_TO THE DANDELION_ Four stanzas were added to this poem after its first appearance, the sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth, but in the finally revised edition these were cut out, very likely because Lowell regarded them as too didactic. Indeed the poem is complete and more artistic without them. "Of Lowell's earlier pieces," says Stedman, "the one which shows the finest sense of the poetry of nature is that addressed _To the Dandelion_. The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intuitively, and both thought and language are felicitous throughout. This poem contains many of its author's peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling." 6. Eldorado: The land of gold, supposed to be somewhere in South America, which the European adventurers, especially the Spaniards, were constantly seeking in the sixteenth century. 27. Sybaris: An ancient Greek colony in southern Italy whose inhabitants were devoted to luxury and pleasure. 52-54. Compare _Sir Launfal._ _MY LOVE_ Lowell's love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in this little poem. He wrote it at about the time of their engagement. While it is thus personal in its origin, it is universal in its expression of ideal womanhood, and so has a permanent interest and appeal. In its strong simplicity and crystal purity of style, it is a little masterpiece. Though filled with the passion of his new and beautiful love, its movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of one of Wordsworth's best lyrics. _THE CHANGELING_ This is one of the tender little poems that refer to the death of the poet's daughter Blanche, which occurred in March, 1847. _The First Snow-fall_ and _She Came and Went_ embody the same personal grief. When sending the former to his friend Sydney H. Gay for publication, he wrote: "May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you." Underwood, in his _Biographical Sketch_ says that "friends of the poet, who were admitted to the study in the upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes that hung over a picture-frame." The volume in which this poem first appeared contained this dedication--"To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little Blanche this volume is reverently dedicated." A changeling, according to folk-lore and fairy tale, is a fairy child that the fairies substitute for a human child that they have stolen. The changeling was generally sickly, shrivelled and in every way repulsive. Here the poet reverses the superstition, substituting the angels for the mischievous fairies, who bring an angel child in place of the lost one. Whittier has a poem on the same theme, _The Changeling._ 29. Zingari: The Gypsies--suggested by "wandering angels" above--who wander about the earth, and also sometimes steal children, according to popular belief.