Sonnet
SCOTTISH BORDER
The following letter to Mr. Howells, then editor of The Atlantic Monthly , in which this sonnet was printed, is a little out of proportion as a head-note to a poem of fourteen lines, but it is too characteristic and too indicative of Lowell's extreme solicitude over his verse to be omitted. " There was one verse in the Border sonnet which, when I came to copy it, worried me with its lack of just what I wanted. Only one? you will say. Yes, all; but never mind — this one most . Instead of
" Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold"
read " dared its blooms." I had liefer " cup," but cup is already metaphoric when applied to flowers, and Bottom the Weaver would be sure to ask in one of the many journals he edits — " How unfold a cup? Does he mean one of those pocket drinking-cups — leathern inconveniences that always stick when you try to unfold 'em?" Damn Bottom! We ought not to think of him, but then the Public is made up of him, and I wish him to know that I was thinking of a flower. Besides, the sonnet is, more than any other kind of verse, a deliberate composition, and " susceptible of a high polish, " as the dendrologists say of the woods of certain trees. Or shall we say " grew in secret bold"? I write both on the opposite leaf, that you may choose one to paste over and not get the credit of tinkering my rhymes.
dared its blooms
grew in secret bold.
Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in blooms and bold, answering his brother b in ballads that b -witched me, and merely changing " could" to " dared" is all that is wanted. The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me. "
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?
Here 't is enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.
SCOTTISH BORDER
The following letter to Mr. Howells, then editor of The Atlantic Monthly , in which this sonnet was printed, is a little out of proportion as a head-note to a poem of fourteen lines, but it is too characteristic and too indicative of Lowell's extreme solicitude over his verse to be omitted. " There was one verse in the Border sonnet which, when I came to copy it, worried me with its lack of just what I wanted. Only one? you will say. Yes, all; but never mind — this one most . Instead of
" Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold"
read " dared its blooms." I had liefer " cup," but cup is already metaphoric when applied to flowers, and Bottom the Weaver would be sure to ask in one of the many journals he edits — " How unfold a cup? Does he mean one of those pocket drinking-cups — leathern inconveniences that always stick when you try to unfold 'em?" Damn Bottom! We ought not to think of him, but then the Public is made up of him, and I wish him to know that I was thinking of a flower. Besides, the sonnet is, more than any other kind of verse, a deliberate composition, and " susceptible of a high polish, " as the dendrologists say of the woods of certain trees. Or shall we say " grew in secret bold"? I write both on the opposite leaf, that you may choose one to paste over and not get the credit of tinkering my rhymes.
dared its blooms
grew in secret bold.
Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in blooms and bold, answering his brother b in ballads that b -witched me, and merely changing " could" to " dared" is all that is wanted. The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me. "
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?
Here 't is enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.
The following letter to Mr. Howells, then editor of The Atlantic Monthly , in which this sonnet was printed, is a little out of proportion as a head-note to a poem of fourteen lines, but it is too characteristic and too indicative of Lowell's extreme solicitude over his verse to be omitted. " There was one verse in the Border sonnet which, when I came to copy it, worried me with its lack of just what I wanted. Only one? you will say. Yes, all; but never mind — this one most . Instead of
" Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold"
read " dared its blooms." I had liefer " cup," but cup is already metaphoric when applied to flowers, and Bottom the Weaver would be sure to ask in one of the many journals he edits — " How unfold a cup? Does he mean one of those pocket drinking-cups — leathern inconveniences that always stick when you try to unfold 'em?" Damn Bottom! We ought not to think of him, but then the Public is made up of him, and I wish him to know that I was thinking of a flower. Besides, the sonnet is, more than any other kind of verse, a deliberate composition, and " susceptible of a high polish, " as the dendrologists say of the woods of certain trees. Or shall we say " grew in secret bold"? I write both on the opposite leaf, that you may choose one to paste over and not get the credit of tinkering my rhymes.
dared its blooms
grew in secret bold.
Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in blooms and bold, answering his brother b in ballads that b -witched me, and merely changing " could" to " dared" is all that is wanted. The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me. "
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?
Here 't is enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.
SCOTTISH BORDER
The following letter to Mr. Howells, then editor of The Atlantic Monthly , in which this sonnet was printed, is a little out of proportion as a head-note to a poem of fourteen lines, but it is too characteristic and too indicative of Lowell's extreme solicitude over his verse to be omitted. " There was one verse in the Border sonnet which, when I came to copy it, worried me with its lack of just what I wanted. Only one? you will say. Yes, all; but never mind — this one most . Instead of
" Where the shy ballad could its leaves unfold"
read " dared its blooms." I had liefer " cup," but cup is already metaphoric when applied to flowers, and Bottom the Weaver would be sure to ask in one of the many journals he edits — " How unfold a cup? Does he mean one of those pocket drinking-cups — leathern inconveniences that always stick when you try to unfold 'em?" Damn Bottom! We ought not to think of him, but then the Public is made up of him, and I wish him to know that I was thinking of a flower. Besides, the sonnet is, more than any other kind of verse, a deliberate composition, and " susceptible of a high polish, " as the dendrologists say of the woods of certain trees. Or shall we say " grew in secret bold"? I write both on the opposite leaf, that you may choose one to paste over and not get the credit of tinkering my rhymes.
dared its blooms
grew in secret bold.
Perhaps, after all, it is the buzzing of that b in blooms and bold, answering his brother b in ballads that b -witched me, and merely changing " could" to " dared" is all that is wanted. The sentiment of this sonnet pleases me. "
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?
Here 't is enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfils.
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.
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