n,--

'Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!'

a strain which shows that when Lowell determinedly sets his mouth to
the trumpet, the blast is that of Roncesvalles."

W.C. Brownell, the latest critic of Lowell's poetry, says of this
poem: "The ode is too long, its evolution is defective, it contains
verbiage, it preaches. But passages of it--the most famous having
characteristically been interpolated after its delivery--are equal to
anything of the kind. The temptation to quote from it is hard to
withstand. It is the cap-sheaf of Lowell's achievement." In this ode
"he reaches, if he does not throughout maintain, his own
'clear-ethered height' and his verse has the elevation of ecstasy and
the splendor of the sublime."

The versification of this poem should be studied with some
particularity. Of the forms of lyric expression the ode is the most
elaborate and dignified. It is adapted only to lofty themes and
stately occasions. Great liberty is allowed in the choice and
arrangement of its meter, rhymes, and stanzaic forms, that its varied
form and movement may follow the changing phases of the sentiment and
passion called forth by the theme. Lowell has given us an account of
his own consideration of this matter. "My problem," he says, "was to
contrive a measure which should not be tedious by uniformity, which
should vary with varying moods, in which the transitions (including
those of the voice) should be managed without jar. I at first thought
of mixed rhymed and blank verses of unequal measures, like those in
the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_, which are in the main masterly. Of
course, Milton deliberately departed from that stricter form of Greek
chorus to which it was bound quite as much (I suspect) by the law of
its musical accompaniment as by any sense of symmetry. I wrote some
stanzas of the _Commemoration Ode_ on this theory at first, leaving
some verses without a rhyme to match. But my ear was better pleased
when the rhyme, coming at a longer interval, as a far-off echo rather
than instant reverberation, produced the same effect almost, and yet
was gratified by unexpectedly recalling an association and faint
reminiscence of consonance."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horace E. Scudder: _James Russell Lowell: A Biography_. 2 vols. The
standard biography.

Ferris Greenslet: _James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work_. The
latest biography (1905) and very satisfactory.

Francis H. Underwood: _James Ru