Dreaming and thoughtless, as young maidens are,
She dippeth her white fingers in the flood,
And grasps, and lifts, and holds it! 'Tis the key.
Up springs she, up, her heart still beating higher.
The casket glances, as with eyes, before her.
The key fits well, up flies the lid. The spirits
All mount aloft, then bow themselves submissive
To this their gracious, innocent, sweet mistress,
Who with white fingers guides them in her play."
The first, perhaps, to recognize the surpassing ability of that child
was the young editor of the "Zeitschrift." Robert Schumann. On her first
appearance, he wrote,--"Others make poetry,--she is a poem." And soon
afterward,--"She early lifted the veil of Isis. The child looks calmly
up,--the man would, perhaps, be dazzled by the brilliancy."
From this moment there was an elasticity and purpose about the young
composer, the secret of which no one knew, not even himself. Like one
caught in the whorls of some happy dream, who will not pause to ask,
"Whither?" he poured out before this child the half-revealed hopes
striving within him; an equal spell was woven about her ingenuous and
earnest heart, and their souls were joined in that purple morning; in
due time they were to be rather _clenched_, through pain.
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