Pres du foyer, Constance s’admirait. 
Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle! 
Au feu!  Courez!  Quand l’espoir l’enivrait,
Tout perdre ainsi!  Quoi!  Mourir,—­et si belle! 
L’horrible feu ronge avec volupte
Ses bras, son sein, et l’entoure, et s’eleve,
Et sans pitie devore sa beaute,
Ses dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve!

Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! 
On disait, Pauvre Constance! 
Et l’on dansa, jusqu’au jour,
Chez l’ambassadeur de France.[65]

Yes, that is the fact of it.  Right or wrong, the poet does not say.  What you may think about it, he does not know.  He has nothing to do with that.  There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber.  There they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador’s of France.  Make what you will of it.

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression, except in one stanza.  The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.  The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as they come.  At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him.  He records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him.  The fire gnaws with voluptuousness—­without pity.  It is soon past.  The fate is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth.  He closes all with the calm veracity,

    They said, “Poor Constance!”

Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament.  For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it.  A poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes just and true.  Thus the destruction of the kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel.  The fact is too great, too wonderful.  It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams.  All the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices.  “Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying.  ’Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.’"[66] So, still more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment.  “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."[67]