arge
darkened room, lying much of the time upon her couch, and seeing only
a few most intimate friends, the frail woman lived and wrote. Books
more than ever became her solace and joy. Miss Mitford says, "She read
almost every book worth reading, in almost every language, and gave
herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seem born to be the
priestess." When Dr. Barry urged that she read light books, she had a
small edition of Plato bound so as to resemble a novel, and the good
man was satisfied. She understood her own needs better than he.

When she was twenty-nine, she published _The Seraphim and Other
Poems_. The _Seraphim_ was a reverential description of two angels
watching the Crucifixion. Though the critics saw much that was
strikingly original, they condemned the frequent obscurity of meaning
and irregularity of rhyme. The next year, _The Romaunt of the Page_
and other ballads appeared, and in 1844, when she was thirty-five, a
complete edition of her poems, opening with the _Drama of Exile_.
This was the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, the first scene
representing "the outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud,
from the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. Adam and
Eve are seen in the distance flying along the glare."

In one of her prefaces she said: "Poetry has been to me as serious a
thing as life itself,--and life has been a _very_ serious thing; there
has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook
pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of
the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand
and head work, apart from the personal being, but as the completest
expression of that being to which I could attain,--and as work I offer
it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of
my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration; but
feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was
done should give it some protection from the reverent and sincere."

While the _Drama of Exile_ received some adverse criticism, the shorter
poems became the delight of thousands. Who has not held his breath in
reading the _Rhyme of the Duchess May_?--

"And her head was on his breast, where she smiled as one at rest,--
_Toll slowly_.
'Ring,' she cried, 'O vesper-bell, in the beech-wood's old chapelle!'
But the passing-bell rings best!

"They have