’I think the black jailer laughs now, hoping that while I want to show that Woman can have the free, full action of intellect, he will prove in my own self that she has not physical force to bear it.  Indeed, I am too poor an example, and do wish I was bodily strong and fair.  Yet, I will not be turned from the deeper convictions.’

’Driven from home to home, as a Renouncer, I gain the poetry of each.  Keys of gold, silver, iron, lead, are in my casket.  Though no one loves me as I would be loved, I yet love many well enough to see into their eventual beauty.  Meanwhile, I have no fetters, and when one perceives how others are bound in false relations, this surely should be regarded as a privilege.  And so varied have been my sympathies, that this isolation will not, I trust, make me cold, ignorant, nor partial.  My history presents much superficial, temporary tragedy.  The Woman in me kneels and weeps in tender rapture; the Man in me rushes forth, but only to be baffled.  Yet the time will come, when, from the union of this tragic king and queen, shall be born a radiant sovereign self.’

* * * * *

’I have quite a desire to try my powers in a narrative poem; but my head teems with plans, of which there will be time for very few only to take form.  Milton, it is said, made for himself a list of a hundred subjects for dramas, and the recorder of the fact seems to think this many.  I think it very few, so filled is life with innumerable themes.’

* * * * *

’Sunday Evening.—­I have employed some hours of the day, with great satisfaction, in copying the Poet’s Dreams from the Pentameron of Landor.  I do not often have time for such slow, pleasing labor.  I have thus imprinted the words in my mind, so that they will often recur in their original beauty.

’I have added three sonnets of Petrarca, all written after the death of Laura.  They are among his noblest, all pertinent to the subject, and giving three aspects of that one mood.  The last lines of the last sonnet are a fit motto for Boccaccio’s dream.

’In copying both together, I find the prose of the Englishman
worthy of the verse of the Italian.  It is a happiness to see
such marble beauty in the halls of a contemporary.

’How fine it is to see the terms “onesto,” “gentile,” used in
their original sense and force.

             ’Soft, solemn day! 
      Where earth and heaven together seem to meet,
        I have been blest to greet
      From human thought a kindred sway;
        In thought these stood
        So near the simple Good,
      That what we nobleness and honor call,
      They viewed as honesty, the common dower of all.’