Its power from loving and from suffering,
They are the banished of another sphere:
For the Almighty goodness might not frame
All for a few—th' elect or the proscribed.
Why spoke the ancients with such awe of Fate?
What had this terrible Fate to do with them,
The common and the quiet, who pursue
The seasons, and do follow timidly
The beaten track of ordinary life?
But she, the priestess of the oracle,
Shook with the presence of a cruel power.
I know not what the involuntary force
That plunges Genius into misery.
Genius doth catch that music of the spheres
Which mortal ear was never meant to know;
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling all unknown to other hearts;–
A Power hath entered in his inmost soul,
Whose presence he may not contain."*
[1]
- ↑ * The part marked as quotation is translated literally from Corinne's song. Its only merit is its exactness, for I have scarcely permitted myself to alter a word. This brief passage is chosen as having less reference to the story than other parts equally beautiful. There occurs, soon afterwards, one of those almost startling remarks which give such peculiarity of thoughtfulness to Madame de Stael's writings. Corinne says, "Perhaps it is what we shall do to-morrow that will decide our fate; perhaps even yesterday have we said some word that nothing can recal." I know not what may be the effect on others, but I could never read this short, but true, remark without a feeling of terror.L. E. L.
