POETRY with Mrs. Moulton was a serious art and an object of earnest pursuit. It was not for mere pastime that she had steeped herself, so to speak, in
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... The old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through; The songs of Spenser's golden days, Arcadian Sidney's silver phrase; |
for in her poetic work she recorded her deepest convictions and her most intimate perceptions of the facts of life. To her life was love; its essence was made up of the charm of noble and sincere friendships, of happy social intercourse, of sympathetic devotion. To this joy of love and friendship, there was in her mind opposed one sorrow—death, and not all the assurances of faith or philosophy could eliminate this dread, this all-pervading fear, that haunted her thoughts. In some way the sadness of death, as a parting, had been stamped on her impressionable nature, and it inevitably colored her outlook and made itself a controlling factor in her character. It took the form, however, of deepening her tenderness for every human relation and widening her charity for all human imperfection. The vision of
Cold hands folded over a still heart,
touched her as it did Whittier, with the pity of humanity's common sorrow, and with him she could have said that such vision
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave.
Writing in later years of Stephen Phillips she said:
"Is it not, after all, the comprehension of love that above all else makes a poet immortal? Who thinks of Petrarch without remembering Laura, of Dante without the vision of Beatrice?"
"I have said that Phillips is the poet of love and of pity. Many poets have uttered the passionate cries of love; but few, indeed, are those who have seen and expressed the piteous tragedy of life as he has done. He says in 'Marpessa,'