Page:Poems Blagden.djvu/15

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
memoir.
xi

the celestial mountain; yet she is far from being alien to joy. In the supreme and exhilarating beauty of the material world she revels like "the shrill cicale, people of the pine," the sound of whose light-hearted chirrup was so grateful to her ears. In no one I have ever known were joyousness, that special appanage of the ancient world, and melancholy, that heavy inheritance of modern times, so evenly and equitably blended. All that was most precious in Pagan feeling, and all that is most sacred in Christian sentiment, were absorbed and assimilated by her nature. She had a thoroughly sensuous soul; an eye, ear, heart, exquisitely alive to beauty of sound and scent, of sky, mountain, sea, city, or human face. She gloried in the gorgeous apparel of the external world, just as—many will remember—she delighted in bright textures and vivid colours for female adornment. Indeed, could her innate tastes have been thoroughly indulged, she would have striven to add to Greek beauty of form an oriental splendour of decoration. She exulted in all that could boast the vital power of loveliness. You never met her but she was full of some fresh subject of enthusiasm—a book, a countenance, or some natural prospect. I have heard more than one of her friends describe her as bird-like; and even a stranger would have found something apt in the comparison, by reason of her singularly small figure and sprightly manner. But I suspect that what really suggested the idea was the completeness of her accord with surrounding nature, and more especially with the scenery