For me the jasmine buds unfold
And silver daisies star the lea,
The crocus hoards the sunset gold,
And the wild rose breathes for me.
I feel the sap through the bough returning,
I share the skylark's transport fine,
I know the fountain's wayward yearning,
I love, and the world is mine!
I love, and thoughts that sometime grieved,
Still well remembered, grieve not me;
From all that darkened and deceived
Upsoars my spirit free.
For soft the hours repeat one story,
Sings the sea one strain divine;
My clouds arise all flushed with glory,—
I love, and the world is mine!
but it can only be perfect in this flowering since it controls wider motives, being "creation's breath and vital flame!" This love manifests itself through life, but it is touched with divinity; it flows out of the individual and becomes a human virtue. Because it is that which
…draws its deeper breath
From altitudes that know not death—
it is both the mystery and the revelation of that paradoxical goodness and strength leavening our more worldly tendencies. No American poet has so clearly visioned this radiance of the spirit, with its glimmerings, still pure white, lighting the way that man takes among his fellows. No influence of that austerity in her art, which is like a suppressed sensibility of all that is sad and perplexing in human life, can lessen the sweetness or tinge the joy for which she sees everywhere so great a capacity, so desirable a need, in human nature.
It is by some consistent shaping of truth, on the anvil of life, out of the elements of experience and intuition, of imagination and spiritual sympathy, that the poet comes to impress its substantive quality upon the world. At the heart of all significant poetry is this purpose, working intensely through the natural feelings of the singer. The soul broods and meditates upon a few great and mysterious questions of human experience, and the art that is engaged in becomes in substance so many declarations, in form so many manifestations of these spiritual interests. They are set forth in the abstract ministrations of beauty; and conveyed in moods that take on the palpable and various deeds of man in his private and public history: and is like a golden thread, running through that pattern of form and color woven in the effort to represent the changing and elusive impressions of nature. By personalizing these
