MISS BARRETT’S POEMS.
27
| For her eyes alone smiled constantly: her lips had serious sweetness, |
| And her front was calm—the dimple rarely rippled on her cheek: |
| But her deep blue eyes smiled constantly,—as if they had by fitness |
| Won the secret of a happy dream, she did not care to speak. |
How fine are both the descriptive and critical touches in the following passage:
| Ay, and sometimes on the hill-side, while we sat down in the gowans, |
| With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before; |
| And the river running under; and across it, from the rowens, |
| A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore— |
| There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems |
| Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments, more various, of our own; |
| Read the pastoral parts of Spenser—or the subtle interflowings |
| Found in Petrarch’s sonnets—here’s the book—the leaf is folded down! |
| Or at times a modern volume—Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl, |
| Howitt’s ballad-dew, or Tennyson’s god-vocal reverie,— |
| Or from Browning some “Pomegranate,” which, if cut deep down the middle, |
| Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity. |
| Or I read there, sometimes, hoarsely, some new poem of my making— |
| Oh, your poets never read their own best verses to their worth, |
| For the echo, in you, breaks upon the words which you are speaking, |
| And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth. |
| After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging |
| A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,— |
| She would break out, on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing, |
| Like a child’s emotion in a god—a naiad tired of rest. |
| Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest— |
| For her looks sing too—she modulates her gestures on the tune; |
| And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest, |
| ’Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on. |
| Then we talked—oh, how we talked! her voice so cadenced in the talking, |
| Made another singing—of the soul! a music without bars— |
| While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking, |
| Brought interposition worthy-sweet,—as skies about the stars. |
