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MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.
Margaret Fuller's precocity and her taste for hard study naturally created for her the reputation, among those who did not know her, of a grave young pedant. Nothing could be wider of the mark; she was full of sentiment, began to write poetry at fifteen, and produced some verses at seventeen which her brother has preserved in print; verses mourning, as is the wont of early youth, over the flight of years and life's freshness already vanished.
STANZAS.
WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN.
| I. | |
| “ | Come, breath of dawn! and o'er my temples play; |
| Rouse to the draught of life the wearied sense; | |
| Fly, sleep! with thy sad phantoms, far away; | |
| Let the glad light scare those pale troublous shadows hence! | |
| II. | |
| “ | I rise, and leaning from my casement high, |
| Feel from the morning twilight a delight; | |
| Once more youth's portion, hope, lights up my eye, | |
| And for a moment I forget the sorrows of the night. | |
| III. | |
| “ | O glorious morn! how great is yet thy power! |
| Yet how unlike to that which once I knew, | |
| When, plumed with glittering thoughts, my soul would soar, | |
| And pleasures visited my heart like daily dew! | |
| IV. | |
| “ | Gone is life's primal freshness all too soon; |
| For me the dream is vanished ere my time; | |
| I feel the heat and weariness of noon, | |
| And long in night's cool shadows to recline.”[1] | |
- ↑ Life Without and Within, p. 370.
