She seems even not to have been unfamiliar with the hope of joy, and I would persuade myself that her best-known lyric of gladness, "My heart is like a singing-bird," was inspired by the early dawning of this passion. But the hope and the joy soon passed away and left her only the solemn refrain of acquiescence: "Then I answered: Yea." Her brother can give no sufficient explanation of this refusal on her part to accept the happiness almost within her hand, though he hints at lack of religious sympathy between the two. Some inner necessity of sorrow and resignation, one almost thinks, drew her back in both cases, some perception that the real treasure of her heart lay not in this world: A voice said, "Follow, follow": and I rose And followed far into the dreamy night, Turning my back upon the pleasant light. It led me where the bluest water flows, And would not let me drink: where the corn grows I dared not pause, but went uncheered by sight Or touch: until at length in evil plight It left me, wearied out with many woes. Some time I sat as one bereft of sense: But soon another voice from very far Called, "Follow, follow": and I rose again. Now on my night has dawned a blessed star: Kind steady hands my sinking steps sustain, And will not leave me till I go from hence. It might seem that here was a spirit of renunciation akin to that of the more masculine mystics; indeed, a great many of her poems are, unconsciously I presume, almost a paraphrase of that recurring theme of the Imitation: "Nolle consolari ab aliqua creatura," and again: "Amore igitur Creatoris, amorem hominis superavit; et pro humano solatio, divinum beneplacitum magis elegit." She, too, was unwilling to find consolation in any creature, and turned from the love of man to the love of the Creator; yet a little reading of her exquisite hymns will show that this renunciation has more the nature of surrender than of deliberate choice: He broke my will from day to day; He read my yearnings unexprest, And said them nay. The world is withheld from her by a power above her will, and always this power stands before her in that peculiarly personal form which it is wont to assume in the feminine mind. Her faith is a mere transference to heaven of a love that terrifies her in its ruthless earthly manifestation; and the passion of her life is henceforth a yearning expectation of the hour when the Bridegroom shall come and she shall answer, Yea. Nor is the earthly source of this love forgotten; it abides with her as a dream which often is not easily distinguished from its celestial transmutation: O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more.