In red the sacred blushes start On errand from a virgin heart, To win its glorious counterpart. The rose that makes the summer fair, The velvet robe that sovereigns wear, The red revealment could not spare. And men who conquer deadly odds By fields of ice, and raging floods, Take the red passion from the gods. Now, Love is red, and Wisdom pale, But human hearts are faint and frail Till Love meets Love, and bids it hail. I see the chasm, yawning dread; I see the flaming arch o'erhead: I stake my life upon the red. J. W. H. We have seen that from her earliest childhood Julia Ward's need of expressing herself in verse was imperative. Every emotion, deep or trivial, must take metrical shape; she laughed, wept, prayed--even stormed, in verse. Walking with her one day, her sister Annie, always half angel, half sprite, pointed to an object in the road. "Dudie dear," she said; "squashed frog! little verse, dear?" We may laugh with the two sisters, but under the laughter lies a deep sense of the poet's nature. As in her dreamy girlhood she prayed-- "Oh! give me back my golden lyre!"-- so in later life she was to pray-- "On the Matron's time-worn mantle Let the Poet's wreath be laid." The tide of song had been checked for a time; after the second visit to Rome, it flowed more freely than ever. By the winter of 1853-54, a volume was ready (the poems chosen and arranged with the help of James T. Fields), and was published by Ticknor and Fields under the title of "Passion Flowers." No name appeared on the title-page; she had thought to keep her _incognito_, but she was recognized at once as the author, and the book became the literary sensation of the hour. It passed rapidly through three editions; was, she says, "much praised, much blamed, and much called in question." She writes to her sister Annie:-- "The history of all these days, beloved, is comprised in one phrase, the miseries of proof-reading. Oh, the endless, endless plague of looking over these proof-sheets--the doubts about phrases, rhymes, and expressions, the perplexity of names, especially, in which I have not been fortunate. To-morrow I get my last proof. Then a fortnight must be allowed for drying and binding. Then I shall be out, fairly out, do you hear? So far my secret has been pretty well kept. My book is to bear a simple title without my name, according to Longfellow's advice. Longfellow has been reading a part of the volume in sheets. He says it will make a sensation.... I feel much excited, quite unsettled, sometimes a little frantic. If I succeed, I feel that I shall be humbled by my happiness, devoutly thankful to God. Now, I will not write any more about it." The warmest praise came from the poets,--the "high, impassioned few" of her "Salutatory." Whittier wrote:-- AMESBURY, 29th, 12 mo. 53. MY DEAR FR'D,--