On me! I answered her in shouts, and knelt,—
Ev'n there in darkness, mid the falling ruins,
Beneath the echoing thunder-trump,—and swore
To make the bondmen free."
Domestic scenes occur, where the stern revolutionist, burning to avenge the hoarded injuries of his class, unbends in tender endearments. These two phases of his character heightened each other as the ivy sets off the oak or the flower the rock. Both aspects were equally planted in his nature, and so were equally spontaneous and truthful in his playing. In one mood he says to Mariamne, with fond murmuring inflections of voice, the very music of caressing love,—
"Life's better joys spring up thus by the wayside;
And the world calls them trifles, 'Tis not so.
Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys
In unregarded torrents upon man;
They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds