Wonder has often been expressed that one who could write "The Amber Gods" and _Sir Rohan's Ghost_ should suddenly lapse into silence and refuse to work the rich vein she had opened. The change, however, was not with the author; it was with the times. Within a year Howells was assistant editor of the _Atlantic_. The artificiality of style and the high literary tone demanded in the earlier period disappeared with the war, and in their place came simplicity and naturalness and reality. The author of _Azarian_ continued to write her passionate and melodious romance, but the columns of the _Atlantic_ and _Harper's_ at length were closed to her tales. A volume of her work of this period still awaits a publisher. She now turned to poetry--there was no ban upon that; the old régime died first in its prose--and poured out lyrics that are to be compared even with those of Taylor and Aldrich, lyrics full of passion and color and sensuous beauty. Among the female poets of America she must be accorded a place near the highest. Only "H. H." could have poured out a lyric like this: In the dew and the dark and the coolness I bend to the beaker and sip, For the earth is the Lord's, and its fullness Is held like the cup to my lip. For his are the vast opulences Of color, of line, and of flight, And his was the joy of the senses Before I was born to delight. Forever the loveliness lingers, Or in flesh, or in spirit, or dream, For it swept from the touch of his fingers While his garments trailed by in the gleam. When the dusk and the dawn in slow union Bring beauty to bead at the brim, I take, 't is the cup of communion, I drink, and I drink it with Him! A chapter of analysis could not so completely reveal the soul of Harriet Prescott Spofford. For a time she busied herself making books on art decoration applied to furniture, and then at last she yielded to the forces of the age and wrote stories that again commanded the magazines. With work like "A Rural Telephone," "An Old Fiddler," and "A Village Dressmaker," she entered with real distinction the field that had been preëmpted by Miss Cooke and Miss Jewett, the depiction of New England life in its actuality. Then at the close of her literary life she wrote deeper tales, like "Ordronnaux," a story with the same underlying _motif_ as "The Amber Gods"--the creation of a soul in soulless beauty--but worked out now with reality, and experience, and compelling power. But it was too late. Could she have learned her lesson when Rose Terry Cooke learned hers; could she, instead of wasting her powers upon the gorgeous _Azarian_, have sent forth in 1863 her volume _Old Madame and Other Tragedies_, she might have taken a leading place among American novelists. III