This poem was “The Washers of the Shroud,” which appeared in the November _Atlantic_. The same thought prevails in this poem which found ampler expression in his prose, as we have seen, a conviction that his country was not to “join the waiting ghosts of names,” but was to have the
“larger manhood, saved for those That walk unblenching through the trial-fires.”[6]
How deeply he felt the poem may be seen not only in the solemn measure of the verse itself, but in the confession of physical exhaustion in which the writing of it left him.[7] Most impressive was the coincidence of the final stanza with the news which reached Elmwood just as the poem itself fell under the eye of the great public. “God, give us peace!” he had said in the penultimate stanza,--
“God, give us peace!--not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!”
“So cried I, with clenched hands and passionate pain, Thinking of dear ones by Potomac’s side: Again the loon laughed mocking, and again The echoes bayed far down the night and died, While waking I recalled my wandering brain.”[8]
There is a single sentence in a letter written four days before the fatal news came which helps to show that side of Lowell’s nature out of which his best work sprang, the attitude of receptivity to the large elemental life. Taken in connection with the sudden blow so soon to fall, it enables one to understand better the power by which Lowell was aroused to action: “These last rains have been _lifting_ the leaves (si levan le foglie) with a vengeance, making as clean work as ever Highland Cateran with cattle. I can’t understand people who call autumn a melancholy season unless they are cockneys indeed. To a country-bred fellow like me, the exquisite atmosphere and the dear associations with nutting and fishing and _trying_ to shoot ducks, and lying under warm hillsides, make it anything but sad. Even to see the leaves fall is a pleasure to me which few others match.”
Certain it is that from this time there seemed to be a new and, I think, loftier and more sustained spirit in his writing upon the great issues of the day. For one thing, he found vent in a rapid succession of poems which form the second series of the “Biglow Papers.” Early in December, 1861, he wrote the first, apparently under pressure to return to this form. “It was clean against my critical judgment,” he writes, “for I don’t believe in resuscitations--we hear no good of the _posthumous_ Lazarus--but I may get into the vein and do some good;” and it is clear that the effort did seat him again in the saddle, for he followed his first paper, which appeared in January, 1862, with five more in successive months, which were in effect pungent comments on the course of events in that dark period. He had apparently the stimulus of an engagement with Mr. Fields, the editor of the _Atlantic_, for we find him in August confessing his inability to bring to light another paper which was confined somewhere in his perplexed brain.