Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/52

 My happiest hours here are those which I spend alone in the forenoon, in my own room, with American books, which Mr. Downing lends me, and those passed in the evening with my host and hostess, sitting in the little darkened parlour with bookcases and busts around us, and the fire quietly glimmering in the large fire-place. There, by the evening lamp, Mr. Downing and his wife read to me by turns passages from their most esteemed American poets. The books I afterwards carry with me up into my chamber; in this way I have become acquainted with Bryant, Lowell, and Emerson, all of them representatives, in however dissimilar a manner, of the life of the New World. Bryant sings especially of its natural life, of its woods, its prairies, its peculiar natural scenes and phenomena—and his song breathes the quiet fresh inspiration of natural life. One feels the sap circulating through the growth of the tree, and the leaves shooting forth. His ‘Thenatopsis,’ or night-song, is a largely conceived although a short poem, in which the whole earth is regarded as a huge burial-place. Lowell is inspired by the great social questions of the new world, by the ideal life of the new world, which he calls forth into existence in his songs about freedom, about the bliss of a free and contented, noble life, and about the honour and beauty of labour. Again and again I beg Mr. Downing to read to me that beautiful little poem, “The Poor Man's Son,” which charms me by its melody, and by its impartial spirit—which is moral melody, and by that cheerful truth which it utters in the prospects for the poor man's son on the soil of the new world. Would that I could translate for you that beautiful poem, and that Mr. Downing could read it to you with his musical voice! His little wife, Caroline, prefers reading a short epic poem, called “Sir Launfall's Vision.” Lowell's ideas are purely moral, and a deep vein of religious feeling runs through them. One of his most