Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/275

JULIA WARD HOWE

Life ye tear to shred and flitter,

Joying in the costly glitter

To rehearse each art-abortion

That consumes a widow's portion.

The skies have left one marble drop

Within the lily's heart.

Here is a stanza that can only find its counterpart in Sternhold and Hopkins's version of the Psalms:

Mrs. Howe invariably says Jèsu for Jesus; and her prayer is always an Ave. Among her crippled and unscholarly devices of expression are such words and phrases as "sweat-embossed," "sense-magic," "weird-encircled," "inmould," "poor occurrence," "recondite dinners," "man's idle irk," "love's eterne," "solvent skies," "in wondrous sequency involved," "life's great impersonate," "prince's minivère," and so forth, since these are taken at random from a barbaric host. She tells us of one who "passions with her glance," and elsewhere bids "dawn's sentinels" to "shed golden balsam." Who else could have written such a stanza as this?

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