She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, And it hardly seemed a day, When a troop of wandering angels Stole my little daughter away; Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari But loosed the hampering strings, And when they had opened her cagedoor, My little bird used her wings. But they left in her stead a changeling, That seems like her bud in full blossom, Alone 'neath the awful sky. 30 40 I THOUGHT OUR LOVE AT FULL, BUT I DID ERR' I THOUGHT our love at full, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; 1 could not see That sorrow in our happy world must be To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss. THE BIGLOW PAPERS1 A LETTER 2 FIRST SERIES FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, INCLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. HOSEA BIGLOW JAYLEM, june 1846. MISTER EDDYTER, - Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a 1 Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that when, in the midst of Admiral Rodney's great sea-fight, Sir Charles Douglas said to him, Behold, Sir George, the Greeks and Trojans contending for the body of Patroclus! the Admiral answered, peevishly, Damn the Greeks and damn the Trojans! I have other things to think of. After the battle was won, Rodney thus to Sir Charles,Now, my dear friend, I am at the service of your Greeks and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as much of it as you please!' I had some such feeling of the impertinence of our pseudo-classicality when I chose our homely dialect to work in. Should we be nothing, because somebody had contrived to be something (and that perhaps in a provincial dialect) ages ago and be nothing by our very attempt to be that something, which they had already been, and which therefore nobody could be again without being a bore? Is there no way left, then, I thought, of being natural, of being naïf, which means nothing more than native, of belonging to the age and country in which you are born? The Yankee, at least, is a new phenomenon; let us try to be that. . . . To me the dialect was native, was spoken all about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish day-laborer was as rare as an Ameri cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a can one now. Since then I have made a study of it so far as opportunity allowed. But when I write in it, it is as in a mother tongue, and I am carried back far beyond any studies of it to long-ago noonings in my father's hay-fields, and to the talk of Sam and Job over their jug of blackstrap under the shadow of the ashtree which still dapples the grass whence they have been gone so long. (LOWELL, in the Introduction' to the Biglow Papers, 1866.) I only know that I believed our war with Mexico (though we had as just ground for it as a strong nation ever has against a weak one) to be essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery. Against these and many other things I thought all honest men should protest. I was born and bred in the country, and the dialect was homely to me. I tried my first Biglow Paper in a newspaper, and found that it had a great run. So I wrote the others from time to time during the year which followed, always very rapidly, and sometimes (as with What Mr. Robinson thinks) at one sitting. When I came to collect them and publish them in a volume, I conceived my parson-editor with his pedantry and verbosity, his amiable vanity and superiority to the verses he was editing, as a fitting artistic background and soil. It gave me the chance, too, of glaneing obliquely at many things which were beyond the horizon of my other characters. (LOWELL, in a letter on the first series of the Biglow Papers, September 13, 1859, to Thomas Hughes, who was planning an English reprint of them. Lowell's Letters, vol. i, pp. 296, 297. Quoted by the kind permission of Messrs. Harper & Bros.) On the political effect of the Biglow Papers, see Greenslet's Lowell, pp. 84-86. The act of May 13, 1846, authorized President Polk to employ the militia, and call out 50,000 volunteers, if drummin and fifin arter him like all nater. the sarjunt he thout Hosea hed n't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo 's though he'd jest com down, so he cal'lated to hook him in, but Hosy wood n't take none o' his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on. you 1 wal, Hosea he com home considerabal riled, and arter I'd gone to bed I heern Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee 's gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, don't Bee skeered, ses I, he's oney amakin pottery 1 ses i, he 's ollers on hand at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and said they wuz True grit. Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee he did n't want to put his ore in to tetch to the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind o' did n't hear him, for I never hearn o' nobody o' that name in this villadge, and I've lived here man and boy 76 year cum next tater diggin, and thair aint no wheres a kitting spryer 'n I be. On He immediately called for the full number necessary. of volunteers, asking Massachusetts for 777 men. May 26 Governor Briggs issued a proclamation for the enrolment of the regiment. As the President's call was merely a request and not an order, many Whigs and the Abolitionists were for refusing it. The Liberator for June 5 severely censured the governor for complying, and accused him of not carrying out the resolutions of the last Whig Convention, which had pledged the party to present as firm a front of opposition to the institution as was consistent with their allegiance to the Constitution.' (Note by Mr. Frank Beverly Williams, in the Riverside and Cambridge Editions of Lowell's Poetical Works). 1 Aut insanit, aut versos facit.-H. W. (The comments signed H. W. are made by the Rev. Homer Wilbur, A. M., pastor of the First Church in Jaalam, who edits the poems of his young parishioner Hosea Biglow.) If you print 'em I wish you'd jest let folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant Keziah used to say it's nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin though and he's a likely kind o' lad. EZEKIEL BIGLOW. THRASH away, you'll hev to rattle Thet air flag's a leetle rotten, To stuff out a soger's chest: Ef you must wear humps like these, S'posin' you should try salt hay fer 't, It would du ez slick ez grease. 'T would n't suit them Southun fellers, They 're a dreffle graspin' set, We must ollers blow the bellers Wen they want their irons het; May be it's all right ez preachin', But my narves it kind o' grates, Wen I see the overreachin' O' them nigger-drivin' States. Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, Ez fer war, I call it murder, There you hev it plain an' flat; you want to take in God. "T aint your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 10 20 30 4C 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' Feller-men like oats an' rye ? This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats. They may talk o' Freedom's airy Tell they 're pupple in the face, It's a grand gret cemetary Fer the barthrights of our race; They jest want this Californy So 's to lug new slave-States in Aint it cute to see a Yankee All to get the Devil's thankee Helpin' on 'em weld their chains? Wy, it's jest ez clear ez figgers, Clear ez one an' one make two, 50 60 70 Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' Bigger pens to cram with slaves, Help the men thet 's ollers dealin' Insults on your fathers' graves; Chaps thet make black slaves o' nig- Help the strong to grind the feeble, ΣΙΟ Help the many agin the few, Help the men thet call your people Witewashed slaves an' peddlin' crew! 120 1 An allusion to the governor's call for troops as well as to the vote on the War Bill. On May 11, 1846, the President sent to the House of Representatives his well-known message declaring the existence of war brought on by the act of Mexico,' and asking for a supply of $10,000,000. Of the seven members from Massachusetts, all Whigs, two, Robert C. Winthrop, of Boston, and Amos Abbott, of Andover, voted for the bill. The Whigs throughout the country, remembering the fate of the party which had opposed the last war with England, sanctioned the measure as necessary for the preservation of the army, then in peril by the unauthorized acts of the President. (F. B. Williams, in Piverside and Cambridge Editions.) |