone." 
 
 In " A Florida Sunday " he recognizes the grain of 
 truth in pantheism, while he asserts just as clearly the 
 independence and responsibility of each human soul : 
 
 All riches, goods and braveries never told 
 Of earth, sun, air and heaven now I hold 
 Your being in my being; I am ye, 
 And ye myself; yea, lastly, Thee,
 
 " ACKNOWLEDGMENT 4OI 
 
 God, whom my roads all reach, howe'er they run, 
 My Father, Friend, Beloved, dear All-One, 
 Thee in my soul, my soul in Thee, I feel, 
 Self of my self. . . 
 
 And I am one with all the kinsmen things 
 That e'er my Father fathered. Oh, to me 
 All questions solve in this tranquillity; 
 E'en this dark matter, once so dim, so drear, 
 Now shines upon my spirit heavenly-clear: 
 Thou, Father, without logic, tellest me 
 How this divine denial true may be, 
 How All's in each, yet every one of all 
 Maintains his Self complete and several. 
 
 The problem of sin at times perplexed our poet, as 
 it has perplexed every thoughtful soul since the world 
 began. How can a holy and omnipotent God permit 
 moral evil ? The only answer is : It is the condition 
 of the highest virtue that man should be free; and 
 freedom to choose the good implies also freedom to 
 choose the evil. Only faith in God's perfect love 
 enables us to face the problem calmly, and still to be- 
 lieve that in the end God will justify his ways to men. 
 In his poem, " Acknowledgment," Lanier has grappled 
 with the problem, and has given the true solution: 
 
 If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep 
 
 While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, 
 Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep. 
 
 And staining holy walls with clots of crime? 
 Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact 
 
 Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply 
 Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked 
 
 Of grace or bread? or, How may Power deny 
 Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope 
 
 These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail
 
 4O2 OPPOSITION 
 
 In life or art that but a hair's more scope 
 
 Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale? 
 Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: 
 Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument. 
 
 Not hardest Fortune's most unbounded stress 
 Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, 
 Possessing thee, the self of loftiness, 
 And very light that Light discovers by. 
 
 Howe'er thou turn'st, wrong Earth! still Love's in sight: 
 For we are taller than the breadth of night. 
 
 And in "Clover" he adds the needful injunction: 
 
 " Tease not thy vision with vain search for ends. 
 The End of Means is art that works by love. 
 The End of Ends ... in God's Beginning's lost." 
 
 Some of these utterances are enigmatical. It is 
 quite possible that the poet himself had not reached 
 entire clearness of thought, and that his verse simply 
 reflects his own dimness of vision. Yet the drift is 
 plain. He trusts an overruling Wisdom, even though 
 that Wisdom is for the present inscrutable to us. Some 
 at least of God's dealings, untoward at first sight, have 
 ultimate value and meaning. Lanier's poem " Oppo- 
 sition " teaches us to trust, where we cannot fully 
 understand : 
 
 Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, 
 
 Complain no more; for these, O heart, 
 
 Direct the random of the will 
 
 As rhymes direct the rage of art. 
 
 Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, 
 
 Complain thou not, O heart; for these 
 
 Bank-in the current of the will 
 To uses, arts, and charities.
 
 " HOW LOVE LOOKED FOR HELL " 403 
 
 In " Rose-Morals " the poet seems to teach that the 
 only refuge of the afflicted soul is found in that prayer- 
 fulness which links our work and our fate with the 
 will of the Eternal : 
 
 Soul, get thee to the heart 
 
 Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there 
 There breathe the meditations of thine art 
 Suffused with prayer. 
 
 Of spirit grave yet light, 
 
 How fervent fragrances uprise 
 
 Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white 
 Virginities! 
 
 Mulched with unsavory death, 
 
 Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, 
 That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, 
 Thy work, thy fate. 
 
 It is cheering and even thrilling to see how this 
 heroic soul, with the clouds of failure and death lower- 
 ing about him, still perceived Love ruling in the 
 universe, and making all things work together for 
 good. " How Love Looked for Hell " is a declaration 
 that even penal suffering is referable to eternal Good- 
 ness : 
 
 " To heal his heart of long-time pain 
 One day Prince Love for to travel was fain 
 
 With Ministers Mind and Sense. 
 ' Now what to thee most strange may be?' 
 Quoth Mind and Sense. 'All things above, 
 One curious thing I first would see 
 
 Hell,' quoth Love. 
 
 " There, while they stood in a green wood 
 And marvelled still on 111 and Good, 
 Came suddenly Minister Mind.
 
 404 HOW LOVE LOOKED FOR HELL 
 
 ' In the heart of sin doth hell begin: 
 'Tis not below, 'Tis not above, 
 It lieth within, it lieth within': 
 (' Where? ' quoth Love?) 
 
 " ' I saw a man sit by a corse; 
 Hell's in the murderer's breast: remorse! 
 
 Thus clamored his mind to his mind: 
 Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, 
 Hell's not below, nor yet above, 
 'Tis fixed in the ever-damned soul ' 
 
 ' Fixed? ' quoth Love 
 
 " ' In dreams, again, I plucked a flower 
 That clung with pain and stung with power, 
 
 Yea, nettled me, body and mind. 1 
 ' 'Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine; 
 No need nor seed of it here Above; 
 In dreams of hate true loves begin.' 
 
 ' True,' quoth Love. 
 
 " ' Now strange,' quoth Sense, and ' Strange ' quoth 
 
 Mind, 
 ' We saw it, and yet 'tis hard to find, 
 
 But we saw it,' quoth Sense and Mind. 
 ' Stretched on the ground, beautiful-crowned 
 Of the piteous willow that wreathed above, 
 But I cannot find where ye have found 
 
 Hell,' quoth Love." 
 
 But here Lanier in part misses the truth. He sees that 
 Hell begins in the heart of Sin, and that Remorse is 
 Hell. But he makes Remorse to be Repentance, and 
 Sin to furnish its own medicine, so that in the very 
 act of penal suffering Hell is made to vanish away. 
 The obduracy of an evil will is not taken account of. 
 It is not Mind and Sense alone that demand punish- 
 ment for persistent iniquity. Conscience and Reason
 
 " EVENING SONG " 405 
 
 also echo the words of Holy Writ: "The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die." Dante's inscription over the 
 gate of the Inferno is more true than Lanier's verse: 
 
 "Justice incited my sublime Creator; 
 Created me divine Omnipotence, 
 The highest Wisdom and the Primal Love." 
 
 He had little to look forward to in this world : he 
 yearned all the more for a world- to come. Rarely do 
 we find in literature so strong a faith in immortality. 
 His struggle with disease had gone on for three whole 
 years when he wrote to his wife this " Evening Song " : 
 
 Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, 
 And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, 
 How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. 
 Ah! longer, longer, we. 
 
 Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, 
 As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, 
 And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done, 
 Love, lay thine hand in mine. 
 
 Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart; 
 
 Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands. 
 O night! divorce our sun and sky apart; 
 Never our lips, our hands. 
 
 And death to him is only new and perfect converse 
 with the elect spirits of all time. It is the drinking 
 of " The Stirrup-Cup " whose wine will be better than 
 any fabled nectar of the gods : 
 
 Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare: 
 Look how compounded, with what care! 
 Time got his wrinkles reaping thee 
 Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
 
 406 " A SONG OF THE FUTURE " 
 
 David to thy distillage went, 
 Keats, and Gotama excellent, 
 Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright, 
 And Shakspere for a king-delight. 
 
 Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt: 
 Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt; 
 'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me; 
 I'll drink it down right smilingly. 
 
 He has no fear for his work. The song which God 
 has inspired, God will preserve. " A Song of the 
 Future " seems to express this hope, trembling, yet con- 
 fident: 
 
 Sail fast, sail fast, 
 
 Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; 
 Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, 
 Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams; 
 
 Sail fast, sail fast. 
 
 Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea 
 With news about the Future scent the sea: 
 My brain is beating like the heart of Haste: 
 I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste; 
 
 Go, trembling song, 
 And stay not long; oh, stay not long: 
 Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, 
 But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love. 
 
 " Sunrise " is Lanier's last poem, dictated when he 
 was too weak to write. Its singularities show the lack 
 of revision; yet, with much that is below the level of 
 his best, there are bursts of true poetry which merit 
 our praise. The rise of the sun over the marshes, and 
 the flooding of the world with his light, symbolize 
 to the poet the lifting up of his frailty into the infinite 
 life of God ;
 
 407 
 
 Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl 
 
 Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl 
 
 In the magnet earth, yea, thou with a storm for a heart, 
 
 Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part 
 
 From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, 
 
 Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright 
 
 Than the eye of man may avail of: manifold One, 
 
 I must pass from thy face, I must pass from the face of the 
 
 Sun: 
 
 Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle a-frown; 
 The worker must pass to his work in the terrible town: 
 But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be done; 
 
 I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun: 
 How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run, 
 I am lit with the Sun. 
 
 And ever my heart through the night shall with knowledge 
 
 abide thee, 
 
 And ever by day shall my spirit, as one that hath tried thee, 
 Labor, at leisure, in art, till yonder beside thee 
 My soul shall float, friend Sun, 
 The day being done. 
 
 Lanier's greatest poem, to our mind, is " The Crys- 
 tal." It is his greatest because it combines the most 
 of critical judgment with the clearest confession of his 
 faith in Christ. He gives us estimates of the world's 
 greatest teachers, estimates so mature and convincing 
 as to show that he might have made his mark in 
 literary criticism. I can select only a few names of 
 those whom he has described, but they will demon- 
 strate the justice of his thought as well as the incisive- 
 ness of its expression. Only the imagination of a 
 poet could so seize upon the central characteristic of 
 its subject and set it forth so luminously. Let us 
 instance Buddha :
 
 4O8 " THE CRYSTAL " 
 
 So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee 
 That all the All thou hadst for needy man 
 Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was 
 But not to be. 
 
 Worn Dante, I forgive 
 
 The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells 
 Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed 
 By death, nor time, nor love. 
 
 And I forgive 
 
 Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars 
 Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, 
 Immortals smite immortals mortalwise 
 And fill all heaven with folly. 
 
 Also thee, 
 
 Brave ^schylus, thee I forgive, for that 
 Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, 
 Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love 
 Stands shining. 
 
 So, unto thee, Lucretius mine 
 (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this 
 That's now complaining?), freely I forgive 
 Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth 
 Whose graves eat souls and all. 
 
 So pass in review Marcus Aurelius, Thomas a Kempis, 
 Epictetus, Behmen, Swedenborg, Langley, Csedmon, 
 all pictured in single sentences, but with master-strokes 
 that open to us the very life. Coming down to our 
 own day we have 
 
 Emerson, 
 
 Most wise, that yet, in rinding Wisdom, lost 
 Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves, 
 Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice 
 Since Milton, yet some register of wit 
 Wanting; all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, 
 Your more or less, your little mole that marks 
 You brother and your kinship seals to man.
 
 LANIER S TRIBUTE TO CHRIST 409 
 
 And finally, in contrast to all these human teachers, 
 Lanier presents to us his picture of Him who is the 
 Teacher of all true teachers, even as He is the King 
 of kings and the Lord of lords : 
 
 But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, 
 
 But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, 
 
 But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, 
 
 O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 
 
 O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, 
 
 What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
 
 What least defect or shadow of defect, 
 
 What rumor, tattled by an enemy, 
 
 Of inference loose, what lack of grace 
 
 Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, 
 
 Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
 
 Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ? 
 
 In all the great writers and great men of history he 
 could find flaws which needed forgiveness. But Christ 
 is so free from fault, so crystal-clear, that God's rays 
 of truth and love can shine through him without hin- 
 drance. This perfect transparency to the divine proves 
 him to be himself divine, our proper and only Prophet, 
 Priest, and King. This seems to be the substance 
 of Lanier's theology. We could wish that he went 
 further, and saw as clearly that the universal need of 
 forgiveness implies a holiness in God which makes for- 
 giveness difficult; so difficult indeed that only Christ's 
 suffering on account of sin renders it consistent that 
 God should forgive. Our poet believed in God's holi- 
 ness, for his own conscience reflected it. He believed 
 also that sin brings suffering to the holy God as well 
 as to the guilty transgressor. If he had put together 
 the two facts of God's holiness and God's love, he 
 
 2C
 
 4IO LANIER S AFFECTION AND OPTIMISM 
 
 would have seen that Christ's Cross is the only solu- 
 tion of the problem how God can forgive sin; for, 
 in that Cross, are manifested God's holiness necessitat- 
 ing suffering, and God's love enduring suffering, for 
 men's salvation. 
 
 Though his faith in God's holiness did not lead him 
 to its proper logical conclusion, it did lead him to try 
 all art by the highest and severest of tests. He was 
 no believer in " art .for art's sake." Art has a nobler 
 mission the revelation of divine purity and love. He 
 could criticize Whitman, Swinburne, and Morris, not 
 only, for their lapses from that ideal standard; even 
 Shakespeare is subjected to condemnatory judgment 
 for his occasionally " labored-lewd discourse " ; Homer 
 too, for his " too soiled a patch to broider with the 
 gods " ; and even Socrates, for his " words of truth 
 that, mildlier spoke, had manlier wrought." Yet he 
 was a great lover of great men, and specially of family, 
 friends, and institutions that had sympathized with 
 him and helped him. We have seen how he loved his 
 wife, reverenced his father, cared for his brother. He 
 celebrates Charlotte Cushman, as " Art's artist, Love's 
 dear woman, Fame's good queen " ; Bayard Taylor, 
 as mingling now with Plato and the bards of ancient 
 and of modern times ; and Dr. Thomas Shearer, on his 
 presenting a portrait-bust of the author : 
 
 Since you. rare friend! have tied my living tongue 
 With thanks more large than man e'er said or sung, 
 
 So let the dumbness of this image be 
 My eloquence, and still interpret me. 
 
 To his class, on certain fruits and flowers sent him in 
 sickness, he writes :
 
 TO RICHARD WAGNER 411 
 
 If these the products be of love and pain, 
 Oft may I suffer, and you love, again. 
 
 But to Johns Hopkins University, that had first given 
 its academic recognition to his merit, and had made 
 him one of its honored instructors, he pours forth a 
 noble tribute of gratitude in his " Ode," read on the 
 fourth Commemoration Day, February, 1880: 
 
 How tall among her sisters, and how fair, 
 How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair 
 As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands 
 Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands! 
 
 And he calls upon the new university to inaugurate a 
 reign of culture in our western world : 
 
 Bring old Renown 
 
 To walk familiar citizen of the town, 
 Bring Tolerance, that can kiss and disagree, 
 Bring Virtue, Honor, Truth, and Loyalty, 
 Bring Faith that sees with undissembling eyes, 
 Bring all large Loves and heavenly Charities, 
 Till man seem less a riddle unto man 
 And fair Utopia less Utopian, 
 And many peoples call from shore to shore, 
 The world has bloomed again, at Baltimore! 
 
 Lanier's poem " To Richard Wagner " expresses his 
 own ambition to interpret our modern world by the 
 music of poetry : 
 
 " O Wagner, westward bring thy heavenly art, 
 
 Xo trifler thou: Siegfried and Wotan be 
 Names for big ballads of the modern heart. 
 
 Thine ears hear deeper than thine eyes can see. 
 Voice of the monstrous mill, the shouting mart, 
 
 Not less of airy cloud and wave and tree, 
 Thou, thou, if even to thyself unknown, 
 
 Hast power to say the Time in terms of tone."
 
 412 TO BEETHOVEN 
 
 His verses " To Beethoven " celebrate the dignity of 
 music, in the person of the great composer : 
 
 In o'er-strict calyx lingering, 
 
 Lay music's bud too long unblown, 
 Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring: 
 
 Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone. 
 
 Psalmist of the weak, the strong, 
 O Troubadour of love and strife, 
 
 Co-Litanist of right and wrong, 
 Sole Hymner of the whole of life, 
 
 1 know not how, I care not why, 
 Thy music brings this broil at ease, 
 
 And melts my passion's mortal cry 
 In satisfying symphonies. 
 
 Yea, it forgives me all my sins, 
 
 Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, 
 
 And tunes the task each day begins 
 By the last trumpet-note of Time. 
 
 Lanier was an optimist, not that he believed all 
 things to be good, but that he believed all things work 
 together for good, under the government of a holy 
 and loving God. He believed in Christ, as the divine 
 Governor, in nature and in history. In " Tiger-Lilies " 
 he wrote: 
 
 Here, one's soul may climb as upon Pisgah, and see one's land 
 Of peace, seeing Christ, who made all these beautiful things. 
 
 In other words, it is Christ who has created all things, 
 and in whom all things consist, or hold together. This 
 enables us to understand what otherwise might be 
 thought a mere poetical fancy, I mean his attributing 
 prayer even to the trees of the forest :
 
 LANIERS INTERPRETATION OF NATURE 413 
 
 The trees that ever lifted their arms toward heaven, obey- 
 ing the injunction of the Apostle, praying always, the great 
 uncomplaining trees, whose life is surely the finest of all lives, 
 since it is nothing but a continual growing and being beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 And in his lectures on Shakespeare at Johns Hopkins 
 University he adds an instructive comment on the uses 
 of Nature: 
 
 To him who rightly understands Nature, she is more than 
 Ariel and Ceres to Prospero; she is more than a servant con- 
 quered like Caliban, to fetch wood for us: she is a friend and 
 comforter; and to that man the cares of the world are but a 
 fabulous Midsummer Night's Dream, to smile at he is ever 
 in sight of the morning and in hand-reach of God. 
 
 All this interprets to us his conception of his own 
 vocation, together with its central importance and dig- 
 nity : 
 
 It is the poet who must sit at the centre of things here, as 
 surely as some great One sits at the centre of things Yonder, 
 and who must teach us how to control, with temperance and 
 perfect art and unforgetfulness of detail, all our oppositions, 
 so that we may come to say with Aristotle, at last, that poetry 
 is more philosophical than philosophy and more historical 
 than history. 
 
