I knew the charm of hillside, field, and wood,
Of lake and stream and the sky's downy brood,
Of roads sequestered, rimmed with sallow sod,
But friends with hardback, aster, golden rod,
Or succory, keeping summer-long its trust
Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust.
These were my earliest friends, and latest too,
Still unestranged, whatever fate may do.

After these strong pronouncements, we may expect Lowell's poetry to show at every turn his great love for natural history, and such is the case. A man cannot hide proclivities so intense. They come out whether he will or no. Let us illustrate now in some detail this feature of his work, beginning with the vegetable kingdom.

The rich milk-tingeing buttercup

Its tiny polished urn holds up,
Filled with ripe summer to the edge,

The sun in his own wine to pledge.

Here is a new idea in poetry—the fact that the yellow buttercup flowers give richness of colour to the milk, and especially to the butter of the cows feeding upon them. The idea is correct, although somewhat prosaic and agricultural.

Again

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean

To be some happy creature's palace.

The reader will note Lowell's fondness for metaphors the metaphor is his favourite figure, and he is constantly coining new ones. The lichens that cover the gravestones of two English soldiers killed at Concord, he very aptly calls the blazon of oblivion.

Two graves are here: to mark the place
At head and foot an unhewn stone,
O'er which the herald-lichens trace

The blazon of oblivion.

The birch is "the most shy and lady-like of trees," and in another poem he addresses the same tree thus

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,

And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

He is constantly moralising the activities of Nature. Two lovers, silent in the intensity of their feeling, can still convey their thoughts, as the bees carry fertilising pollen from flower to flower.

But all things carry the heart's messages,

And know it not, nor doth the heart well know,
But Nature hath her will, even as the bees,

Blithe go-betweens, fly singing to and fro
With the fruit-quickening pollen.

Again, the scattering of seeds by the wind is like chance-sown thoughts that may take root in hearts lying open to receive them.

There is no wind but soweth seeds

Of a more true and open life,

Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds,
With wayside beauty rife.

There is considerable freshness in our poet's allu

sions to bees.

In Al fresco we have—

The dandelions and buttercups

Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee
Stumbles along the clover tops.

Here the word "stumbles" is a particularly happy description of the sometimes blundering clumsy flight of a bumble-bee, as he hurries from flower to flower, so in the same poem—

The irreverent, buccaneering bee
Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery

Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor
With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door.

Here are new and striking metaphors, yet perfectly consonant with scientific fact. The destinies, moving on silently, work out their results slowly and surely like the coral under the sea.

Patient are they as the insects that build islands in the deep, They heed not the bolted thunder, but their silent way they

keep.

This is marred by the misuse of the term "insects for such organisms as the corals. The same image is found in one of his sonnets, where, putting in a plea like M. Arnold for steady, tranquil work as against spasmodic bursts, he says :—

Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep,
Wherewith the steadfast coral stems uprise,

Which, by the toil of gathering energies,
Their upward way into clear sunshine keep,
Until, by heaven's sweetest influences,
Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green
Into a pleasant island in the seas,

Where, 'mid tall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen,
And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour,
Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power.

A masterly picture this, of the growth of a coral island, and a highly appropriate analogy as well.

We need not continue this kind of illustration ; the passages quoted are enough to show how thoroughly Nature has marked out this poet for her own. We conclude by citing one or two passages in which the atmosphere of country life, its sights and sounds, is strikingly brought home to the reader. The first is from the Prelude to The Vision of Sir Launfal.

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

Then heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might—

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

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun

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

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings:
He sings to the wide world and she to her nest—
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear

That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,

That the river is bluer than the sky,

That the robin is plastering his house hard by ;

And if the breeze kept the good news back,