adds, however: — ‘What heaven it must be to have the happy sense of accomplishing something, and to feel the glow of action without exhausted weariness! Surely the race would have worn itself out by corrosion, if men in all ages had suffered, as we now do, from the consciousness of an unattained Ideal.’
Extracts from journals will best reveal her state of
mind.
‘I have a dim consciousness of what the terrible
experiences must be by which the free poetic element is
harmonized with the spirit of religion. In their essence
and their end these are one, but rarely in actual
existence. I would keep what was pure and noble in my
old native freedom, with that consciousness of falling
below the best convictions which now binds me to the
basest of mankind, and find some new truth that shall
reconcile and unite them. Once it seemed to me, that
my heart was so capable of goodness, my mind of clearness,
that all should acknowledge and claim me as a
friend. But now I see that these impulses were
prophetic of a yet distant period. The “intensity” of
passion, which so often unfits me for life, or, rather, for
life here, is to be moderated, not into dulness or
languor, but a gentler, steadier energy.’
‘The stateliest, strongest vessel must sometimes be
brought into port to refit. If she will not submit to
be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and
scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring
a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave.
Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the
insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean.
