Ix

Here is thy limit, mightiest of thine age An under- and an over-world to paint, Peopled with epileptic and with saint, The murderer’s, ogre’s, and the gambler’s rage: Too much of fever in thee to assuage Our average human restlessness, the taint Of a charmed subtlety oft rendering faint The sense of man’s salvation in thy page. Perchance in thy heroic spirit, fraught With too much tragedy, the causes lie; That spirit unembittered, overwrought, In which a something fitful we descry, A fretfulness, as in thine image caught By Sonia Kovalevsky’s soulful eye.

HESEPE, 28th May