Public Faces, Private Lives
Text from Improper Bostonians

"You melt my strength" The flamboyant, cigar-smoking Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was directly responsible for helping to modernize American poetry. Lowell first met the divorced actress Ada Dwyer Russell in 1909, and in 1912 the two began a successful courtship. Two years later, they were living together In Lowell's Brookline mansion. Much of Lowell's poetry alludes to their loving relationship. This passage is from "The Wheel of the Sun": In the street, You spread a brightness where you walk, And I see your lifting silks And rejoice; But I cannot look up to your face. You melt my strength, And set my knees to trembling. Shadow yourself that I may love you, For it is too great a pain.