e scene. There was a hushed silence while Lowell spoke, and when he
uttered the last grand words of his ode, every heart was full, and the
old wounds bled afresh, for hardly one of that vast throng had escaped
the badge of mourning, for a son, or brother, or father, lost in that
war.

"Bow down, dear land, for thou hast found release!
Thy God, in these distempered days,
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise!
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.

O Beautiful! My Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips,
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare.

What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare.

"The Cathedral," dedicated most felicitously to the late James T.
Fields, the author publisher, written in 1869, was published early in
the following year in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and immediately won the
applause of the more thoughtful reader. It is a poem of great
grandeur, suggestive in the highest degree and rich in description and
literary finish. Three memorial odes, one read at the one hundredth
anniversary of the fight at Concord Bridge, one under the old elm, and
one for the Fourth of July, 1876, followed. The Concord ode appears to
be the more striking and brilliant of the three, but all are
satisfactory specimens, measured by the standard which governs the
lyric.

"Heartsease and Rue," is the graceful title of Mr. Lowell's last
volume of verse. A good many of his personal poems are included in the
collection, such as his charming epistle to George William Curtis, the
elegant author of "Prue and I," one of the sweetest books ever
written, inscribed to Mrs. Henry W. Longfellow, in memory of the happy
hours at our castles in Spain; the magnificent apostrophe to Agassiz;
the birthday offering to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; the lines to
Whittier on his seventy-fifth birthday; the verses