For the gret prize o' death in battle?
To him who, deadly hurt, agen
Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men
That rived the rebel line asunder?"

Charles Sumner, a somewhat heavy person, with little sense of humor,
wished that the author of the _Biglow Papers_ "could have used good
English." In the lines just quoted, indeed, the bad English adds
nothing to the effect. In 1848 Lowell wrote _A Fable for Critics_,
something after the style of Sir John Suckling's _Session of the
Poets_; a piece of rollicking doggerel in which he surveyed the
American Parnassus, scattering about headlong fun, sharp satire, and
sound criticism in equal proportion. Never an industrious workman,
like Longfellow, at the poetic craft, but preferring to wait for the
mood to seize him, he allowed eighteen years to go by, from 1850 to
1868, before publishing another volume of verse. In the latter year
appeared _Under the Willows_, which contains some of his ripest and
most perfect work, notably _A Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire_, with its
noble and touching close--suggested by, perhaps, at any rate recalling,
the dedication of Goethe's _Faust_,

"Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten;"

the subtle _Footpath_ and _In the Twilight_, the lovely little poems
_Auf Wiedersehen_ and _After the Funeral_, and a number of spirited
political pieces, such as _Villa Franca_ and the _Washers of the
Shroud_. This volume contained also his _Ode Recited at the Harvard
Commemoration_ in 1865. This, although uneven, is one of the finest
occasional poems in the language, and the most important contribution