"T is a face that can never grow older,

That never can part with its gleam, 'T is a gracious possession forever, For is it not all a dream?

TO H. W. L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867

"ELMWOOD, February 27, 1867.

"MY DEAR LONGFELLOW,-On looking back, I find that our personal intercourse is now of nearly thirty years' date. It began on your part in a note acknowledging my Class Poem much more kindly than it deserved. Since then it has ripened into friendship, and there has never been a jar between us. If there had been, it would certainly have been my fault and not yours. Friendship is called the wine of life, and there certainly is a stimulus in it that warms and inspires as we grow older. Ours should have some body to have kept so long.

I planned you a little surprise in the Advertiser for your birthday breakfast. I hope my nosegay did not spoil the flavor of your coffee. It is a hard thing to make one that will wholly please, for some flowers will not bear to be handled without wilting, and the kind I have tried to make a pretty bunch of is of that variety. But let me hope the best from your kindness, if not from their color or perfume.

"In case they should please you (and because there was one misprint in the Advertiser, and two phrases which I have now made more to my mind), I have copied them that you might have them in my own handwriting. In print, you see, I have omitted the tell-tale ciphers- not that there was anything to regret in them, for we have a proverbial phrase 'like sixty' which implies not only unabated but extraordinary vigor.

"Wishing you as many happy returns as & wise man should desire, I remain always affectionately yours, J. R. L." Letters I. 378, 379.

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 slides along,

Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY

"While I was most unwell," Lowell wrote to a friend, September 21, 1875, "I could not find any reading that would seclude me from myself till one day I bethought me of Calderon. I took down a volume of his plays, and in half an hour was completely absorbed. He is surely one of the most marvellous of poets. I have recorded my debt to him in a poem, The Nightingale in the Study."

"COME forth!" my catbird calls to me,
"And hear me sing a cavatina
That, in this old familar tree,

Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

Feels music's soul through every fibre sent,

Whispers the ravished strings
More than he knew or meant ;

Old summers in its memory glow;
The secrets of the wind it sings;
It hears the April-loosened springs;
And mixes with its mood
All it dreamed when it stood
In the murmurous pine-wood
Long ago!

The magical moonlight then

Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen

Came dim from the distance blown ; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro

With delight as it stood,
In the wonderful wood,
Long ago!

O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,
But made us all feeling and voice?
When we went with the winds in their
blowing,

When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years?
Have we not from the earth drawn juices
Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel, all I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,

Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,

A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

No feet avail; to hear it nigh,
The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise
Those angel stairways in my brain,
That climb from these low-vaulted days
To spacious sunshines far from pain.

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet,
I leave thy covert haunt untrod,
And envy Science not her feat

To make a twice-told tale of God.

They said the fairies tript no more,
And long ago that Pan was dead;
"T was but that fools preferred to bore
Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long,
The fairies dance each full-mooned night,
Would we but doff our lenses strong,
And trust our wiser eyes' delight.

City of Elf-land, just without
Our seeing, marvel ever new,
Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt
Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue,

I build thee in yon sunset cloud,
Whose edge allures to climb the height;
I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud,
From still pools dusk with dreams of
night.

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD OCTOBER, 1861

Lowell wrote at some length to C. E. Norton concerning the production of this poem.

ELMWOOD, Oct. 12, 1861.

You urged me to read poetry to feed myself on bee bread - so that I might get into the mood of writing some. Well, I have n't been reading any, but I have written something whether poetry or no I cannot tell yet. But I want you to like it if you can. Leigh Hunt speaks somewhere of our writing things for particular people, and wondering as we write if such or such a one will like it. Just so I thought of you, after I had written - for while I was writing I was wholly absorbed. I had just two days allowed me by Fields for the November Atlantic, and I got it done. It had been in my head some time, and when you see it you will remember my having spoken to you about it. Indeed, I owe it to you, for the hint came from one of those books of Souvestre's you lent me the Breton legends. The writing took hold of me enough to leave me tired out and to satisfy me entirely as to what was the original of my head and back pains. But whether it is good or not, I am not yet far enough off to say. But do like it, if you can. Fields says it is "splendid," with tears in his eyes but then I read it to him, which is half the battle. I began it as a lyric, but it would be too aphoristic for that, and finally flatly refused to sing at any price. So I submitted, took to pentameters, and only hope the thoughts are good enough to be preserved in the ice of the colder and almost glacier-slow measure. I think I have done well-in some stanzas at least and not wasted words. It

Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow

mist

Their halos, wavering thistle downs of light;

The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst,

Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright,

Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night.

Then all was silent, till there smote my

ear

A movement in the stream that checked my breath:

Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, "This water is of Death!

The Sisters wash a shroud, -ill thing to hear!"

I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three Known to the Greek's and to the Northman's creed,

That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, Still crooning, as they weave their endles: brede,

One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time shall be."

No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed,

But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; Something too high for joy, too deep for

sorrow,

Thrilled in their tones, and from their faces gleamed.

"Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,"

So sang they, working at their task the while;

"The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn:

For Austria? Italy? the Sea - Queen's isle?

O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn?