James Russell Lowell to Charles Eliot Norton, December 25, 1862

Elmwood, Xmas Night, 1862.

. . . . I send the poor verses.¹ You will see that I accepted your criticism and left out the crowding stanza. I have also made some corrections—chiefly because I altered the last stanza but one in order to get in “feed every skill,” and then found the same rhymes staring at me from the last. So, as I could not copy it again and did not like to send anything with corrections in it, I e'en weakened the last stanza a little to make all square. You see what it is to write in rhyme, and not to remember what you have written. It is safer to repeat one's self in prose.

I hope all of you have had a good Christmas. I don't see why any national misfortunes should prevent our being glad over the birth of Good into the world eighteen centuries and a half ago. To me it is always a delightful day, and I, dull as I may be, come to dinner with a feeling that at least I am helping in the traditional ceremonies. One can say at least with a good conscience, as he lays his head on his pillow, like one of My Lord Tennyson's jurymen, Caput apri detuli — I brought the bore's head. With which excellent moral, and love to all,

I am always your loving

J. R. L.

Asked in the very friendliest way

      To send some word prolific,

Some pearl of wit, from Boston Bay

      To astonish the Pacific,

I fished one day and dredged the next,

      And, when I had not found it,

"Our bay is deep," I murmured, vext,

      "But has vast flats around it!"

You fancy us a land of schools,

      Academies, and colleges,

That love to cram our emptiest fools

      With 'onomies and 'ologies,

Till, fired, they rise and leave a line

      Of light behind like rockets—

Nay, if you ask them out to dine,

      Bring lectures in their pockets.

But, 'stead of lecturing other folks,

      To be yourself the topic;

To bear the slashes, jerks, and pokes

      Of scalpels philanthropic—

It makes one feel as if he'd sold,

      In some supreme emergence,

His corpus vile, and were told,

      "You're wanted by the surgeons!"

I felt, when begged to send a verse

      By way of friendly greeting,

As if you'd stopped me in my hearse

      With " Pray, address the meeting!"

For, when one's made a lecture's theme,

      One feels, in sad sincerity,

As he were dead, or in a dream

      Confounded with posterity.

I sometimes, on the long-sloped swells

      Of deeper songs careening,

Shaking sometimes my cap and bells,

      But still with earnest meaning,

Grow grave to think my leaden lines

      Should make so long a journey,

And there among your golden mines

      Be uttered by attorney.

What says the East, then, to the West,

      The old home to the new one,

The mother-bird upon the nest

      To the far-flown, but true one?

Fair realm beneath the evening-star,

      Our western gate to glory,

You send us faith and cheer from far;

      I send you back a story.

We are your Past, and, short or long,

      What leave Old Days behind them

Save bits of wisdom and of song

      For very few to find them?

So, children, if my tale be old,

      My moral not the newest,

Listen to Grannam while they're told,

      For both are of the truest.

                        _____

Far in a farther East than this,

      When Nature still held league with

Man, And shoots of New Creation's bliss

      Through secret threads of kindred ran;

When man was more than shops and stocks,

      And earth than dirt to fence and sell,

Then all the forests, fields, and rocks

      Their upward yearning longed to tell.

The forests muse of keel and oar;

      The field awaits the ploughshare's seam;

The rock in palace-walls would soar;

      To rise by service all things dream.

And so, when Brahma walked the earth,

      The golden vein beneath the sward

Cried, "Take me, Master; all my worth

      Lies but in serving thee, my lord!

"Without thee gold is only gold,

      A sullen slave that waits on man,

Sworn liegeman of the Serpent old

      To thwart the Maker's nobler plan;

But, ductile to thy plastic will,

      I yield as flexible as air,

Speak every tongue, feed every skill,

      Take every shape of good and fair.

"The soul of soul is loyal hope,

      The wine of wine is friendship's juice,

The strength of strength is gracious scope,

      The gold of gold is nobler use;

Through thee alone I am not dross!

      Through thee, O master-brain and heart!

I climb to beauty and to art,

      I bind the wound and bear the Cross,"

_______________

¹ To be read at a lecture on himself, which was to be given in California, by the Rev. T. Starr King.

SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James Russell Lowell, Volume 1, p. 361-5