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Updated: June 14, 2025
The friends of Sir Launfal hastened to the knight, to tell him of his lady's succour, if so it were according to God's will. "Sir comrade, truly is not this your friend? This lady is neither black nor golden, mean nor tall. She is only the most lovely thing in all the world." When Launfal heard this, he sighed, for by their words he knew again his friend.
I had myself never been a great reader of his poetry, when I met him, though when I was a boy of ten years I had heard my father repeat passages from the Biglow Papers against war and slavery and the war for slavery upon Mexico, and later I had read those criticisms of English poetry, and I knew Sir Launfal must be Lowell in some sort; but my love for him as a poet was chiefly centred in my love for his tender rhyme, 'Auf Wiedersehen', which I can not yet read without something of the young pathos it first stirred in me.
So shall ye all, O reapers, Honor them now the more, And garner in gladness, with songs of praise, The grass from the desolate shore." "And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee, An image of Him who died on the tree; * Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; Behold, through Him, I give to thee!" James Russell Lowell: Sir Launfal.
All through his career, the religion of humanity is put forward with point and persistence, and the finest of distinctions in morality are maintained, the so constantly ignored vital difference between the deed and its motive, as in "Sir Launfal:"
But in his constitution there was, I think, another reason why the author of "Sir Launfal," "Hunger and Cold," "The Landlord," and "The Search" should not have emulated Howard or Miss Fry, and have gone into the realms of destitution to relieve its wrongs.
The effectiveness of The "Present Crisis" and "Sir Launfal," and of the "Memorial Odes," particularly the "Ode to Agassiz," is likewise due to the passion, sweetness, and splendor of certain strophes, rather than to the perfection of these poems as artistic wholes. Lowell's personal lyrics of sorrow, such as "The Changeling," "The First SnowFall," "After the Burial," have touched many hearts.
"And she was smooth and full, as if one gush Of life had washed her, or as if a sleep Lay on her eyelid, easier to sweep Than bee from daisy." BEDDOIS' Pygmalion. "Sche was as whyt as lylye yn May, Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day." Romance of Sir Launfal. I walked on, in the fresh morning air, as if new-born.
Very sweet and dainty were these maidens, and richly clothed in garments of crimson sendal, closely girt and fashioned to their bodies. All men, old and young, looked willingly upon them, for fair they were to see. Gawain, and three knights of his company, went straight to Launfal, and showed him these maidens, praying him to say which of them was his friend. But he answered never a word.
And yet, with all the half-tone's advantages, I must admit that Yuengling's head of the "Professor" and many of his wood-cuts in an illustrated edition of "Sir Launfal," published some years ago, and much of the work of such masters as Cole, Wolff, Yuengling, and others, stand as monuments for all time to the skill of hands that no process will ever excel, for they put into it that something which the bath of vitriol will never furnish, a bite of the acid of their own genius.
The poems which he published during the next twenty years did little to enhance his reputation, which, as a poet, must rest upon his "Biglow Papers," his odes, and his "Vision of Sir Launfal." Yet poetry was but one of his modes of expression, and, some think, the less important one.
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