on of Sir
Launfal" in 1845, "A Fable for Critics" in 1848, "The Biglow
Papers" in 1848, and a second series in 1867, "Under the
Willows" in 1868, "The Cathedral" in 1869; among his
best-known prose works, "Conversations on Some of the Old
Poets" published in 1845, "Fireside Travels" in 1864, "Among
My Books" in 1870 and 1876, "My Study Windows" in 1871; his
"Letters" edited by Charles Eliot Norton, published in 1893.

I

THE POET AS PROPHET[35]

Poets are the forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world.
Driven by their fine nature to search into and reverently contemplate
the universal laws of the soul, they find some fragment of the broken
tables of God's law, and interpret it, half-conscious of its mighty
import. While philosophers are wrangling, and politicians playing at
snapdragon with, the destinies of millions, the poet, in the silent
deeps of his soul, listens to those mysterious pulses which, from one
central heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins of the
universe, and utters truths to be sneered at, perchance, by
contemporaries, but which become religion to posterity. Not unwisely
ordered is that eternal destiny which renders the seer despised of
men, since thereby he is but the more surely taught to lay his head
meekly upon the mother-breast of Nature, and harken to the musical
soft beating of her bounteous heart.

[Footnote 35: From an essay contributed to _The Pioneer_ in 1843.
Lowell was the founder and editor of _The Pioneer_, Robert Carter
being his associate. The magazine lived only three months. Charles
Eliot Norton, the editor of Lowell's "Letters," says it "left its
projectors burdened with a considerable debt." "I am deeply in debt,"
wrote Lowell afterward, when hesitating to undertake a journey, "and
feel a twinge for every cent I spend."]

That Poesy, save as she can soar nearer to the blissful throne of the
Supreme Beauty, is of no more use than all other beautiful things are,
we are fain to grant. That she does not add to the outward wealth of
the body, and that she is only so much more excellent than any bodily
gift as spirit is more excellent than matter, we must also yield. But,
inasmuch as all beautiful things are direct messages and revelations
of himself, given us by our Father, and as Poesy is the searcher out
and interpreter of all these, tracing by her inborn sympathy the
invisible nerves which bind them harmoniou