Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

In embarking, however, he warbled a sort of swan-song at the close of his academical life, and published in September, 1823, a small volume of eighty pages, printed at the University Press, Cambridge, and entitled “Poems by George Bancroft. Cambridge: Hilliard & Metcalf.” Some of these were written in Switzerland, some in Italy, some, after his return home, at Worcester; but almost all were European in theme, and neither better nor worse than the average of such poems by young men of twenty or thereabouts. The first, called “Expectation,” is the most noticeable, for it contains an autobiographical glimpse of this young academical Childe Harold setting forth on his pilgrimage:--

'T was in the season when the sun
More darkly tinges spring's fair brow,
And laughing fields had just begun
The summer's golden hues to show.
Earth still with flowers was richly dight,
And the last rose in gardens glowed;
In heaven's blue tent the sun was bright,
And western winds with fragrance flowed;
'T was then a youth bade home adieu;
And hope was young and life was new,
When first he seized the pilgrim's wand
To roam the far, the foreign land.