my Sister,"
composed by Charles in a lucid interval, when he was confined in
the asylum at Hoxton for the six weeks of his single attack of
insanity.

Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and wouldst oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

Mary was ten years older than Charles, and, as is shown well in
Talfourd's "Final Memorials," loved him with an affection combining a
mother's care, a sister's tenderness, and a friend's fervent
sympathy. Nor did he, in return, fall short in any respect. He
appreciated her devotion, pitied her sorrow, responded to her
feelings, revered her worth, and ministered to her wants with a
loving gentleness, a patient self-sacrifice, and an heroic fortitude,
which, as we gaze on his image, make the halo of the saint and the
crown of the martyr alternate with the wrinkles of his weaknesses and
his mirth. In one of her periodical paroxysms of madness, Mary struck
her mother dead with a knife. Charles was then twenty-two, full of
hope and ambition, enthusiastically attached to Coleridge, and in
love with a certain "fair-haired maid," named Anna, to whom he had
written some verses. This fearful tragedy altered and sealed his
fate. He felt it to be his duty to devote himself thenceforth to his
unhappy sister. He abandoned every thought of marriage, gave up his
dreams of fame, and turned to his holy charge, with a chastened but
resolute soul. "She for whom he gave up all," De Vincy says, "in turn
gave up all for him. And of the happiness, which for forty years or
more he had, no hour seemed true that was not derived from her." He
never thought his sacrifice of youth and love gave him any license
for caprice towards her or exactions from her. He always wrote of her
as his better self, his wiser self, a generous benefactress, of whom
he was hardly worthy. "Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my
poor sister is the most thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of
selfishness." He was happy when she was well and with him. His great
sorrow was to be obliged so often to part from her on the recurrences
of her attacks. "To say all that I know of her would be more than I
think anybody could believe or even understand. It would be sinning
against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can conceal
nothing I do from her. All my wretched imperfections I c