University of Virginia Library

[XXIII Excellent Bartlett]

Excellent Bartlett,
I must a part let
Fly of my satisfaction:
After tasting your trout
I feel as stout
As who has done a good action.
Though my stomach's capricious,
It found them delicious
And certain to stow well:
With all decent haste
They largened the waist
Of yours J. R. Lowell.
 

This passage becomes more intelligible—and more poignant—when one realizes that it was written but a few months before Lowell's death from cancer.