say that she was not naturally sad: that she was all gaiety and cheerfulness: but there is a mournfulness of soul which is never to be seen on the cheek or in the eye: and this I believe to have dwelt in Mrs. Maclean's breast more than in most people's. How otherwise are we to understand her poetry? We cannot believe her sadness to have been put on like a player's garb: to have been an affectation, an unreality: it is too earnest for that. We must suppose that she felt what she wrote: and if so, her written sadness was real sadness. Take the following lines from The Golden Violet: no one can believe that the sentiment they contain is unreal.
song.
My heart is like the failing hearth
Now by my side;
One by one its bursts of flame
Have burnt and died.
There are none to watch the sinking blaze,
And none to care
Or if it kindle into strength,
Or waste in air.
My fate is as yon faded wreath
Of summer flowers:
They've spent their store of fragrant health
On sunny hours,
Which reck'd them not, which heeded not
When they were dead;
Other flowers, unwarn'd by them
Will spring instead.
And my own heart is as the lute
I now am waking:
Wound to too fine and high a pitch,
They both are breaking.
And of their song what memory
Will stay behind?
An echo, like a passing thought
Upon the wind.
