It was a year and more before the volume was printed, bearing the title "The Poems of Maria Lowell," and inscribed to Mrs. Story, Mrs. Putnam, and Mrs. Shaw, three friends of whose loving appreciation Lowell had had many assurances. There are only twenty poems in the volume. Most had been printed before, one, "The MorningGlory," in Lowell's own collection. None of her translations were included. One looks naturally in such a volume rather for intimations of the writer's character, and for touches of personal feeling, than for poetic art. Mrs. Lowell herself plainly had but a humble conceit of her poetic gift, and it does not appear that poetry was an abundant resource with her. But art there is of no mean order in this little book. It is a delicate instrument on which she plays; there are not many stops, but there is a vibrant tone which thrills the ear. Tenderness indeed is the prevailing note, but in one poem, "Africa," there is a massiveness of structure, and a sonorous dignity of measure which appeal powerfully to the imagination. The poems have, here and there, an autobiographic value. One written in Rome, shortly after the travellers had reached that city and the dream of childhood had come true, ended with the verses:

"And Rome lay all before us in its glory,

Its glory and its beautiful decay,

But, like the student in the oft-read story,
I could have turned away,

"To the still chamber with its half-closed shutter
Where the beloved father lay in pain,

To sit beside him in contentment utter,
Never to part again."

There are four sonnets in which her love for her husband glows with a deep, steady passion, one of them written doubtless in the solemn days near the end, in the spirit recorded by Lowell when he wrote to Briggs after her death: "She promised to be with me if that were possible.”

"In the deep flushing of the Western sky

The new moon stands as she would fain be gone,
And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion :

If Death uplift me, even thus should I,

Companioned by the silver spirits high,

And stationed on the sunset's crimson towers,
Bend longing over earth's broad stretch of bowers,
To where my love beneath their shades might lie:
For I should weary of the endless blue,
Should weary of my ever-growing light,
If that one soul, so beautiful and true,
Were hidden by earth's vapors from my sight,
Should wane and wane as changeful planets do,
And move on slowly, wrapt in mine own night."

What most impresses the reader who takes all these poems at a sitting is the reserve, the just balance of sentiment which controls them. Passion is here, but it is not stormy, and love and tenderness, but they are not feeble and tearful. Depth of feeling and strength of character lie open to view in the firm lines, and the fine light and shade of the verse come incontrovertibly from a nature evenly poised, whose companionship must have been to Lowell that of a kindred spirit, capable indeed of guiding and not merely of seconding his resolves.

Mrs. Maria White Lowell