Lowell's love of Elmwood and its surroundings finds expression everywhere in his writings, both prose and verse, but nowhere in a more direct, personal manner than in this poem. He was not yet thirty when the poem was written, and Cambridge could still be called a "village," but the familiar scenes already had their retrospective charms, which increased with the passing years. Later in life he again celebrated his affection for this home environment in Under the Willows.

"There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says Scudder, "and more than all the veil of the season hangs tremulously over the whole, so that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of the rambling verses; yet, after all, the most enduring impression is of the young man himself in that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so much of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with beauty in the soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding through the marshes, the distant sound of the ploughman, the near chatter of the chipmunk, the individual trees, each living its own life, the march of the seasons flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of human life associated with his own experience, the hurried, survey of his village years—all these pictures float before his vision; and then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of the singer's voice with tears, there wells up the thought of the little life which held as in one precious drop the love and faith of his heart."

1. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied that region.

5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their feasts on Olympus. Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence.

11. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own, rather than receiving the influence from nature's mood.

25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning in the fields of Boaz, see the book of Ruth, ii.

38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had "squirrel" here, which would be inconsistent with the "underground fastness." And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees?

40. This line originally read, "with a chipping bound." Cheeping is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like "cheep," or "chip."

45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble and other refuse of the season before his "fall plowing."

46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of this detail of the picture. Compare Bryant's Death of the Flowers:

50. Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, The Birch Tree.

68. Lavish of their long-hid gold: The chestnut leaves, it will be remembered, turn to a bright golden yellow in autumn. These descriptions of autumn foliage are all as true as beautiful.

73. Maple-swamps: We generally speak of the swamp-maple, which grows in low ground, and has particularly brilliant foliage in autumn.

82. Tangled blackberry: This is the creeping blackberry of course, which every one remembers whose feet have been caught in its prickly tangles.

91. Martyr oak: The oak is surrounded with the blazing foliage of the ivy, like a burning martyr.

99. Dear marshes: The Charles River near Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes, the characteristic features of which Lowell describes with minute and loving fidelity.

127. Bobolink: If Lowell had a favorite bird, it was the bobolink, although the oriole was a close competitor for his praises. In one of his letters he says: "I think the bobolink the best singer in the world, even undervaluing the lark and the nightingale in the comparison." And in another he writes: "That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I always date the New Year from the day of my first draught. Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all arriÈre pensÉe about getting a livelihood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me—makes a business of it and pipes as it were by the yard—but Bob squanders song like a poet."

Compare the description in Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line:

See also the opening lines of Under the Willows for another description full of the ecstasy of both bird and poet. The two passages woven together appear in the essay Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, as a quotation. An early poem on The Bobolink, delightful and widely popular, was omitted from later editions of his poems by Lowell, perhaps because to his maturer taste the theme was too much moralized in his early manner. "Shelley and Wordsworth," says Mr. Brownell, "have not more worthily immortalized the skylark than Lowell has the bobolink, its New England congener."

134. Another change: The description now returns to the marshes.

147. Simond's hill: In the essay Cambridge Thirty Years Ago Lowell describes the village as seen from the top of this hill.

159-161. An allusion to the Mexican War, against which Lowell was directing the satire of the Biglow Papers.

174-182. Compare the winter pictures in Whittier's Snowbound.

177. Formal candles: Candles lighted for some form or ceremony, as in a religious service.

192. Stonehenge: Stonehenge on Salisbury plain in the south of England is famous for its huge blocks of stone now lying in confusion, supposed to be the remains of an ancient Druid temple.

207. Sanding: The continuance of the metaphor in "higher waves" are "whelming." With high waves the sand is brought in upon the land, encroaching upon its limits.

209. Muses' factories: The buildings of Harvard College.

218. House-bespotted swell: Lowell notes with some resentment the change from nature's simple beauties to the pretentiousness of wealth shown in incongruous buildings.

220. Cits: Contracted from citizens. During the French Revolution, when all titles were abolished, the term citizen was applied to every one, to denote democratic simplicity and equality.

223. Gentle Allston: Washington Allston, the celebrated painter, whom Lowell describes as he remembered him in the charming essay Cambridge Thirty Years Ago.

225. Virgilium vidi tantum: I barely saw Virgil—caught a glimpse of him—a phrase applied to any passing glimpse of greatness.

227. Undine-like: Undine, a graceful water nymph, is the heroine of the charming little romantic story by De la Motte FouquÉ.

234. The village blacksmith: See Longfellow's famous poem, The Village Blacksmith. The chestnut was cut down in 1876. An arm-chair made from its wood still stands in the Longfellow house, a gift to Longfellow from the Cambridge school children.

254. Six old willows: These much-loved trees afforded Lowell a subject for a later poem Under the Willows, in which he describes particularly one ancient willow that had been spared, he "knows not by what grace" by the ruthless "New World subduers"—

In a letter written twenty years after the Reverie to J.T. Fields, Lowell says: "My heart was almost broken yesterday by seeing nailed to my willow a board with these words on it, 'These trees for sale.' The wretch is going to peddle them for firewood! If I had the money, I would buy the piece of ground they stand on to save them—the dear friends of a lifetime."

255. Paul Potter: One of the most famous of the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, notable for the strong realism of his work.

264. Collegisse juvat: The full sentence, in the first ode of Horace, reads, "Curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat." (It is a pleasure to have collected the dust of Olympus on one's chariot wheels.) The allusion is to the Olympic games, the most celebrated festival of Greece. Lowell puns upon the word collegisse with his own coinage, which may have the double meaning of going to college and collecting.

272. Blinding anguish: An allusion to the death of his little daughter Blanche. See The Changeling, The First Snow-fall, and She Came and Went.