Bliss it: A rather violent use of the word, not recognized by
the dictionaries, but nevertheless felicitous.
_AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE_
Lowell's love of Elmwood and its surroundings finds expression
everywhere in his writings, both prose and verse, but nowhere in a
more direct, personal manner than in this poem. He was not yet thirty
when the poem was written, and Cambridge could still be called a
"village," but the familiar scenes already had their retrospective
charms, which increased with the passing years. Later in life he again
celebrated his affection for this home environment in _Under the
Willows._
"There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and
more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole,
so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling
verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young
man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not
so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of
beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with beauty in the
soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding through the marshes, the
distant sound of the ploughman, the near chatter of the chipmunk, the
individual trees, each living its own life, the march of the seasons
flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of
human life associated with his own experience, the hurried, survey of
his village years--all these pictures float before his vision; and
then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of the singer's
voice with tears, there wells up the thought of the little life which
held as in one precious drop the love and faith of his heart."