After reading "Maud":

Leave him to us, ye good and sage,
Who stiffen in your middle age.
Ye loved him once, but now forbear;
Yield him to those who hope and dare,
And have not yet to forms consign'd
A rigid ossifying mind.

Ionica.

Pure lyrical poetry of every form had been essayed
by my father before 1855, but a monodramatic lyric, like
"Maud," was a novelty. In consequence its meaning
and drift were widely misunderstood even by educated
readers, which partly accounts for the outburst of hostile
criticism that greeted its appearance. It is a "Drama
of the Soul," set in a landscape glorified by Love, and
according to Lowell, "The antiphonal voice to 'In
Memoriam ².'" Nothing perhaps more justified what has
been said of my father, that had he not been a poet, he
might have been remarkable as an actor, than his reading
of "Maud," with all its complex contrasts of motive and

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