Credo: Latin, I believe: the first word in the Latin version of
James Russell Lowell
the Apostles' Creed, hence used for _creed_.
_THE COURTIN'_
This poem first appeared as "a short fragment of a pastoral," in the
introduction to the First Series of the _Biglow Papers_. It is said to
have been composed merely to fill a blank page, but its popularity was
so great that Lowell expanded it to twice its original length, and
finally printed it as a kind of introduction to the Second Series of
the _Biglow Papers_. It first appeared, however, in its expanded form
in a charitable publication, _Autograph Leaves of Our Country's
Authors_, reproduced in facsimile from the original manuscript.
"This bucolic idyl," says Stedman, "is without a counterpart; no
richer juice can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee soil."
Greenslet thinks that this poem is "perhaps the most nearly perfect of
his poems."