ible the blow!
But, three years afterward, when Linda came,
With her dark azure eyes and golden hair,
It was as if a healing angel touched
The parents' wound, and turned their desolation
Into a present paradise, revealing
Two dear ones, beckoning from the spirit-land,
And one, detaining them, with infant grasp,
Feeble, yet how resistless! here below.

And so there was great comfort in that household:
And those unwhispered longings both had felt
At times, that they might pass to other scenes
Where Love would find its own, were felt no more:
For Linda grew in beauty every day;
Beauty not only of the outward mould,
Sparkling in those dear eyes, and on the wind
Tossing those locks of gold, but beauty born,
In revelations flitting o'er the face,
From the soul's inner symmetry; from love
Too deep and pure to utter, had she words;
From the divine desire to know; to prove
All objects brought within her dawning ken;
From frolic mirth, not heedless but most apt;
From sense of conscience, shown in little things
So early; and from infant courtesy
Charming and debonair.

The parents said,
While the glad tears shone brimming in their eyes,
"Oh! lacking love and best experience
Are those who tell us that the purity
And innocence of childhood are delusion;
Or that, so far as they exist, they show
The absence of all mind; no impulses
Save those of selfish passion moving it!
And that, by nature desperately wicked,[1]
The child learns good through evil; having no
Innate ideas, no inborn will, no bias.
Here, in this infant, is our confutation!
O self-sufficing physiologist,
Who, grubbing in the earth, hast missed the stars,
We ask no other answer to thy creed
Than this, the answer heaven and earth supply."

Now sixteen summers had our Linda seen,
And grown to be a fair-haired, winsome maid,
In shape and aspect promising to be
A softened repetition of her mother;
And yet some traits from the paternal side
Gave to the head an intellectual grace
And to the liquid eyes a power reserved,
Brooding awhile in tender gloom, and then
Flashing emotion, as some lofty thought,
Some sight of pity, or some generous deed,
Kindled a ready sympathy whose tears
Fell on no barren purpose; for with Linda
To feel, to be uplifted, was to act;
Her sorest trials being when she found
How far the wish