Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/268

 252 Lowell too overpowering for poetry except the brief expression of dominant feeling, as in the fine stanza written in October, i86i. God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep. But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit. And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap! In the poems written in the decade after the war there is a greater depth of thought and a maturity of feeling. The cause which he served broadened into the issue of the life of a national democracy; and he was called upon to sing its victories and the sacrifice by which they were won. The odes are so noble in sentiment and so splendid in parts that one cannot forbear to regret that they do not bring an even more perfect beauty to their great theme. The far-fetched figure, the halting measure, the forced rhythm occasionally intrude on verse where the feeling demands all the majesty of poetic mastery. And yet, national anniversaries have rarely if ever aroused such pseans as these in which New England moiirns her slain but passes on her heritage to the larger nation. Eloquence rises again and again to passionate melody, yet the feeling never loses the restraining gtiide of thought. Lowell never attains greater mastery than in the thoughtful analysis and noble beauty of the stanzas on Lincoln in the Commemoration Ode. The war and its aftermath left Lowell's poetic faculty some- what spent. Now and then a theme would arouse his imagina- tion to its earlier spontaneity. Chartres revisited summoned back the recollections of its first impressions and stirred him to search again the mysteries and confusions of faith. The death of Agassiz recalled the Cambridge of old and its brave spirits. But the visits of the Muse grew rarer, and Lowell came to find his most characteristic expression in the prose essay. As the close of the war relieved him from the pressing necessity of political writing, he naturally returned to literature. Mrs. Browning, in one of her letters to her husband, complains of the Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, which she has just been reading, that Lowell is saying over again the