In his poems, or at any rate in the earlier ones, this lighter side finds more expression, proportionally, than in the Journal. In the volume called “Grains de Mil,” published in 1854, and containing verse written between the ages of eighteen and thirty, there are poems addressed, now to his sister, now to old Genevese friends, and now to famous men of other countries whom he had seen and made friends with in passing, which, read side by side with the “Journal Intime,” bring a certain gleam and sparkle into an otherwise somber picture. Amiel was never a master of poetical form; his verse, compared to his prose, is tame and fettered; it never reaches the glow and splendor of expression which mark the finest passages of the Journal. It has ability, thought--beauty even, of a certain kind, but no plastic power, none of the incommunicable magic which a George Eliot seeks for in vain, while it comes unasked, to deck with imperishable charm the commonplace metaphysic and the simpler emotions of a Tennyson or a Burns. Still as Amiel’s work, his poetry has an interest for those who are interested in him. Sincerity is written in every line of it. Most of the thoughts and experiences with which one grows familiar in the Journal are repeated in it; the same joys, the same aspirations, the same sorrows are visible throughout it, so that in reading it one is more and more impressed with the force and reality of the inner life which has left behind it so definite an image of itself. And every now and then the poems add a detail, a new impression, which seems by contrast to give fresh value to the fine-spun speculations, the lofty despairs, of the Journal. Take these verses, written at twenty-one, to his younger sister: “Treize ans! et sur ton front aucun baiser de mère Ne viendra, pauvre enfant, invoquer le bonheur; Treize ans! et dans ce jour mil regard de ton père Ne fera d’allégresse épanouir ton coeur. “Orpheline, c’est là le nom dont tu t’appelles, Oiseau né dans un nid que la foudre a brisé; De la couvée, hélas! seuls, trois petits, sans ailes Furent lancés au vent, loin du reste écrasé. “Et, semés par l’éclair sur les monts, dans les plaines, Un même toit encor n’a pu les abriter, Et du foyer natal, malgré leurs plaintes vaines Dieu, peut-être longtemps, voudra les écarter. “Pourtant console-toi! pense, dans tes alarmes, Qu’un double bien te reste, espoir et souvenir; Une main dans le ciel pour essuyer tes larmes; Une main ici-bas, enfant, pour te bénir.”