“Upon an empty tortoise-shell
      He stretched some chords, and drew
    Music that made men’s bosoms swell
      Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew.”

HEBE

Lowell suggests in this dainty symbolical lyric his conception of the poet’s inspiration.  Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods of Olympus, in Greek mythology, and poured for them their nectar.  She was also the goddess of eternal youth.  By an extension of the symbolism she becomes goddess of the eternal joyousness of the poetic gift.  The “influence fleet” is the divine afflatus that fills the creative mind of the poet.  But Pegasus cannot be made to work in harness at will.  True inspiration comes only in choice moments.  Coy Hebe cannot be wooed violently.  Elsewhere he says of the muse: 

    “Harass her not; thy heat and stir
    But greater coyness breed in her.”

“Follow thy life,” he says, “be true to thy best self, then Hebe will bring her choicest ambrosia.”  That is—­

    “Make thyself rich, and then the Muse
    Shall court thy precious interviews,
    Shall take thy head upon her knee,
    And such enchantment lilt to thee,
    That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow
    From farthest stars to grass-blades low.”

TO THE DANDELION

Four stanzas were added to this poem after its first appearance, the sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth, but in the finally revised edition these were cut out, very likely because Lowell regarded them as too didactic.  Indeed the poem is complete and more artistic without them.

“Of Lowell’s earlier pieces,” says Stedman, “the one which shows the finest sense of the poetry of nature is that addressed To the Dandelion.  The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intuitively, and both thought and language are felicitous throughout.  This poem contains many of its author’s peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling.”

6.  Eldorado:  The land of gold, supposed to be somewhere in South America, which the European adventurers, especially the Spaniards, were constantly seeking in the sixteenth century.

27.  Sybaris:  An ancient Greek colony in southern Italy whose inhabitants were devoted to luxury and pleasure.

52-54.  Compare Sir Launfal.

MY LOVE

Lowell’s love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in this little poem.  He wrote it at about the time of their engagement.  While it is thus personal in its origin, it is universal in its expression of ideal womanhood, and so has a permanent interest and appeal.  In its strong simplicity and crystal purity of style, it is a little masterpiece.  Though filled with the passion of his new and beautiful love, its movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of one of Wordsworth’s best lyrics.