The Dancing Bear by James Russell Lowell

Atta Troll is the bear hero of a satirical poem by German poet Heinrich Heine, published in 1847. He’s a performing bear who escapes and becomes a humorous symbol of revolutionary idealism. Lowell references him because the sight of a real street bear brings Heine’s fictional bear to mind — and that memory fuels the poem’s argument about the enduring power of poetry.

Lowell suggests that he wasn’t actively telling himself, "I’m going to remember Heine's poem and respond to it." Instead, the memory came to him spontaneously, partially formed and instinctual—a piece of Heine's world emerging without any prompting. That’s precisely his argument: poetry influences us beneath the surface of conscious thought.

It's a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet, consisting of 14 lines split into an 8-line octave and a 6-line sestet. The octave introduces the broad idea of poetic power, while the sestet provides concrete evidence through a street scene. This strict, traditional structure reflects the poem's argument: just as the sonnet's rules influence Lowell's writing, Heine's poem subtly influenced Lowell's approach.

It's affectionate, not condescending. Heine spent the last eight years of his life paralyzed and bedridden in what he referred to as his "mattress grave" in Paris, where he died in 1856. Lowell's use of "poor" recognizes that suffering while also marveling at the fact that someone who went through all that still had the influence to tip a bear-handler in America decades later.

Elf-land is Lowell's term for the imaginative realm that poetry occupies—a space that's not fully real but also not completely unreal. It draws from the tradition of referring to the fairy realm or the world of art as a distinct, enchanted territory. When we say poets "stretch their sway" beyond even Elf-land, it suggests their influence seeps out of the realm of imagination and into real life.

Exactly. Lowell's opening lines illustrate that a poem's most profound impacts often occur beyond the poet's original intentions. Heine didn't compose Atta Troll to inspire a stranger to tip a bear-handler in America years after he passed away — but that's exactly what happened. The poem honors this uncontrollable, unpredictable influence as poetry's greatest triumph.

A bear-ward (sometimes spelled bearward) is the person who handles a performing bear, guiding the animal through the streets and collecting money from onlookers. This term is an old English word that was somewhat outdated even during Lowell's era, lending a subtly literary touch that suits a poem about imagination.

Lowell was both a poet and a literary critic, and he often stated that great writing carries moral and social weight — it goes beyond mere entertainment to influence how people feel and behave. This sonnet serves as a small example of that idea: a genuine coin placed into a real hand because of a poem. For Lowell, this isn’t trivial; it’s the essence of literature.