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 "La mâle Sapho, l’amante et le poëte, Plus belle que Vénus par ses mornes pâleurs,— Plus belle que Vénus se dressant sur le monde!”

Among the lesser poems of this volume "The Portrait" holds a place of honour in right of its earnest beauty of thought and rich simplicity of noble images. Above them all in reach and scope of power stands the poem of "Jenny;" great among the few greatest works of the artist. Its plain truth and masculine tenderness are invested with a natural array of thought and imagination which doubles their worth and force. Without a taint on it of anything coarse or trivial, without shadow or suspicion of any facile or vulgar aim at pathetic effect of a tragical or moral kind, it cleaves to absolute fact and reality closer than any common preacher or realist could come; no side of the study is thrown out or thrown back into false light or furtive shadow; but the purity and nobility of its high and ardent pathos are qualities of a moral weight and beauty beyond reach of any rivalry. A divine pity fills it, or a pity something better than divine; the more just and deeper compassion of human fellowship and fleshly brotherhood. Here is nothing of sickly fiction or theatrical violence of tone. No spiritual station of command is assumed, no vantage-ground of outlook from hills of holiness or heights of moral indifference or barriers of hard contempt; no unction of facile tears is poured out upon this fallen golden head of a common woman; no loose-tongued effusion of slippery sympathy, to wash out shame with sentiment. And therefore is "the pity of it" a noble pity, and worth the paying; a genuine sin-offering for intercession, pleading with fate