"
He is America's greatest humorist in verse. _The Biglow Papers_ and _A
Fable for Critics_ are ample justification for such an estimate.
As Lowell grew older, his poetry, dominated too much by his acute
intellect, became more and more abstract. In _Under the Old Elm_, for
example, he speaks of Washington as:--
"The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow
That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim."
It is possible to read fifty consecutive lines of his _Commemoration Ode_
without finding any but abstract or general terms, which are rarely the
warp and woof out of which the best poetry is spun. This criticism explains
why repeated readings of some of his poems leave so little impression on
the mind. Some of the poetry of his later life is, however, concrete and
sensuous, as the following lines from his poem _Agassiz_ (1874) show:--
"To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom,
Tenants in common with the bees,
And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees,
Is better than long waiting in the tomb."
In prose literary criticism, he keeps his place with Poe at the head of
American writers. Lowell's sentences are usually simple in form and easily
understood; they are frequently enlivened by illuminating figures of
rhetoric and by humor, or rendered impressive by the striking way in which
they express thought, _e.
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