Part 7 (1/2)

Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle: Vous me piquez, maladroite Ah, c'est bien, Bien,--chere Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle”

”Celui qu'en vain je voudraisobier

(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere

(Ah, fi! profane, est-ce la rains d'or benits par le Saint-Pere!) II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, En y pensant a peine je respire: Frere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain, Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?

”Vite! un coup d'oeil au miroir, Le dernier--J'ai l'assurance Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir Chez l'ambassadeur de France”

Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait

Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle!

Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait, Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!

L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'eleve, Et sans pitie devore sa beaute, Ses dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve!

Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!

On disait, Pauvre Constance!

Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour, Chez l'ambassadeur de France[65]

Yes, that is the fact of it Right or wrong, the poet does not say

What youto do with that There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her cha, at the Ambassador's of France Make what you will of it

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not, frole poetical (so called) expression, except in one stanza The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing

The poet stands by, i her words just as they come At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own eer the facts only, but the facts as they seenaith _voluptuousness_--_without pity_ It is soon past The fate is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth He closes all with the calm veracity,

They said, ”Poor Constance!”

Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperareatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and coreat, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his govern, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuovernment, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becodom of assyria cannot be contereat, too wonderful It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused eleht, full of strange voices ”Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying 'Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is coht of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment

”The ing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands”[67]

But by howis noble when it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so h for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere affectation of it, in hardness of heart Si may almost always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions as a sort of current coin; yet there is even a worse, at least athan this, in which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by so, yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try toit with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost

When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a truly good and holy man, he per so far as to exclaiels, tell me where

You know hilories bea flowers?[68]

This eht But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl--

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above

But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; Thestrea, in their fall[69]