Forty years! have they
bound those brows with no garland? shed in the lamp no drop of
ambrosial oil?
Not so looked the Iphigenia in Aulis. Her forty years had seen her in
anguish, in sacrifice, in utter loneliness. But those pains were borne
for her father and her country; the sacrifice she had made pure for
herself and those around her. Wandering alone at night in the vestal
solitude of her imprisoning grove, she has looked up through its
"living summits" to the stars, which shed down into her aspect their
own lofty melody. At forty she would not misbecome the marble.
Not so looks the Persica. She is withered; she is faded; the drapery
that enfolds her has in its dignity an angularity, too, that tells of
age, of sorrow, of a stern resignation to the _must_. But her
eye, that torch of the soul, is untamed, and, in the intensity of her
reading, we see a soul invincibly young in faith and hope. Her age is
her charm, for it is the night of the past that gives this beacon-fire
leave to shine. Wither more and more, black Chrysalid! thou dost but
give the winged beauty time to mature its splendors!
Not so looked Victoria Colonna, after her life of a great hope, and of
true conjugal fidelity.
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