Page:Summer on the lakes, in 1843.djvu/159

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THE SEERESS OF PREVORST.
149
 Dead lies my bodily frame,
 But in the inmost mind a light burns up,
Such as none knows in the waking life.
 Is it a light? no! but a sun of grace!

Often in the sense of her sufferings, while in the magnetic trance, she made prayers in verse, of which this is one:


  Father, hear me!
  Hear my prayer and supplication.
   Father, I implore thee,
  Let not thy child perish!
   Look on my anguish, my tears.
 
 Shed hope into my heart, and still its longing,
 Father, on thee I call ; have pity I
Take something from me, the sick one, the poor one.
 
  Father, I leave thee not,
  Though sickness and pain consume me.
   If I the spring's light,
  See only through the mist of tears,
   Father, I leave thee not.


These verses lose their merit of a touching simplicity in an unrhymed translation; but they will serve to show the habitual temper of her mind.

“As I was a maker of verses,” continues Dr. Kerner, “it was easy to say, Frau H. derived this talent from my magnetic influence; but she made these little verses before she came under my care.” Not without deep significance was Apollo distinguished as being at once the God of poesy, of prophecy, and the