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._