Note 97 — Chapter XVI · RETURN TO PRIVATE LIFE 1885-1888
Reading edition
A month before Mr. Gilder had asked for a poem, and Lowell had put him off thus: “Rhymes for Gilder indeed! He doesn’t need ’em for he can make ’em. But I have a pocketful. I give you one at a time:—
“Love to Mrs. Gilder And to all the childer.”
After that, in a series of brief notes called out by the Landor article, there was a peppering of these lines, each note ending in a couplet, as—
“Give my love to Mrs. Gilder, Hope this weather hasn’t chill’d her.” “Love to Mrs. Gilder, Glad that it thrilled her.” “Love to Mrs. Gilder: At her birth kind fairies filled her (to be continued in my next).”
“(Continued)
Cup with all sweet gifts and trilled her (to be continued)”
but in his next he is obliged to write: “I have lost my cue in the epic poem to Mrs. Gilder’s address. I thought I could carry it in my memory, but find that her pocket has holes in it.”