When Nature and we were peers,

And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years?

30

Have we not from the earth drawn juices
Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel, all I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,

A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,

As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,

This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak it and show it,

40

50

THE electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill

Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes,

1 See Lowell's letters to Professor Charles Eliot Norton, February 2, and February 26, 1874, especially the second letter. Lowell was in Florence when Agassiz died. His death,' he says, 'came home to me in a singular way, growing into my consciousness from day to day as if it were a graft new-set, that by degrees became part of my own wood and drew a greater share of my sap than belonged to it, as grafts sometimes will.' (Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, vol. ii, pp. 115116.) See also the references in note on p. 211.

And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root

Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben,

For he was masculine from head to heel. Nay, let himself stand undiminished by With those clear parts of him that will not die.

Himself from out the recent dark I claim To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; 81

To show himself, as still I seem to see,
A mortal, built upon the antique plan,
Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran,
And taking life as simply as a tree !
To claim my foiled good-by let him ap-

pear,

Large-limbed and human as I saw him

near,

Loosed from the stiffening uniform of fame:

And let me treat him largely: I should fear (If with too prying lens I chanced to err, Mistaking catalogue for character),

His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. Nor would I scant him with judicial breath

And turn mere critic in an epitaph;

I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death,

And would but memorize the shining half Of his large nature that was turned to me: Fain had I joined with those that honored

him