not wholly maintain it, even in these “retreats” at Brook Farm. She seems to have been in the habit of going there on New Year’s Eve; and there are among her papers successive meditations or descriptions at that time, usually introducing some poem of her own. One of these narratives is as follows: —
“The moon was nearly full, and shone in an unclouded sky over wild fields of snow. The day was Sunday, a happy Sunday. I had enjoyed being with William equally when we were alone or with these many of different ages, tempers, and relationships with us, for all seemed bound in one thought this happy day.
“William addressed them in the morning on the Destiny of the Earth, and then I read aloud Ellery’s poem ‘The Earth.’[1] … But in the night the thoughts of these verses kept coming, though they relate more to what had passed at the Fourier convention, and to the talk we had been having in Mrs. R.’s room, than to the deeper occupation of my mind.”[2]
To find how this dream of silence filled her soul, at times, we must turn to another passage in the same letter to the Rev. W. H. Channing which describes her interview with the Ripleys: —
“It is by no means useless to preach. In my experience of the divine gifts of solitude, I had forgotten what might be done in this other way. O that crowd
