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58 59 MARIA A. BROOKS. carefully winding their way through the somewhat intricate maze of elisions, and inversions, and hard proper names. The extracts we have selected, however, almost belie the censure, while they more than justify the praise. The Notes to this poem are full of curious information, and more interesting than the poem itself. She tells us that "some of them were written in Cuba, some in Canada, some at Hanover, U. S., some at Paris, and the last at Keswick, England, under the kind encouragement of Robert Southey, Esq.; and near a window which overlooks the beautiful lake Derwent, and the finest groups of those mountains which encircle completely that charming valley where Greta winds over its bed of clean pebbles, looking as clear as dew." Mrs. Brooks wrote a prose romance, entitled Idomen, or the Vale of Yumuri, which was published in 1843. This was among the latest productions of her creative mind; for at the close of 1845, she died on her estate in the island of Cuba. DESCRIPTION OF EGLA. (FROM ZÓPHIËL.) BLEST were those days! Can these dull ages boast Aught to compare? though now no more beguile, Chain'd in their darkling depths, the infernal host; Who would not brave a fiend to share an angel's smile? 'T was then there lived a captive Hebrew pair; In woe the embraces of their youth had past; And blest their paler years one daughter; fair She flourish'd, like a lonely rose, the last And loveliest of her line. The tear of joy, The early love of song, the sigh that broke From her young lip, the best beloved employ; What womanhood disclosed, in infancy bespoke A child of passion: tenderest and best Of all that heart has inly loved and felt, Adorned the fair enclosure of her breast: Where passion is not found, no virtue ever dwelt. Yet, not perverted, would my words imply The impulse given by Heaven's great Artisan Alike to man and worm, mere spring, whereby The distant wheels of life, while time endures, roll on But the collective attributes that fill, About the soul, their all-important place; That feed her fires, empower her fainting will, And write the God on feeble mortal's face. Yet anger or revenge, envy or hate, The damsel knew not: when her bosom burned And injury darken'd the decrees of fate, She had more piteous sigh'd to see that pain return'd. Or if, perchance, though form'd most just and pure Amid their virtue's wild luxuriance hid, Such germs, all mortal bosoms must immure Which sometimes show their poisonous heads, unbid,— If, haply such the fair Judean finds, Self-knowledge wept the abasing truth to know; And innate Pride, that queen of noble minds, Crush'd them indignant ere a bud could grow. And such, even now, in earliest youth are seen; But would they live, with armour more deform Their breasts made soft by too much love must screen:— "The bird that sweetest sings can least endure the storm." And yet, despite of all, the starting tear, The melting tone, the blood suffusive, proved, The soul that in them spoke could spurn at fear Of death or danger; and had those she loved Required it at their need, she could have stood, Unmoved, as some fair-sculptured statue, while The dome that guards it earth's convulsions rude Are shivering, meeting ruin with a smile.
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