e sonnets
to George Sand, on which the French biographer[3] of Mrs. Browning, in
recent years, has commented, translating the first line,--

"_Vrai genie, mais vraie femme!_"

and adding that these words, addressed to George Sand, are illustrated by
her own life.

The sonnet "Insufficiency," of this period, closes with the lines,

"And what we best conceive we fail to speak.
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall."

In all this work that deep religious note, that exaltation of spirituality
which so completely characterized Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is felt by
the reader. Religion was always to her a life, not a litany. The Divine
Love was as the breath of life to her, wherein she lived and moved, and on
which she relied for her very being.

The poem called "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," though not often noted
by the critical writers on Mrs. Browning, is one full of impressive lines,
with that haunting refrain of every stanza,--

"O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!"

Albeit, a candid view must also recognize that this poem reveals those
early faults, the redundancy, the almost recklessness of color and rhythm,
that are much less frequently encountered in the poems of Mrs. Browning
than they were in those of Miss Barrett. For poetic work is an art as well
as a gift, and while "Poets are born, not made," yet, being born, the poet
must proceed also to make himself. In this "Rhapsody" occur the lines that
are said to have thrown cultured Bostonians into a bewilderment
exceptional; a baffled and despairing state not to be duplicated in all
history, unless by that of the Greeks before the Eleusinian mysteries; the
lines running,--

"Let us sit on the thrones
In a purple sublimity,
And grind down men's bones
To a pale unanimity."

Polite circles in Boston pondered unavailingly upon this medley, and were
apparently reduced to the same mental condition as was Mrs. Carlyle when
she read "Sordello." Unfortunately for Jane Carlyle there were in her day
no Browning societies, with their all-embracing knowledge, to which
Browning himself conveniently referred all persons who questioned him as
to the meaning of certain passages. One Boston woman, not unknown to fame,
recalls even now that she walked the Common, revolving these cryptic lines
in her mind, and meeting Dr. Holmes, asked if