speed, while its metrical defects and its obscurities in expression or design are no less significant of haste. Of one thing we may feel sure: The haste that drove the poem to completion was not so much the result of a desire to have it done by a certain time, as the impatience that springs from an author's complete absorption in his subject that will give him no rest till his ideas have obtained expression.

The poem is peculiar in purpose, form, and structure. The story tells of the young knight who, before setting out on his quest, prays for a vision to guide him. The vision is granted. In it, he sees himself riding out, young, hopeful, exultant in the joy of summer. At the gate of his castle a leper asks an alms. In disgust the young knight tosses him a piece of gold. The leper refuses the gift, for it is offered in the wrong spirit. Then his dream changes. He sees himself, long years after, returning in poverty and old age, in the dead of winter, to a castle no longer his. He is driven from its doors, and, as he sits in the cold, the leper appears once more. Sir Launfal has now no gold to give, but he shares with the beg gar his single crust and gives him water from his wooden bowl. Then the beggar casts off his disguise; he is transformed into the Christ, who tells Sir Launfal that this is the true spirit of charity. It is not what we give. but what we share, that is welcome to

the needy and of blessing to ourselves. The young knight awakens. He hangs up his armor and devotes himself to charity and hospitality. He has learned his lesson.

The structure of the poem is somewhat faulty. The Prelude has, it is true, some connection with Part First. Youth and summer are related, so are summer and warmth of heart. But Lowell seems to confound the two symbolisms. Summer is at once pride of youth that mistakes scornful bounty for true charity and the warmth of love that tries in vain to invade the castle. The rhapsody over June, notwithstanding its rare beauty, is disproportionally prominent. In the Second Part the description of winter, intended to intensify helplessness and humiliation and impres sions of old age, is broken into by the description of the little brook, a description which dwells not on the desolation of winter, but on its joy and beauty.

In unity of structure, the oneness that should exist in the perfect poem, The Vision of Sir Launfal is deficient. But this defect is merely incidental. The beauties of the poem, however unrelated, are none the less admirable and inspiring. For while The Vision of Sir Launfal is a story, a story with a moral, we must not forget that it is above all a poem. It is a poem not merely because it is in verse, that is, in rhyme and metre. Advertisements in street

cars are often in rhyme and metre, but these are not poetry. The Vision of Sir Launfal is a poem not on account of its form but on account of its spirit. The writer feels intensely the wonder of what he is describing and tries to make his reader feel it. The mere story he could have told in prose. What he is trying to tell is the magic of the summer world, the cold, crystal beauty of winter, the sunlight that God gives freely to us all, the mystery of human sympathy that God would have us give and that we withhold, all these marvels and many more he feels intensely. And when one feels a thing so deeply that mere words seem too bare to express it, when to these he must add the music of metre and the link of rhyme, then he has left the region of prose and risen into poetry.

The story is a moral story, and the moral is important; for the young Lowell was, as you have seen, a man who took moral lessons deeply. There was in him a mystic vein, a half belief in the direct utter ance of God to men, something that made him akin to the young knight that asks this vision from God for his guidance. "Not what we give, but what we share," — not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it, - that is what tells in our own hearts in the eye of Heaven. That is the central lesson, and this Lowell made his own motto.

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A great beauty of the poem lies in the setting, the

perfect description of a perfect day in June, and in that contrasted description of the little brook in winter. It is these, perhaps, more than anything else, that give the poem its greatness. We go to poetry less for teaching than for awakening. We want the poet to interpret to us the message of the skies, of the winds, of the "druid woods," of the eternal sea. And of his moral we get not a cold theological theory of life, but a warm stirring impulse to noble action.

In studying such a poem, read it aloud. Read it slowly, letting it, so to speak, dissolve in the mind, till each word has given up its lesson.

Let your imagination have free wing. Do not be afraid of enthusiasm. Let each picture call up associated recollections from your own storehouse of memory. Try to enjoy, to find the way to enjoyment. For poetry read without pleasure is profitless.

As for the other poems included with the Vision, these are not so much intended for study in themselves as for reading in connection with the chief poem studied. For in them one finds reflected other moods of the poet, or often the same moods, even the same pictures in a different setting. And, by reading them all, by laying one beside another, you will feel emerging from them at last the man himself, a new friend, stimulating, inspiring, speaking- though men call him dead—to his living friends in words of noble and uplifting significance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lowell's Complete Works are published by Houghta, Mifflin, and Company. The poems and prose works can be obtained separately.

The Vision of Sir Launfal was first published in 1848. A number of editions were struck from the first plates, one appearing as late as 1875. In the collection of his poems appearing in 1857, Lowell made a number of alterations. This text gives, virtually, the final form of the poem, and is followed in this edition. It is followed also in the case of the other poems included, except in a few that appeared only in the earlier collections. Attention is called in the notes to significant variations of text in the vari ous editions.

Biographies of Lowell have been written by E. E. Brown and by F. H. Underwood. James Russell Lowell, an Address by G. W. Curtis, will be found suggestive. Edward Everett Hale's James Russell Lowell and His Friends is full of interesting informa tion, and has been drawn on considerably in the introduction of this volume. Lowell's Letters, edited by C. E. Norton, also afford much material concerning the poet's life, surroundings, and character.

In the periodicals will be found articles almost innumerable. The teacher will do well to instruct the