“Come like the benediction
    That follows after prayer.”

19-20.  Compare these lines with the ninth strophe of Wordsworth’s Ode.  The “inspiring sea” is Wordsworth’s “immortal sea.”  Both poets rejoice that some of the impulses and ideals of youth are kept alive in old age.

21.  Earth gets its price, etc.:  Notice the special meaning given to Earth here, in contrast with heaven in line 29.  Here again the thought is suggested by Wordsworth’s Ode, sixth strophe: 

    “Earth fills our lap with pleasures of her own.”

23.  Shrives:  The priest shrives one when he hears confession and grants absolution.

25.  Devil’s booth:  Expand this metaphor and unfold its application to every-day life.

27.  Cap and bells:  The conventional dress of the court fool, or jester, of the Middle Ages, and, after him, of the stage clown, consisted of the “fool’s cap” and suit of motley, ornamented with little tinkling bells.

28.  Bubbles we buy, etc.:  This line, as first published, had “earn” for “buy.”

31.  This line read originally:  “There is no price set,” etc.  The next line began with “And.”

32-95.  This rapturous passage descriptive of June is unquestionably the most familiar and most celebrated piece of nature poetry in our literature.  It is not only beautiful and inspiring in its felicitous phrasings of external nature, but it is especially significant as a true expression of the heart and soul of the poet himself.  It was always “the high-tide of the year” with Lowell in June, when his spirits were in fine accord with the universal joy of nature.  Wherever in his poetry he refers to spring and its associations, he always expresses the same ecstasy of delight.  The passage must be compared with the opening lines of Under the Willows (which he at first named A June Idyll): 

“June is the pearl of our New England year. 
Still a surprisal, though expected long,
Her coming startles.  Long she lies in wait,
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back,
Then, from some southern ambush in the sky,
With one great gush of blossom storms the world,” etc.

And in Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line the coming of spring is delightfully pictured: 

                       “Our Spring gets everything in tune
    An’ gives one leap from April into June,” etc.

In a letter written in June, 1867, Lowell says:  “There never is such a season, and that shows what a poet God is.  He says the same thing over to us so often and always new.  Here I’ve been reading the same poem for near half a century, and never had a notion what the buttercup in the third stanza meant before.”

It is worth noting that Lowell’s happy June corresponds to May in the English poets, as in Wordsworth’s Ode: