his three memorial poems: (1) _Ode Read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Fight at Concord Bridge_ (1875), (2) _Under the Old Elm_ (1875), written in commemoration of Washington's taking command of the Continental forces under that tree, a century before, and (3) _Ode for the Fourth of July_, 1876, are well-known patriotic American poems. After returning from England and passing from the excitement of diplomatic and social life to a quiet New England home, he wrote:-- "I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me.' And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,-- Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends with song." In 1888 he published a volume of poems called _Heartsease and Rue_. He died in 1891 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near his "Elmwood" home, not far from the last resting place of Longfellow. [Illustration: LOWELL'S STUDY, ELMWOOD] POETRY.--Lowell wrote many short lyrical poems, which rank high. Some of them, like _Our Love is not a Fading Earthly Flower_, _O Moonlight Deep and Tender_, _To the Dandelion_, and _The First Snow-Fall_ are exquisite lyrics of nature and sentiment. Others, like _The Present Crisis_, have for their text, "Humanity sweeps onward," and teach high moral ideals. Still others, like his poems written in commemoration of some event, are instinct with patriotism. He is best known for three long poems, _The Biglow Papers_, _A Fable for Critics_ and _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. All of these, with the exception of the second series of _The Biglow Papers_, appeared in his wonderful poetic year, 1848. He will, perhaps, be longest known to posterity for that remarkable series of papers written in what he called the Yankee dialect and designed at first to stop the extension of slavery and afterwards to suppress it. These are called "Biglow Papers" because the chief author is represented to be Hosea Biglow, a typical New England farmer. The immediate occasion of the first series of these _Papers_ was the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846. Lowell said in after years, "I believed our war with Mexico to be essentially a war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery." The second series of these _Papers_, dealing with our Civil War, began to be published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1862. The poem lives to-day, however, not for its censure of the war or for its attack on slavery, but for its expression of the mid-nineteenth century New England ideals, hard common sense, and dry humor. Where shall we turn for a more incisive statement of the Puritan's attitude toward pleasure?