ride of our girls--
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
With a scorn in her eye that the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!

Go back, haughty Southron! Go back! for thy gold
Is red with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold!"

There was in this volume another poem which is not in any of the later
editions, the impression of which, as it remains to me in broken
snatches, is very beautiful. It began with the lines

"Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one,
Of brown in the shadow, and gold in the sun."

It was a refreshment and an inspiration to look into this book between
my long rows of figures, and read such poems as "The Angel of
Patience," "Follen," "Raphael," and that wonderfully rendered "Hymn"
from Lamartine, that used to whisper itself through me after I had read
it, like the echo of a spirit's voice:--

"When the Breath Divine is flowing,
Zephyr-like o'er all things going,
And, as the touch of viewless fingers,
Softly on my soul it lingers,
Open to a breath the lightest,
Conscious of a touch the slightest,--

Then, O Father, Thou alone,
From the shadow of thy throne,
To the sighing of my breast
And its rapture answerest."

I grew so familiar with this volume that I felt acquainted with the
poet long before I met him. It remained in my desk-drawer for months. I
thought it belonged to my poetic friend, the baler of cloth. But one
day he informed me that it was a borrowed book; he thought, however, he
should claim it for his own, now that he had kept it so long. Upon
which remark I delivered it up to the custody of his own conscience,
and saw it no more.

One day, towards the last of my stay at Lowell (I never changed my
work-room again), this same friendly fellow-toiler handed me a poem to
read, which some one had sent in to us from the counting-room, with the
penciled comment, "Singularly beautiful." It was Poe's "Raven," which
had just made its first appearance in some magazine. It seemed like an
apparition in literature, indeed; the sensation it created among the
staid, measured lyrics of that day, with its flit of spectral wings,
and its ghostly refrain of "Nevermore!" was very noticeable. Poe came
to Lowell to live awhile, but it was after I had gone away.

Our national poetry was at this time just beginning to be well known
and appreciated. Bryant had published two volumes, and every school
child was familia