120.  Baael’s stone obscene:  Human sacrifices were offered on the altars of Baael. (Jeremiah xix, 5.)

147-205.  This strophe was not in the ode as delivered, but was written immediately after the occasion, and included in the published poem.  “It is so completely imbedded in the structure of the ode,” says Scudder, “that it is difficult to think of it as an afterthought.  It is easy to perceive that while the glow of composition and of recitation was still upon him, Lowell suddenly conceived this splendid illustration, and indeed climax of the utterance, of the Ideal which is so impressive in the fifth stanza....  Into these threescore lines Lowell has poured a conception of Lincoln, which may justly be said to be to-day the accepted idea which Americans hold of their great President.  It was the final expression of the judgment which had slowly been forming in Lowell’s own mind.”

In a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, Lowell says:  “The passage about Lincoln was not in the ode as originally recited, but added immediately after.  More than eighteen months before, however, I had written about Lincoln in the North American Review—­an article that pleased him.  I did divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin caste.”

It is a singular fact that the other great New England poets, Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, had almost nothing to say about Lincoln.

150.  Wept with the passion, etc.:  An article in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1885, began with this passage:  “The funeral procession of the late President of the United States has passed through the land from Washington to his final resting-place in the heart of the prairies.  Along the line of more than fifteen hundred miles his remains were borne, as it were, through continued lines of the people; and the number of mourners and the sincerity and unanimity of grief was such as never before attended the obsequies of a human being; so that the terrible catastrophe of his end hardly struck more awe than the majestic sorrow of the people.”

170.  Outward grace is dust:  An allusion to Lincoln’s awkward and rather unkempt outward appearance.

173.  Supple-tempered will:  One of the most pronounced traits of Lincoln’s character was his kindly, almost femininely gentle and sympathetic spirit.  With this, however, was combined a determination of steel.

175-178.  Nothing of Europe here:  There was nothing of Europe in him, or, if anything, it was of Europe in her early ages of freedom before there was any distinction of slave and master, groveling Russian Serf and noble Lord or Peer.

180.  One of Plutarch’s men:  The distinguished men of Greece and Rome whom Plutarch immortalized in his Lives are accepted as types of human greatness.

182.  Innative:  Inborn, natural.

187.  He knew to bide his time:  He knew how to bide his time, as in Milton’s Lycidas, “He knew himself to sing.”  Recall illustrations of Lincoln’s wonderful patience and faith.