ALLEGRA
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being;
Graceful without design, and unforeseeing;
With eyes—Oh! speak not of her eyes! which seem
Two mirrors of Italian heaven.
In these Wordsworthian lines Shelley describes Lord Byron's little daughter, Allegra, then under two years of age; and the word "toy"—so keenly suggestive of both the poetic and the masculine point of view—has in this case an unconscious and bitter significance. Allegra was a toy at which rude hands plucked violently, until death lifted her from their clutches, and hid her away in the safety and dignity of the tomb. "She is more fortunate than we are," said her father, with a noble and rare lapse into simplicity, and the words were sadly true. Never did a little child make a happier escape from the troublesome burden of life.
In the winter of 1816, a handsome, vivacious, dark-eyed girl sought the acquaintance
