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
