DON SILVA.

                          I go to Rome, to seek

The right to use my knightly sword again;
The right to fill my place and live or die
So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. 
I sate one hour upon the barren rock
And longed to kill myself; but then I said,
I will not leave my name in infamy,
I will not be perpetual rottenness
Upon the Spaniard’s air.  If I must sink
At last to hell, I will not take my stand
Among the coward crew who could not bear
The harm themselves had done, which others bore. 
My young life yet may fill some fatal breach,
And I will take no pardon, not my own,
Not God’s—­no pardon idly on my knees;
But it shall come to me upon my feet
And in the thick of action, and each deed
That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting
That drives me higher up the steep of honor
In deeds of duteous service to that Spain
Who nourished me on her expectant breast,
The heir of highest gifts.  I will not fling
My earthly being down for carrion
To fill the air with loathing:  I will be
The living prey of some fierce noble death
That leaps upon me while I move.  Aloud
I said, “I will redeem my name,” and then—­
I know not if aloud:  I felt the words
Drinking up all my senses—­“She still lives. 
I would not quit the dear familiar earth
Where both of us behold the self-same sun,
Where there can be no strangeness ’twixt our thoughts
So deep as their communion.”  Resolute
I rose and walked.—­Fedalma, think of me
As one who will regain the only life
Where he is other than apostate—­one
Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows
Of Spanish knight and noble.  But the breach—­
Outside those vows—­the fatal second breach—­
Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast,
Not even expiation—­poor pretence,
Which changes naught but what survives the past,
And raises not the dead.  That deep dark gulf
Divide us.

FEDALMA.

           Yes, forever.  We must walk

Apart unto the end.  Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love. 
Our dear young love—­its breath was happiness! 
But it had grown upon a larger life
Which tore its roots asunder.  We rebelled—­
The larger life subdued us.  Yet we are wed;
For we shall carry each the pressure deep
Of the other’s soul.  I soon shall leave the shore. 
The winds to-night will bear me far away. 
My lord, farewell!

What has been said of The Spanish Gypsy applies very nearly as well to all her other poems.  They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and beautiful.  On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a poetical advance on The Spanish Gypsy, containing more genuine poetry, more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion.  They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something which marks the truest poetry is wanting.  They are saturated with her ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or three exceptions.