We hold in kindly affection her
learned and blind teacher, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who, she tells us, was
"enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple
and upright of human beings." The love of his grateful scholar, when
called upon to mourn the good man's death, embalms his memory among her
Sonnets, where she addresses him as her
"Beloved friend, who, living many years
With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun,
Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune
To visible Nature's elemental cheers!"
Nor did this "steadfast friend" forget his poet-pupil ere he went to
"join the dead":--
"Three gifts the Dying left me,--Aeschylus,
And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock
Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock
Of stars, whose motion is melodious."
We catch a glimpse of those communings over "our Sophocles the royal,"
"our Aeschylus the thunderous," "our Euripides the human," and "my Plato
the divine one," in her pretty poem of "Wine of Cyprus," addressed to
Mr. Boyd. The woman translates the remembrance of those early lessons
into her heart's verse:--
"And I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio's turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Pages:
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325