Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/202

184 of upturned faces with their look of unintelligent complacency! Give me tears and groans, rather, if there be a mixture of physical excitement and bigotry. Mr. Dewey is heard because, though he has not entered into the secret of piety, he wishes to be heard and with a good purpose; can make a forcible statement and kindle himself with his own thought. How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little. Can we not wake the spark that will weld them, till they take beautiful forms and can assist each alone? Were one to come now who could purge us with fire! …

“But all my tendency at present is to the deepest privacy. — Where can I hide till I am given to myself? Yet I love the others more and more, and when they are with me must give them the best from my scrip. When I see their infirmities I would fain heal them, forgetful of my own! But am I left one moment alone, then, a poor wandering pilgrim, yet no saint, I would seek the shrine; would therein die to the world and then if from the poor reliques some miracle might be wrought, that is for them!

“Yet some of these saints were able to work in their generation, for they had renounced all!”

It may have been on one of these New Year’s retreats that she wrote her most thoughtful and most artistic poem; almost the only one of hers to which the last epithet could be applied, if, indeed, it be applicable here. The poem was printed in “Summer on the Lakes,” and is on a theme which suited her love of mystic colors