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alike of superabundant imagery and of harmonious verbosity, which has had the happiest results. She is one of the greatest sonnet writers in our language, worthy for this at all events to be ranked side by side with Milton and with Wordsworth.

Our own generation is probably inclined to give the poetess less than her due, and for obvious reasons. The art of versemaking has been carried to a point of technical perfection that she hardly dreamt of, and her laxity offends. Moreover, her innocent and heartfelt enthusiasms fall a little dully on the ear of a perverse and critical generation. We should call her naive, almost silly, where she has merely been artless and confiding. Her enthusiasm for Bulwer Lytton's weaker work and the traces of his influence on her earlier poems we cannot easily away with. There are passages in Aurora Leigh, particularly the passages describing the bad people, which might make an unkindly critic describe the authoress as a hysterical school-girl; and indeed it would not be easy to confute the critic, except by putting passage against passage, and showing how, with her, a lapse is always followed by a rise. What valuable and original elements her thought possesses have for the most part been absorbed long ago, have become common property, and are no longer recognisable as hers. The great struggle for Italian unity has inspired some of her best verses, and that struggle has already become very much a matter of ancient history. Yet in spite of all deductions that can be made-deductions, be it remembered, which are sometimes to be counted against the reader, and only sometimes against the poetess-she remains an attractive and delightful personage, and she has stamped enough of herself upon her poetry to give it an enduring charm. Her deep tenderness and genuineness of feeling, showing themselves in such poems as the Cry of the Children or Cowper's Grave, will never fail of their rightful power. She has touched all the chief human relationships, that of friend and friend, that of husband and wife, that of mother and child, with an exquisite insight and sensitiveness and delicacy, and her style, when she touches them, attains almost always that noble and severe simplicity which is so greatly to be preferred to her most luscious and copious versification. She has added a charm to motherhood only less than that added by Raffaelle himself, and the pleasant fate will be hers of being faithfully read by many a generation of youthful lovers.

WILLIAM T. ARNOLD.

IRREPARABLENESS.

I have been in the meadows all the day,
And gathered there the nosegay that you see,
Singing within myself as bird or bee

When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,—and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!

My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.

GRIEF.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
I.

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,—
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery while I strove,—

'Guess now who holds thee?'-' Death,' I said. But, there The silver answer rang-'Not Death, but Love.'

IV.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware

In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush! call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice within
That weeps as thou must sing-alone, aloof

VI.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand

Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore,-
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

What I do

With pulses that beat double.
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I suc
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

XXVII.

My own beloved, who hast lifted me

From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown

A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,
Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
Who camest to me when the world was gone,
And I who looked for only God, found thee!
I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel,
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life—so I, with bosom-swell,
Make witness, here, between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

XXVIII.

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night,
This said, he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand—a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! this the paper's light-
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast :
And this-O Love, thy words have ill availed,
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

XLIII.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life !—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.'

Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street
Live out, from end to end, full in the sun,
With Austria's thousand; sword and bayonet,

Horse, foot, artillery,-cannons rolling on

Like blind slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat
Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode

By a single man, dust-white from head to heel,
Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode,
Like sculptured Fate serene and terrible.
As some smooth river which has overflowed,
Will slow and silent down its current wheel
A loosened forest, all the pines erect,

So swept, in mute significance of storm,

The marshalled thousands; not an eye deflects

To left or right, to catch a novel form

Of Florence city adorned by architect

And carver, or of Beaut'es live and warm

Scared at the casements,-all, straightforward eyes
And faces, held as steadfast as their swords,
And cognizant of acts, not imageries.

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