Her life was one long, large-souled,
large-hearted prayer for the triumph of Right, Justice, Liberty; and she
who lived for others was
"poet true,
Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do
For Truth,--the ends being scarcely two."
Beauty _was_ truth with her, the wife, mother, and poet, three in one,
and such an earthly trinity as God had never before blessed the world
with.
This day week, at half-past four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Browning
died. A great invalid from girlhood, owing to an unfortunate accident,
Mrs. Browning's life was a prolonged combat with disease thereby
engendered; and had not God given her extraordinary vitality of spirit,
the frail body could never have borne up against the suffering to which
it was doomed. Probably there never was a greater instance of the power
of genius over the weakness of the flesh. Confined to her room in
the country or city home of her father in England, Elizabeth Barrett
developed into the great artist and scholar.
From her couch went forth those poems which have crowned her as "the
world's greatest poetess"; and on that couch, where she lay almost
speechless at times, and seeing none but those friends dearest and
nearest, the soul-woman struck deep into the roots of Latin and Greek,
and drank of their vital juices.
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