Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/239

Rh And elsewhere we are reminded thatThe true poet is thus an evangelist of good things to come—an apostle of the kingdom of heaven as at hand, nay, as already set up—a revealer of "golden glimpses of To Be"—a larkwhile the untrue, unfaithful poet is but a noisome bird of night,The Past is nehushtan to very many in America, who feel in its shadow a presence not solemn or softening, but chilly and blighting, and who therefore assume the attitude of iconoclasts toward its eikon basilikè; of such is Mr. Lowell—susceptible as he may be to the poetry of the past:Among the special abuses of the Present, as fatal legacies of the Past, which he assails, naturally the "peculiar institution" occupies a front rank. Slavery he denounces as eagerly as any Garrison, or Stowe, or Whittier can do: sometimes with bitter sarcasm, as in the stanzas entitled "An Interview with Miles Standish"—sometimes with burning indignation,. as in those "On the Capture of certain fugitive Slaves near Washington," a generous outburst of impassioned invective and prophetic remonstrance,—or with contemptuous aversion, as in the eulogy on John G. Palfrey,—or with the quietness that comes of faith in better times, as in the sonnet which declares "slave" to be "no word of deathless lineage sprung," but one in protest against which