 In the biography of Lanier by Mims, the most sugges- 
 tive and valuable paragraph, from our point of view, 
 is that one in which is described our poet's conception 
 of the meaning and use of music, and I venture to 
 quote the whole of it, as indicating the place he must 
 occupy in the history of art : 
 
 "Lanier believed in the religious value of music; it was a 
 ' gospel whereof the people are in great need, a later revela-
 
 414 MUSIC OVERRATED IN LANIER S POEMS 
 
 tion of all gospels in one'; 'music/ he says, 'is to be the 
 Church of the future, wherein all creeds will unite like the 
 tones in a chord.' He was one of ' those fervent souls who fare 
 easily by this road to the Lord.' Haydn's inscription, ' Laus 
 Deo,' was in Lanier's mind whenever he listened to great 
 music; for it tended to ' help the emotions of man across the 
 immensity of the known into the boundaries of the Un- 
 known.' He would have composers to be ministers of re- 
 ligion. He could not understand the indifference of some 
 leaders of orchestras, who could be satisfied with appealing 
 to the aesthetic emotions of an audience, while they might 
 ' set the hearts of fifteen hundred people afire.' The final 
 meaning of music to him was that it created within man ' a 
 great, pure, unanalyzable yearning after God.' " 
 
 It is not too much to say that Lanier regarded him- 
 self as the apostle of a new era, in which poetry should 
 have music as its continual ministrant and helper. 
 For this reason he cultivated not only his musical gifts, 
 but also all his gifts of mind and heart. He sought 
 to apply the scientific method to the study of poetry, 
 and he conceived that he had improved the art by 
 his discovery that rhythm, tone, and color, and not 
 mere stress, are its essentials. He probably erred in 
 thinking the science of versification more important 
 than it is in reality. But he made up for this error by 
 his constant insistence upon the moral significance of 
 poetry, and by his subjection of all art to the final 
 standard of God's purity and love. Being himself a 
 great musician, he overrated music, and made it too 
 dominant an element in his own compositions. We 
 cannot doubt that some great poetry, like that of 
 Wordsworth, is deficient in musical quality. Un- 
 rhythmical enunciation of important thought has some- 
 times all the effect, and even more than the effect, of
 
 LANIER S INDOMITABLE SPIRIT 415 
 
 the most melodious and measured utterance. To 
 Lanier's contention that the basis of rhythm is time, 
 not accent, we would modestly reply that the basis of 
 rhythm is both time and accent ; the former giving us 
 the form, the latter giving us the substance, of poetry. 
 Which of the two, form or substance, is most im- 
 portant, is like the question which blade of the shears 
 does the cutting. No poetry is great which is not a 
 combination of the two; for the one is soul, the other 
 is body; and though soul is the primary and dominant 
 element, it will never make itself known to men ex- 
 cept through the body which manifests it. 
 
 We are reminded again of the contrast between 
 the two Southern poets, Lanier and Poe. Poe had 
 inveighed against " the heresy of the didactic." He 
 disdained all aims in art except the rousing of emotion. 
 Lanier, on the other hand, held that art has a moral 
 end. This gave to his poetry a joyful and hopeful air, 
 while Poe's was enveloped in cloud and gloom. This 
 made Lanier himself a steady and indomitable worker, 
 even to the very end of his days, while Poe worked 
 only in the intervals of debauch. When strength failed, 
 Lanier was still undaunted. There was nothing sor- 
 rowful in his heroism. He cheered others when he 
 could have no hope for himself, at least in this present 
 life. He dictated his poem " Sunrise " with a fever 
 of one hundred and four degrees, when he was too 
 weak to hold a pen or to lift food to his mouth. His 
 last lectures were read from his chair; every sentence 
 seemed as if it might be his last ; in the carriage, after 
 the lecture was over, his exhaustion was so great that 
 it was a problem whether he could reach his home
 
 4l6 LANIER A GREAT POET IN THE MAKING 
 
 alive. On November 19, 1880, he wrote to Paul 
 Hamilton Hayne: 
 
 For six months past a ghastly fever has been taking posses- 
 sion of me each day at about twelve M., and holding my head 
 under the surface of indescribable distress for the next twenty 
 hours, subsiding only enough each morning to let me get on 
 my working-harness, but never intermitting. A number of 
 tests show it to be not the " hectic " so well known in con- 
 sumption; and to this day it has baffled all the skill I could 
 find in New York, in Philadelphia, and here. I have myself 
 been disposed to think it arose purely from the bitterness of 
 having to spend my time in making academic lectures and 
 boy's books pot-boilers all when a thousand songs are 
 singing in my heart that will certainly kill me if I do not 
 utter them soon. But I don't think this diagnosis has found 
 favor with any practical physician; and meantime I work day 
 after day in such suffering as is piteous to see. 
 
 The end was sure to come, and speedily. He was 
 taken to Polk County, North- Carolina, to camp out in 
 the open air, in hope that this might bring relief. But 
 there he was seized with deadly illness. The closing 
 scene is best described- by Mrs. Lanier, who was with 
 him to the end : 
 
 " We are left alone (August 29th) with one another. On the 
 last night of the summer comes a change. His love and im- 
 mortal will hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one 
 more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then 
 falls the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme 
 submission to the adored will of God." 
 
 Lanier was not a great poet, but he had in him the 
 making of a great poet. He had made unmistakable 
 progress in his art; his best work is, in occasional 
 passages, equal to any other work of his country, if 
 not of his time. There are lightning-flashes of true
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY 417 
 
 poetry, which seem to promise the advent of an illu- 
 minating sun. But the poet has not his powers under 
 full control; he runs off upon a tangent when a fancy 
 strikes him; and these fancies often turn out to be 
 only conceits. He has originality, but he seems too 
 often to be straining after novelty. He has the gift 
 of melody, but he sometimes mars the music of his 
 verse by the effort to bring it' into harmony with a 
 mechanical theory. In short, he lacks, except at rare 
 moments, the spontaneity that belongs to the highest 
 poetical achievement, and the inevitableness of the 
 truest poetical inspiration. But, when all this is said, 
 we have still to take account of a noble poetic gift in 
 process of development a gift so noble as to cause 
 unending sorrow, when we see it coming to its earthly 
 end. 
 
 Such an end 1 of such a gift suggests to us one of the 
 most serious problems of theology. Man, as an intel- 
 lectual, moral, and religious being, does not attain the 
 end of his existence on earth. His development is im- 
 perfect here. Will divine wisdom leave its- work in- 
 complete ? Must there not be a hereafter, for the full 
 growth of man's powers, and for the satisfaction of his 
 aspirations? Created, unlike the brute, with infinite 
 capacities for moral progress, must there not be an 
 immortal existence in which those capacities shall be 
 brought into exercise ? Surely we have here an argu- 
 ment from God's love and wisdom for the immortality 
 of the righteous. God will not treat the righteous as 
 the tyrant of Florence treated Michelangelo, when 
 he bade him carve out of ice a statue, which would 
 melt under the first rays of the sun. Lanier died with
 
 418 BEYOND THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT 
 
 a thousand songs -singing in his soul; his head and 
 heart were full of poems. Is all that wealth to go for 
 naught? We can only point to the poet's own un- 
 wavering assurance of the life to come, and to the 
 promises of the Christ in whom he trusted, to answer 
 the gloomy assertion that death ends all. Reason 
 may not enable us to predict a certain and personal 
 immortality. But Christ has " brought life and im- 
 mortality to light " in his blessed gospel ; and what 
 reason cannot prove, He proves who rose himself from 
 the dead, and so conquered death forevermore. The 
 end of Lanier was very different from the end of 
 Poe. While Poe's life ended in darkness and despair, 
 Lanier's ended in hope and joy. To Lanier we may 
 apply without qualification Shelley's triumphant words 
 with regard to Keats : 
 
 "He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
 Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again; 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain. 
 
 He lives, he wakes 'tis Death is dead, not he; 
 Mourn not for Adonais!"
 
 IX 
 
 WALT WHITMAN
 
 " Man might live at first 
 The animal life: but is there nothing more? 
 In due time, let him critically learn 
 How he lives; and, the more he gets to know 
 Of his own life's adaptabilities, 
 The more joy-giving will his life become. 
 Thus man, who hath this quality, is best." 
 
 Browning's " Clean.' 
 
 NOTE. The figures appended to extracts from Whitman's 
 poems refer to pages in the most complete and critical edition 
 of the " Leaves of Grass " hitherto published that of David 
 McKay, Philadelphia, to whom the author gives thanks for 
 the privilege of transcription.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 SYDNEY SMITH once observed that, when he had a 
 cold, he was uncertain whether there we're thirty-nine 
 Muses and nine Articles, or nine Muses and thirty- 
 nine Articles. The present writer has no cold, but he 
 is in an analogous state of uncertainty. In a previous 
 work, " The Great Poets and Their Theology," he 
 found nine great poets to correspond with the nine 
 Muses, and they were Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakes- 
 peare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Browning, and 
 Tennyson. In writing on " American Poets and Their 
 Theology," he would like also to find nine American 
 poets to admire and to criticize. But thus far there 
 are only eight: namely, Bryant, Emerson, Whittier, 
 Poe, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Lanier. Who 
 shall be the ninth? A large majority of his readers 
 will probably answer by naming Whitman. Is the 
 vox populi, in this case, a vox Dei? The future of 
 American poetry will largely depend upon our conclu- 
 sion; for "like people, like poet" is just as true as 
 " like people, like priest." For this reason I wish to 
 weigh Whitman's life and work in absolutely just 
 balances, even though adverse criticism may be at- 
 tributed to overplus of " malignant virtue " in the 
 reviewer. 
 
 The choice of the nickname " Walt " was character- 
 istic of the man. He rebelled against his patronymic 
 
 421
 
 422 WHITMAN S REVOLT AGAINST LAW 
 
 " Walter," as too formal and too stiff. He wished to 
 be unlike his father, who was a steady and somber 
 man. But he also wished to be unconventional in all 
 his ways. The " hail-fellow-well-met," of low life, 
 seemed to him more comradelike and more humane 
 than the elegant gentlemen who bore the names of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh and Sir Walter Scott. ^Revolt against 
 .tradition, or restriction, or law of any sort, unless it 
 were the law of his own impulses, was a part of his 
 nature. He desired to be an original force in literature 
 and in life. His poetical works begin with a declara- 
 tion of independence which gives us a valuable clue 
 to their total significance: 
 
 One's-Self I sing, a simple, separate Person; 
 
 Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse. 
 
 Of Physiology from top to toe I sing; 
 Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy 
 for the muse 
 
 I say the Form complete is worthier far; 
 The Female equally with the male I sing. 
 
 Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, 
 Cheerful for freest action form'd, under the laws 
 
 divine, 
 The Modern Man I sing, (n) 
 
 Walt Whitman may properly be considered from 
 three points of view his art, his morality, and his 
 religion. In his art, he aims to .get back to Nature. 
 And here there is a grain of truth. Wordsworth said 
 well that 
 
 " To the solid ground of Nature trusts the mind 
 That builds for aye."
 
 ART WITHOUT MORALITY IMPOSSIBLE 423 
 
 But Nature is an ambiguous term. Shall we confine 
 it to the physical world, and make poetry merely de- 
 scriptive of sunsets and storms? There is no poetry 
 that does not find meanings in the outward world 
 suggestions of truth and beauty. Shall we include 
 man in Nature, but only man's body? Then we forget 
 that body has no value or claim upon our attention 
 except as it serves the higher uses of the soul. Poetry 
 must recognize the relation of man's body to his spirit, 
 of his spirit to its fellows, and of all men to God, or 
 it will be destitute of beauty and of truth. An all- 
 embracing atheism and materialism cuts poetry loose 
 from its real sources of inspiration. Nature finds its 
 meanings only in man, and man finds his meanings 
 only in God. Art without morality, and morality with- 
 out religion, are equally impossible. -^Poetry aims to 
 depict, not the conceptions of savage men, but those 
 of thoughtful and cultivated men. The gentleman and 
 the Christian show what man's nature really is. Not 
 the body, but the soul that dominates the body, is most 
 worthy of admiration. If poetry does not see the 
 higher in the lower, it degrades and pollutes. Art 
 must idealize, or perish. 
 
 Bernard Shaw tells us that the great ethical move- 
 ment of our day is the turkey-trot. In a similar vein 
 we may say that the great esthetic movement of our 
 day is free-verse. * Free-verse is destitute of rhyme, 
 and it has only an irregular and rudimental rhythm. 
 Walt Whitman is its leading representative. That 
 poetry may take the form of free-verse may be 
 granted, while yet it is denied that Walt Whitman's 
 free-verse is poetry, or, if poetry at all, is more than
 
 4^4 FAITH IN GOD NECESSARY TO GREAT POETRY 
 
 an infantile and undeveloped kind of poetry. The 
 free-verse of the Ninetieth Psalm, like some of the 
 Ossianic ballads, has other merits besides that of free- 
 dom. It reproduces Nature, not only in its variety, 
 but also in its ideal aspects. Those ideal aspects are 
 suggested and symbolized in the measured cadence of 
 Milton's " Paradise Lost," and in every worthy speci- 
 men of blank verse. ^Poetry is an expression of ide^l 
 truth in its normal relations, and especially in its sub- 
 ordination of the physical to the spiritual. It must 
 recognize the moral element in man. Hence the glori- 
 fication of bodily organs and passions, and the as- 
 sumption that the soul is a mere efflux from the body, 
 are fatal to the poet's art and influence. Man is not 
 supreme in the universe. God is not a mere name 
 for the All. There is a higher Personality than that 
 of the poet, and a theistic faith is necessary to the 
 greatest poetry. Evolution builds on the past. It is 
 no merit to be wholly unlike. When the moral element 
 is lacking, egotism leads the writer to overestimate 
 his own powers and to regard all his observations as 
 of equal value. All things become divine, and he 
 praises the vile as well as the worthy. The world 
 becomes a wilderness of rubbish, which he merely 
 inventories. In his view, man becomes free, not by 
 entering into the communion and life of the personal 
 God, but by asserting the right of every vicious im- 
 pulse to control his action. This is moral slavery and 
 ruin, and this is the philosophy which underlies the 
 verse of Walt Whitman. 
 
 Before proceeding to verify these statements by 
 excerpts from his writings, it will be well to glance
 
 FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF WHITMAN'S BOYHOOD 425 
 
 at the facts of his life, and, if possible, to discover 
 the sources of his philosophy. He was born in the 
 township of Huntington, on the northwestern corner 
 of Long Island, on May 31, 1819. His birthplace 
 was more closely connected with the opposite Con- 
 necticut shore, only ten miles away, than it was with 
 the growing village of Brooklyn, forty miles to the 
 west. From Connecticut had come the mingled En- 
 glish, Independent, and Quaker stock, which found its 
 unique expression in himself. When he was only 
 four years of age, however, his father removed to 
 Brooklyn, and there pursued the trade of a master- 
 carpenter. But the boy frequently visited his grand- 
 mother at the old 'home. There he gathered the eggs 
 of sea-gulls and speared eels. In- the admirable biog- 
 raphy by George Rice Carpenter, these surroundings 
 are credited with an important influence upon his 
 mental development : " The poetic gift was born in 
 him when he listened to the song of the bird calling 
 its dead mate, and heard the melodious hissing of the 
 sea whispering of death." An element of romance was 
 added by the farmers who occasionally dug in the 
 beach for Captain Cook's treasures, and by the talks 
 of the seamen who had manned our ships in the war 
 of 1812. 
 
 He w'as a sturdy child, bred by his father to the car- 
 penter's bench, and possessed of but two educational 
 advantages, the district school and the circulating 
 library. The " Thousand and One Nights " and the 
 " Waverley Novels " absorbed him. At twelve he be- 
 came office-boy to a kind-hearted lawyer, then similarly 
 served a physician. He had no ambition for college. 
 
 2D
 
 426 WHITMAN A BORN BOHEMIAN 
 
 His real training was that of a printer's apprentice 
 and of a school-teacher. Experience as a compositor 
 led to sundry contributions to the " Long Island 
 Patriot " and to George P. Morris's " Mirror " in 
 New York City; and his service as a country peda- 
 gogue at Babylon, on the southern shore of Long 
 Island, gave him some practice as a debater and public 
 speaker. He was at that time an abolitionist, a tee- 
 totaler, an opponent of capital punishment. He was 
 also a Democrat; he entered the realm of politics, 
 advocated the election of Van Buren to the Presidency, 
 stood for Free-Soil and Reform. 
 
 After 1841 he was typesetter, contributor, editor, 
 in turn, of various ephemeral periodicals, and ended 
 by serving on the staff of the Brooklyn " Daily Eagle." 
 For a while his dress, betokened social aspirations, for 
 he wore frock-coat, tall hat, and boutonniere. -tent 
 he was a born Bohemian, and society irked him. He 
 rebelled against authority and self-sacrifice. He spoke 
 of himself as " stubborn, restless, and unhappy." He 
 was too self-centered easily to find companionship, and 
 he took to solitude, assumed the dress of a workman, 
 and sought relief by wandering. " Lazy and hazy," 
 he spent a couple of years in travel, if so we may 
 call working his way through the South. In my 
 judgment, this tour constituted an epoch in his life, 
 and for this reason I shall speak more fully about it 
 hereafter, and shall seek further light upon it from 
 his writings. In the meantime, let me only say that 
 he was for a brief period an editor on the staff of the 
 New Orleans " Crescent," and that after a few months 
 of such service he made his way homeward by way of
 
 GENESIS OF WHITMAN S GENIUS 427 
 
 Chicago and the Great Lakes, though carrying with 
 him affectionate remembrances of the " exquisite 
 wines," the " perfect and mild French brandy," the 
 " splendid and roomy and leisurely barrooms " of the 
 St. Charles and St. Louis hotels. 
 
 In 1848 either satiety or poverty compelled him to 
 return to his father's house in Brooklyn. He was now 
 thirty years of age. He spent several years in assisting 
 his father's work of carpentry and building. But all the 
 while he was meditating and writing. He was seized 
 with the ambition to- put his experience into literature, 
 and into literature of a new sort. Between 1850 and 
 1855 a great change occurred. Until he reached the age 
 of thirty-one he had been a mere writer for newspapers. 
 After this time he was a writer of verse, so unusual in 
 form and so strange in spirit that it attracted atten- 
 tion and criticism. The genesis of Walt Whitman's 
 peculiar genius has occupied the inquiries of many 
 biographers, but with little of positive result. William 
 Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Warren are 
 said to have given him hints. More weight may be 
 attributed to the suggestion that without Whitman's 
 knowledge of the English Bible, its Old Testament 
 parallelism and accompanying rhythm, he never would 
 have devised his method. But it was substance rather 
 than form that he thought most of. He wished to be 
 the poet of the crowd, the mouthpiece of primitive 
 humanity, the expression of man's physical nature. 
 With this view, in 1855, he gave up manual work, and 
 devoted himself to literature, so far as an indolent 
 resignation of himself to observation and to writing 
 could accomplish this.
 
