The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-14

IT l am not an American, whoever was," he exclaims, but democracy it. self is no more sacred than is monar- chy. It is man that is sacred-his du- ties, his opportunities. It is not his rights which make man sacred. Let us all work together to make democracy possible. It is no invention to go by itself like perpetual motion"
 The lecturer gave delightful word picture of the influence for good which was exerted upon the character and writings of Lowell by Miss Maria White, whom he married. "The years of his engagement to her. when he was from twenty to twenty-five, were the time when his nature ripened the most and when he was most prolific as poet. He writes of her, "She fills my ideal; l mean to live as a man beloved by her should live" In March, 1S44, they were married. In 1853 Mrs. Low ell died. He does not refer to her death in hia letters.
 Sorrow plays an important part in the development of our poet. In 1S47 his little girl Blanche died. A little later he wrote the poem, "The First Snowfall" In the spring of 1850 his little daughter Rose died. Two years later he lost his little boy Walter and l the following year his wife died. At twenty-two Lowell said, T do not fear criticism, as love truth" The great poem which embodies his love of truth is "The Present Crisis" This was written when he was twentynine and is as popular as any of his poems It closes with the frequently quoted i stanza:
 New occasions teach new duties, time
 makes ancient good uncouth; | They must upward still and onward | who woud keep abreast of truth; To! before us gleam her camp-tires; we
 ourselves must pilgrims be; Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly
 through the desperate winter sea-" 1 Next to love of right, said the speak CT, we must place LowelPs love of na- ture. He loved it because it spoke to him of spiritual things. His love of country was great. Patriotism rose with him to the level of passion. The greatest poem he ever wrote was the "Commemoration Ode" which he read at the Harvard commencement, July 21, 1865. This poem begins on high level, yet ascends higher and higher tC the climax:
 "Oh, beautiful my country. ours once
 more;
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled
 hair
 Der such sweet brows as never other
 wore;
 And letting thy lips, freed from
 wraths pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it,
 Among the nations bright beyond com pare?
 What were our lives without thee? ] What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee; But ask whatever else and we vii
 dare.'
 Lowell's most religious poem is "Th' Cathedral written at Chartes, France where he finds himself suddenly con fronted with the cathedral in it's vas repose. This poem expresses some thing of the religious belief of Lowel at fifty years. Each age must wor ship it's own thought of God" he says Again, Man cannot be Gods outlaw i he would" And of himself:
 q, that still pray at morning and a
 eve,
 Loving those roots that feed us iron
 the past, And prizing more than Plato things
 learned At that best academe, my mother
 knee;
 Thrice in my life have truly prayed, Thrice, stirred below my consciou self, have felt
 That perfect disenthrallment which God; Nor know which to hold worse enc my,
 Him who on speculation's windy vast Would turn me loose, stripped of th raiment warm, By faith contrived against our naked ness;
 Or, him who, cruel-like, would fain ob
 scure,
 With painted saints and paraphrase o God,
 The souls east windows of divine sur prise"