UNDER THE WILLOWS by James Russell Lowell: Summary, Meaning & Analysis

Frank-hearted hostess of the field and wood, Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree, 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. A week ago the sparrow was divine; The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 10 From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet come; But now, oh rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the West Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, The bobolink has come, and, like the soul Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what Save _June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June_. 20 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date, And, with her handful of anemones, Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, The season need but turn his hour-glass round, And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms, Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front 30 With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books, While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect, Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, I take my May down from the happy shelf Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, Waiting my choice to open with full breast, And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. 40 July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields, Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge, And every eve cheats us with show of clouds That braze the horizon's western rim, or hang Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping idly, Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, Conjectured half, and half descried afar, Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. But June is full of invitations sweet, 50 Forth from the chimney's yawn and thrice-read tomes To leisurely delights and sauntering thoughts That brook no ceiling narrower than the blue. The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane Brushes, then listens, _Will he come?_ The bee, All dusty as a miller, takes his toll Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a day To sun me and do nothing! Nay, I think Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes The student's wiser business; the brain 60 That forages all climes to line its cells, Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish, Will not distil the juices it has sucked To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, Except for him who hath the secret learned To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The winds into his pulses. Hush! 'tis he! My oriole, my glance of summer fire, Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, Twitches the packthread I had lightly wound 70 About the bough to help his housekeeping,-- Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck, Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, Divines the providence that hides and helps. _Heave, ho! Heave, ho!_ he whistles as the twine Slackens its hold; _once more, now!_ and a flash Lightens across the sunlight to the elm Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails 80 My loosened thought with it along the air, And I must follow, would I ever find The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life. I care not how men trace their ancestry, To ape or Adam: let them please their whim; But I in June am midway to believe A tree among my far progenitors, Such sympathy is mine with all the race, Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet There is between us. Surely there are times 90 When they consent to own me of their kin, And condescend to me, and call me cousin, Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time, Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills Moving the lips, though fruitless of all words. And I have many a lifelong leafy friend, Never estranged nor careful of my soul, That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes me Within his tent as if I were a bird, Or other free companion of the earth, 100 Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men. Among them one, an ancient willow, spreads Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all round His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, In outline like enormous beaker, fit For hand of Jotun, where mid snow and mist He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, I know not by what grace,--for in the blood Of our New World subduers lingers yet Hereditary feud with trees, they being 110 (They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes,-- Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing, Stiffened in coils and runnels down the bank. The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers And glints his steely aglets in the sun, Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal 120 Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike Lurks balanced 'neath the lily-pads, and whirl A rood of silver bellies to the day. Alas! no acorn from the British oak 'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those rings Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed, Was ever planted here! No darnel fancy Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields; With horn and hoof the good old Devil came, 130 The witch's broomstick was not contraband, But all that superstition had of fair, Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. And if there be who nurse unholy faiths, Fearing their god as if he were a wolf That snuffed round every home and was not seen, There should be some to watch and keep alive All beautiful beliefs. And such was that,-- By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 140 Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared Confess a mortal name,--that faith which gave A Hamadryed to each tree; and I Will hold it true that in this willow dwells The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, Of ancient Hospitality, long since, With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of doors. In June 'tis good to lie beneath a tree While the blithe season comforts every sense, 150 Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart, Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest. There muse I of old times, old hopes, old friends,-- Old friends! The writing of those words has borne My fancy backward to the gracious past, The generous past, when all was possible. For all was then untried; the years between 160 Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none Wiser than this,--to spend in all things else, But of old friends to be most miserly. Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring, As to an oak, and precious more and more, Without deservingness or help of ours, They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year, Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade, Sacred to me the lichens on the bark, Which Nature's milliners would scrape away; 170 Most dear and sacred every withered limb! 'Tis good to set them early, for our faith Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come, Few plant, but water dead ones with vain tears. This willow is as old to me as life; And under it full often have I stretched, Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive, And gathering virtue in at every pore Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought 180 Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost. Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Become a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below; Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, Dilated in the broad blue over all. I was the wind that dappled the lush grass, The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, 190 The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. Was I then truly all that I beheld? Or is this stream of being but a glass Where the mind sees its visionary self, As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, Across the river's hollow heaven below His picture flits,--another, yet the same? But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, 200 Doth in opacous cloud precipitate The consciousness that seemed but now dissolved Into an essence rarer than its own. And I am narrowed to myself once more. For here not long is solitude secure, Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell. Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, Himself his large estate and only charge, To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely unemployed. 220 Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things; He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, By right of birth exonerate from toil, Who levies rent from us his tenants all, And serves the state by merely being. Here The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair,-- A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 230 Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, And many men and manners he hath seen, Not without fruit of solitary thought. He, as the habit is of lonely men,-- Unused to try the temper of their mind In fence with others,--positive and shy, Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 240 Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, In motion set obsequious to his wheel, And in its quality not much unlike. Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors. The children, they who are the only rich, Creating for the moment, and possessing Whate'er they choose to feign,--for still with them Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, Strewing their lives with cheap material For wingèd horses and Aladdin's lamps, 250 Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane To dead leaves disenchanted,--long ago Between the branches of the tree fixed seats, Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at _What's my thought like?_ while the boys, With whom the age chivalric ever bides, Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes, Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs, Or, from the willow's armory equipped 260 With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword, Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt 'Gainst eager British storming from below, And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill. Here, too, the men that mend our village ways, Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded slate, Their nooning take; much noisy talk they spend On horses and their ills; and, as John Bull Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend, So these make boast of intimacies long 270 With famous teams, and add large estimates, By competition swelled from mouth to mouth. Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased To have his legend overbid, retorts: 'You take and stretch truck-horses in a string From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know, Not heavy neither, they could never draw,-- Ensign's long bow!' Then laughter loud and long. So they in their leaf-shadowed microcosm Image the larger world; for wheresoe'er 280 Ten men are gathered, the observant eye Will find mankind in little, as the stars Glide up and set, and all the heavens revolve In the small welkin of a drop of dew. I love to enter pleasure by a postern, Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob; To find my theatres in roadside nooks, Where men are actors, and suspect it not; Where Nature all unconscious works her will, And every passion moves with easy gait, 290 Unhampered by the buskin or the train. Hating the crowd, where we gregarious men Lead lonely lives, I love society, Nor seldom find the best with simple souls Unswerved by culture from their native bent, The ground we meet on being primal man, And nearer the deep bases of our lives. But oh, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul, Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend, Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 300 That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff To such divinity that soul and sense, Once more commingled in their source, are lost,-- Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world? Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, I am content, nor need to blush; I take My little gift of being clean from God, Not haggling for a better, holding it Good as was ever any in the world, 310 My days as good and full of miracle. I pluck my nutriment from any bush, Finding out poison as the first men did By tasting and then suffering, if I must. Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; But I have known when winter barberries Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise Of savor whose mere harshness seemed divine. Oh, benediction of the higher mood 320 And human-kindness of the lower! for both I will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the ale-house bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; But though our lives, moving in one dull round Of repetition infinite, become 330 Stale as a newspaper once read, and though History herself, seen in her workshop, seem To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles,-- Panes that enchant the light of common day With colors costly as the blood of kings, Till with ideal hues it edge our thought,-- Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, And man the best of nature, there shall be 340 Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, Some freshness, some unused material For wonder and for song. I lose myself In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, _This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose_, But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, For every by-path leads me to my love. God's passionless reformers, influences, That purify and heal and are not seen, Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 350 Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? I know that sunshine, through whatever rift, How shaped it matters not, upon my walls Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source, And, like its antitype, the ray divine, However finding entrance, perfect still, Repeats the image unimpaired of God. We, who by shipwreck only find the shores Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first; Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 360 That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps, The shock and sustenance of solid earth; Inland afar we see what temples gleam Through immemorial stems of sacred groves, And we conjecture shining shapes therein; Yet for a space we love to wander here Among the shells and seaweed of the beach. So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest, Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 370 That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling cheer And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes Look once and look no more, with southward curve Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold; From blossom-clouded orchards, far away The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed 380 With multitudinous pulse of light and shade Against the bases of the southern hills, While here and there a drowsy island rick Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridge Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat; Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, All life washed clean in this high tide of June.

Public domain · sourced from Project Gutenberg