Lowell.

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
Our hearts are all thy own;
To-day we bid thee welcome
Not for ourselves alone.

In the long years of thy absence
Some of us have grown old,
And some have passed the portals
Of the Mystery untold;

For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
For the voices that are dumb,
For each and all I bid thee
A grateful welcome home!

For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
To the nine-fold Muses dear;
For the Seer the winding Concord
Paused by his door to hear;

For him, our guide and Nestor,
Who the march of song began,
The white locks of his ninety years
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!

For him who, to the music
Her pines and hemlocks played,
Set the old and tender story
Of the lorn Acadia...

        After him who did the mills own,
        This place was called in honor Tilson;
        Bright gleaming like to a beaming star,
        Is clear waters of the Otter.

        And it doth form here a vast pond,
        Which extends for miles beyond,
        A fortune on town it will shower,
        This prodigious water power.

        No other spots to youth appear,
        Like lovely little lakes round here,
        And few small towns have fine roadway
        Lined with brick blocks like your broadway.

From purest wells of English undefiled
None deeper drank than he, the New World's child,
Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke
The wit and wisdom of New England folk,
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh
Provoked thereby might well have shaken half
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball
And mine of battle overthrew them all.

        Like fruit that's large and ripe and mellow,
        Sweet and luscious is Longfellow,
        Melodious songs he oft did pour
        And high was his Excelsior.
        He shows in his Psalm of Life
        The folly of our selfish strife,
        With Hiawatha we bewail
        His suffering in great Indian tale.
        Indian nation was forlorn
        Till great spirit planted corn;
        His story of Evangeline
        It is a tale of love divine.

        'T will not be long before they hear
            The bullbat on the hill,
        And in the valley through the dusk
            The pastoral whippoorwill.
        A few more friendly suns will call
            The bluets through the loam
        And star the lanes with buttercups
                Away down home.

        "Knee-deep!" from reedy places
            Will sing the river frogs.
        The terrapins will sun themselves
            On all the jutting logs.
        The angler's cautious oar will leave
            A trail of drifting foam
        Along the shady currents
                Away down home.

        The mocking-bird will feel again
            The glory of his wings,
        And wanton through the balmy air

What was is... since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners. They start up
bald like baby birds
to embrace retirement.

At the altar of surrender,
I met you
in the hour of credulity.
How your misfortune came out clearly
to us at twenty.

At the gingerbread casino,
how innocent the nights we made it
on our Vesuvio martinis
with no vermouth but vodka
to sweeten the dry gin,

the lash across my face
that night we adored...
soon every night and all,
when your sweet, amorous
repetition changed.

Fertility is not to the forward,
or beauty to the precipitous,
things gone wrong
clothe summer
with gold leaf.

Sometimes
I catch my mind
circling for you with glazed eye,
my los...