Sunday, [31 August, 1840.] I have received your letter and had also written an answer to it, which I just burnt. It was written when I was not in a fit state of mind to write. I had been feeling very strongly that
“Custom lies about us with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.”
If I had written this an hour ago, it would have been black and melancholy enough, but I have smoked three cigars and ruminated and am calm—almost....
If I had seen her three years ago things might have been not thus. But yet I would not give up the bitter knowledge I gained last summer for much—very much.
“Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never passed the lonesome hours,
Weeping and watching for the morrow,
He knows ye not, ye Heavenly powers.”
I have been calmer and stronger ever since. Oh the glory of a calm, still soul! If we could keep our souls ever in a holy silence, we should be wise, we should hear the music of the spheres. But they will ever be talking to themselves. If we could but become so, we should then ever have at our beck those divine messengers which visit us also as well as Abraham....
Do “they say” that she is “transcendental”? Yes, she does indeed go beyond them. They cannot understand a being like her. But if they mean that she is unfit for the duties of life, they are entirely wrong. She has more “common sense” than any woman I have ever seen. Genius always has. Hear what Maria herself says in one of her glorious letters to me. “When I said that I loved you, I almost felt as if I had said ‘and I will espouse sorrow for thy sake,’ for I have lived long enough and observed life keenly enough to know that not the truest and most exalted love can bar the approach of much care and sorrow.” And all these she is ready and able to bear. Yes, she will love you, for she loves everything that I love.
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!”