d to Shakespeare?

THE HUMBLE-BEE

6. What characteristics of the bumblebee make animated torrid-zone
applicable? Why doesn't he need to seek a milder climate in Porto Rico?

16. Epicurean: one addicted to pleasure of senses, specially eating and
drinking. How does it apply to the bee?

THE SNOW-STORM

Emerson called this poem "a lecture on God's architecture, one of his
beautiful works, a Day."

9. This picture is strikingly like Whittier's description of a similar
day in "Snow-Bound."

13. bastions: sections of fortifications.

18. Parian wreaths were very white because the marble of Paros was pure.

21. Maugre: in spite of.

FABLE

This fable was written some years before its merits were recognized.
Since then it has steadily grown in popularity.

BOSTON HYMN

16. fend: defend.

24. boreal: northern.

80. behemoth: very large beast.

THE TITMOUSE

76. impregnably: so that it can resist attack.

97. wold: Rood, forest.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891)

"As political reformer, as editor, as teacher, above all as an example of
the type of scholarly gentleman that the new world was able to produce,
he perhaps did more than any of his contemporaries to dignify American
literature at home and to win for it respect abroad."

--W. B. CAIRNS.

Born at Cambridge, Mass., he early showed a love of literature and says
that while he was a student at Harvard he read everything except the
prescribed textbooks. He opened a law office in Boston, but spent his
time largely in reading and writing poetry. He became professor of
literature at Harvard in 1854 and later edited the Atlantic Monthly.
Later he was minister to Spain and to England. In 1885 he returned to
his work at Harvard, where he remained until his death in the very house
in which he was born.

The poems by Lowell are used by permission of, and by special arrangement
with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of his works.

HAKON's LAY

This poem is here given in its original form as published by Lowell in
Graham's Magazine in January, 1855. It was afterwards expanded into the
second canto of "The Voyage to Vinland."

With what other poems in this book may "Hakon's Lay" be compared?

3. Skald. See Longfellow, 'The Skeleton in Armor,' note on I. 19.

10. Hair and beard were both white, we are told. Who is suggested in
this line as white?

17. eyried.