 428 HICKS AND EMERSON SOURCES OF WHITMAN 
 
 There were two sources of his philosophy. Not 
 enough attention has been given by his biographers 
 to the strain of Quaker blood in his veins, and to the 
 influence of Quakerism upon his early religious thought 
 and life. The Van Velsors, from whom he sprang on 
 his mother's side, were of Quaker ancestry. But his 
 grandfather was a friend and comrade of Elias Hicks, 
 the Quaker preacher, who began the movement against 
 the orthodox beliefs, of George Fox, and became the 
 head and leader of the sect called Hicksites. Whittier 
 stood by the old faith ; but Hicks gave up the deity of 
 Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. In Hicks 
 there was a spirit of revolt and self-assertion that was 
 lacking in the older body. All mere forms of religion, 
 even churchgoing and public prayer, were made little 
 of. And Walt Whitman was brought up in an atmos- 
 phere of shrewd worldliness which placed dependence 
 solely upon the inward light an inward light which, 
 in his case, showed its insufficiency, apart from the 
 Christian revelation, as a guide to belief or conduct. 
 
 The second influence which shaped the philosophy 
 of Walt Whitman was more immediate than that of 
 Elias Hicks; it was 1 that of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 A newspaper reviewer, soon after the publication of 
 Whitman's great work, the " Leaves of Grass," de- 
 scribed it as the production of both a transcendentalist 
 and a rowdy. About the transcendentalism there can 
 be no doubt, and to my mind it is equally clear that 
 this, was mainly derived from Emerson. If the reader 
 is surprised at this, or inclined to doubt, I would refer 
 him to my exposition of Emerson's philosophy in a 
 preceding essay of this volume. In these early days
 
 " LEAVES OF GRASS " 42Q 
 
 Whitman went about everywhere with a copy of Em- 
 erson's " Essays " in his pocket. He called Emerson 
 his master, and Emerson himself recognized in Whit- 
 man the same ideas of which he alone had been thus 
 far the advocate, remarking- pleasantly that "Leaves 
 of Grass " was a combination of the Bhagavad Gita 
 and the New York " Herald." Whitman's disjointed 
 and rhapsodic method of utterance, both in prose and 
 in poetry, was possibly caught from Emerson, together 
 with his fundamental conceptions that Nature is orig- 
 inally and mainly physical, that spirit is an efflux from 
 matter, and that mind is- to be interpreted in bodily 
 terms. A materialistic, deterministic, and fatalistic 
 philosophy pervades all of Whitman's writing. It is 
 the glaring but natural outcome of Emerson's more 
 guarded but none the less pernicious doctrine. This 
 philosophy is the secret of Whitman's glorification of 
 man's physical nature, and it makes " Leaves of Grass " 
 little more than the history of his own body. That 
 body he conceives to be only a significant part of the 
 vast universe, of which good and evil are alike and 
 equally the manifestations. The poet is a part of the 
 All he is indeed the soul of the All worthy of ad- 
 miration therefore in all his impulses and powers. 
 Whitman is a pantheist like the Brahman, and he can 
 sing the praises of lust, as the Hindu carves its doings 
 in the Caves of Elephanta. 
 
 The publication of " Leaves of Grass " was unques- 
 tionably the advent of a novelty in American litera- 
 ture. Until 1855 Whitman had been content with 
 prose. But desire for independence grew by what it 
 fed on. Wanderlust, at first a physical instinct, be-
 
 430 EMERSON'S CRITICISM OF " LEAVES OF GRASS " 
 
 came at last consciously intellectual. Freedom became 
 a passion, and asserted itself in- his. writing-. Every 
 great passion tends to rhythmical expression. Abraham 
 Lincoln's address at Gettysburg may be put into lines 
 that read like poetry. In his Southern tour Whitman 
 had given such rein to impulse that he came to re- 
 gard all impulse as divine. He felt himself surcharged 
 with elemental forces that had hitherto no proper out- 
 let in literature. He wished to voice the humanity and 
 energy of the illiterate horde with which he identified 
 himself he would represent, not the world of books, 
 but the world of men. He would make his verse con- 
 form to his subject: he spoke of his poems as 
 
 lawless at first perusal, although on closer examination a cer- 
 tain regularity appears, like the recurrence of lesser and 
 larger waves on the seashore, rolling in without intermis- 
 sion, and fitfully rising and falling. 
 
 Emerson did much to commend " Leaves of Grass " 
 to the general public. He called it " the most extraor- 
 dinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet 
 contributed." Whitman says of Emerson's letter con- 
 veying this eulogium, " I regarded it as the charter of 
 an Emperor." This was only natural, since Whitman 
 was the inheritor of Emerson's philosophy, if not of 
 his delicacy or of his style. But Emerson greatly ob- 
 jected to the publication of his private letter, and he 
 afterward added criticisms which seemed like confes- 
 sions of regret for his premature enthusiasm. For 
 Whitman was no blind or passive admirer, but one 
 determined to carry Emerson's philosophy to its logical 
 conclusion. In a long talk with Whitman on Boston
 
 WHITMAN UNCHANGED BY CRITICISM 43! 
 
 Common, Emerson sought to convince him that rhyme 
 and rhythm are not unnatural, and that reticence with 
 regard to some bodily relations is consistent with ideal 
 truth. Whitman was unconvinced, though somewhat 
 impressed by the words of his master. He could 
 write with unusual humility : 
 
 Whether my friends claim it for me or not, I know well 
 enough that in respect to pictorial talent, dramatic situa- 
 tions, and especially in verbal melody and all the conven- 
 tional technique of poetry, not only the divine works that 
 to-day stand ahead in the world's reading, but dozens more, 
 transcend (some of them immeasurably transcend) all I have 
 done or could do. 
 
 But he also wrote a eulogy of Emerson which served 
 for self- justification: 
 
 His final influence is to make his students cease to worship 
 anything almost cease to believe in anything, outside of 
 themselves. . . No teacher ever taught, that has so provided 
 for his pupil's setting up independently no truer evolutionist. 
 
 He came at last to depreciate his benefactor. In 1872 
 he wrote : 
 
 Emerson has just been this way . . . lecturing. He main- 
 tains the same attitude draws on the same themes as 
 twenty-five years ago. It all seems to- me quite attenuated 
 (the first drawing of a good pot of tea, you know, and Emer- 
 son's was the heavenly herb itself but what must one say to 
 a second, or even third or fourth infusion?) 
 
 And the result of Emerson's criticism, like the opposi- 
 tion of other critics, was only to confirm the poet in 
 his chosen method. So. he writes : 
 
 When the book aroused such a storm of anger and cordem- 
 nation everywhere, I went off to the East end of Long Island
 
 43 2 A POET OF CHAOS 
 
 and Peconic Bay. Then came back to New York with the 
 confirmed resolution, from which I never afterwards wavered, 
 to go on with my poetic enterprise in my own way, and 
 finish it as well as I could. 
 
 Whitman's aims and methods were certainly original. 
 In notes which he left at his death, he charged himself : 
 
 Make no quotations, and no reference to other writers. 
 Lumber the writing with nothing let it go as lightly as the 
 bird flies in the air or a fish swims in the sea. Avoid all poet- 
 ical similes; be faithful to the perfect likelihoods of nature 
 healthy, exact, simple, disdaining ornaments. Do not go into 
 criticisms or arguments at all; make full-blooded, rich, flush, 
 natural works. Insert natural things, indestructibles, idioms, 
 characteristics, rivers, states, persons, and so forth. Be full 
 of strong sensual germs! . . Poet! beware lest your poems are 
 made in the spirit that comes from the study of pictures of 
 things and not from the spirit that comes from the con- 
 tact with real things themselves. 
 
 Emerson's later judgments with regard to Whitman 
 were, as I have already intimated, less favorable than 
 were his earlier utterances. He calls Whitman's cata- 
 logues of natural objects " the auctioneer's inventories 
 of a warehouse." The poet mistook these for poetry, 
 whereas they were simply materials for poetry. His 
 philosophy spoiled his art If Whitman was a poet at 
 all, he was a poet of chaos, for his work is " without 
 form and void " ; the creative and shaping hand is lack- 
 ing. He does not perceive that art is not merely the 
 copyist of nature, but the copyist of the higher nature, 
 the discoverer of the unifying principle of nature, the 
 revelation of the spiritual and moral Author and End 
 of nature. Since Whitman would not recognize the 
 God of nature, he could see nature only in bits. He
 
 PANTHEISTIC PHILOSOPHY A FOE OF ART 433 
 
 was " hypnotized by phenomena " ; like Yankee Doodle, 
 he " could not see the town, there were so many 
 houses." This is the real explanation of his weari- 
 some cataloguing, which often runs into a maundering 
 vacuity. It also accounts for his eulogy of the mean 
 and the low, the vulgar and the vile. He has no sense 
 of proportion, because lie has no proper standard of 
 judgment. He forgets that nature is man's garden, 
 a garden not perfect, but one which man is to dress 
 and keep. Poetry sees the ideal thought in nature and 
 reproduces it in verse. To fancy that the ugly and 
 the vicious are divine, that one man is as good as an- 
 other, merely because both are found in the world, is 
 to make real poetry impossible. 
 
 This same philosophy degrades the form of art as 
 well as its substance. Beauty wakens in us sym- 
 pathetic feeling, and clamors for rhythmical expres- 
 sion. The poet thinks instinctively in numbers the 
 numbers indeed are born with the thought. The high- 
 est truth clothes itself in melodious phrase. Great 
 poets are great artists as well as great lovers of 
 truth. As the sense of beauty and of truth becomes 
 more acute, poetry becomes more rhythmical and more 
 melodious. Recitative gives place to song. Walt 
 Whitman scouts these higher modes of expression, 
 and imitates only the voices of physical and animal 
 nature. But in doing this he descends to the lower 
 methods of aboriginal man, and, to adopt his own 
 phrase, " sends over the roofs of the world only a 
 barbaric yawp." We might as well give up Handel 
 and Beethoven, and go back to the music of tom-toms. 
 The lower form of poetry indicates a lower form of
 
 434 " CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!" 
 
 truth, and copies only a lower form of nature. In my 
 judgment, Whitman's best poems, the " Song of the 
 Universal," the " Proud Music of the Storm," the 
 " Song of the Redwood Tree," the " Song of the 
 Exposition," and, above all, " O Captain ! my Cap- 
 tain ! " are those in which he comes nearest to the 
 conventional forms of poetical expression, most nearly 
 forgets his dogmas of the body, and most avails him- 
 self of the garnered wisdom of the past. 
 
 Before I pass from the consideration of the mere 
 form of Whitman's verse, I must quote his greatest 
 poem, if only to show how near he came to achieving 
 both technical and emotional success. " O Captain ! 
 my Captain ! " will live, when all else that he has 
 written is forgotten. Better than any other poem, 
 it expresses the universal sorrow which followed the 
 death of our martyred President, Abraham Lincoln : 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; 
 
 The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is 
 
 won; 
 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: 
 But O heart! heart! heart! 
 O the bleeding drops of red, 
 Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen cold and dead. 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
 
 Rise up for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills; 
 
 For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths for you the shores 
 
 a-crowding; 
 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
 Here Captain! dear father! 
 
 This arm beneath your head; 
 
 It is some dream that on the deck 
 You've fallen cold and dead.
 
 WHITMAN'S EGOTISM 435 
 
 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; 
 The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and 
 
 done; 
 
 From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won: 
 Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! 
 But I, with mournful tread, 
 
 Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen cold and dead. (375) 
 
 Here is genuine emotion, but emotion clothed in nearly 
 correct metrical form. It shows that Whitman could 
 write poetry when his soul was stirred by something 
 outside himself. There are defects even here which 
 it were ungracious to criticize, but they are all defects 
 due to his method, and we lose sight of them when we 
 enter sympathetically into his grief over the unspeak- 
 able loss which the nation suffered when its great 
 Captain died. Unfortunately, with all its occasional 
 flashes of genius, his free-verse is ordinarily not so 
 near the requirements of poetry as is some of his 
 prose. Its art is infantile and defective; it is indolent 
 and often commonplace; the most remarkable thing 
 about it is that it was ever printed as poetry. 
 
 Another infelicity clings to Walt Whitman's art; 
 namely, his boundless egotism. This too is the fruit 
 of his philosophy. He is possessed by the pantheistic 
 delusion that the universe reaches personality only in 
 man. He himself is the typical manifestation of the 
 universe and its typical representative. Every atom 
 of his body and every thought of his mind is there- 
 fore of value. The complete expression of himself 
 will be the exposition of universal humanity. He criti- 
 cized Ruskin's view that poetry should have
 
 436 A SENSE OF SIN WANTING IN WHITMAN 
 
 nothing to do with the poet's special personality, nor exhibit 
 the least trace of it like Shakspere's great unsurpassable 
 dramas. But I have dashed at the greater drama going on 
 within myself and every human being that is what I have been 
 after. 
 
 Homer, Vergil, and Dante have been reticent about 
 themselves; we know little about them; their poetry 
 is objective rather than subjective. Whitman would 
 reverse all this; he says unblushingly, "I celebrate 
 myself " ; he would express in his verse every impulse 
 of his nature. This naked individualism is the result 
 of self-deification. And this naked individualism, in 
 turn, corrupted his art. He was too great an ad- 
 mirer of himself to be conscious of his own defects of 
 style. He could not tell the commonplace from the 
 inspired. 
 
 Our criticism of Whitman's art becomes very quickly 
 a criticism of his morality. His blatant egotism is the 
 egotism of the atheist who sees nothing in the universe 
 higher than himself. He sees no divine holiness in 
 contrast with his own moral imperfection; he per- 
 ceives no moral evil in himself, and so is blind to the 
 greatness of the good. His sense of sin is as weak 
 as his sense of God. But I must not prematurely con- 1 
 demn him. There is one utterance of his which has 
 been quoted in his favor. In his letter to Edward 
 Dowden, dated January 18, 1872, he describes his 
 aim in literature : 
 
 I seek to typify living Human Personality, immensely ani- 
 mal, with immense passions, immense amativeness, immense 
 adhesiveness in the woman immense maternity and then, in 
 both, immenser far, a moral conscience, and in always realizing
 
 THE COARSE EGO IN WHITMAN S VERSE 437 
 
 the direct and indirect control of the divine laws through all 
 and over all forever. 
 
 So far as my reading of his works informs me, this 
 is the only tribute which the author makes to morality, 
 or law, or God. It is so exceptional a tribute, and is 
 so incongruous with the general drift and spirit of 
 his writings, that I must regard it as a tribute to his 
 correspondent, rather than to the great realities which 
 his poems and his life ignored. As we shall hereafter 
 see, the poet was quite capable of impersonating a 
 morality which he did not possess, in order that he 
 might not utterly lose the good opinion of his friends. 
 The Whitman cult is so frequently unacquainted 
 with his poems and his life, that duty seems to require 
 the publication of features in both which eulogists 
 have hitherto ignored. It is a thankless and unpleasing 
 task, and I undertake it with regret. I proceed to 
 quote certain passages of his verse, in which egotism 
 and coarseness are evenly matched : 
 
 Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the 
 
 son, 
 
 Turbulent, fleshy and sensual, eating, drinking and breeding; 
 No sentimentalist no stander above men and women, or 
 
 apart from them; 
 No more modest than immodest. (54) 
 
 Joy of the friendly, plenteous dinner the strong carouse, 
 and drinking! 
 
 O, while I live, to be the ruler of life not a slave! 
 
 To be indeed a God! (384) 
 
 Teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism. (168)
 
 438 WHITMAN'S THESIS 
 
 I know perfectly well my own egotism; 
 
 I know my omnivorous lines, and will not write any less; 
 
 And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself. (81) 
 
 I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all and I will 
 
 be the bard of personality; 
 And I will show of male and female that either is but the 
 
 equal of the other; 
 And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me for 
 
 I am determin'd to tell you with courageous clear voice, 
 
 to prove you illustrious. (24) 
 
 Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main 
 concern and includes and is the Soul. (25) 
 
 I swear I think now that everything without exception has an 
 eternal Soul. (391) 
 
 I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of 
 
 the stars; 
 And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and 
 
 the egg of the wren. (62) 
 
 Unscrew the locks from the doors! 
 
 Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! (54) 
 
 Through me forbidden voices; 
 
 Voices of sexes and lusts voices veil'd, and I remove the 
 
 veil; 
 Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur'd. (55) 
 
 Fall behind me, States! 
 
 A man before all myself, typical before all. (303) 
 
 divinity of the common man was Whitman's 
 thesis, and that for the reason that the individual sum- 
 marizes and expresses the universaj> It was a dim 
 apprehension of the universal, without recognition of 
 its unifying- principle, Whitman perceived the power
 
 A MAN WITHOUT A SHRINE 439 
 
 that works in and through nature, but failed to see the 
 personality of that power. He chose a non-moral, in- 
 stead of a moral God. The only unifying principle he 
 could discern was himself. So he could believe all his 
 ideas and passions to be manifestations of the in- 
 dwelling Deity. His system was an " illegitimate con- 
 secration of the finite." Good and evil alike, in others 
 as well as in himself, were revelations of the spirit 
 that moved through all, and that spirit was only the 
 personification of matter, something non-moral, evil 
 as well as good. He liked the " refreshing wicked- 
 ness " of stage-drivers and ferry-hands, for to him, in 
 quite other than the scriptural sense, there was " noth- 
 ing common or unclean." What Emerson said of 
 Gibbon applies equally to him : " The man has no 
 shrine a man's most important possession." Hence 
 he could glorify every bodily appetite, and make even 
 the life of the prostitute a subject of his verse. I must 
 connect this celebration of vileness with his own prac- 
 tical cutting loose from restraint. He would not have 
 thus deified passion, if he had not previously broken 
 away from a personal and holy God. 
 
 As to Whitman's immorality, at least in his early 
 life, we are not left to conjecture. His own letter to 
 John Addington Symonds, dated August 10, 1890, and 
 written in his seventy-second year, is sufficiently ex- 
 plicit: 
 
 My life, young manhood, mid-age, times South, etc., have 
 been jolly bodily, and doubtless open to criticism. Though 
 unmarried I have had six children two are dead one living 
 Southern grandchild, fine boy, writes to me occasionally 
 circumstances (connected with their fortune and benefit) 
 have prevented me from intimate relations.
 
 44O WHITMAN'S IMMORALITY 
 
 I do not find in this, or in any other writing of Walt 
 Whitman, the least sign of regret for the " jolly life " 
 of those Southern years, or for the subsequent abandon- 
 ment of his offspring. His paternity was like that of 
 Rousseau, which permitted his own children to be 
 foundlings. Bliss Perry, in his otherwise comprehen- 
 sive and judicial biography of Whitman, has minimized 
 the poet's aberrations, and has attributed them to sud- 
 den floods of passion which overtook a sensitive nature 
 and served as an early stage of its education. Much 
 as I should like to accept this explanation, it seems 
 to me inadequate, in view of two outstanding facts : 
 first, that Whitman never expressed regret for the 
 escapades, never suppressed or retracted what have 
 always seemed his vicious utterances; and, secondly, 
 that, with regard to the most serious suspicion of his 
 correspondent, Whitman ventures upon no direct de- 
 nials. Symonds had been reading " Calamus," a group 
 of poems celebrating the intimate friendship of men 
 for men. Some of the lines troubled him, and, as 
 Perry says : 
 
 " His familiarity with certain passages of Greek literature 
 increased his curiosity. He wrote to Whitman begging for a 
 more exact elucidation, and Whitman, in order to avoid any 
 possible misconstruction, wrote frankly in reply concerning 
 his own early relations with women." 
 
 Yes, but he said nothing about his early relations with 
 men. 
 
 Whitman was something of a poseur. His urbanity 
 and dignity were at times the veil which hid an inward 
 sense of difference between his own standards and those 
 accepted by the world around him. He \vould not
 
 WHITMAN A POSEUR 441 
 
 argue, and he would not disclose ; but he could ignore. 
 So he went steadily on his way, only the more deter- 
 mined by criticism to live his own life and maintain 
 his own independence of all ordinary moral as well 
 as all ordinary literary standards. He had a fine 
 faculty of concealment, but he was also capable of 
 arrant dishonesty. His persistent self-glorification and 
 occasional falsification of facts throw doubt upon the 
 sincerity of his seeming disclaimers. Whitman was 
 not only guilty of indelicacy in sending to various jour- 
 nals extravagant eulogies of his own poems, but he 
 prefaced his " Leaves-Droppings " with a letter to 
 Emerson, from which I quote the following sentences : 
 
 The first edition, on which you mailed me that till now un- 
 answered letter, was twelve poems I printed a thousand 
 copies, and they readily sold; these thirty-two Poems I stereo- 
 type, to print several thousand copies of. . . The way is clear 
 to me. A few years, and the average annual call for my 
 Poems is ten or twenty thousand copies more, quite likely. 
 
 Mr. Perry tells us, however, that, of the " Leaves of 
 Grass " of 1855, 
 
 "An edition of a thousand copies was planned, but only 
 about eight hundred seem actually to have been printed. . . 
 Then came the tragedy of hope deferred. There were practi- 
 cally no sales. In his old age Whitman used to refer good- 
 naturedly to the one man who actually bought a copy of the 
 1855 edition." 
 
 The biographer calls the letter to Emerson a " ro- 
 mancing about the sale of the first edition," and speaks 
 of 
 
 " Whitman's nervous condition at the time. He was over- 
 excited, no doubt, and felt that he was playing for high 
 stakes." 
 2E
 
 442 THOREAU S SEARCHING CRITICISM 
 
 It seems to me rather to deserve severe censure, as a 
 deliberate attempt to deceive the man who had first 
 given him currency and credit in the literary world. 
 Whitman's appetite for praise grew by what it fed on ; 
 self -appreciation became monumental; it lasted to the 
 end ; for, long after admirers, themselves straitened in 
 means, were contributing to his support because they 
 believed him penniless, he was erecting for himself a 
 mausoleum which cost four thousand dollars, and at 
 his death he had in the bank several thousand dollars 
 more. " The good, gray poet " must submit to some 
 discount of his pretensions. 
 
 Late in life Whitman said to Prof. G. K. Palmer: 
 " There are things in ' Leaves of Grass ' which I 
 would no sooner write now than I would cut off my 
 right hand; but I am glad I printed them." Whittier 
 called the book " muck, obscenity, vulgarity, bombast," 
 and he threw it into the fire. The intensity and par- 
 ticularity of its references to sensual relations dis- 
 gusted him. It was indeed a sort of phallic frenzy. 
 Thoreau praised it as a study of nature, but thought 
 that the beasts might have so spoken. That was a 
 significant and searching criticism. Whitman admired 
 the beasts. He said : 
 
 I think I could go and live with the animals. I stand and 
 look at them long and long. They are so placid and self- 
 contained. They do not fret and whine about their condi- 
 tion; they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their 
 sins; they do not make me sick, discussing their duty to God. 
 Not one of them is respectable or unhappy over the whole 
 earth. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? . . 
 Evil propels me, and refusal of evil propels me; I am indif- 
 ferent.
 
 OBSCENITY EXALTED TO A PRINCIPLE 443 
 
 Whitman's rejection of a holy God is followed by a 
 blinding of his soul to sin. And of this it has been 
 well said, " The man who lives like an animal and cares 
 not for moral failure, having no desire for things noble 
 or great, is worse than an animal, because he is so much 
 more than an animal." In " Leaves of Grass " Whit- 
 man hints indeed at physical relations and contacts of 
 which the mere animal is ignorant and guiltless, and 
 which remind the reader of Oscar Wilde. 
 
 What is the truth about his glorification of the body ? 
 We may grant that there is a squeamishness which is 
 only prudery. Oversensitiveness with regard to bodily 
 organs is a sign of undisciplined imagination. Educa- 
 tion gives a certain freedom, both in conversation and 
 in plastic art. The human form is noble and divine, 
 even in its nudity. But only when immoral suggestion 
 is wholly absent, and when form suggests the su- 
 premacy of spirit. In other words, nature in this 
 aspect utters a symbolic language, and is beautiful only 
 when she is moral; when she is immoral, she needs 
 to be ashamed. The bodily organs and relations are 
 worthy of reverence, and are subjects for poetry, only 
 so far as they symbolize spiritual truth and minister 
 to its influence. To make the body in itself an object 
 of worship, or to regard it as the parent and master 
 of the soul, is to reverse all right relations and to teach 
 a fundamental immorality. Yet this is the doctrine 
 of Whitman. His poetry is a poetry of the flesh. Ret- 
 icence with regard to sexual relations is necessary if 
 we would recognize the rightful reign of spirit over 
 body. But Whitman has exalted obscenity into a 
 principle.
 
 444 WHITMAN PRAISED BY NOTED MEN 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive more unblushing an- 
 nouncements of immoral ambition than are contained 
 in some of his poems. The Attorney General of 
 Massachusetts evidently took this view of the case 
 when he threatened to prosecute Whitman's publishers 
 for printing an obscene volume, and James R. Osgood 
 and Company in consequence gave up the publication 
 of the " Leaves of Grass." Secretary James Harlan, 
 in Washington, in like manner dismissed Whitman 
 from his $1,600 clerkship because that book was found 
 in his possession. But the poet gained stout defenders 
 Rossetti declared the work to be " incomparably the 
 largest performance of our period in poetry," though 
 he objected to its " agglomeration." William Dean 
 Howells spoke of Whitman, after a visit, as " emanat- 
 ing an atmosphere of purity and serenity," in spite 
 of the poet's own assertions that he loved and depicted 
 impurity as much as he loved and depicted purity. 
 John Burroughs said that " Americans may now come 
 home: unto us a man is born." He credited Whit- 
 man with " the primal spirit of poesy itself," " the 
 most buoyant and pervasive spirituality," " the most 
 uncompromising religious purpose," though he saw in 
 him grave defects. Alcott, Conway, Bryant, Beecher, 
 came to see Whitman ; and in England, Lord Hough- 
 ton, Myers, and Swinburne praised him, though Swin- 
 burne came at last to break away from his spell. 
 Women have been found to justify his erotic verse, 
 and to see in it only the frank avowal of innocent natu- 
 ral instincts. I am' content to place my reader in the 
 seat of judgment. Since he " knows the ordinance 
 of God, that they who practise such things are worthy
 
 WHITMAN CHANGED BY THE CIVIL WAR 445 
 
 of death," let him judge whether those are guiltless 
 who, though they do not the same, yet " consent with 
 those who practise them." 
 
 There came a day when Whitman's glorification of 
 sexual relations became a glorification of comradeship. 
 The passion of man for woman gave place to the 
 passion of man for man, and this passion merged into 
 something democratic and universal. Our Civil War 
 stirred him. I do not find that he had interest in the 
 slave, or that he rejoiced in his emancipation. He was 
 no abolitionist, at least in his later years. But he was 
 concerned for the Union of the States, and for the 
 men who were defending it. His own brother was 
 wounded in one of the first battles of the war, and 
 Whitman started for Washington to care for him. 
 When the brother recovered from what proved to be 
 a slight wound, Whitman began a visitation and help 
 to others who were sick and wounded, until he had 
 ministered in this way to nearly a hundred thousand 
 men. We must not withhold from this service our 
 grateful acknowledgments. It was a service entirely 
 voluntary and without pay. It was not the ordinary 
 service of a nurse, but that of a. companion and friend. 
 He brought paper and envelopes, with postage-stamps, 
 and wrote letters dictated by the boys to their parents 
 or friends at home. He carried to thousands of bed- 
 sides little packets of sweetmeats or tobacco. He even 
 read the Bible to those who requested it, though he 
 ordinarily trusted more to his own kindly and sym- 
 pathetic talk, to cheer his patient. All this was done 
 in hours of leisure from the work of the government 
 office in which he had found employment, and its value
 
 44^ THE NEW RESOLVE OF WHITMAN 
 
 largely consisted in the unconventional and hearty 
 method of his address. This practical work for others 
 seems to be the result of a vow registered at the begin- 
 ning of the war, on April 16, 1861, and suggested 
 by the patriotic rush to arms by so many of the youth 
 of the land. It indicates a wider outlook and an im- 
 pulse to self-sacrifice, which before this time we see 
 nothing of. The record of this new resolve was found 
 among his papers after his death, and it reads as 
 follows : 
 
 I have this day, this hour, resolved to inaugurate for myself 
 a pure, perfect, sweet, clean-blooded robust body, by ignor- 
 ing all drinks but water and pure milk, and all fat meats, 
 late suppers a great body, a purged, cleansed, spiritualized, 
 invigorated body. 
 
 And in one of his poems he writes : 
 
 I have loved the earth, sun, animals I have despised riches, 
 I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the 
 
 stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, 
 I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had 
 
 patience and indulgence toward the people, taken off my 
 
 hat to nothing known or unknown, 
 
 I have dismissed whatever insulted my own Soul or defiled my 
 Body. (303) 
 
 Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd, to breathe 
 
 his last; 
 This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, 
 
 restored, 
 
 To life recalling many a prostrate form: 
 I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the 
 
 taste of myself, 
 I reject none, I permit all. (304)
 
 " A BATTERED, WRECKED OLD MAN " 447 
 
 There is no need of censorship of his writings after 
 1861. His literary work reflects a new and better con- 
 dition of body. It was well that he then pledged him- 
 self to abstinence, for the demands upon his physical 
 system had hitherto been great, and the calls for sym- 
 pathy in his new work of relieving suffering were still 
 more exhausting. In 1873, at the early age of fifty- 
 four, he broke down. A stroke of paralysis shattered 
 his seemingly invulnerable constitution, and from the 
 collapse that followed he never fully recovered. After 
 a time he retired to Camden, New Jersey, bought him 
 a poor little house, and, with the aid of contributions 
 from friends at home and abroad, spent the remainder 
 of his life. He had many visitors. On his seventieth 
 birthday he was given a public reception in Camden, 
 at which his friends gave him praise. But he was, to 
 use his own description of Columbus, " a battered, 
 wrecked old man." And in 1891, when seventy -two 
 years of age, he breathed his last 
 
 The race from which Walt Whitman sprang has 
 been described as " solid, strong-framed, long-lived, 
 moderate of speech, friendly, fond of their horses and 
 cattle, sluggish in their passions, but fearful when once 
 started." Our poet possessed all these peculiarities of 
 both body and mind. As a boy, he was healthy and 
 hearty. As teacher of a country school, composed 
 mostly of girls, he showed little sentiment or partiality 
 toward the sex. As a grown man, he had the calm- 
 ness and benignity of good nature. These were natu- 
 ral gifts. But behind them and underlying them there 
 was a passion which, when roused, knew no restraint. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson's description of the Scot, as
 
 448 THE AFTERMATH OF WHITMAN 
 
 " an iceberg over a volcano," might almost apply to 
 Whitman. On occasion he could let himself loose, 
 and he did this in his tour of the South. The echoes 
 of that exuberant life were always sounding within 
 him. But the woes of his country opened to him 
 a larger vision. A sort of national, yes, even of 
 cosmic, consciousness was developed. His chronic 
 good nature poured itself forth in care for the sick 
 and wounded. He gave what strength he had to 
 kindly ministrations at their bedsides, until paralysis 
 seized him and his strength was gone. His after-life 
 in Camden has been celebrated as the monkish retreat 
 of an Oriental guru, lost in the ecstasy of his identi- 
 fication with the All, and quietly awaiting the trans- 
 forming touch of death. There are other views, how- 
 ever, of that Camden life, and I am permitted to quote 
 the following passages from the private letter of a 
 pastor whose work in that city filled part of the time 
 of Whitman's residence there : 
 
 " My residence in Camden came in the period of what might 
 be termed the aftermath of Whitman's influence in the city. 
 As there was not much of the earlier, there was less of the 
 later. And what there was, was wholly inimical to righteous- 
 ness. His personal laxity of belief, if not of act, produced 
 in his followers a license for physical and mental indulgence. 
 Last winter the noblest Christian woman it was my privilege 
 to know in the city of Camden passed away. She was un j 
 married and had lived to her eightieth year. She possessed 
 a rare, clear, pure mind, and had a remarkable ability to 
 intuit realities back of appearances. Often, in long conver- 
 sations with her, have I mentioned the person of Walt Whit- 
 man, whose home was four doors removed from hers during 
 her girlhood and young womanhood. She told me that hun- 
 dreds of times she had passed around the whole block to 
 avoid meeting Walt Whitman, whose very eye terrified her
 
 " THE POETRY OF DEMOCRACY " 449 
 
 womanhood. Last fall it was my privilege to baptize the 
 last member of the ' Walt Whitman Club ' of Camden. The 
 majority had died drunkards, and only the grace of God had 
 saved this man from a like fate." 
 
 The result of my inquiries is negative. The impres- 
 sions of the aged maiden lady thus quoted may have 
 been derived from the general opinion of Christian 
 circles, which in its turn may have been formed by the 
 perusal of Whitman's books, and not from personal 
 acquaintance. And yet I cannot ignore the testimony 
 of an esteemed pastor to the effect that Walt Whit- 
 man's influence was antagonistic to Christianity and 
 to morality. 
 
 Walt Whitman's verse was called by Edward Dow- 
 den " the poetry of Democracy." John Burroughs too 
 quotes Whitman as saying that the mother-idea of 
 his poems is democracy, and democracy 
 
 " carried far beyond politics into the region of taste, the stand- 
 ards of manners and beauty, and even into philosophy and 
 theology." 
 
 It was so, only because the poet came to regard him- 
 self as the natural representative of the whole race of 
 man. He was an Occidental mystic, who identified 
 himself with the universe, and saw in his own body 
 and soul the very flower of humanity. " He uses the 
 communal ' I,' like Krishna," said Emerson. Self- 
 love and self-worship expanded into a kindly sympathy 
 with all forms of life. A universal good nature was 
 to him the highest form of virtue. All men are your 
 brothers in their failures as well as in their gifts, in 
 their vices as well as in their virtues therefore be
 
 450 WHITMAN'S DEMOCRACY ANARCHY 
 
 good to them! Their faults are part of them smile, 
 but do not reprove! " Science " is their united intel- 
 lect; "the States" are their organized force; "De- 
 mocracy " is their collective will. Whitman is the 
 apostle of this democracy; he could give his time and 
 labor to caring for the suffering, without asking 
 whether they were Unionists or rebels; so he could 
 anticipate a day when there would be " one heart to 
 the globe." As against the exaggerated nationalism 
 of our day, this has an air of plausibility; in fact, it 
 is but the elevation of the actual Walt Whitman into 
 world-wide validity, the declaration of independence 
 on the part of every individual, the transcending of 
 all boundaries of law, and the enthronement of arbi- 
 trary impulse. Democracy of this sort is only anarchy, 
 with a better name, as will appear by mere citation 
 from his verses : 
 
 I swear I am for those that have never been master'd! 
 
 For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never 
 master. (306) 
 
 Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become 
 the master myself. (307) 
 
 Race of veterans! Race of victors! 
 
 Race of the soil, ready for conflict! race of the conquering 
 
 march! 
 
 (No more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race;) 
 Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself; 
 Race of passion and the storm. (316) 
 
 The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on 
 
 themselves, 
 The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the 
 
 boundless impatience of restraint. (158)
 
 WHITMAN'S DEMOCRACY ANARCHY 451 
 
 I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America 
 
 rise; 
 Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary 
 
 wilds, 
 No more on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea. (247) 
 
 such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and 
 
 varied! 
 The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! (264) 
 
 1 hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men I hear 
 
 LIBERTY! (275) 
 
 I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with 
 
 stripes, I sing you only, 
 Flapping up there in the wind. (279) 
 
 Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever 
 
 afterward resumes its liberty. (33 1 ) 
 I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, 
 
 God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. (333) 
 
 Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a 
 God. (335) 
 
 Of This Union, soak'd, welded in blood of the solemn price 
 paid of the unnamed lost, ever present in my mind. 
 
 Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me! 
 Hour prophetic hour resuming the past! (338) 
 
 I announce a race of splendid and savage old men. (344) 
 
 Lo, Soul, see'st thou not, plain as the sun, 
 The only real wealth of wealth in generosity, 
 The only life of life in goodness? (436) 
 
 As a strong bird on pinions free, 
 Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
 Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America, 
 Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee. (45 1 )
 
 452 INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON WHITMAN S VERSE 
 
 Some of these verses have the ring of true poetry, 
 for they are both rhythmical and musical. It is in- 
 teresting to learn that Walt Whitman attributed to 
 music much of his inspiration : 
 
 Ah, from a little child, 
 
 Thou knowest, Soul, how to me all sounds became music; 
 
 My mother's voice, in lullaby or hymn; 
 
 The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long- 
 
 leav'd corn, 
 
 The measur'd sea-surf, beating on the sand, 
 The twittering bird, the hawk's sharp scream, 
 
 The lowing cattle, bleating sheep the crowing cock at 
 dawn. (357, 358) 
 
 He was a great lover of the opera, the symphony, and 
 the more intricate chamber-music of trained perform- 
 ers. This is all the more remarkable when we remem- 
 ber that he disdained the full-orbed music of verse, and 
 affected a recitative that was well-nigh destitute of 
 both rhyme and rhythm. In his longing for a larger 
 sort of harmony he threw away the necessary means 
 for its attainment. But he believed that humanity 
 greatly needed " strong, melodious songs," and that 
 the great West of America would yet produce them. 
 This reminds us once more of Rousseau, and of his 
 dream of human freedom and perfection. The free- 
 dom, however, is freedom from restraint, and the per- 
 fection is development of a congenitally pure spirit. 
 That the service of God is the only true freedom, and 
 that human perfection requires submission to God's 
 law, seems never to 'have dawned upon his mind. The
 
 WHITMAN'S FANCY TO FOUND A RELIGION 453 
 
 result is that, like Rousseau, he preaches a gospel of 
 license, which will lead, as did Rousseau's, to the 
 disintegration of society and to a " revolution clad in 
 hell-fire." He banished from his verse the rhyme and 
 rhythm of the best poetry, although the harmonic 
 chords of the symphony and the submission of the 
 player to the will of the conductor should have taught 
 him that democracy can give perfection to man only 
 as each individual makes his freedom the voluntary 
 executor of law and the willing instrument of the 
 personal God. 
 
 (All this bears upon the final question of Walt Whit- 
 man's religion. For he fancied himself to be not 
 only the preacher, but also the founder, of a new 
 religion. It was a religion of affectionate comrade- 
 ship, which put, in place of the God of love and law, 
 the misty conception of a materialistic universe, of a 
 democracy free to do evil as well as good, and of an in- 
 dividualism in which the body is supreme^. A frugal 
 liver after 1861, he passed into an austerity of diet 
 like that of a Roman Catholic ascetic. Weighing two 
 hundred pounds, six feet in height, with loosened hair 
 and open breast, his Jovian countenance and master- 
 ful composure dominated and fascinated his visitors. 
 Abraham Lincoln could say, " Well, he looks like a 
 man ! " But he was a compound of the mystic- and 
 the hobo. His " cosmic consciousness " was never 
 taught to recognize Him " in whom all things consist," 
 the Creator and Redeemer of mankind. He had no 
 sense of sin, and he felt no need of Christ. Born of 
 the people, he wished to express their life. But he 
 had no proper standard by which to judge. He did not
 
 454 BURSTS OF LOFTY THOUGHT IN WHITMAN 
 
 see that there is much in life which is not worth ex- 
 pressing, much evil which for virtue's sake we need 
 to cover with a veil. And yet there are occasional 
 bursts of lofty thought and emotion that make us 
 regret that his wild nature was not tamed and made 
 to work in normal traces. " It pleased God to reveal 
 his Son in me," said Paul. If Walt Whitman could 
 have had that revelation he might have been a true 
 poet and a true man. That knowledge would have 
 organized and illuminated his verse; would have led 
 him to glorify the spirit rather than the body; would 
 have shown him the duty of confessing sin and of 
 accepting Christ's offer of salvation. 
 
 And yet " that which is known of God is manifest," 
 even in him. In a temporary retreat which he found 
 for himself, on Timber Creek near Camden, he com- 
 muned with nature : 
 
 As if for the first time, indeed, creation for the first time 
 noiselessly sank into and through me its placid and untellable 
 lesson, beyond O, so infinitely beyond! anything from art. 
 books, sermons, or from science, old or new. The spirit's 
 hour religious hour the visible suggestion of God in space 
 or time now once definitely indicated, if never again the 
 untold pointed at the heavens all paved with it. The Milky 
 Way, as if some superhuman symphony, some ode of univer- 
 sal vagueness disdaining syllable and sound a flashing glance 
 of Deity, addressed to the soul all silently the indescribable 
 night and stars far off and silently. . . 
 Proved to me this day, beyond cavil, that it is not my material 
 
 eyes which finally see, 
 Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, 
 
 shouts, embraces, procreates. 
 
 Thought of the Infinite, the All! 
 Be thou my God! (382, 439)
 
 WHITMAN S AVERSION TO CHURCHES 455 
 
 " He was deeply impressed," says Mr. Perry, "by the 
 Sunday services for the insane, in Doctor Bucke's 
 Asylum, rinding beneath these crazed faces, strange 
 as it may seem, the peace of God that passeth all un- 
 derstanding." 
 
 These were only transient visitations of insight and 
 of conscience. In his early notes we read what seems 
 to have been the general trend of his thinking: 
 
 Boldly assume that all the usual priests . . . are infidels, 
 and the . . . are Faithful Believers ... I am as much Bud- 
 dhist as Christian, . . as much nothing as something. . . The 
 churches are one vast lie. The people do not believe in 
 them; they do not believe in themselves. 
 
 I do not despise you, priests; 
 
 My faith is the greatest of faiths, and the least of faiths, 
 Enclosing worship ancient and modern, and all between 
 ancient and modern. (82) 
 
 I have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all; 
 I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true I reject 
 no part. 
 
 I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god. (189) 
 
 In 1880 he said to Doctor Bucke : 
 
 I have never had any particular religious experiences never 
 felt that I needed to be saved never felt .the need of spirit- 
 ual regeneration never had any fear of hell, or distrust of 
 the scheme of the universe. I always felt that it was per- 
 fectly right and for the best. 
 
 " In his youthful note-book he remarks that ' the Bible 
 is now exhausted,' and speaks of ' the castrated good- 
 ness of schools and churches.' " " Irritated by ' par-
 
 456 WHITMAN'S AVERSION TO CHURCHES 
 
 sons and the police,' he slammed his windows tight on 
 Sunday, to keep out the sound of the bells and choir of 
 a neighboring church." He said : 
 
 I always mistrust a deacon; his standard is low. . . The 
 whole ideal of the church is low, loathsome, horrible. . . 
 " Leaves of Grass " is the most religious book among books, 
 crammed full of faith. . . Give those boys a chance (some 
 urchins who were swimming in the Schuylkill River) and 
 they would develop the heroic and manly, but they will be 
 spoiled by civilization, religion and the damnable conventions. 
 Their parents will want them to grow up genteel. 
 
 I have said that the soul is not more than the body, 
 And I have said that the body is not more than the soul; 
 And nothing, not God, is greater to me than one's self is, 
 And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to 
 his own funeral drest in his shroud. 
 
 And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. 
 
 In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own 
 face in the glass. (90) 
 
 What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred 
 
 ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? 
 And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? (94) 
 
 Underneath Socrates clearly see and underneath Christ the 
 
 divine I see, 
 The dear love of man for his comrade. (125) 
 
 Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme? 
 
 There can be any number of Supremes One does not 
 
 countervail another, any more than one eyesight coun- 
 tervails another, or one life countervails another. (291) 
 
 It is I who am great, or to be great it is you up there, or 
 any one. (304)
 
 A RELIGION OF UNMORAL GOOD NATURE 457 
 
 Peter Doyle was one of Whitman's intimates, and 
 these are some of his words about the poet : 
 
 " He had pretty vigorous ideas on religion ... he never 
 went to church didn't like form, ceremonies didn't seem to 
 favor preachers at all. I asked him about the hereafter, ' There 
 must be something,' he said. ' There can't be a locomotive 
 unless there is somebody to run it.' I have heard him say 
 that if a person was the right sort of person and I guess he 
 thought all persons right kind of persons, he couldn't be 
 destroyed in the next world nor in this." 
 
 Mr. Perry tells us that, when on furlough in Brooklyn, 
 Whitman wrote regularly to Peter Doyle. " Some- 
 times he sent Doyle a ' good long ' kiss, ' on the paper 
 here/ like an affectionate child. Often he comforted 
 him, when ill or out of work, with vigorous admoni- 
 tions " like the following: 
 
 As long as the Almighty vouchsafes you health, strength, 
 and a clear conscience, let other things do their worst, and 
 let Riker go to hell. 
 
 Which reminds one of the disciple of Nietzsche, who 
 condensed his precepts for conduct into the words, 
 " So live, that you can look every man in the eye, and 
 tell him to go to hell ! " What Walt Whitman meant 
 by " religion " was an unmoral good nature and self- 
 worship, devoid of righteousness or law : 
 
 Know you! solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater 
 
 Religion, 
 The following chants, each for its kind, I sing. (22) 
 
 Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may; 
 
 I make the poem of evil also I commemorate that part also;
 
 45 CHRIST, BACCHUS, AND WHITMAN 
 
 I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is 
 
 And I say there is in fact no evil; 
 (Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, 
 
 or to me, as anything else.) (20) 
 
 I too, following many, and follow'd by many, inaugurate a 
 
 Religion I descend into the arena; 
 (It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the 
 
 winner's pealing shouts; 
 Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every 
 
 thing.) 
 
 Each is not for its own sake; 
 
 I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for 
 Religion's sake. 
 
 I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough; 
 None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough; 
 None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how 
 certain the future is. 
 
 I say that the real and permanent grandeur of These States 
 
 must be their Religion; 
 
 Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur, 
 (Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without Religion; 
 Nor land, nor man or woman, without Religion.) (21) 
 
 Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge 
 
 that pass all the argument of the earth; 
 
 And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, 
 And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own; 
 And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the 
 
 women my sisters and lovers; 
 And that a kelson of the creation is love. (35) 
 
 The poet does not hesitate to compare himself with 
 the great religious leaders of the past. Christ is men- 
 tioned casually, in company with the mythical Hercu- 
 les, Hermes, and Bacchus. Whitman even ventures to
 
 " DEMOCRATIC VISTAS " 459 
 
 claim affectionate brotherhood with our Lord, in his 
 work and his spirit : 
 
 I see Christ once more eating the bread of his last supper, 
 
 in the midst of youths and old persons; 
 I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toil'd 
 
 faithfully and long, and then died. (144) 
 
 TO HIM THAT WAS CRUCIFIED 
 
 My spirit to yours, dear brother; 
 
 Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not 
 
 understand you; 
 I do not sound your name, but I understand you, (there are 
 
 others also;) 
 I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you, and to 
 
 salute those who are with you, before and since and 
 
 those to come also, 
 That we all labor together, transmitting the same charge and 
 
 succession. (116) 
 
 In " Democratic Vistas " the poet who is to come 
 follows a host of vanished powers, among whom' he 
 sees " Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, 
 like a dove." But Whitman himself at last emerges 
 as the true Poet, who fills all things. In his unbounded 
 egotism he identifies the universe, and the whole 
 process of evolution, with himself, and, without a 
 thought of his finiteness and sin, aspires to take the 
 place of God : 
 
 With laugh, and many a kiss, 
 
 (Let others deprecate let others weep for sin, remorse, 
 
 humiliation;) 
 O soul, thou pleasest me I thee. 
 
 O Thou transcendant! 
 
 Nameless the fibre and the breath! (352)
 
 460 SELF-DEIFICATION OF WHITMAN 
 
 How should I think how breathe a single breath how 
 
 speak if, out of myself, 
 I could not launch, to those, superior universes? 
 
 Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
 
 At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 
 
 But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual Me, 
 
 And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs, 
 
 Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
 
 And fillest, swellest full, the vastnesses of Space. (353) 
 
 Finally shall 'come the Poet, worthy that name; 
 
 The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs. (349) 
 
 Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more; 
 The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them. (350) 
 
 " Chanting the Square Deific " is a poem after the 
 model of Emerson's " Brahma." It might possibly 
 be interpreted as an adoption for poetical purposes of 
 an Oriental and pantheistic philosophy. But it is more 
 than this. Whitman made this philosophy the guide 
 and excuse for his practical life. He not only iden- 
 tified himself with the All, but he regarded the All 
 as expressing himself. It was a Brahminical self- 
 deification, which held all nature, all history, all re- 
 ligions, as the outcome of the one life that throbbed 
 in his veins and clamored for manifestation in himself. 
 But for the philosophic garb that clothes it, and for 
 the poetic halo that surrounds it, we might call it 
 blasphemous. We must not determine the degree to 
 which moral perversity may unconsciously reach. Let 
 me only quote the significant lines of this poem which 
 makes Jehovah, Christ, Satan, and the Holy Spirit, 
 equally with Brahma, Saturn, Hermes, and Hercules,
 
 "' CHANTING THE SQUARE DEIFIC " 461 
 
 to be mere transient effluences from the poet's change- 
 less side: 
 
 Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of 
 
 the sides; 
 
 Out of the old and new out of the square entirely divine, 
 Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed) . . . from this side 
 
 JEHOVAH am I, 
 Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am. 
 
 Consolator most mild, the promis'd one advancing, 
 With gentle hand extended the mightier God am I, 
 Foretold by prophets and poets, in their most rapt prophecies 
 
 and poems; 
 From this side, lo! the Lord CHRIST gazes lo! Hermes I 
 
 lo! mine is Hercules' face. (392, 393) 
 
 For I am affection I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope, 
 and all-enclosing Charity; 
 
 But my Charity has no death my Wisdom dies not, neither 
 
 early nor late, 
 And my sweet Love, bequeath'd here and elsewhere, never 
 
 dies. 
 
 Defiant, I, SATAN, still live still utter words in new lands 
 
 newly appearing, (and old ones also;) 
 Permanent here, from my side, warlike, equal with any, real 
 
 as any, 
 Nor time, nor change, shall ever change me or my words. 
 
 Santa SPIRITA, breather, life, 
 
 Beyond the light, lighter than light, 
 
 Beyond the flames of hell joyous, leaping easily above hell; 
 
 Beyond Paradise perfumed solely with mine own perfume; 
 
 Including all life upon earth touching, including God 
 
 including Saviour and Satan; 
 Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me, what were all? what 
 
 were God?) (393, 394)
 
 462 WHITMAN'S VIEW OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 It is difficult to determine, and still more difficult to 
 describe, the views of Whitman with regard to a future 
 life. They probably varied with his moods of feeling, 
 and became more definite and hopeful toward the 
 close of his career. As the life of the body grew feeble, 
 the desire for a larger and freer existence grew 
 stronger. What hope he had seems to have been 
 derived from his evolutionary philosophy, together 
 with an unconscious appropriation of the Christian 
 idea of progress toward the good, which that philos- 
 ophy was unable to supply: 
 
 Now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, 
 soon to chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains 
 an identity still? . . Does he yet exist, a definite, vital being, 
 . . an individual? . . I have no doubt of it. . . When depress'd 
 by some specially sad event, or tearing problem, I wait till I 
 go out under the stars for the last voiceless satisfaction. 
 
 In this broad Earth of ours, 
 Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, 
 Enclosed and safe within its central heart, 
 Nestles the seed Perfection. (466) 
 
 What do you think has become of the young and old men? 
 And what do you think has become of the women and 
 children? 
 
 They are alive and well somewhere; 
 
 The smallest sprout shows there is really no death; 
 
 And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait 
 
 at the end to arrest it, 
 And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. (36) 
 
 I believe of all those billions of men and women . . . every 
 one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in 
 exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and 
 out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in 
 Kfe. (319)
 
 WHITMAN'S VIEW OF IMMORTALITY 463 
 
 For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the 
 
 past? 
 (As a projectile, form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, 
 
 still keeps on, 
 So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.) (346) 
 
 Are Souls drown'd and destroy'd so? 
 Is only matter triumphant? (355) 
 
 The dirge and desolation of mankind. (356) 
 
 I hear the overweening, mocking voice, 
 Matter is conqueror matter, triumphant only, 
 continues onward. 
 
 Tell me my destination! (397) 
 
 I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you. 
 Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither. (398) 
 
 . . . the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me; 
 And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to 
 
 me; 
 . . . Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with 
 
 me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our 
 
 destination, 
 Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and 
 
 defeated. (181) 
 
 Here is only the instinct of immortality, vague and 
 dim, without the certainty afforded by a positive reve- 
 lation. Evolution has its unpromising aspect for the 
 soul inclined to evil. If the future is only a natural 
 growth out of the past, there is no remedy for sin, 
 and no prospect other than a reproduction of man's 
 present iniquity and misery. For this reason the 
 poet's verse vibrates between a dreadful recognition
 
 464 WHITMAN'S VIEW OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 of unchanging abnormity, and an irrational ecstasy 
 of hope : 
 
 I say distinctly I comprehend no better sphere than this 
 
 earth, 
 I comprehend no better life than the life of my body. (414) 
 
 I do not know what you are for, . . 
 But I will search carefully for it. (327) 
 
 That you are here that life exists, and identity; 
 That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a 
 verse. (324) 
 
 With that sad, incessant refrain: Wherefore, unsatisfied Soul? 
 and Whither, O mocking Life? (349) 
 
 Behold a secret silent loathing and despair. 
 
 Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death 
 under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones. (178) 
 
 Not one word or deed not venereal sore, discoloration, 
 privacy of the onanist, putridity of gluttons or rum- 
 drinkers, peculation, cunning, betrayal, murder, seduction, 
 prostitution, but has results beyond death, as really as 
 before death. (286) 
 
 Yet Whitman cherishes an inextinguishable hope. 
 He appropriates the results of Christianity, without ful- 
 filling its conditions: 
 
 I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! (392) 
 My rendezvous is appointed it is certain; 
 The Lord will be there, and wait till I come, on perfect terms; 
 (The great Camerado, the lover true for whom* I pine, will be 
 there.) (86)
 
 " PASSAGE TO INDIA " 465 
 
 I know I am deathless; 
 
 I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's 
 
 compass; 
 I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt 
 
 stick at night. (50) 
 
 Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deed, 
 
 Thou yieldest up thyself. (488) 
 
 O my brave soul! 
 
 O farther, farther sail! 
 
 O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God! 
 
 O farther, farther, farther sail! (354) 
 
 " Passage to India " was published in 1870. It ex- 
 presses Whitman's later longings for the brotherhood 
 of man. The first voyage of Columbus is made the 
 symbol of that venture of the spirit which heralds and 
 precedes every advance into the future of the individual 
 and of the race. Of this collection of his poems he said : 
 
 There's more of me, the essential, ultimate me, in that than 
 in any of the poems. . . The burden of it is evolution the one 
 thing escaping the other the unfolding of cosmic purposes. 
 
 Passage to India! 
 
 Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first? 
 
 The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work, 
 
 The people to become brothers and sisters, 
 
 The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, 
 
 The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near, 
 
 The lands to be welded together. (347) 
 
 O glad, exulting, culminating song! 
 A vigor more than earth's is in thy riotes! 
 Marches of victory^man disenthrall'd the conqueror at 
 last! (458)
 
 466 " THE SINGER IN THE PRISON " 
 
 Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is 
 Good steadily hastening towards immortality, 
 
 And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge 
 itself and become lost and dead. (482) 
 
 Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream! 
 
 Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, 
 
 The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream. (348) 
 
 Have we not grovell'd here long enough, eating and drinking 
 
 like mere brutes? 
 Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long 
 
 enough? (354) 
 
 For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the 
 
 bivouac-camps of green; 
 But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the 
 
 countersign, 
 Nor drummer to beat the morning drum. (365) 
 
 This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, 
 Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson 
 
 done, 
 Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the 
 
 themes thou lovest best. 
 Night, sleep, and the stars. (489) 
 
 I find in all Whitman's verses only one poem which 
 indicates that he had grasped the idea of a righteous 
 God and of a righteous administration of the universe. 
 To him law and penalty are non-existent; justice and 
 judgment are not the foundations of God's throne. 
 Only one poem intimates that the thought of con- 
 demnation and retribution had ever impressed him, and 
 even this poem makes death, and not a suffering and 
 redeeming God, to be the source of pardon. That 
 poem is entitled " The Singer in the Prison." It 
 shows that the poet had powers of versification which
 
 " THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER " 467 
 
 it surely would have profited him more commonly to 
 use: 
 
 O sight of shame, and pain, and dole! 
 O fearful thought a convict Soul! 
 
 A soul, confined by bars and bands, 
 Cries, Help! O help! and wrings her hands; 
 Blinded her eyes bleeding her breast, 
 Nor pardon finds, nor -balm of rest. 
 
 It was not I that sinn'd the sin, 
 The ruthless Body dragg'd me in; 
 Though long I strove courageously, 
 The Body was too much for me. 
 
 (Dear prison'd Soul, bear up a space, 
 For soon or late the certain grace; 
 To set thee free, and 'bear thee home, 
 The Heavenly Pardoner, Death, shall come. 
 
 Convict no more nor shame, nor dole! 
 Depart! a God-en franchis'd Soul!) (420-422) 
 
 Walt Whitman's doctrine of the future is summed 
 up in his own words, especially in the poem entitled 
 " The Mystic Trumpeter," and in his " Song of the 
 Universal " : 
 
 I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space 
 but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all. (397) 
 
 I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me as the day 
 
 cannot, 
 
 1 see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by 
 
 death. (436)
 
 468 " SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL " 
 
 Nothing ever has been, or ever can be, charged against me, 
 
 half as bad as the evil I really am. 
 
 I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me; 
 I charge you- to leave all free, as I have left all free. (427) 
 
 I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily 
 
 that is eternal you yourself will surely escape; 
 The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. (440) 
 
 Hymns to the universal God, from universal Man all joy! 
 A reborn race appears a perfect World, all joy! 
 Women and Men, in wisdom, innocence and health all joy! 
 Riotous, laughing bacchanals, fill'd with joy! (458) 
 
 For it, the partial to the permanent flowing, 
 For it, the Real to the Ideal tends. 
 
 For it, the mystic evolution; 
 
 Not the right only justified what we call evil also justified. 
 
 From imperfection's murkiest cloud, 
 Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, 
 One flash of Heaven's glory. (466, 467) 
 
 Give me, O God, to sing that thought! 
 
 Give me give him or her I love, that quenchless faith 
 
 In Thy ensemble. Whatever else withheld, withhold not from 
 
 us, 
 
 Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space; 
 Health, peace, salvation universal. 
 
 Is it a dream? 
 
 Nay, but the lack^ of it the dream, 
 
 And, failing it, love's lore and wealth a dream, 
 
 And all the world a dream. (468) 
 
 Was Walt Whitman a poet? Yes, a poet in the 
 lower realms of poetry. He had poetry in solution, 
 which needed the touch of creative imagination to 
 crystallize into pleasing form; he had the golden ore,
 
 WITHOUT LAW AND WITHOUT LIBERTY 469 
 
 but it was so mixed with quartz and slag as to seem 
 rough and uncouth; he had flashes of insight, but his 
 sky was generally cloudy and of uncertain promise. 
 His poetry lacked in substance as well as in form. He 
 had no hold upon the truth of things that enabled him 
 to organize his material. Arbitrary in form as in sub- 
 stance, he apotheosized the body, and every impulse 
 of the body was represented in the irregularity and 
 lawlessness of his verse. Whitman sought liberty 
 without law; but, because he ignored Christ, he lost 
 both law and liberty. His fundamental error was his 
 choice of an impersonal and non-moral, in place of a 
 personal and moral God. Self-willed and pleasure- 
 loving, he " refused to have God in his knowledge," 
 and " God gave him up to a reprobate mind." He 
 lost all sense of righteousness in God or man. The 
 love which he celebrated was love without moral dis- 
 tinctions, love for what is, rather than for what ought 
 to be, love for nastiness as well as for purity, for 
 wickedness as well as for goodness, for the wrong as 
 well as for the right. We search his work from end 
 to end, but find no recognition of any Being who cares 
 for the right or who will vindicate it. The universe 
 has no heart that can feel, and no will that can con- 
 trol ; all things are equally phases of its manifestation ; 
 there is no security for progress; the only power is 
 man himself. Man is a creature of evil impulses as 
 well as of good, and the evil are often supreme. But 
 yielding to the evil is not sin, for the yielding is only 
 a product of man's nature, and that nature is primarily 
 physical, and so, destitute of conscience or will. Since 
 there is no guilt, there can be no atonement and no
 
 47O WITHOUT GOD AND WITHOUT HOPE 
 
 redemption. Christ is only one of many good ex- 
 amples of heroic suffering, and the poet can com- 
 placently put himself by Christ's side. What hope has 
 he for the future? Only a vague instinct that yearns 
 for another and a better life, side by side with a con- 
 science that witnesses against him, and protests that 
 all right to such a life has been forfeited by his sin. 
 " Without God and without hope " is the verdict of 
 reason. It is the natural and necessary outcome of a 
 godless philosophy and a godless life, the demonstra- 
 tion of the moral depths to which poetry can descend 
 when liberty is divorced from law.
 
 GENERAL INDEX
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 Abbey, 112. 
 
 Abbott, J. S. C., 213. 
 
 Abbott, Lyman, 345. 
 
 " Acknowledgment," 401. 
 
 " Adonais," 418. 
 
 JEneid, 328. 
 
 " African Chief, The," 24. 
 
 " After the Burial," 275. 
 
 " After the Curfew," 327. 
 
 Agassiz, 229, 359. 
 
 " Ages, The," 14, 23, 25. 
 
 Agnostitism, 344. 
 
 Akenside, 269. 
 
 "Al Aaraaf," 173. 
 
 Alcott, 280, 444. 
 
 " Algic Researches," 232. 
 
 Allan, John, 164-167, 169, 170, 187. 
 
 " Alphonso," 88. 
 
 " American Scholar, The," 52. 
 
 "Among the Hills," 134. 
 
 "Annabel Lee," 178. 
 
 " Annals of America," 323. 
 
 ' Answer, The," 147. 
 
 Anti-slavery Declaration, 121. 
 
 Anti-slavery poems, 120, 134, 243, 
 280-288. 
 
 Anti-slavery Society, 120. 
 
 Apocalypticism, 89. 
 
 Appleton, Miss F. E., 226. 
 
 Arianism, 344. 
 
 Aristotle, 342. 
 
 Arminianism, 57, 76. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 22, 30, 75. 
 
 " Arsenal at Springfield, The," 244. 
 
 Art: impossible without morality, 
 423; degraded by pantheistic phi- 
 losophy, 433. 
 
 " Astrsea at the Capitol," 135. 
 
 " At Eventide," 135. 
 
 " At the Summit," 361. 
 
 Atonement, 222, 246, 261, 297, 307, 
 309, 3i7, 343, 346, 354, 409, 466. 
 
 Augustine, 157, 223. 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus, 97, 408. 
 
 " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
 The," 334, 338. 
 
 Bachiler, Stephen, in. 
 
 " Ballad of Trees and the Master, 
 A," 386. 
 
 Bancroft, George, 153. 
 
 " Banished from Massachusetts," 112. 
 
 " Barbara Frietchie," 152. 
 
 Barclay, 108. 
 
 " Barclay of Ury," 134. 
 
 " Barefoot Boy, The," 116. 
 
 " Battle-field, The," 28. 
 
 Bay Song Book, 4. 
 
 Beattie, 269. 
 
 Beecher, 444. 
 
 " Beleagured City, The," 257. 
 
 " Belfry of Bruges, The," 230. 
 
 " Bells, The," 192, 193. 
 
 Bergson, 342. 
 
 " Between the Gates," 145. 
 
 Beyer, 202. 
 
 Bible, the: as God's revelation, 61"; 
 no substitute for communion with 
 Christ, 80; and Emerson's teach- 
 ing, too; and the authority of the 
 Spirit, 1 08, 109; the guide of 
 Whittier, 131; in the view of 
 Whitman, 455. 
 
 Bigelow, G. T., 326. 
 
 " Biglow Papers, The," 268, 274, 275, 
 282-289. 
 
 " Bill and Joe," 326. 
 
 Bla'ine, J. G., 153. 
 
 Blair, n. 
 
 Blake, William, 427. 
 
 2G 
 
 473
 
 474 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 " Blessed are they that mourn," 30. 
 
 " Blind Bartimeus," 252. 
 
 Boccaccio, 218. 
 
 Boethius, 27. 
 
 " Bonnie George Campbell, The," 
 250. 
 
 " Book, The," 131. 
 
 Boston Common, no. 
 
 " Boylston Prize Dissertations," 333. 
 
 Bradstreet, Anne, 6. 
 
 Brahe, Tycho, 173. 
 
 " Brahma," 86, 460. 
 
 Brahminism, 60, 97. 
 
 " Brewing of Soma, The," 155. 
 
 " Broomstick Train, The," 363. 
 
 Brown, John, 123. 
 
 Brownell, 202. 
 
 Browning, 13, 28, 294, 300, 421. 
 
 Brownson, 280. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen: poetry and 
 theology of, 1-48; ancestry of, 5; 
 birthplace and early discipline of, 
 6; educational influences surround- 
 ing, 7; lack of college training of, 
 8, 44; early poems of, 9; Words- 
 worth's influence upon, n, 13; 
 perennial genius of, 12; wide 
 stretch of activity of, 13; the cory- 
 pheus of American poets, 14; ex- 
 changes the law for letters, 15; 
 editor of " The Evening Post," 16; 
 public services of, 17; physical 
 conditions of energy of, 18; re- 
 ligious belief and habits of, 19, 20; 
 a Christian poet, 21, 22, 31-36; hu- 
 man sin and divine justice and 
 love in poetry of, 23-27; humor of, 
 27, 28; a hymn-writer, 31-35, 252; 
 most significant religious poem of, 
 35 ; the Cross rarely in verses of, 
 36; love-songs of, 36, 37; view of 
 immortality held by, 37-43; filial 
 piety of, 41; limitations of, 43, 
 44; somberness of verses of, 44, 
 45; translator of Homer, 46, 47, 
 261; summary of character of, 48; 
 father of American poetry, 210; 
 first poet to influence Longfellow, 
 212; in contrast with Lowell, 267; 
 in " Fable for Critics," 279; visits 
 Whitman, 444. 
 
 Bucke, 455. 
 
 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 3. 
 
 Buddha, 407. 
 
 Buddhists, 346. 
 
 " Building of the Ship, The," 244. 
 
 Bulwer, 204. 
 
 Bunyan, 324. 
 
 " Burial-place, The," 4. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 107, 152, 157, 284. 
 
 Burroughs, John, 444, 449. 
 
 Butler, 269. 
 
 Byron, 45, 203, 231, 269, 279. 
 
 Cabot, 55, 102. 
 
 " Calamus," 440. 
 
 Calvin, 340, 341, 349. 
 
 Calvinism, 51, 57, 63, 79, 115, US, 
 221, 304, 321, 324, 339-343, 347, 
 349, 351, 376, 385. 
 
 " Cantata " for the Centennial, 390- 
 392. 
 
 Carlisle, Speaker, 153. 
 
 Carlyle, 84, 87, 94, 95, 177, 280. 
 
 Carpenter, G. R., 425. 
 
 " Cathedral, The," 275, 294-300, 305. 
 
 Catullus, 202. 
 
 " Caxtons, The," 204. 
 
 " Celestial Love, The," 71, 92. 
 
 " Chambered Nautilus, The," 337, 
 346. 
 
 Channing, 101, 243. 
 
 " Chanting the Square Deific," 460. 
 
 Chaucer, 13, 263. 
 
 Christ: nativity of, 32; world-wide 
 supremacy of, 35; as an atoning 
 Saviour, 36, 59; as a present com- 
 panion, 45, 48; immanence of, 65; 
 final test of a poet's worth, 81; in 
 the thought of Emerson, 82; ab- 
 sorbs and transforms, 83; has glo- 
 rified nature and man, 89; and 
 immortality, 96, 187; within, 109; 
 within, one with the historic, no; 
 in the thought of Whittier, 139- 
 145; absent from the vision of Poe, 
 193, 198; the final Judge, 202; in 
 the view of Longfellow, 223, 235- 
 239, 241, 242, 246, 261; in the 
 view of Lowell, 297-301, 304, 309, 
 312, 317; in the view of Holmes, 
 343-347; in the view of Lyman
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 475 
 
 Abbott, 345; in the view of 
 Lanier, 386, 399, 400, 407-410, 
 412, 418; Elias Hicks denies di- 
 vinity of, 428; in the view of 
 Whitman, 453, 454, 456, 458-461, 
 470. 
 
 Christianity, in the thought of 
 Emerson, 94. 
 
 " Christus," 224, 231, 234-236, 253, 
 254- 
 
 Cicero, 89, 97. 
 
 Clarke, J. F., 326. 
 
 Cleaveland, Parker, 256. 
 
 " Clover," 402. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 30. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 269. 
 
 Collins, William, 162. 
 
 Colman, George, 250. 
 
 " Commemoration Ode," 275, 290. 
 
 Confucius, 142. 
 
 Congregationalism, 345, 346. 
 
 " Conqueror Worm, The," 189, 190. 
 
 Conway, 444. 
 
 Cooke, 95. 
 
 Cooper, 232, 280. 
 
 " Coplas de Manrique," 259. 
 
 " Corn," 387, 388. 
 
 " Cotter's Saturday Night," 157. 
 
 " Courtin', The," 289. 
 
 " Courtship of Miles Standish," 231, 
 234- 
 
 Cowley, 263, 269, 392. 
 
 Cowper, 1 1 6. 
 
 " Creative Evolution," 342. 
 
 " Crooked Footpath, The," 349. 
 
 " Cross of Snow, The," 229. 
 
 Crowninshield, F. B., 326. 
 
 " Crucifixion, The," 142. 
 
 " Cry of a Lost Soul, The," 148. 
 
 " Crystal, The," 407. 
 
 Cummington, 5. 
 
 " Cupido," 84-86. 
 
 Curtis, B. R., 326. 
 
 Curtis, G. W., n, 20, 228, 302. 
 
 Cushing, Caleb, 125. 
 
 Cushman, Charlotte, 410. 
 
 Dana, 280. 
 
 Dante, 67, 187, 212, 224, 228, 262, 
 
 405, 408, 421, 436. 
 Darwin, Francis, 342, 
 
 Davis, G. F., 326. 
 
 " Day is Done, The," 225. 
 
 Day, Miss Mary, 379. 
 
 " Deacon's Masterpiece, The," 336. 
 
 " Death of the Flowers, The," 39. 
 
 Deism, 57. 
 
 " Democratic Vistas," 459. 
 
 " Deserted Village," 157. 
 
 " Destiny," 70. 
 
 Dickens, 321. 
 
 " Divine Comedy," 187, 224, 262, 
 
 311. 
 
 " Divine Right of Kings, The," 167. 
 " Divine Tragedy, The," 235. 
 Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 180. 
 " Doll's House, The," 88. 
 " Domain of Arnheim, The," 188. 
 Donne, 392. 
 " Dorothy Q.," 322. 
 Douglass, Frederick, 153. 
 Dowden, Edward, 436, 449. 
 Doyle, Peter, 457. 
 " Dream of Summer, A," 133. 
 Dryden, 263. 
 Dualism, 101. 
 Dyer, Mary, no. 
 
 " Earth," 23. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 65, 84, 236, 351. 
 
 "Bin Feste Burg 1st Unser Gott," 
 134- 
 
 " Elegy," Gray's, n6. 
 
 " Eleonora," 177. 
 
 Eliot, President, 344. 
 
 Ellis, no. 
 
