The illness of Blanche which led her parents to take her into the country was slight and temporary. The child grew in beauty and winning grace, and endeared herself to her father in a manner which left its signs long afterward. Early in March, 1847, however, when she was vigorous and gave promise of a hearty life, she was seized suddenly with a malady consequent upon too rapid teething, and after a week’s sickness died. “In the fourteen months she was with us (for which God be thanked),” Lowell wrote to Briggs, “she showed no trace of any evil tendency, and it is wonderful how in so brief a space she could have twined her little life round so many hearts. Wherever she went everybody loved her. My poor father loved her so that he almost broke his heart in endeavoring to console Maria when it was at last decided the dear child was not to be spared to us.” After Blanche was buried, her father took her tiny shoes, the only ones she had ever worn, and hung them in his chamber. There they stayed till his own death. “The Changeling” preserves in poetry the experience of the father in this first great sorrow of his life, and “The First Snow-Fall” intimates the consolation which was shortly to be brought, for in September the second child, Mabel, was born. The literary product of 1847 was inconsiderable. A few poems appeared, and Lowell even contemplated trying his hand at a tragedy founded on the Conquest of Mexico,--the first conquest, as one of his friends slyly remarks,--suggested no doubt by Prescott’s history, which had appeared four years earlier, and had just been followed by the “Conquest of Peru.” He made some progress with the tragedy, and even purposed offering it in competition for the large prize promised by Forrest for a good acting tragedy, but no line of it appears to have been preserved. He contributed also two or three articles to the _North American Review_, and in the fall of the year he set about the collection of such poems as he had written since his previous volume appeared. In the midst of this work he wrote to his friend Carter, then in the little village of Pepperell, and his letter reflects pleasantly the attitude he always took toward New England country life, as well as shows the wistfulness of his regard for his lost child.