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By Margaret Fuller

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,

Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,

And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought

Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,—

A higher charm than modern culture won

With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,

Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.

A many-colored light flows from one sun;

Art, ’neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;

The prism modifies the perfect day;

But thou hast known such mediums to shun,

And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.

Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,

Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.


n/a

Source: American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (1993)

  • Arts & Sciences
  • Mythology & Folklore

Poet Bio

Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller was one of the most prominent literary women of the nineteenth century, and is sometimes thought of as America’s first feminist. After a rigorous classical education in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, she sought out Ralph Waldo Emerson. A brilliant conversationalist, Fuller applied many of Emerson’s Transcendental ideas to women in a series of open discussions. These conversations, which included some of the finest minds of the day, pioneered the idea that women could argue philosophy on par with men. She was sent to Rome as foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune, and there met Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, a lieutenant in the Italian Unification Movement, whom she married. After the revolt failed, she set off for America, but perished when her ship was wrecked off Fire Island.

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