re, as symbolized in the
Greek myths, where every natural force becomes a person, and where, in
turn, persons pass with equal readiness and freedom back into nature
again.

In this connection a name would suggest itself even if it did not
appear,--Heine, the Greek, Heine the Jew, Heine the Romanticist, as Emma
Lazarus herself has styled him; and already in this early volume of hers
we have trace of the kinship and affinity that afterwards so plainly
declared itself. Foremost among the translations are a number of
his songs, rendered with a finesse and a literalness that are rarely
combined. Four years later, at the age of twenty-one, she published her
second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as
literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with
the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and
"Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly
Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect
mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of
her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in the world,
she yet makes us aware of a talent of unusual distinction, and a highly
endowed nature,--a sort of tact of sentiment and expression, an instinct
of the true and beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like
second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external
stimulus. But it is not the purely imaginative poems in this volume that
most deeply interest us. We come upon experience of life in these pages;
not in the ordinary sense, however, of outward activity and movement,
but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not
in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we
walk." This is the motto, drawn from Emerson, which she chooses for her
poem of "Epochs," which marks a pivotal moment in her life. Difficult
to analyze, difficult above all to convey, if we would not encroach
upon the domain of private and personal experience, is the drift of
this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper
accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the
drama of the human soul,--"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly,"
"flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth to death.

A golden morning of June! "Sweet empty sky without a stain." Sunlight
and mist and "ripple of rain-f