The latter was consequently astonished when, during her sister's last illness and after her death, she discovered these various compositions in different places and in the least promising forms, carelessly left unnoticed on bedroom shelves, or buried deep in long unopened cabinet drawers. The verses were scrawled with pen or pencil in most irregular fashion, often on blank leaves of tradesmen's account-books, on scraps of old letters and memoranda, the pencil notes sometimes almost effaced, and the handwriting not rarely all but illegible. They were covered, moreover, with hundreds of female fancy heads, sometimes very beautiful; which she had through life an irresistible propensity to draw whenever she had pen or pencil in her hand. And in this state were found pages on pages of fine and finished verse, continually corrected and re-copied and showing great care in the composition, though in other parts lines were often unfinished and the final touches obviously not given.
These fragments are, nevertheless, if one may say so, as poems mostly complete in themselves, and may be read without a sense of imperfection. This is especially the case with the one which
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