 " Elsie Venner," 338, 339. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo: poetry and 
 theology of, 49-103; Puritan an- 
 cestry of, 51; education of, 52; 
 compared with Bryant, 53; a poet- 
 ical philosopher, 54; explained 
 man by nature, 55; defect in 
 thinking of, 56; factors in tran- 
 scendentalism of, 56-62; rejected 
 external authority, 59; sources of 
 doctrine of, 62; eclecticism of, 63; 
 denies personality to God, 63; had 
 no sense of sin, 66; taught the 
 " green-apple theory " of evil, 67, 
 and salvation by character, 72; 
 conception of poetry held by, 73,
 
 476 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 74; had poetical substance without 
 form, 75; theological ideas of, 76; 
 gave up prayer and the Lord's 
 Supper, 77, 83; scoffed at Provi- 
 dence, 78; value of positive doc- 
 trine of, 80; slightingly alludes to 
 Christ, 81; worshiper of successful 
 force, 84; confounds moral dis- 
 tinctions, 86, 307; had no personal 
 intimacies, 87; questioned ethics 
 of Jesus, 88; owed much to Christ, 
 89; music of verses of, 90; scorned 
 the individual, 91; no controver- 
 sialist, 93; doubtful of personal 
 immortality, 95; personal pecu- 
 liarities and habits of, 97; afflicted 
 with loss of memory, 98; a non- 
 ethical monist, 100; drift of influ- 
 ence of, 102; death of, 102; quoted 
 by Whittier, 149; preceded by 
 Whittier in anti-slavery movement, 
 152; called Foe "the jingleman," 
 202; contrasted with Longfellow, 
 210, 250; in estimate of Lowell, 
 269; in " Fable for Critics," 280; 
 New England spirit in, 334; a full- 
 fledged pantheist, 344; influenced 
 Longfellow and Lowell theologic- 
 ally, 345; "Life of," 357; con- 
 trasted with Holmes, 357; char- 
 acterized by Lanier, 408; influ- 
 enced Whitman, 428-432; letter of 
 Whitman to, 441; comments on 
 Whitman, 449. 
 
 " Enchanter, The," 73. 
 
 Epicureanism, 142, 254. 
 
 " Epistle to George William Curtis," 
 302. 
 
 " Essay on History," motto to the, 
 87. 
 
 " Eternal Goodness, The," 154. 
 
 " Eureka," 184-187, 191. 
 
 " Eurydice, " 274. 
 
 " Evangeline," 231, 232. 
 
 " Evening Song," 405. 
 
 Everett, 359. 
 
 " Excelsior," 230. 
 
 "Exile's Departure, The," 117. 
 
 "Expostulation," 121. 
 
 Ezekiel, 341. 
 
 " Ezekiel," 122, 
 
 " Fable for Critics, A," 274, 279, 
 
 317- 
 " Fall of the House of Usher, The," 
 
 204. 
 
 " Farewell to Agassiz, A," 360. 
 " Fate," 91. 
 " Faust," 235. 
 Federal theology, 221, 341. 
 Felton, 229. 
 
 " Flood of Years, The," 43. 
 " Florida Sunday, A," 400. 
 " Flowers," 259. 
 
 " Footsteps of Angels, The," 219. 
 " For Annie," 191. 
 " Forest Hymn, A," 22. 
 " Fountain, The," 25. 
 Fox, George, 63, 66, 108, in, 428. 
 Franco, 280. 
 Franklin, 142. 
 " Freedom," 72. 
 Free-verse, 423, 424, 435. 
 " Fringed Gentian, The," 42. 
 Fugitive Slave Law, 125. 
 Fuller, Miss, 177, 280. 
 " Future Life, The," 24, 39. 
 
 Galton, 342. 
 
 Gannett, W. C., 44. 
 
 Garfield, 359. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 117, 119, 
 120, 122, 124, 125, 314. 
 
 " Genevieve," 37. 
 
 " Give All to Love," 69. 
 
 God: in English deism, 57; in the 
 thought of Emerson, 62-66, 76, 89, 
 95, 100-102; transcendence and 
 personality of, 100; in the thought 
 of Whittier, 134-140, 145-148; in 
 the thought of Poe, 181-191; in 
 the view of Longfellow, 223, 246, 
 261; in the view of Lowell, 295- 
 300, 302-304, 306, 309, 312, 317; 
 in the view of Holmes, 341-352, 
 355. 356; in the view of Lanier, 
 376, 382, 385, 393-396, 400-404, 
 406, 409, 410, 414; in the view 
 of Whitman, 432, 436, 437, 439, 
 442, 443, 452-461, 466, 469. 
 
 Goethe, 75, 91, 97, 231, 232, 235, 
 240, 421. 
 
 " Gold Bug, The," 175.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 477 
 
 " Golden Legend, The," 235, 236. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 157. 
 
 " Good-bye," 77, 99. 
 
 Gosse, 202. 
 
 " Grace," 71. 
 
 " Grandmother's Story of Bunker 
 
 Hill Battle," 364. 
 " Grave by the Lake, The," 139. 
 Gray, 116. 
 " Great Poets and Their Theology, 
 
 The," v, 421. 
 " Green River," 15. 
 Greene, G. W., 216. 
 Griswold, R. W., 163, 177, 203 205. 
 " Guardian Angel, The," 338, 339. 
 
 Hague, Dr. W., 66, 102. 
 
 Halleck, 280. 
 
 Hamilton, Gail, 122. 
 
 Harrison, 62. 
 
 " Haunted Palace, The," 200, 201. 
 
 Hawthorne, 103, 213, 229, 232, 280. 
 
 Hayne, P. H., 416. 
 
 "Healer, The," 144. 
 
 Heckewelder, 214. 
 
 " He hath put all things under His 
 feet," 35- 
 
 Heine, 202. 
 
 " Hermann and Dorothea," 232. 
 
 "Hermes Trismegistus," 241, 242. 
 
 " Heroism," 92. 
 
 "Hiawatha," 214, 231-233, 250. 
 
 Hicksite party, 109, 143, 428. 
 
 Hillard, 229. 
 
 " History of Redemption," 236. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell: and Emer- 
 son, 97; author of tribute to Whit- 
 tier, 158; in "Fable for Critics," 
 280; poetry and theology of, 319- 
 367; our poetical humorist, 321, 
 329; parents of, 322; conceived 
 boyhood dislike for Calvinism, 
 324; school days of, 325; college 
 classmates of, 326; writer of class- 
 poems, 326-328; early verses of, 
 328; a medical student abroad, 
 331; a medical practitioner, 332; 
 lecturer, essayist, and poet, 333; 
 gains attention by his prose, 333; 
 greatest in his conversation, 334; 
 New England spirit in, 334; made 
 
 himself and " The Atlantic " by 
 " The Autocrat," 335 ; best poetical 
 work of, 337; ventures into fiction, 
 338; most consciously and inten- 
 tionally theological of our poets, 
 339; inveterate hater of Calvinism, 
 339; misunderstood Calvinism, 340, 
 349; opposed by Scripture and 
 
 . philosophy, 341, 342; has practic- 
 ally the theology of Herbert Spen- 
 cer, 345; wrote hymns to the God 
 of nature, 346; perhaps uncon- 
 sciously regenerate, 348; bitter 
 prejudice of, 350; excused by ex- 
 travagances of hyper-Calvinists, 
 351; ethical fruits of doctrine of, 
 352; no reformer, 353; touched 
 the surface of life, 353; felicitous 
 in patriotic hymns, 355; contrasted 
 with Emerson, 357; a correspond- 
 ent of Motley and Lowell, 358; 
 paid worthy tribute to his friends, 
 359; the poet of this life, 362; with 
 humor fresh in his age, 363. 
 
 Homer, 4, 47, 261, 410, 421, 436. 
 
 " Homoeopathy," 351. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark, n. 
 
 Horace, 269. 
 
 " How Love Looked for Hell," 
 403. 
 
 " How the Old Horse Won the Bet," 
 365- 
 
 Howe, 359. 
 
 Howe, John, 201. 
 
 Howells, William Dean, 444. 
 
 " Hudibras," 269. 
 
 "Humble-Bee, The," 251. 
 
 " Hundred Days in Europe," 363. 
 
 Hutton, 22. 
 
 " Hymn for my Brother's Ordina- 
 tion," 237, 238. 
 
 " Hymn of the Sea, A," 23. 
 
 " Hymn of Trust," 348. 
 
 " Hymn to Death," 8, 26, 41. 
 
 " Hyperion," 220, 221, 224. 
 
 Ibsen, 88. 
 
 " I Cannot Forget," 9. 
 " Ichabod," 125. 
 Idealism, English, 56. 
 Immanence, Oriental, 62.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 Immortality, 37-43, 95, 148-150, 186, 
 
 187, 256-261, 301, 302, 405-407, 
 
 462, 467. 
 
 " Imp of the Perverse, The," 176. 
 " In Memoriam," 238. 
 " In Memory," 135. 
 Incarnation, 344. 
 
 " Indian Girl's Lament, The," 41. 
 " Individuality," 395. 
 " Inferno," 262. 
 Inner light, 66, 109, 114, 428. 
 "'inscription for a Well in Memory 
 
 of the Martyrs of the War," 93. 
 " Inscription for the Entrance to a 
 
 Wood," 23, 26. 
 
 Inspiration, 222, 305-307, 428. 
 Intemperate, Bryant's prayer for the, 
 
 34- 
 
 " International Copyright," 288. 
 Intuitionalism, German, 56, 57. 
 " Irene," 166. 
 " Irene," 272. 
 " Iron Gate, The," 366. 
 Irving, Washington, 212, 216. 
 " Italy," 123. 
 
 "Jacquerie, The," 384, 389. 
 
 James, Henry, 66, 94, 202. 
 
 " Journey of Life, The," 43. 
 
 Judaism, 344. 
 
 " June," 41. 
 
 " Justice and Expediency," 121. 
 
 " Kalevala," 232. 
 
 Kant, 57, 342. 
 
 " Kavanagh," 224, 245. 
 
 " Keramos," 245. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 262. 
 
 " Knight and Friar," 250. 
 
 " Lakeside, The," 133. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 149. 
 
 " Lament for the Royal George," 
 116. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 203. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney: and the mechan- 
 ism of verse, 127; improved on 
 Poe's theory of poetry, 192; 
 poetry and theology of, 369-418; 
 our chief poetical musician, 371; 
 contrasted with Poe, 372, 415, 
 
 418; parents of, 373; had a pas- 
 sion for music, 374; educational 
 beginnings of, 375 ; struggles to 
 learn his duty, 376; influenced by 
 teacher of science, 377; a South- 
 ern volunteer, 378; broken in 
 health by army life, 379; desper- 
 ate illness of, 380; dawn of poet- 
 ical ambition of, 381; somberness, 
 yet sweetness and maturity, in ear- 
 liest poetry of, 382, 383; a lec- 
 tprer on literature, 387; gains 
 public notice by "Corn," 387; 
 
 Centennial, 390; defects in style 
 of, 392; physical handicap of, 393; 
 interpreted poetry in terms of 
 music, 397-399; music too much 
 dominated poetry of, 399; religion 
 ground of sense of duty of, 399; 
 believed love rules the universe, 
 401-403; believed in immortality, 
 405-407; last poem of, 406; great- 
 est poem of, 407; sums up his es- 
 timate of Christ, 409; affection and 
 optimism of, 410; nature interpre- 
 ted by, 412, 413; science of ver- 
 sification overrated by, 414; in- 
 domitable spirit of, 415; last days 
 of, 416; a great poet in the ma- 
 king, 416; in relation to immor- 
 tality, 417. 
 
 Laplace, 187. 
 
 " Last Judgment," 187. 
 
 " Last Leaf, The," 329, 337. 
 
 " Laus Veneris," 136. 
 
 Lauvriere, 203. 
 
 " Leaves of Grass," 428, 429, 441- 
 444, 456. 
 
 " Leaves-Droppings," 441. 
 
 " Lenore," 166. 
 
 " Liberator, The," 120. 
 
 " Library of Poetry and Song," 46. 
 
 " Life," 78, 79. 
 
 " Life of General Greene," 216. 
 
 " Life That Is, The," 37. 
 
 " Lifetime, A," 38. 
 
 " Light of Stars, The," 258. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 153, 291, 430, 
 434, 453- 
 
 " Living Temple, The," 201.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 479 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth: 
 Emerson at the funeral of, 98; 
 tribute of Whittier to, 149; pre- 
 ceded by Whittier in anti-slavery 
 movement, 152; abusively criticized 
 by Poe, 176, 177; poetry and the- 
 ology of, 207-263; the last genera- 
 tion influenced by, 209; most be- 
 loved of American poets, 210; 
 parents of, 210; early environment 
 of, 211, 212; college training and 
 classmates of, 213; interested in 
 Indian life by surroundings in 
 Maine, 213; early verses and liter- 
 ary ambition of, 214, 215; pro- 
 fessor at Bowdoin, 215; goes 
 abroad for three years, 215, 216; 
 as a teacher, 217; marriage of, 
 219; turning-point in career of, 
 220; unevangelical, 222; a Pela- 
 gian, but a Christian poet, 223; 
 translated Dante, 224, 228, 262 ; 
 discovers his vocation, 225; pros- 
 perity and growing fame of, 226; 
 truly national poet, 227; loses his 
 second wife, 228; friends of, 229; 
 most productive period of, 230; 
 most successful in shorter poems, 
 231; appreciated good in heathen 
 peoples, 233; faults in longer 
 poems, 234; insufficiently estimates 
 Christ, 235-239, 241, 242, 261; 
 ein in the view of, 236; neither 
 skeptic nor mystic, 238; tends to 
 pagan views, 239; had faith in 
 Christ's human example, 242; poet 
 of Union, 244, and of peace, 244; 
 fundamental theological defect of, 
 246; most mature work of, 249; 
 kindly spirit of, 250; in relation to 
 Emerson, 250; affectionate and 
 gentle, 251; no dogmatist, 252, 
 *53; Christian spirit in poetry of, 
 253; believed in immortality, 256- 
 ?6i; found congenial field in trans- 
 lating " Purgatorio " and " Para- 
 diso," 262 ; sunny and genial to 
 the last, 262; honored in Poets' 
 Corner, 263; in contrast with 
 Lowell, 267; succeeded in Har- 
 vard by Lowell, 290; New En- 
 
 gland spirit in, 334; under influ- 
 ence of Emerson, 344; memorial 
 of Holmes to, 359. 
 
 Longfellow, Samuel, 209. 
 
 Lord's Supper, The, 20, 77, 83. 
 
 " Lost in Him," 92. 
 
 " Lost Occasion, The," 126. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell: compared 
 with Bryant, 28; preceded by 
 Whittier in anti-slavery move- 
 ment, 152; criticized by Poe, 177; 
 wrote tribute to Longfellow, 263; 
 poetry and theology of, 265-317; 
 our chief poetical moralist, 267; 
 in contrast with other poets, 267; 
 typical man of letters, 267; par- 
 entage and boyhood of, 268; 
 knew the Yankee dialect, 268, 285- 
 289; at college, 269; literary and 
 ethical bent of, 270; marriage di- 
 rects the genius of, 271; early 
 poems of, 272; early straits and 
 bereavements of, 273; ethical and 
 patriotic genius of, 275; in the 
 realm of pure poetry, 275; growth 
 of ethical principle of, 277; most 
 perfect work of, 278; first gush of 
 wit of, 279; turns from literature 
 to politics, 280; greatest achieve- 
 ment of, 282; professor in Har- 
 vard, 289; prose work of, 290; 
 loses youthful spontaneity, 290; 
 most productive years of, 292; as 
 editor, diplomat, and wit, 293; 
 last notable poetic work of, 294; 
 confesses his faith in " The Cathe- 
 dral," 295; theology of, 295-313; 
 without definite belief in immor- 
 tality, 301 ; a theist, not a Chris- 
 tian, 302 ; missed the true theory 
 of morals, 303; had a Calvinistic 
 inheritance of virtues, 304; denied 
 special inspiration, 305; inferior in 
 moral earnestness to Wordsworth, 
 308; misunderstands and derides 
 the atonement, 309, 310; a greater 
 poet if a greater man, 312; served 
 democracy by inherited theistic 
 faith, 313; greater as an essayist 
 than as a poet, 314; paid high trib- 
 ute to his friends, 314; made
 
 480 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 modest estimate of himself, 316; 
 shortcomings of, 317; indebted to 
 wit as instrument in poetry, 321; 
 made Holmes a contributor to 
 "The Atlantic," 334; New En- 
 gland spirit in, 334; under influ- 
 ence of Emerson, 344; objects to 
 allusion of Holmes, 353; a cor- 
 respondent of Holmes, 358; me- 
 morial of Holmes to, 359; greet- 
 ing " To Holmes " by, 367. 
 Luther, 120. 
 
 Macaulay, 290. 
 
 " Manuscript Found in a Bottle, A," 
 171. 
 
 " Marshes of Glynn, The," 393, 396. 
 
 " Martin Franc, or the Monk of 
 Saint Anthony," 250. 
 
 " Masque of Pandora, The," 240, 
 241. 
 
 Materialism, 55, 115, 344. 
 
 Matthews, Brander, 202. 
 
 " Maud Muller," 152. 
 
 " Merlin," 75. 
 
 " Mesmeric Revelations," 204. 
 
 " Mezzo Cammin," 230. 
 
 " Michael Angelo," 246-249, 255. 
 
 Michelangelo, 187, 236, 417. 
 
 " Midnight Mass for the Dying 
 Year," 176. 
 
 Milton, 202, 218, 269, 290, 362, 396, 
 408, 421, 424. 
 
 Mims, Edwin, 373, 379, 380, 413. 
 
 " Minister's Daughter, The," 134. 
 
 " Minstrel," 269. 
 
 Miracle, 307. 
 
 Missionary hymn, Bryant's, 33. 
 
 Missions, Christian, 88, 344. 
 
 " Mithridates," 70. 
 
 " Mogg Megone," 127. 
 
 " Moll Pitcher," 118. 
 
 " Monadnoc," 90, 251. 
 
 Monism, 100. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 353. 
 
 Morality, in relation to art and re- 
 ligion, 423. 
 
 " Morituri Salutamus," 255. 
 
 Morley, John, 66, 94. 
 
 Morris, 410. 
 
 Morris, G. P., 426. 
 
