The daughter of music,--music, passing into her being, became poetry.

It was not the stage that attracted her, with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which the stage seemed to centre and represent.

There the poetry found a voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself.

It coloured her thoughts, it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams.

At last came love; and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may be led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find strange virtues in some lonely flower.