The Poems, vol 2 | Page 7

"Does not the morn break thus,
Swift, bright, victorious,
With new skies cleared for us
Over the soul storm-tost?
Her night was long and deep,
Strange visions vexed her sleep,
Strange sorrows bade her weep,
Her faith in dawn was lost.
"No halt, no rest for her,
The immortal wanderer
From sphere to higher sphere
Toward the pure source of day.
The new light shames her fears,
Her faithlessness and tears,
As the new sun appears
To light her god-like way."
Nature is the perpetual resource and consolation. "'T is good to be
alive!" she says, and why? Simply,

"To see the light
That plays upon the grass, to feel (and
sigh
With perfect pleasure) the mild breeze
stir
Among the garden roses, red and white,
With whiffs of fragrancy."
She gives us the breath of the pines and of the cool, salt seas,
"illimitably sparkling." Her ears drink the ripple of the tide, and she
stops
"To gaze as one who is not satisfied
With gazing at the large, bright,
breathing sea."
"Phantasies" (after Robert Schumann) is the most complete and perfect
poem of this period. Like "Epochs," it is a cycle of poems, and the
verse has caught the very trick of music,--alluring, baffling, and evasive.
This time we have the landscape of the night, the glamour of moon and
stars,--pictures half real and half unreal, mystic imaginings, fancies,
dreams, and the enchantment of "faerie," and throughout the
unanswered cry, the eternal "Wherefore" of destiny. Dawn ends the
song with a fine clear note, the return of day, night's misty phantoms
rolled away, and the world itself, again green, sparkling and breathing
freshness.
In 1874 she published "Alide," a romance in prose drawn from
Goethe's autobiography. It may be of interest to quote the letter she
received from Tourgeneff on this occasion:--
"Although, generally speaking, I do not think it advisable to take
celebrated men, especially poets and artists, as a subject for a novel,
still I am truly glad to say that I have read your book with the liveliest
interest. It is very sincere and very poetical at the same time; the life
and spirit of Germany have no secrets for you, and your characters are
drawn with a pencil as delicate as it is strong.