“These stage divinities how soon they pass!
“How short a time it seems since we sat with Juliet on that balcony above the Verona road. Juliet, so fair, so ethereal, listening dreamily as Romeo speaks, her golden voice vibrating with the undying poetry of Shakespeare, the whole world bound by her magic spells!
“She was barely twenty, this Miss Smithson, and, without knowing it, she was a poem, a passion, a revolution—By her absolute truth she conquered.
“She it was who gave the lead to Dorval, Malibran, Victor Hugo and Berlioz. To her Delacroix owed his conception of sweet Ophelia.
“Now she is dead and her dream of glory—that glory which passes so rapidly—is over and done.
“In my young days they used to sing a funeral dirge to Juliet, wherein recurred, like an old Greek chorus, the heart-breaking refrain, ‘Throw flowers! Throw flowers!’
“‘Juliet is dead. Throw flowers!
Death lies upon her, softly as frost on April grass. Throw flowers!
Her love song is a funeral knell. Throw flowers!
Her marriage feast the feast of Death. Throw flowers!
Her marriage blossoms deck her tomb. Throw flowers!’”
Liszt wrote from Weimar as only he can write:
“She inspired you, you loved and sang of her. Her work is done!”
To Louis Berlioz.