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"O strange New World, thet yit wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung,
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby bed
Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread,
An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains,
Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains,
Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain
With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane,

Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events
To pitch new States ez Old-World men pitch tents,
Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's plan
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man,
An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin-

The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay
In fearful haste thy murdered corse away."

In spite of parlor-anarchists, hyphenates, Bolshevists, and other traitors these last lines may still be read with confident assurance.

To-day, better than we could a few years ago, we understand the tender pathos of these lines in which the love of winter beauty is overshadowed with an irrepressible longing for the dear, old, far-off days of peace:

"Where's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number,

An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white,

Walk the col' starlight into summer;
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell

Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer
Than the last smile thet strives to tell

O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.

"Snowflakes come whisperin' on the pane,
The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant,
But I can't hark to wut they're say'n',
With Grant or Sherman ollers present;

"Or

up the slippery knob I strain

An' see a hundred hills like islan's
Lift their blue woods in broken chain
Out o' the sea o' snowy silence;
The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth,
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin',
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth
Of empty places set me thinkin'."

It is not minimizing Lowell to say that he is by no means one of the great figures in the world's literature. But he has made contributions to our American letters without which we would be immeasurably poorer. It can also be said of him that no other writer has written in dialect lines so pathetically beautiful and enchantingly melodious.

But some of the pithiest lines in the two series are found detached from any other outstanding thought or expression. Consequently, many of them are all but lost to a very large proportion of modern readers. Yet these scintillating epigrams are replete with suggestions and homely common sense. Their name is legion, and the examples given are typical rather than inclusive:

"Democ'acy gives every man

The right to be his own oppressor."

"My gran❜ther's rule was safer'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy-onless ye know."

"(Why I'd give more for one bobolink

Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink.)"

"Now don't go off half-cock; folks never gains By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains."

"It's no use buildin' wut's a-goin to fall."

Here are two lines which each new generation needs to remember:

"Young folks are smart, but all ain't good thet's new; I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin' tu."

Few other writers could have expressed the following thought without falling into banality or irreverence:

"An' you've gut to git up airly

Ef you want to take in God."

In one of his satiric congressional speeches two thoughts highly worthy of quotation are sententiously expressed:

"But The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail,

Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without fail,

While Fac's the old stage thet gits sloughed in the ruts, An' hez to allow for your darned efs an' buts,

An' folks don't want Fourth o' July t' interfere
With the business consarns o' the rest o' the year,
No more 'n they want Sunday to pry an' to peek
Into wut they are doin' the rest o' the week."

It would be hard to find an apter comment
upon certain phases of the Puritan character:
"Pleasure does make us Yankees kind o' winch,
Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch;
But yit we du contrive to worry thru,

Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing's to du,
An kerry a hollerday, ef we set out,

Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt."

Hume cynically remarked that the Puritans hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the people. This falsehood contained just enough truth to make it effective. Lowell's lines express the truth of the aphorism of the Scottish historian, but are without that which made Hume's witticism palpably unjust. More than once has the New England satirist in this fashion packed whole chapters of social psychology into a few pregnant sentences.

Another example of this is found in the following lines from which no real student of humanity will think of dissenting:

"An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way
Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger;

Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay

While book-froth seems to wet your hunger;

For puttin' in a downright lick

'twixt Humbug's eyes ther's few can metch it, An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick

Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet."

In speaking of the Biglow Papers Charles Sumner said, "It's a pity that they are not written in the English language." Sumner represented that group of would-be superintellectuals to whom writing in dialect is the committing of a sin against the most sacred literary conventionalities. Lowell's use of the Yankee dialect in the Biglow Papers enhanced their literary value because it gave them a closer contact with life. They are rooted in the very soil of New England. They give expression to the philosophy of an unHosea Biglow is not a type but an individual. He has all of Lowell's own brilliancy and penetration. This was not true of every Yankee farmer, but it was true of some. The fact that Lowell had the dramatic power to express himself through such a rugged personality is not the least of the evidences of his title to a literary preeminence. This Harvard professor and exemplar of a rich cosmopolitan culture never lost his contact with the common things of life.

common common man.

Lowell, like most of the towering figures of literature, again and again stressed certain

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