We may not find a clear statement of this mystic revelation in the discursive “Conversations;” rather we should look for it in his poems of this period, and here, though we find nothing whatever to correspond to a system of divine order, we do find, recurring in various forms, a recognition of an all-embracing, all-penetrating power which through the poet transmutes nature into something finer and more eternal, and gives him a vantage ground from which to perceive more truly the realities of life. “The Token,” “An Incident in a Railroad Car,” “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” all in a manner witness to this, and show how persistently in Lowell’s mind was present this aspect of the poet which makes him a seer. Perhaps there is a more direct attempt at expressing this truth in one of the poems not retained in later collections. It is entitled “A Dirge,” and is the imagined plaint over a poet who has died. In this tumultuous period of Lowell’s youth, when the tranquillity which a returned love brought was after all a very self-conscious tranquillity, there was always room for morbid fancies, and the frequency with which in his poetry he recurs to the images of death leads one to suspect that he experimented a little with the idea of his own death. And it may be that in this poem, which a healthier judgment later led him to suppress, he was dramatizing himself. “Poet! lonely is thy bed, And the turf is overhead,-- Cold earth is thy cover; But thy heart hath found release, And it slumbers full of peace ’Neath the rustle of green trees, And the warm hum of the bees Mid the drowsy clover; Through thy chamber still as death A smooth gurgle wandereth, As the blue stream murmureth To the blue sky over. * * * * * Thou wast full of love and truth, Of forgivingness and ruth,-- Thy great heart with hope and youth Tided to o’erflowing; Thou didst dwell in mysteries, And there lingered on thine eyes Shadows of serener skies, Awfully wild memories That were like foreknowing; Thou didst remember well and long Some fragments of thine angel-song, And strive, through want, and woe, and wrong, To win the world unto it; Thy curse it was to see and hear Beyond to-day’s scant hemisphere, Beyond all mists of doubt and fear, Into a life more true and clear,-- And dearly thou didst rue it. * * * * * “Poet! underneath the turf, Soft thou sleepest, free from morrow; Thou hast struggled through the surf Of wild thoughts, and want, and sorrow; Now, beneath the moaning pine Full of rest thy body lieth, While, far up in pure sunshine, Underneath a sky divine, Her loosed wings thy spirit trieth; Oft she strove to spread them here, But they were too white and clear For our dingy atmosphere.”