It would be easy to fill many pages with illustrations drawn from unprinted poems written during this period, and they would have the added value of disclosing the fact that poetry was fast becoming the natural expression of his mind, even while he was fashioning it with constantly better art. In a letter written to Loring, 26 July, 1839, containing two bits of verse lyrically interpretative of his experience, he says: “You must not be surprised if I don’t write again for some time, but the next time I do write I trust my letters will be better worth the postage. At any rate, it shall be filled more with my _real_ than with my _poetical_ me; although now they are synonymous terms, as they should be, for my poetry answers me very much as a sort of journal or rather nousometer.” It is hard for most of us to escape the lurking judgment that the man, or boy either, who throws his spiritual experience into verse is more or less consciously dramatizing, and we are apt to credit greater honesty to the one who does not than to the one who does poetize his disappointments; but in spite of the artfulness which betrays itself in the effort of one who has not yet perfect command of his instrument, there is a ring of sincerity about Lowell’s poetic journal which, without juggling, we both infer from his nature as it is otherwise disclosed, and make illustrative of the real life of the spirit. Here are some verses which occur in a letter to Dr. Loring in the summer of 1839. In writing of them to his friend a few days later, Lowell says: “The lines I wrote to you the other day were improvised, and you must judge them leniently accordingly. I do not think now, as I did ‘two years ago,’ that poetry _must_ be an inspiration, but am convinced that somewhat of care, nay, even of thought, is requisite in a _poem_.” “Turn back your eyes, my friend, with me Upon those two late parted years-- Nay, look alone, for I can see But inward through these bitter tears: Deep grief sometimes our mind’s eye clears. “How much lies in that one word ‘Past’! More than in all that waits before; How many a saddened glance is cast To that stern wall of nevermore, Whose shadow glooms our heart’s deep core. * * * * * “As hard it is for mortal glance To pierce the Has been’s mystery And force of iron circumstance Which said let these and these things be, As to resolve futurity. “A many streams that once ran full Of joy or Marah waves of pain, Wasting or making beautiful, Have sunk no more to flow again, And scarce the tracks they wore remain. “And many shades of joy and woe Pass cloudlike, silent, o’er my soul, Which not one being else may know, And into utter darkness roll, Links lost from out my being’s whole. * * * * *