The Tree Friends of James Russell Lowell 



Effey L. Riley 

 Rochester, N. Y. 



James Russell Lowell had many friends. He began making 

 friends when a very little boy and he always kept his friends. 

 In college, later when he began his writing, as a professor, editor, 

 and diplomat, he had many friends. Among them were the 

 best men of the times in America and in Europe. His writing 

 brought him in contact with such men as Poe, Longfellow, Nathan 

 Hale, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story and Dr. Parsons. As a scholar 

 he had many friends in England and on the continent, where the 

 best universities paid him their highest honors. 



To-day the writings of all great men are studied and searched 

 through in the most careful manner to find out all the intimate 

 things concerning the lives of the authors. In the reading of 

 Lowell's poems one comes quite unconsciously to feel his love of 

 nature and to see her with his eyes. In spite of the fact that 

 Lowell was a man of the world with a rich full life we feel that he 

 is at his best when writing of those things he knew best in nature. 

 His whole writing is enriched more by its homely New England 

 background than by all his European polish. It is in the familiar 

 New England woods that Lowell found his best friends. He 

 writes of the trees 



"These were my earliest friends and latest too" 



He calls to them 



"O never unsympathizing trees." 



Or he says he is — 



"A willing convert of the trees." 



He knew his trees too, as one can only know those things that are 



best loved. 



"No distant tree but by his shape was known, 

 Or, near at hand by leaf or bark alone." 



One of Lowell's earliest poems, which he inscribed to his mother 



was about the old chestnut tree that stood beside his home at 



Elm wood, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under this tree he played 



when a boy, and one feels that he is refering to it again in his 



"To the Dandelion." 



"The sight of trees calls back the robins song 

 Who, from the dark old tree 

 Beside the door, sang clearly all day long." 



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