The versification of this poem should be studied with some particularity. Of the forms of lyric expression the ode is the most elaborate and dignified. It is adapted only to lofty themes and stately occasions. Great liberty is allowed in the choice and arrangement of its meter, rhymes, and stanzaic forms, that its varied form and movement may follow the changing phases of the sentiment and passion called forth by the theme. Lowell has given us an account of his own consideration of this matter. "My problem," he says, "was to contrive a measure which should not be tedious by uniformity, which should vary with varying moods, in which the transitions (including those of the voice) should be managed without jar. I at first thought of mixed rhymed and blank verses of unequal measures, like those in the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_, which are in the main masterly. Of course, Milton deliberately departed from that stricter form of Greek chorus to which it was bound quite as much (I suspect) by the law of its musical accompaniment as by any sense of symmetry. I wrote some stanzas of the _Commemoration Ode_ on this theory at first, leaving some verses without a rhyme to match. But my ear was better pleased when the rhyme, coming at a longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than instant reverberation, produced the same effect almost, and yet was gratified by unexpectedly recalling an association and faint reminiscence of consonance." BIBLIOGRAPHY Horace E. Scudder: _James Russell Lowell: A Biography_. 2 vols. The standard biography. Ferris Greenslet: _James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work_. The latest biography (1905) and very satisfactory. Francis H. Underwood: _James Russell Lowell: A Biographical Sketch and Lowell the Poet and the Man_. Interesting recollections of a personal friend and editorial associate. Edward Everett Hale: _Lowell and His Friends_. Edward Everett Hale, Jr.: _James Russell Lowell_. (Beacon Biographies.) Charles Eliot Norton: _Letters of James Russell Lowell_. 2 vols. Invaluable and delightful. Edmund Clarence Stedman: _Poets of America_. W.C. Brownell: _James Russell Lowell_. (Scribner's Magazine, February, 1907.) The most recent critical estimate. George William Curtis: _James Russell Lowell: An Address_. John Churton Collins. _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, "Poetry and Poets of America." Excellent as an English estimate. Barrett Wendell: _Literary History of America_ and _Stelligeri_, "Mr. Lowell as a Teacher." Henry James: _Essays in London and Library of the World's Best Literature_. George E. Woodberry: _Makers of Literature_. William Watson: _Excursions in Criticism_. W.D. Howells: _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_. Charles E. Richardson: _American Literature_. M.A. DeWolfe Howe: _American Bookmen_. Thomas Wentworth Higginson: _Old Cambridge_. Frank Preston Stearns: _Cambridge Sketches_. 1905. Richard Burton: _Literary Leaders of America_. 1904.