Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, chapter 4, page 1267

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19th-Century American

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Crawfords Orpheus.

Each Orpheus must to the abyss descend,
     For only thus the poet can be wise,—
Must make the sad Persephone his friend,
     And buried love to second life arise;
Again his love must lose, through too much love,
     Must lose his life by living life too true;
For what he sought below has passed above,
     Already done is all that he would do;
Must tune all being with his single lyre;
     Must melt all rocks free from their primal pain;
Must search all nature with his one soul's fire;
     Must bind anew all forms in heavenly chain:
If he already sees what he must do,
     Well may he shade his eyes from the far-shining view.

Margaret's love of art, like that of most cultivated persons in this country, was not at all technical, but truly a sympathy with the artist, in the protest which his work Pronounced on the deformity of our daily manners; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of form; her aspiration with him to a fairer life. As soon as her conversation ran into the mysteries of manipulation and artistic effect, it was less trustworthy. I remember that in the first times when I chanced to see pictures with her. I

Boston, Phillips, Sampson, 1852.

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Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
W. H. Channing, Ed.

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Crawfords Orpheus.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli W. H. Channing, Ed.

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Crawfords Orpheus.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
W. H. Channing, Ed.