§ 31. The Cambridge Poets

To this period belongs the greater part of the work of the three New England poets, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes. In the early lives of these three there was a somewhat remarkable similarity. They were all descendants of New England families of culture and standing. They grew up in homes of plenty, but not of undignified display. They were surrounded by people of education and intellectual ability. They came to feel, as Holmes puts it, as much at ease among books as a stable boy feels among horses. Each held a professorship at Harvard. Here the resemblance ends, for never were three poets more unlike in work and disposition than the three who are known as the Cambridge Poets.

§ 32. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807–1882

The birthplace of Longfellow was Portland, Maine, which he calls "the beautiful town that is seated by the sea." He had all the advantages of books, college, and home culture; and he made such good use of them that while he was journeying homeward from Bowdoin College with his diploma in his trunk, the trustees were meditating upon offering the young man of nineteen the professorship of modern languages in his Alma Mater. He accepted gladly, spent three years in Europe preparing for the position, and returned to Bowdoin, where he remained for six years. Then came a call to become professor at Harvard; and a welcome professor he was, for his fame had gone before him. The boys were proud to be in the classes of a teacher who, with the exception of George Ticknor, a much older man, was the best American scholar of the languages and literature of modern Europe. He was a poet, too; his Summer Shower had been in their reading-books. Some of them had read his Outre Mer, a graceful and poetical mingling of bits of travel, stories, and translations. Moreover, he was a somewhat new kind of professor to the Harvard students of 1836, for he persisted in treating them as if they were gentlemen; and, whatever they might be with others, they always were gentlemen with him.

Up to 1839, the mass of Longfellow's work was in prose; but in that year he published first Hyperion and then Voices of the Night. In the latter volume were translations from six or seven languages. There were also A Psalm of Life and The Reaper and the Flowers. These have had nearly seventy years of hard wear; but read them as if no one had ever read them before, and think what courage and inspiration there is in—

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

The lovers of poetry were watching the young professor at Harvard. What would be his next work? When his next volume came out, it contained, among other poems, The Skeleton in Armor. Thus far, his writings had been thoughtful and beautiful, but in this there was something more; there was a stronger flight of the imagination, there was life, action, a story to tell, and generous promise for the future.

So Longfellow's work went on. He lived in the charming old Craigie House in Cambridge, where, as he wrote,

Once, ah, once, within these walls, One whom memory oft recalls, The Father of his Country, dwelt.

His longest narrative poems are Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and The Song of Hiawatha, which have been favorites from the first. He translated Dante's Divine Comedy and wrote several dramas. His translations are much more literal than those of most writers; but they are never bald and prosy, for he gives to every phrase the master touch that makes it glow with poetry. Few, if any, poems are more American and more patriotic than his Building of the Ship, with its impassioned apostrophe:—

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Nevertheless, Longfellow loved the Old World and the literatures of many peoples. In his translations he brought to his own country the culture of the lands across the sea. In so doing he not only enabled others to share in his enjoyment, but did much to prove to the youthful literature of the New World that there were still heights for it to ascend.

Longfellow knew how to beautify his verse with exquisite imagery, but this imagery was never used merely for ornament; it invariably flashed a light upon the thought, as in—

Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.

He had the ability to produce beauty from the simplest materials. Once, for instance, he chose a time-worn subject, he made a time-worn comparison, he used in his fifteen lines of verse but fifty-six different words, all everyday words and five sixths of them monosyllables; and with such materials he composed his Rainy Day!  His writings are so smooth and graceful that one sometimes overlooks their strength. Evangeline, for instance, is "A Tale of Love in Acadie," but it is also a picture of indomitable purpose and unfaltering resolution. Miles Standish  is more than a charming Puritan idyl, centring in an archly demure, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" It is a maiden's fearless obedience to the voice of her heart, and a strong man's noble conquest of himself. The keynote of much of Longfellow's lyric verse is his sympathy. When sorrow came to him, his pity did not centre in himself, but went out into the world to all who suffered. In the midst of his own grief, he wrote:—

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair.

"Read me that poem," said a bereaved mother, "for Longfellow understood." That is why Longfellow is great. In his Hiawatha  he introduced a Finnish metre; in Evangeline  he first succeeded in using the classic hexameter in English. Thus he gave new tools to the wrights of English verse; but it was a far greater glory to be able to speak directly to the hearts of the people. This gift, together with his pure and blameless life, won for him an affection so peculiarly reverent that, even while he lived, thousands of his readers spoke his name with the tenderness of accent oftenest given to those who are no longer among us. Happy is the man who wins both fame and love!

§ 33. James Russell Lowell, 1819–1891

A big, roomy house, fields, woods, pastures, libraries, a college at hand, older brothers and sisters, a father and mother of education and refinement,—such were the surroundings of Lowell's early life. The Vision of Sir Launfal  shows how well he learned the out-of-door world; his essays prove on every page how familiar he became with the world of books.

When the time for college had come, there were difficulties. The boy was ready to read every volume not required by the curriculum, and to keep every rule except those invented by the faculty. When graduation time drew near, his parents were in Rome. Some one hastened to tell them that their son had been rusticated to Concord for six weeks and had also been chosen class poet. "Oh, dear!" exclaimed the despairing father, "James promised me that he would quit writing poetry and go to work."

Fortunately for the lovers of good poetry, "James" did not keep his word. He struggled manfully to become a lawyer, but he could not help being a poet. Just ten years after graduating, he brought out in one short twelvemonth three significant poems. The first was The Vision of Sir Launfal, with its loving outburst of sympathy with nature. He knew well how the clod—

Groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.

