To doff their hats as the black coat went by,
Ere skirts expanding in their apogee
Turned girls to bells without the second e;
Still in my teens, I felt the varied woes
Of volunteers, each singing as he chose,
Till much experience left me no desire
To learn new species of the village choir."
Life at Elmwood was interrupted by college days, but he returned to the Cambridge house with his wife, Maria Lowell. The oldest children were born here. Here, too, came the first great sorrow of the parents, the death of their first born. At that time Mrs. Lowell found comfort in writing "The Alpine Sheep," a poem that has helped many parents in a like time of bereavement.
The next great sorrow came during the Civil War, when the death from wounds was announced first of General Charles Russell Lowell, then of James Jackson Lowell, and finally of William Lowell Putnam, all beloved nephews. In the Biglow Papers, Second Series, the poet referred to these three soldiers. Leslie Stephen called the lines "the most pathetic that he ever wrote" in which he spoke of the three likely lads,
"Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't,