Elevations Poétiques et Religieuses.Par Marie Jenna. Deuxième Edit. 2 vols. Paris: Adrien le Clerc et Cie. 1872.
As the eye lingers upon a beautiful landscape, spring clad and fair in the clear light of the new-risen sun; as the ear loiters unwilling to lose the last echoed link of some simple melting melody; as the hand tarries loth to quit the gentle grasp that speaks unspoken sympathy, so have we—reluctant to lose such fair pictures, such moving lays, such deep and tender feeling—lingered and loitered and tarried with Marie Jenna, “the Poet of the Vosges.” Gifted with the nice perception of a true poet, Marie Jenna clothes the simplest ideas in language of such rare delicacy, so fresh, tender, vivid, and withal so musical, that mind, heart, eye, and ear, all are at once engaged. A bird, a butterfly, a flower, gains new interest in her hands; she flings a grace around it, she vests it with a dignity it never had before; she makes it live again. Take, for instance, the opening stanzas of “Le Papillon”:
“Pourquoi t'approcher en silence
Et menacer mon vol joyeux?
Par quelle involontaire offense
Ai-je pu déplaire à tes yeux?
“Je suis la vivante étincelle
Qui monte et descend tour à tour;
La fleur à qui Dieu donne une aile,
Un souffle, un regard, un amour.