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 you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do
with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There
they danced, till the morning, 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, from
beginning to end of it, a single 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, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as
they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of
death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no
longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire
gnaws with _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
temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the
greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of
feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to
the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in
proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a
point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this
government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild
fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of
Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact
is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a
confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his s