th for all mankind!
The helm from her bold front she doth unbind,
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,
And bids her navies hold their thunders in. 330
No challenge sends she to the elder world,
That looked askance and hated; a light scorn
Plays on her mouth, as round her mighty knees
She calls her children back, and waits the morn
Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas." 335

XI

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! 340
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips,
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 345
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? 350
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!

NOTES

_THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL_

1. The Musing organist: There is a peculiar felicity in this musical
introduction. The poem is like an improvisation, and was indeed
composed much as a musician improvises, with swift grasp of the subtle
suggestions of musical tones. It is a dream, an elaborate and somewhat
tangled metaphor, full of hidden meaning for the accordant mind, and
the poet appropriately gives it a setting of music, the most symbolic
of all the arts. It is an allegory, like any one of the adventures in
the _Fairie Queen_, and from the very beginning the reader must be
alive to the symbolic meaning, upon which Lowell, unlike Spenser,
places chief emphasis, rather than upon the narrative. Compare the
similar musical device in Browning's _Abt Vogler_ and Adelaide
Proctor's _Lost Chord_.

6. Theme: The theme, subject, or underlying thought of the poem is
expressed in line 12 below:

"We Sinais climb and know it not;"

or more comprehensively in the group of four lines of which this is
the concl