“I’m sure ’tis India, all day, To those who look on you Without a stint, without a blame, Might I but be the Jew! I’m sure it is Golconda Beyond my power to deem, To have a smile for mine, each day, How better than a gem! “At least, it solaces to know That there exists a gold Although I prove it just in time Its distance to behold; Its far, far treasure to surmise And estimate the pearl That slipped my simple fingers through While just a girl at school!” Here was already manifest that defiance of form, never through carelessness, and never precisely from whim, which so marked her. The slightest change in the order of words—thus, “While yet at school, a girl”—would have given her a rhyme for this last line; but no; she was intent upon her thought, and it would not have satisfied her to make the change. The other poem further showed, what had already been visible, a rare and delicate sympathy with the life of nature:— “A bird came down the walk; He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow raw. “And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to a wall, To let a beetle pass. “He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all around; They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head “Like one in danger, cautious. I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home “Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam— Or butterflies, off banks of noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.” It is possible that in a second letter I gave more of distinct praise or encouragement, as her third is in a different mood. This was received June 8, 1862. There is something startling in its opening image; and in the yet stranger phrase that follows, where she apparently uses “mob” in the sense of chaos or bewilderment: DEAR FRIEND,—Your letter gave no drunkenness, because I tasted rum before. Domingo comes but once; yet I have had few pleasures so deep as your opinion, and if I tried to thank you, my tears would block my tongue. My dying tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet, but Death was much of mob as I could master, then. And when, far afterward, a sudden light on orchards, or a new fashion in the wind troubled my attention, I felt a palsy, here, the verses just relieve. Your second letter surprised me, and for a moment, swung. I had not supposed it. Your first gave no dishonor, because the true are not ashamed. I thanked you for your justice, but could not drop the bells whose jingling cooled my tramp. Perhaps the balm seemed better, because you bled me first. I smile when you suggest that I delay “to publish,” that being foreign to my thought as firmament to fin.