Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary. Daniel Dulany Addison
in the pines singing a melancholy tune in the summer sunlight; and other subjects of equal beauty. As an illustration of these prose-poems, the suggestion for which she derived from Jean Paul Richter, the following may be of interest: it is called, “Flowers beneath Dead Leaves:”—
“Two friends were walking together beside a picturesque mill-stream. While they walked they talked of mortal life, its meaning and its end; and, as is almost inevitable with such themes, the current of their thoughts gradually lost its cheerful flow.
“ ‘This is a miserable world,’ said one. ‘The black shroud of sorrow overhangs everything here.’
“ ‘Not so,’ replied the other. ‘Sorrow is not a shroud; it is only the covering Hope wraps about her when she sleeps.’
“Just then they entered an oak grove. It was early spring, and the trees were bare; but the last year’s leaves lay thick as snowdrifts upon the ground.
“ ‘The liverwort grows here, I think—one of our earliest flowers,’ said the last speaker. ‘There, push away the leaves, and you will see it. How beautiful, with its delicate shades of pink, and purple and green, lying against the bare roots of the oak tree! But look deeper, or you will not find the flowers: they are under the dead leaves.’
“ ‘Now I have learned a lesson which I shall not forget,’ said her friend. ‘This seems to me to be a bad world; and there is no denying that there are bad things in it. To a sweeping glance it will sometimes seem barren and desolate; but not one buried germ of life and beauty is lost to the All-Seeing Eye. Having the weakness of human vision, I must believe where I cannot see. Henceforth, when I am tempted to despair on account of evil, I will say to myself, Look deeper; look under the dead leaves, and you will find flowers.’ ”
Lucy Larcom almost imperceptibly slipped into womanhood during these Lowell years. From being an eager and precocious child, she became an intelligent and thoughtful woman. The one characteristic which seemed most fully defined was her tendency to express her thoughts in verse and prose. As is the case with young authors, her early verses were artificial, the sentiments were often borrowed, and the emotions were not always genuine. It is not natural to find a healthy young girl writing on such themes as “Earthly joys are fleeting,” “Trust not the world, ’twill cheat thee.” “The murderer’s request” was—
“Bury me not where the breezes are sighing
O’er those whom I loved in my innocent days.”
But when she wrote out of her own experience, and recorded impressions she had felt, there was a touch of reality in her work that gave some prophecy of her future excellence. She could write understandingly about the boisterous March winds, or “school days,”—
“When I read old Peter Parley,
Like a bookworm, through and through,
Vainly shunned I Lindley Murray,
And dull Colburn’s ‘Two and Two.’ ”
One cannot find any evidence that she made a study of verse-making, not even possessing “Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary.” Her powers were cultivated mainly by reading the poetry of others and unconsciously catching their spirit and metre. Her ear for music helped her more than her knowledge of tetrameters or hexameters.
The most important results of these years were the development of her self-reliance and sweetness, the stirring up of her ambitions to win an education, and the dawnings of her spiritual life. She was laying up stores of impressions and memories, also, that were to be permanently preserved in her more finished poems of later years. The imagery of her maturer verse recalls her early days, when in the freedom of childhood she roamed the fields and the woods, and lived on the banks of the Merrimac. We see her youth again through her reminiscences of the barberry cluster sweetened by the frost; the evening primrose; roses wet with briny spray; the woodbine clambering up the cliff; heaps of clover hay; breezes laden with some rare wood scent; the varied intonations of the wind; hieroglyphic lichens on the rocks; the mower whistling from the land; the white feet of the children pattering on the sand; the one aged tree on the mountain-top, wrestling with the storm wind; the candles lighted at sunset in the gambrel-roofed houses; the lightning glaring in the face of the drowning sailor; the tragedy of unconscious widowhood; the mill-wheel, the hidden power of the mill, with its great dripping spokes; and the mystery of meeting and blending horizons.
In the spring of 1846 the scene of Lucy Larcom’s life was changed, when her sister Emeline married, and went to seek a home in the West, for she shared with the new family their pioneer life in Illinois. A few days before they started on their journey, she wrote some lines of farewell in her scribbling-book, which show that she was beginning to use real experiences for the subject of her verses.
“Farewell to thee, New England!
Thou mother, whose kind arm
Hath e’er been circled round me,
The stern and yet the warm.
Farewell! thou little village,
My birthplace and my home,
Along whose rocky border
The morning surges come.
Thy name shall memory echo,
As exiled shell its wave.
Art thou my home no longer?
Still keep for me a grave.”
CHAPTER II.
IN ILLINOIS.
1846–1852.
A journey from Massachusetts to Illinois, in 1846, was long, and filled with inconveniences. A little time-worn diary, written in pencil, kept by Lucy Larcom on the journey, is interesting for itself, and preserves the record of the difficulties that beset early travelers to the West.
Monday, April 13, 1846. Returned to Boston in the morning, and now, in the afternoon, we have really started. Passing through Massachusetts and Connecticut, we encountered a snowstorm, something quite unexpected at this season! Came on board the steamboat “Worcester,” in darkness. And here we are, three of us, squeezed into the queerest little cubby-hole of a state-room that could be thought of. We all sat down on the floor and laughed till we cried, to see ourselves in such close companionship! We had a dispute, just for the fun of it, as to who should occupy the highest shelf. It was out of the question to put E. and the baby up there, and for myself, I painted the catastrophe which would occur, should I come down with my full weight upon the rest, in such glowing colors, that they were willing to consign me to the second shelf; and here I lie while the rest are asleep (if they can sleep on their first steamboat trip) trying to write of my wonderful experiences as a traveler.
Tuesday. Alas! Must I write it? The boast of our house must cease. When it has been said with so much pride that a Larcom was never seasick!—I have proved the contrary. I only thought to eat a bit of “ ’lasses gingerbread,” on occasion of my departure from Yankee Land, and while I lay to-day in my berth, I was inwardly admonished that the angry Neptune was not pleased with my feasting, and I was obliged to yield up the precious morsel as a libation to him. Small sleep had I this night.
In the morning, S. and I rose long before daylight, and went out to peep at the sea by moonlight. It was strange and new to see the path of the great creature in the waters. After daylight most of the passengers came on deck. It was delightful sailing into New York by sunrise.
Passing through Hellgate, I was reminded of the worthy Dutch who went this way long ago, as Dick Knickerbocker records. Passed Blackwell’s Island—saw prisoners at work—looked like pigs. Also passed the fort on Frog’s Neck; small beauty in the great smoky city for me; an hour’s stay and a breakfast at the hotel were enough. Took the cars across New Jersey. Don’t like the appearance of this State at all. Reached Philadelphia about noon. Went immediately aboard the “Ohio”—a beautiful