Sir Launfal, too, climbs to a soul, for the poem is the story of a life. The second poem was A Fable for Critics. The fable proper is as dull as the preposterous rhymes and unthinkable puns of Lowell will permit; but its pithy criticisms of various authors have well endured the wear and tear of half a century. The third was The Biglow Papers. Here was an entirely new vein. Here the Yankee dialect—which is so often only a survival of the English of Shakespeare's day—became a literary language. Lowell could have easily put his thoughts into the polished sentences of the scholar; but the homely wording which he chose to employ gives them a certain everyday strength and vigor that a smoother phrasing would have weakened. When he writes,—

Ez fer war, I call it murder; There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that,—

he strikes a blow that has something of the keenness of the sword and the weight of the cudgel.

These three poems indicate the three directions in which Lowell did his best work; for he was poet, critic, and reformer,—sometimes all three in one. In such poems as The Present Crisis, that stern and solemn arraignment of his countrymen, there is as much of earnest protest as of poetry. So in The Dandelion, his "dear, common flower" reveals to him not only its own beauty, but the thought that every human heart is sacred.

Lowell's lyrics are only a small part of his work; for he took the place of Longfellow at Harvard, he edited the Atlantic and the North American Review; he wrote many magazine articles on literary and political subjects; he delivered addresses and poems, the noble Commemoration Ode ranking highest of all; and he was minister, first to Spain, and then to England. In his prose writings one is almost overwhelmed with the wideness of his knowledge, yet there is never a touch of pedantry. He always writes as if his readers were as much at home in the world of books as himself. The serious thought is ever brightened by gleams of humor, flashes of wit. When we take up one of his writings, it will "perchance turn out a song, perchance turn out a sermon." It may be full of strong and manly thought, and it may be all a-whirl with rollicking merriment; but whatever else it is, it will be sincere and honest and interesting. It is easier to label and classify the man who writes in but one manner, and it may be that he wins a surer fame; but we should be sorry indeed to miss either scholar, critic, wit, or reformer from the work of the poet Lowell.

§ 34. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809–1894

On the page for August in a copy of the old Massachusetts Register for 1809, the twenty-ninth day is marked, and at the bottom of the page is a foot-note, "Son b." In this laconic fashion was noted the advent of the physician-novelist-poet. He had also a chance of becoming a clergyman and a lawyer; for his father favored the one profession, and he himself gave a year's study to the other. It was while he was poring over Blackstone that the order was given to break up the old battleship Constitution. Then it was that he wrote Old Ironsides. The poem was printed on handbills. They were showered about the streets of Washington, and the Secretary of the Navy revoked his order. Holmes was twenty-one. The question of a profession was still unsettled. Finally he decided to be a physician; but, as he said, "The man or woman who has tasted type is sure to return to his old indulgence sooner or later." In Holmes's case, it was sooner, for he had hardly taken his degree before the publishers were advertising a volume of his poems. Here were My Aunt, The September Gale, and best of all, The Last Leaf, the verses that one reads with a smile on the lips and tears in the eyes.

The young physician's practice did not occupy much of his time, chiefly because he wrote poetry and made witty remarks. These were a delight to the well folk, but the sick people were a little afraid of a doctor whose interest and knowledge were not limited to pills and powders. Moreover, the man who lay ill of a fever could not forget that the brilliant young M. D. had said jauntily of his slender practice, "Even the smallest fevers thankfully received." Soon an invitation came to teach anatomy at Dartmouth; and, a few years later, to teach the same subject at Harvard. Holmes was successful in both places; for with all his love of literature, he had a genuine devotion to his profession. He wrote much on medical subjects, and three times his essays gained the famous Boylston prize, offered annually by Harvard College for the best dissertations on questions in medical science.

In 1857, the publishers, Phillips, Sampson and Co., decided to establish a new magazine. "Will you be its editor?" they asked Lowell; and he finally replied "Yes, if Dr. Holmes can be the first contributor to be engaged." Dr. Holmes became not only the first contributor, but he named the magazine The Atlantic. Some twenty-five years earlier he had written two papers called The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. He now continued them, beginning, "I was just going to say when I was interrupted." The scene is laid at the table of a boardinghouse. The Autocrat carries on a brilliant monologue, broken from time to time by a word from the lady who asks for original poetry for her album, from the theological student, the old gentleman, or the young man John; or by an anxious look on the face of the landlady, to whom some paradoxical speech of the Autocrat's suggests insanity and the loss of a boarder. Howells calls The Autocrat  a "dramatized essay;" but, whatever it is called, it will bear many readings and seem brighter and fresher at each one. Among the paragraphs of The Autocrat  and The Professor, which followed, a number of poems are interspersed. Three of them are The One-Hoss Shay, with its irrefutable logic; Contentment, with its modest—

I only wish a hut of stone (A very plain brown stone will do),—

and the exquisite lines of The Chambered Nautilus, with its superb appeal,—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!

Holmes was also a novelist; for he produced Elsie Venner  and two other works of fiction, all showing power of characterization, and all finding their chief interest in some study of the mysterious connection between mind and body. "Medicated novels," a friend mischievously called them, somewhat to the wrath of their author.

Nearly half of Holmes's poems were written for some special occasion,—some anniversary, or class reunion, or reception of a famous guest. At such times he was at his best; for the demand for occasional verse, which freezes most wielders of the pen, was to him a breath of inspiration.

Holmes's wit is ever fascinating, his pathos is ever sincere; but the charm that will perhaps be even more powerful to hold his readers is his delightful personality, which is revealed in every sentence. A book of his never stands alone, for the beloved Autocrat is ever peeping through it. His tender heart first feels the pathos that he reveals to us; his kindly spirit is behind every flash of wit, every sword-thrust of satire.