d immediate effect of the poem Mr. Greenslet says:
"Some in the audience were thrilled and shaken by it, as Lowell
himself was shaken in its delivery, yet he seems to have felt with
some reason that it was not a complete and immediate success. Nor is
this cause for wonder. The passion of the poem was too ideal, its
woven harmonies too subtle to be readily communicated to so large an
audience, mastered and mellowed though it was by a single deep mood.
Nor was Lowell's elocution quite that of the deep-mouthed odist
capable of interpreting such organ tones of verse. But no sooner was
the poem published, with the matchless Lincoln strophe inserted, than
its greatness and nobility were manifest."

The circumstances connected with the writing of the ode have been
described by Lowell in his private letters. It appears that he was
reluctant to undertake the task, and for several weeks his mind
utterly refused to respond to the high duty put upon it. At last the
sublime thought came to him upon the swift wings of inspiration. "The
ode itself," he says, "was an improvisation. Two days before the
commemoration I had told my friend Child that it was impossible--that
I was dull as a door-mat. But the next day something gave me a jog,
and the whole thing came out of me with a rush. I sat up all night
writing it out clear, and took it on the morning of the day to Child."
In another letter he says: "The poem was written with a vehement
speed, which I thought I had lost in the skirts of my professor's
gown. Till within two days of the celebration I was hopelessly dumb,
and then it all came with a rush, literally making me lean (mi fece
magro), and so nervous that I was weeks in getting over it." In a note
in Scudder's biography of Lowell (Vol. II., p. 65), it is stated upon
the authority of Mrs. Lowell that the poem was begun at ten o'clock
the night before the commemoration day, and finished at four o'clock
in the morning. "She opened her eyes to see him standing haggard,
actually wasted by the stress of labor and the excitement which had
carried him through a poem full of passion and fire, of five hundred
and twenty-three lines, in the space of six hours."

Critical estimates are essentially in accord as to the deep
significance and permanent poetic worth of this poem. Greenslet, the
latest biographer of Lowell, says that the ode, "if not his most
perfect, is surely his noblest and most splendid work," and adds:
"Until the dream of