Let us take one or two selections at random from the
first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four
stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--
My perfect wife, my Leonor,
Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path grey heads abhor?
For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from our life's safe hem!
With me, youth led--I will speak now,
No longer watch you as you sit
Reading by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it
Mutely--my heart knows how--
When, if I think but deep enough,
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
And you, too, find without a rebuff
The response your soul seeks many a time
Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--
We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could
"pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this.
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