The great grief which Mr. Taylor felt when his wife died, was so deep and keen that he was for many months unreconciled, and in a mental state somewhat akin to despair. His appearance among his friends, whether at Kennett or in the office of the “Tribune” at New York, did not, however, betray his feelings so much as his private correspondence and occasional poems. He was the sincerest of mourners; and his natural susceptibility to every shade of emotion made this severe bereavement an occasion of untold suffering. In his endeavors to banish the gloomy spectre, he resorted to hard work. Hence, the first half of the year 1851 was one of the busiest seasons of his life. He wrote early and late. He composed poems and essays, wrote editorials, and edited correspondence, some of it being the labor attached to his profession, but a great share of it written to occupy his mind and shut out his affliction. His “Rhymes of Travel,” which had been published after his return from California, called the attention of the reading public to him as a poet, and there was a strong demand for another volume. His friends urged him to write, his uneasy heart pushed him into work, and the newspapers kept questioning him about the advent of a second volume, until he decided to bring out his book of “Romances, Lyrics, and Songs.” There was one poem in that volume which was very sweet when wholly disconnected with history, but which becomes fascinating and sad as Milton’s lament for his eyesight, when we once know the circumstances and the mental condition in which it was written. Two verses of that poem were printed, as follows:— “Give me music, sad and strong, Drawn from deeper founts than song; More impassioned, full, and free, Than the poet’s numbers be: Music which can master thee, Stern enchantress, Memory! Piercing through the gloomy stress Of thy gathered bitterness, As the summer lightnings play Through a cloud’s edge far away. Give me music; I am dumb; Choked with tears that never come; Give me music; sigh or word Such a sorrow never stirred,— Sorrow that with blinding pain Lies like fire on heart and brain. Earth and heaven bring no relief, I am dumb; this weight of grief Locks my lips; I cannot cry: Give me music, or I die.” It was then that he wrote those pathetic lines, so full of his sadness and so descriptive of his bereavement, that he was never satisfied with a name for them and finally left them without a title, the first couplet of which sufficiently indicates the tenor,— “Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane, And fall, thou drear December rain!”