Through the lips of night and the droning chimes,
Chanting ever of love whose grief o’erwhelms me,
I would be the sound, the night, full madly drunk
With darkness,—the quietude, yon melting cloud,—
Or merge with the light, dissolving altogether.
This pantheism is paralleled, in Vidas Anteriores (Previous Lives) by her consciousness of having lived, in the past, a multiplicity of lives. It may be said, in general, that as a modern pagan she is far more real than as the rhyming Christian she reveals herself in her few attempts at religious poetry.
Shortly before her death she wrote a sonnet called Esperança (Hope), that is clear presentiment. She did not weaken at its approach; she was, as near as is humanly possible, the impassive muse of her own sonnets:
I know it’s a kindly road and the journey’s brief.
Her didactic works, Livro da Infancia, published in 1899, consisting of prose and verse, and Alma Infantil, written in collaboration with Julio Cesar da Silva, 1912, for school use, do not belong to her major productions. It is significant of the status of the Brazilian text-book, as well as of the varied tasks thrown upon the shoulders of the educated in a continent where the major portion of the population has been thus far condemned to illiteracy, when we see how frequently even the major creative spirits of the country turn to the writing of text-books. Yesterday Olavo Bilac, fellow Parnassian of Francisca Julia, spared time for the labour; today Coelho Netto, Oliveira Lima, Monteiro Lobato do so. Again and again is one reminded what a sacrifice, what a luxury, is the creative life in a land that lacks anything like the creative audience. And how much better off are we, who are only on the threshold of a truly national literature?