What really lived and breathed in those early poems was something independent of their religious dogmatism, namely, the whole emotional life of a gentle, yet dignified soul. The soul which found expression in them had this characteristic of the new century, that it loved solitude, and only in solitude found itself and felt itself rich. It was an unsociable soul, only disposed to vibrate in harmony with nature. It was sad and pathetically earnest; under no circumstances whatever cheerful or gay. And, finally, it was never erotic; one only of the poems was an expression of the happiness of satisfied love; the feeling pervading all the rest was sorrow over the loss of the loved one, whom death had claimed as his prey. The poetry of the eighteenth century had resolved love into gallantry, had taken neither it nor woman seriously, but in this new poetry love was the silent worship of a memory, and woman was adored and glorified as she had been in the days of the Minnesingers; only now it was woman as the departed one, as the spirit. Never did Lamartine depict the wild grief of loss at the moment of the loss; in his poems grief has become a condition, a silent despair which blunts, stiffens, tortures, and at a rare time dissolves into tears. This new song was song which flowed naturally from its fountain, plentiful and pure; it was music like harp-strains blended with the tones of celestial violins. And, borne on these tones, simple, familiar emotions communicated themselves to the reader's mind, such thoughts as that of the poem _La Retraite_--happiness awaits me nowhere; or of _L'Automne_--nature's autumnal mourning garb harmonises with my sorrow and is pleasant to my eyes; or of _Le Golfe de Baya_--this spot, once the scene of such great events, preserves not a trace of them; in like manner we ourselves shall disappear, leaving no trace behind. But, note well; a thought like this last was expressed in such wonderfully beautiful lines as the following: Ainsi tout change, ainsi tout passe; Ainsi nous-mêmes nous passons, Hélas! sans laisser plus de trace Que cette barque où nous glissons Sur cette mer où tout s'efface. There was never any systematic description of nature, or any attempt at painting; the momentary impression of nature was caught, even as it passed, by genius, and preserved for all time. The poet is sitting at evening on the bare mountain side. Venus rises above the horizon (_Le Soir_). A ray from the star seems to glide across his brow and touch his eyes, and he feels as if the departed one, in whose companionship he had lived here, were hovering near him. He addresses the ray from Venus: Mon cœur à ta clarté s'enflamme, Je sens des transports inconnus, Je songe à ceux qui ne sont plus: Douce lumière, es-tu leur âme?