 " Mortal Antipathy, A," 338, 340, 
 
 357- 
 
 Motherwell, 250. 
 Motley, J. L., 358, 360. 
 Muller, George, 78. 
 " Murders of the Rue Morgue, 
 
 The," 175. 
 " Music," 91. 
 
 " Mutual Admiration Society," 230. 
 " My Autumn Walk," 29. 
 " My Captain," 291, 434. 
 " My Lost Youth," 211. 
 " My Namesake," 139. 
 " My Psalm," 155. 
 " My Soul and I," 147. 
 " My Springs," 383. 
 " My Study Windows," 290. 
 " My Trust," 136. 
 " Mystic Trumpeter, The," 467. 
 
 Nature: in Bryant's poetry, 22-27, 
 29, 40, 42; in Emerson's works, 
 55-57, 65, 85, 89, 90, 103; in Whit- 
 tier's poems, 132; in the works of 
 Holmes, 346; what is included in, 
 423; ideal aspects of, 424; in the 
 view of Whitman, 424, 429, 432; 
 beautiful only when moral, 443. 
 
 " Nature, The Order of," 27. 
 
 Neal, 280. 
 
 Neoplatonism, 62. 
 
 " Never or Now," 355. 
 
 " New England Tragedies, The," 
 235- 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 184. 
 
 Nietzsche, 88, 457. 
 
 Norton, C. E., 269, 293, 315, 334, 
 345- 
 
 Nott, Richard, 109. 
 
 " Nun's Aspiration, The," 78. 
 
 " Nux Postcoenatica," 332. 
 
 " Ode " at Concord, 92. 
 
 " Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876," 
 
 313- 
 " Ode " on fourth Commemoration 
 
 Day of Johns Hopkins, 411. 
 " Ode on the Birthday of George 
 
 Washington," 12. 
 " Old English Dramatists, The," 274, 
 
 290.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 481 
 
 " Old Ironsides," 328. 
 
 " Old Man's Funeral, The," 42. 
 
 Omar Khayyam, 63. 
 
 " Opposition," 402. 
 
 " Our Master," 144, 
 
 " Outre-Mer," 218, 220. 
 
 " Over-Heart, The," 144. 
 
 " Overman," 88. 
 
 Over-Soul, thz, 62, 66, 85, 87, 107, 
 
 " Palace of Art, The," 205. 
 
 " Palfrey, To John Gorham," 314. 
 
 Palmer, G. K., 442. 
 
 Pantheism, 77, 101, 186, 344, 400, 
 
 433, 460. 
 
 "Paradise Lost," 311, 424. 
 " Paradise of Tears," 43. 
 " Paradiso," 262. 
 " Park, The," 69. 
 Parker, Theodore, 75, 280, 344. 
 Parkman, 359. 
 Parsees, 346. 
 " Parting Health," 360. 
 " Parting of the Ways, The," 274, 
 
 277. 
 
 " Passage to India," 465. 
 " Past, The," 40. 
 Paul, 87, 88, 239, 341, 34S, 349. 
 
 4S4- 
 
 Paul, Jean, 44. 
 Peirce, Benjamin, 326, 339. 
 " Pennsylvania Pilgrim, T h e," 
 
 Perry, Bliss, 440, 441, 455, 457. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 282, 315. 
 
 Philo/82. 
 
 " Philosophy of Composition, The," 
 194. 
 
 Pierce, Franklin, 213. 
 
 " Pilgrim's Progress," 116, 324. 
 
 Plato, 62, 82. 
 
 Plotinus, 62. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan: and the mechan- 
 ism of verse, 127; poetry and the- 
 ology of, 159-206; contrasted with 
 Whittier, 161, 162; biographers of, 
 163; ancestry and early training 
 of, 163, 164; in school abroad, 
 165; early poems of, 166; dissi- 
 pated at college, 168; broke 
 
 with his patron, 169, 170; idol- 
 ized fame, 171; wrote little verse, 
 but polished it much, 174; suc- 
 cessful with his stories, 174, 
 tales of the charnel-house, 175; as 
 editor and critic, 176, alienated his 
 friends, 177; loses his wife, 178- 
 180; a creature of whim, impulse, 
 and passion, 180; dies miserably, 
 181; an atheist of the heart, 182, 
 because of self-conceit, 183; gives 
 his theology in " Eureka," 184; 
 an absolute materialist, 184; de- 
 nied immortality, 186, 187; never 
 dealt -with sin against God, 187; 
 reversed right rules in his concep- 
 tion of beauty, 188; made awaken- 
 ing of emotion the sole aim of 
 poetry, 189; fed his imagination 
 on the abnormal, 191; made poetry 
 the rhythmical creation of beauty, 
 192; had no vision of Christ, 193, 
 198; illustrated his theory of com- 
 position in " The Raven," 195-198; 
 a master of technique, 198; pro- 
 pounded a profound theory of 
 versification, 199; judged by differ- 
 ent critics, 202-205; perhaps felt 
 supreme need and begged God's 
 mercy in his last words, 206; con- 
 trasted with Longfellow, 210; se- 
 verely criticizes Longfellow, 250; 
 in contrast with Lowell, 267; in 
 " Fable for Critics," 280; con- 
 trasted with Lanfer, 372, 415, 418. 
 
 " Poems on Slavery," 243. 
 
 "Poet, The," 46, 73, 82, 91. 
 
 " Poet at the Breakfast Table, The," 
 338, 350. 
 
 "Poetic Principle, The," 192. 
 
 Poetry: natural surroundings not 
 sufficient to produce, 3; a belated 
 product of America, 4; Emerson's 
 conception of, 73-75; Milton's es- 
 sentials of, 74; not a selling com- 
 modity in Poe's day, 174; faith in 
 God necessary to great, 189, 246, 
 261, 424; Poe's theory of, 192, 
 194, 195, 199, 200, 202; and re- 
 ligion, 311; and music, 371-373, 
 452; Lanier's theory of, 414, 415;
 
 482 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 reacts to the sense of beauty and 
 
 of truth, 433. 
 Poets' Corner, 263. 
 Pope, 13, 269. 
 Porteus, ii. 
 
 Potter, Miss M. S., 219. 
 " Prayer," 77. 
 Prayer: Emerson's view of, 77, 78; 
 
 Lowell's view of, 299; Lanier's 
 
 view of, 403, 413. 
 " Prelude," 227. 
 Prescott, 229. 
 
 " Present Crisis, The," 281. 
 " Problem, The," 80. 
 " Proem," 128. 
 " Professor at the Breakfast Table, 
 
 The," 338. 
 " Prometheus," 281. 
 "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall," 108. 
 " Proud Music of the Storm," 434. 
 " Psalm of Life, A," 209, 225, 257. 
 " Psalm of the West," 393, 394. 
 " Purgatorio," 262. 
 Puritanism, 341. 
 Puritans: and love for nature, 4; 
 
 and recognition of a present 
 
 Christ, 45; intolerant, no, HI; 
 
 fortitude and faith of, 236. 
 Puseyism, 113. 
 
 " Quadroon Girl, The," 243. 
 
 " Quaker of the Olden Time, The," 
 114. 
 
 Quakerism, 108, 157, 428. 
 
 Quakers: and externalism, 66; ec- 
 centricities of, no; persecuted, 
 no, in; and anti-slavery discus- 
 sion, 119, 143; fortitude and faith 
 of, 236; influenced Whitman, 428. 
 
 " Quatrains," 74. 
 
 " Questions of Life," 132. 
 
 " Rainy Day, The," 230. 
 
 Rascas, Bernard, 26. 
 
 " Rationale of Verse, The," 199. 
 
 " Raven, The," 180, 195-198, 203. 
 
 " Reaper and the Flowers, The," 
 
 258. 
 
 " Receive thy Sight," 32. 
 " Remonstrance," 400. 
 " Resurrection," 385. 
 
 Richardson, G. W., 326. 
 
 Robertson, F. W., 20. 
 
 Robespierre, 94. 
 
 " Rose-Morals," 403. 
 
 Rossetti, 444. 
 
 Rousseau, 94, 440, 452, 453. 
 
 Ruskin, 396, 435. 
 
 " Rykman, Andrew," 137. 
 
 Saadi, 63. 
 
 " Sacrifice," 93. 
 
 Salis-Seewis, 260. 
 
 " Saul," 300. 
 
 Schleiermacher, 97. 
 
 " School-Boy, The," 325. 
 
 Schoolcraft, 232. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 56. 
 
 " Science of English Verse," 397, 
 399- 
 
 " Self-reliance," 79- 
 
 Seneca, 89. 
 
 " Shadow and the Light, The," 148. 
 
 Shakespeare, 13, 17, 82, 362, 387, 
 398, 410, 413, 421- 
 
 " Shakspeare," 82. 
 
 " She Came and Went," 301. 
 
 Shearer, Thomas, 410. 
 
 Shelley, 13, 418. 
 
 Sin: in conception of Bryant, 23-27; 
 in the thought of Emerson, 66, 67, 
 86; in the thought of Whittier, 
 i37> 138; in the view of Poe, 187; 
 in the view of Longfellow, 223, 
 236; in the view of Lowell, 297, 
 300, 307, 309; in the view of 
 Holmes, 340-344,346, 348-350,354! 
 in the view of Lanier, 399-401, 
 404, 409, 410; in the view of 
 Whitman, 436, 459. 
 
 " Singer in the Prison, The," 466. 
 
 " Sketch Book, The," 212, 218. 
 
 Smith, Samuel F., 326. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 421. 
 
 Snell, Ebenezer, 6. 
 
 " Snow-Bound," 128, 150, 157. 
 
 " Snow-storm, The," 90. 
 
 Socrates, 410. 
 
 " Solution," 74. 
 
 " Song for the Jacquerie," 383. 
 
 " Song of Nature," 82. 
 
 " Song of the Exposition," 434.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 483 
 
 " Song of the Future, A," 406. 
 " Song of the Redwood Tree," 434. 
 " Song of the Silent Land," 260. 
 " Song of the Stars," 23. 
 " Song of the Universal," 434, 467. 
 " Sonnets upon the Punishment of 
 
 Death," 308. 
 " Sordello," 294. 
 " Spanish Student, The," 231. 
 " Special Pleading," 398. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 187, 194. 
 Spenser, 269. 
 
 " Sphinx, The," 53, 55, 68. 
 Spinoza, 63. 
 
 " Stanzas on Freedom," 280. 
 Stedman, 75, 127. 
 " Stirrup-Cup, The," 405. 
 Stoddard, 10. 
 Stoicism, 142, 254, 343. 
 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 283, 339, 354, 
 
 361. 
 
 " Street, The Crowded," 27. 
 Sumner, Charles, 94, 125, 229, 359. 
 " Sun-Day Hymn, A," 347. 
 " Sunrise," 406, 415. 
 " Sunset on the Bearcamp," 133. 
 Swedenborg, 63, 408. 
 Swinburne, 136, 203, 410, 444. 
 Symonds, J. A., 439, 440. 
 " Symphony, The," 389. 
 
 " Tales of the Arabesque and the 
 
 Grotesque," 174. 
 ".Tamerlane," 171, 172. 
 " Tamerlane and Other Poems," 
 
 171. 
 
 Tauler, 63. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 390, 410. 
 Taylor, Father, 72. 
 Tennyson, 44, 202, 205, 228, 238, 
 
 249, 408, 421. 
 
 "Tent on the Beach," 117, 128. 
 " Terminus," 99. 
 Thackeray, 321. 
 " Thanatopsis," 10, n, 44. 
 Thoreau, 103, 442. 
 " Thousand and One Nights, The," 
 
 425- 
 
 " Threnody," 81, 95, 96, 99, 251. 
 Ticknor, George, 219, 290. 
 " Tiger-Lilies," 412. 
 
 " To a Waterfowl," 29, 30. 
 " To Beethoven," 412. 
 " To Canaan," 354. 
 " To Helen," 166. 
 " To Him that was Crucified," 459. 
 " To Holmes," 367. 
 " To lanthe," 214. 
 " To John Gorham Palfrey," 314. 
 "To My Old Schoolmaster," 116. 
 "To Oliver Wendell Holmes," 158. 
 "To Richard Wagner," 411. 
 Transcendentalism, 54-62, 64, 66. 
 " Translations," 91. 
 Trinity, the: in the view of Whit- 
 tier, 140; denied, 222. 
 " Two Travellers, The," 43. 
 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 283. 
 Unitarianism, 101, 115, 221, 304, 
 
 324, 343-346. 
 " Uriel," 68. 
 
 Van Dyke, 66. 
 
 Vedas, the, 62. 
 
 Vergil, 212, 269, 328, 421, 436. 
 
 " Village Blacksmith, The," 230. 
 
 " Vision of Echard, The," 148. 
 
 " Vision of Sir Launfal, The," 274, 
 
 278, 289. 
 
 Vivian, Frances, 204. 
 " Voices of the Night, The," 176, 
 
 225. 
 " Voluntaries," 72. 
 
 Waite, Chief Justice, 153. 
 
 " Waiting by the Gate," 36. 
 
 " Waldehses, Hymn of the," 26. 
 
 Waller, 392. 
 
 Ward, William Hayes, 373, 396. 
 
 Warren, Samuel, 427. 
 
 Waverley Novels, 425. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 94, in, 125, 126. 
 
 Weismann, 342. 
 
 Wells, William, 269. 
 
 " West Wind, The," 24. 
 
 " What Mr. Robinson Thinks," 286. 
 
 " What the Voice Said," 138. 
 
 White, H. K., ii. 
 
 White, Miss Maria, 271. 
 
 Whitman, Walt: criticized by Lanier, 
 410; poetry and theology of, 410- 
 470; acclaimed by many as a con-
 
 484 
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 spicuous American poet, 421; sig- 
 nificantly chooses the nickname 
 " Walt," 421; declaration of inde- 
 pendence by, 422^ _', seeks to get 
 back to nature, 422; leading repre- 
 sentative of free-verse, 423, 424; 
 the philosophy underlying the 
 verse of, 424; formative influences 
 of boyhood of, 425; a born Bohe- 
 mian, 426; genesis of genius of, 
 427; devotes himself to literature, 
 427; sources of philosophy of, 
 428; a pantheist, like the Brah- 
 man, 429; would voice the human- 
 ity of the illiterate horde, 430; un- 
 changed by Emerson's criticisms, 
 431; a poet of chaos, 432; imi- 
 tates the voices of physical and 
 animal nature, 433; could write 
 poetry when stirred by something 
 outside himself, 435; egotism of, 
 435; the coarse ego in verses of, 
 437, 438; thesis of, 439; chose 
 a non-moral God, 439; immorality 
 of, 439; a poseur, 440; exalted 
 obscenity into a principle, 443; 
 changed by the Civil War, 445; 
 received impulse to self-sacrifice, 
 446; a battered, wrecked, old 
 man, 447; natural gifts of, 447; 
 conflicting views of Camden life 
 of, 448; called poet of democracy, 
 449; anarchy the democracy of, 
 450; influence of music on verses 
 of, 452; had fancy to found a re- 
 ligion, 453; bursts of lofty thought 
 in verses of, 454; the religion of, 
 457; compared self with great re- 
 ligious leaders, 458; deifies him- 
 self, 460, 461 ; had hope of im- 
 mortality with a recognition of un- 
 changing abnormity, 462-465, 467; 
 a poet in the lower realms of 
 poetry, 468; without God and 
 without hope, 470. 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf : poetry and 
 theology of, 105-158; most Ameri- 
 can of our poets, 107; an Ortho- 
 dox Quaker, 108, 109, 143, 428; 
 a believer in Christ, 109; of 
 Quaker and Huguenot parentage, 
 
 in; personal habits of, 113; con- 
 trasted with Emerson, 114; early 
 surroundings and privations of, 
 115; early verses of, 116; a natural 
 editor, 117; espoused anti-slavery 
 cause, 119-125; a fighting spirit, 
 but a non-resistant, 123; contrasted 
 with Garrison, 124; early faults of 
 verses of, 127; financial success of, 
 128; recipient of public esteem, 
 129; religious views of, 130-158; 
 hymns of, 130, 144, 154, 252; a 
 man of one Book, 131; believed in 
 a personal God, 132; anti-slavery 
 poems of, 134; had a genuine con- 
 viction of sin, 137, 138, and trust 
 in divine mercy, 138, 139; believed 
 in the divinity of Christ, 140; had 
 a practical view of the Trinity, 
 140, 141; accepted Christ's sacri- 
 fice, 142; not far from Calvinism, 
 142, 145; believed in the triumph 
 of goodness, 146; not a Universal- 
 ist, 147; believed in personal im- 
 mortality, 148-150; defects of 
 poetry of, 151; most potent poet 
 of the anti-slavery movement, 152; 
 contrasted with other poets, 152; 
 rewarded for service and sacrifice, 
 153; last days of, 154-158; the 
 humble friend of God, 157; con- 
 trasted with Poe, 161, 162; con- 
 trasted with Longfellow, 210; 
 urged Longfellow to run for Con- 
 gress, 243; poet of Liberty, 244; 
 in contrast with Lowell, 267; in 
 "Fable for Critics," 280; memo- 
 rial of Holmes to, 359; criticized 
 Whitman, 414. 
 
 Whittier, Thomas, no. 
 
 Whitty, J. H., 167, 187. 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, 443. 
 
 Wilkinson, W. C., 47, 48. 
 
 " William Wilson," 165. 
 
 Williams, Roger, 120. 
 
 Willis, 177, 280. 
 
 " Winter-Evening Hymn to my Fire, 
 A," 306. 
 
 Winthrop, Robert C., 153. 
 
 Woodberry, George E., 163. 
 
 " Woodnotes " II, 64, 90.
 
 GENERAL INDEX 
 
 485 
 
 Woodrow, James, 377. 
 
 Woolman, John, 137. 
 
 " Word, The," 131. 
 
 Wordsworth, n, 13, 21, 45, 46, 75, 
 
 308, 414, 421, 427. 
 " World-Soul, The," 99. 
 " World's Homage, The," 361. 
 
 " Worship of Nature, The," 133. 
 " Written at Rome," 92. 
 
 " Xenophanes," 85. 
 
 " Year's Life, A," 273. 
 " Yellow Violet," 24.

 
 
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