2S4 I^ l^'^D LAND. 



Seductive as the figure is, there seems to be some- 

 thing slightly forced in the poet's conceit that the 

 thrushes sing because they have been " pierced 

 through with June's delicious sting," unless it might 

 be justified on the principle that pain and trial often 

 enhance moral values. 



There is a beautiful stanza in the poem, " On 

 Planting a Tree at Inverara," — 



" Hither the busy birds shall flutter, 

 With the light timber for their nests, 

 And, pausing from their labor, utter 

 The morning sunshine in their breasts." 



With all his poet's soul Lowell loved the serene, 

 as when he congratulates himself on having left the 

 grating noise and stifling smoke of London, and 

 found in some sequestered haunt 



" Air and quiet too ; 

 Air filtered through the beech and oak ; 

 Quiet by nothing harsher broke 

 Than wood-dove's meditative coo.'' 



The word " meditative " is extremely felicitous, 

 but no more so than the hop-skip-and-spring of 

 the following lines from a Commencement dinner 

 poem : — 



" I 've a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech, 

 Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach, 

 Swerving this way and that, as the wave of the moment 

 Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim's foam on 't, 

 And leaving on memory's rim just a sense 

 Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense ; 

 Not poetry, — no, not quite that, but as good, 

 A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would." 



