In the third, fourth, and fifth papers Lowell used his satire effectively to sting his countrymen into a perception of the meaner side of politics, for his incessant cry throughout his political career was for independence and idealism, and the obverse was an unfailing denunciation of shams and cowardly truckling to popular views. It was when he came to the close of the six numbers which he appears to have agreed to write that he gave himself up to the luxury of that bobolink song which always swelled in his throat when spring melted into summer. “Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line,” like the opening notes of “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” like “Under the Willows,” “Al Fresco,” and similar poems, is the insistent call of Nature which is perhaps the most unmistakable witness in Lowell of a voice most his own because least subject to his own volition. To be sure, Lowell had a truth he wished to press,--the need of crushing the rattlesnake in its head of slavery; but he must needs first clear his throat by a long sweet draught of nature, and the mingling of pure delight in out of doors with the perplexities of the hour renders this number of the “Biglow Papers” one that goes very straight to the reader’s heart.
There is no flagging in this monthly succession, as one reads the “Papers” now, but Lowell hated the compulsory business of a poem a month,--as he says in this latest number:--
“I thought ef this ’ere milkin’ o’ the wits So much a month, war n’t givin’ Natur’ fits,-- Ef folks war n’t druv, findin’ their own milk fail, To work the cow that hez an iron tail, An’ ef idees ’thout ripenin’ in the pan Would send up cream to humor ary man.”
And he wrote to Fields, 5 June, 1862: “It’s no use. I reverse the gospel difficulty, and while the flesh is willing enough, the spirit is weak. My brain must lie fallow a spell,--there is no super-phosphate for those worn-out fields. Better no crop than small potatoes. I want to have the _passion_ of the thing on me again and beget lusty Biglows. I am all the more dejected because you have treated me so well. But I must rest awhile. My brain is out of kilter.” And again in August he wrote to the same: “Give me a victory and I will give you a poem: but I am now clear down in the bottom of the well, where I see the Truth too near to make verses of.”