She entered with him in disguise, And mastered the fortress by surprise: There is no spot she loves so well on ground, Has hall and bower at his command; And there's no poor man in the North Countree 2-THE COURTIN'. [The Courtin' "the only attempt I had ever made at any thing like a pastoral," as the author states-is the most genuine of our native idyls. The first sketch of the poem comprised only six stanzas, which, curiously enough, were written and inserted merely to fill a vacant page in the introduction to the Biglow Papers. These being greatly admired, the author added stanzas from time to time till the poem assumed its present form of twenty-four stanzas.] 3 GOD makes sech2 nights, all white an' still All silence an' all glisten. al purists may raise to the use of these colloquialisms in literature, we should hesitate in condemning such use until we have learned Mr. Lowell's defense in a masterly essay prefixed to the Biglow Papers. In this essay he shows that many of these supposed "provincialisms" have the authority of the best Eng 1 The biographer of Mr. Lowell says of The Vision of Sir Launfal: "This noble poem was composed in a kind of fury, substantially as it now appears, in the space of about forty-eight hours, during which the poet scarcely ate or slept. It was almost an improvisation, and its effect upon the reader is like that of the outburst of an inspired|lish writers of the sixteenth and singer." seventeenth centuries. 2 sech. It will be noted that The Courtin' is written in the "Yankee dialect." Whatever objections verb 8 Fur'z for as, in order that. The form "fur" has the authority of Sir Philip Sidney. Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown,1 A fireplace filled the room's one side There warn't no 2 stoves (tell3 comfort died) The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 7 8 Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther 10 Young The very room, coz 12 she was in, An' she looked full ez rosy agin1 'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come2 to look He was six foot o' man, A 1, He'd sparked it 5 with full twenty gals, But 'long o' her his veins 'ould run 9 All crinkly like curled maple, The side she breshed 10 felt full o' sun She thought no v'ice1 hed sech a swing My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!3 She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, All ways to once her feelin's flew An' yit she gin her cheer1 a jerk "You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" He stood a spell on one foot-fust, An' on which one he felt the wust? Says he, "I'd better call agin;" |