The first volume of poetry which Lowell published, “A Year’s Life,” is, as its name intimates, a poetic record of the time covered by these and other passages from his correspondence. It appeared in January, 1841, and he was moved to print it both because Miss White desired it, and because it was so full of her. The love which found expression, as we have seen, in letters to a familiar friend, could not fail of an outlet in verse, and was but thinly concealed from the public in a volume which, from Dedication to Epilogue, was glowing with it. Many of the poems he had already printed in the magazines for which he had been diligently writing, and these poems, as they appeared, were announcements, to those who knew both the lovers, of the pure passion which was flaming. Two of the poems in particular reflect Lowell’s idealization of the lady and his consciousness of what this experience meant to him. “‘Ianthe,’” he writes to Loring, “is good as far as it goes. I did not know her then. She _is_ a glorious creature indeed!” “Dear, glorious creature!” he exclaims, near the close of the poem, “With eyes so dewy bright, And tenderest feeling Itself revealing In every look and feature, Welcome as a homestead light To one long-wandering in a clouded night; O, lovelier far her woman’s weakness, Which yet is strongly mailed In armor of courageous meekness And faith that never failed!” The lines on pages 77, 78 are from the same poem, which was written thus when the acquaintance was ripening into intimacy. The whole poem is a tribute to the visionary beauty of her face and character as revealed to him. “There is a light,” thus the poem opens:-- “There is a light within her eyes Like gleams of wandering fire-flies; From light to shade it leaps and moves Whenever in her soul arise The holy shapes of things she loves.” Throughout the poem runs, moreover, an undercurrent of holy awe and a presage of her short life, which drew from him the reflections on death that occur in his letters:-- “I may not tell the blessedness Her mild eyes send to mine, The sunset-tinted haziness Of their mysterious shine, The dim and holy mournfulness Of their mellow light divine; The shadows of the lashes lie Over them so lovingly, That they seem to melt away In a doubtful twilight-gray, While I watch the stars arise In the evening of her eyes. I love it, yet I almost dread To think what it foreshadoweth; And, when I muse how I have read That such strange light betokened death,-- Instead of fire-fly gleams, I see Wild corpse lights gliding waveringly.”