“Now have I quite passed by that cloudy If That darkened the wild hope of boyish days, When first I launched my slender-sided skiff Upon the wide sea’s dim, unsounded ways; Now doth Love’s sun my soul with splendor fill, And Hope bath struggled upward into Power, Soft Wish is hardened into sinewy Will, And Longing into Certainty doth tower: The love of beauty knoweth no despair; My heart would break, if I should dare to doubt, That from the Wrong, which makes its dragon’s lair Here on the Earth, fair Truth shall wander out, Teaching mankind, that Freedom’s held in fee Only by those who labor to set free.” In “A Year’s Life” the l’envoi of the volume is a timid poem, “Goe, little booke!” in which the poet, sending his venture out among strangers and most likely among apathetic readers, comforts himself with the reflection:-- “But, if all others are unkind, There’s _one_ heart whither thou canst fly For shelter from the biting wind; And, in that home of purity, It were no bitter thing to die.” The “L’Envoi” of “Poems” is addressed to M. W. and is an open confession of the indebtedness of his love, three years after the veiled disclosure in “Ianthe,” “Irene,” “Isabel,” and other figurings of his affection, and runs like a golden thread through all the warp and woof of his imagination and fancy. In this serious poem, which he retained in his later collections, though without the declarative initials,[39] Lowell intimates very clearly that his maturer outlook on life, and his attitude toward poetry are due largely to the inspiration which he has derived from the aspirations of his betrothed. Not only has his love for her quickened his eye of faith, but he has caught a wider view and a firmer hold on the great realities of the spirit through the contagion of her lofty idealism and its fervent expression in a moral ardor. This is especially manifest in a long passage which has been omitted from the poem in later collections. There are portions of this omitted passage which are little better than a dissertation on the poet’s mission, and they were wisely dropped, but they drew after them by necessity a few verses which have an interest as recording in a candid fashion the change which had come over the poet’s mind in these three years just past. After the introductory lines, in which he speaks rather disdainfully of “A Year’s Life,” and intimates that he has grown a sadder and a wiser man, yet with no lessening of that trust in God which was so marked a characteristic of his betrothed, he goes on:--