“Spare me that horrible ghostly story of vessels freighted with staring corpses!  Ugh! it curdled the blood in my veins once, and I shut the book in disgust.  Don’t begin it now, for Heaven’s sake!”

“Why, Clara!  It is the most thrilling poem in the English language.  Each reperusal fascinates me more and more.  It requires a dozen readings to initiate you fully into its weird, supernatural realms.”

“Yes; and it is precisely for that reason that I don’t choose to hear it.  There is quite enough of the grim and hideous in reality without hunting it up in pages of fiction.  When I read I desire to relax my mind, not put it on the rack, as your favorite books invariably do.  Absolutely, Beulah, after listening to some of your pet authors, I feel as if I had been standing on my head.  You need not look so coolly incredulous; it is a positive fact.  As for that ‘Ancient Mariner’ you are so fond of, I am disposed to take the author’s own opinion of it, as expressed in those lines addressed to himself.”

“I suppose, then, you fancy ‘Christabel’ as little as the other, seeing that it is a tale of witchcraft.  How would you relish that grand anthem to nature’s God, written in the vale of Chamouni?”

“I never read it,” answered Clara very quietly.

“What?  Never read ‘Sibylline Leaves’?  Why, I will wager my head that you have parsed from them a thousand times!  Never read that magnificent hymn before sunrise, in the midst of glaciers and snow-crowned, cloud-piercing peaks?  Listen, then; and if you don’t feel like falling upon your knees, you have not a spark of poetry in your soul!”

She drew the lamp close to her, and read aloud.  Her finely modulated voice was peculiarly adapted to the task, and her expressive countenance faithfully depicted the contending emotions which filled her mind as she read.  Clara listened with pleased interest, and, when the short poem was concluded, said: 

“Thank you; it is beautiful.  I have often seen extracts from it.  Still, there is a description of Mont Blanc in ‘Manfred’ which I believe I like quite as well.”

“What?  That witch fragment?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand ‘Manfred.’  Here and there are passages in cipher.  I read and catch a glimpse of hidden meaning; I read again, and it vanishes in mist.  It seems to me a poem of symbols, dimly adumbrating truths, which my clouded intellect clutches at in vain.  I have a sort of shadowy belief that ‘Astarte,’ as in its ancient mythological significance, symbolizes nature.  There is a dusky vein of mystery shrouding her, which favors my idea of her as representing the universe.  Manfred, with daring hand, tore away that ‘Veil of Isis’ which no mortal had ever pierced before, and, maddened by the mockery of the stony features, paid the penalty of his sacrilegious rashness, and fled from the temple, striving to shake off the curse.  My guardian has a curious print