Page:Poems Blagden.djvu/14

 charity of which her heart was a never-failing fountain. To all such charges of inconsistency or inconsequence she was merrily insensible, and would close an argument in which, from the mere syllogistic point of view, she had perhaps not emerged a victor, with two or three rapid nods of the head, and the exclamation, "Ah! well!" as though she were addressing her own breast, and appealing to a grandly illogical but truly celestial tribunal within. I remember well holding a controversy with her on one of those subjects that dip into the inner life, as we sat among the roses and the vines, a few days before our dear Florence held its sixth centenary of the birth of Dante. We differed; she failed to convince me, and I failed equally to shake her. Finally, she enunciated something I did not even understand, and I said so frankly. "Never mind," she replied, "you will understand it some day." And she was right. Alas! she can reprove us thus wisely and quietly—no more.

This ever-present, ever-flowing feeling, which was the main charm of her conversation, seems to me to be strikingly noticeable—though I almost think in a slightly less degree, probably because we naturally expect to find it there—in her poetry. She is resolutely on the side of the angels. Yet she soars into no ethereal region. Her Muse walks the familiar world of human passion and suffering, illumining the journey with the light of a compassionate lantern lit at heavenly lamps. Her creed is the old one of the valley of tears that leads to