aps upon me while I move. Aloud
I said, "I will redeem my name," and then--
I know not if aloud: I felt the words
Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives.
I would not quit the dear familiar earth
Where both of us behold the self-same sun,
Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts
So deep as their communion." Resolute
I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me
As one who will regain the only life
Where he is other than apostate--one
Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows
Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach--
Outside those vows--the fatal second breach--
Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast,
Not even expiation--poor pretence,
Which changes naught but what survives the past,
And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf
Divide us.

FEDALMA.

Yes, forever. We must walk
Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love.
Our dear young love--its breath was happiness!
But it had grown upon a larger life
Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled--
The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed;
For we shall carry each the pressure deep
Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore.
The winds to-night will bear me far away.
My lord, farewell!

What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to
all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are
sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and
beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a
poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry,
more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion.
They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something
which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her
ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or
three exceptions.

Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems
than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of
Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of
so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was
to be--

a happy spiritual star
Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose
Of light in Paradise, whose only self