Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/269

JULIA WARD HOWE patience or faculty to proceed; while their brothers always feel some inward sense impelling them to greater mastery of their professions. The foremost men are those who include woman's intuition with their own strengthening purpose; the noblest women acquire a masculine conscientiousness of treatment in whatever work they undertake. Has Mrs. Howe thus enhanced her womanly endowments? Between her Passion Flowers, published in 1854, and these Later Lyrics, we fail to discover much artistic advance or gain in intellectual clearness. The former volume was noticeable for great merits and great faults; but the faults are equally conspicuous, if not exaggerated, in the collection under review.

What is Mrs. Howe's standard of excellence? Let us repeat it from her own lips. The first among her Poems of Study and Experience reveals it plainly, and is, we observe, one of the most incisive and finished pieces in the volume:

TO THE CRITIC

Of all my verses, say that one is good,

So shalt thou give more praise than Hope might claim;

And from my poet-grave, to vex thy soul,

No ghost shall rise, whose deeds demand a name.

A thousand loves, and only one shall stand

To show us what its counterfeits should be;

The blossoms of a spring-tide, and but one

Bears the world's fruit—the seed of History.

A thousand rhymes shall pass, and only one

Show, crystal-shod, the Muse's twinkling feet;

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