Many of her poems are lost; but some still
remain in my possession, and a few still hang on my memory. I will repeat
to you a sonnet addressed to Love.
SONNET
TO LOVE.
Ah, Love! ere yet I knew thy fatal power,
Bright glow'd the colour of my youthful days,
As, on the sultry zone, the torrid rays,
That paint the broad-leaved plantain's glossy bower;
Calm was my bosom as this silent hour,
When o'er the deep, scarce heard, the zephyr strays,
'Midst the cool tam'rinds indolently plays,
Nor from the orange shakes its od'rous flower:
But, ah! since Love has all my heart possess'd,
That desolated heart what sorrows tear!
Disturb'd and wild as ocean's troubled breast,
When the hoarse tempest of the night is there
Yet my complaining spirit asks no rest;
This bleeding bosom cherishes despair.
"The tender and sacred duties which nature imposed, became a source of
additional happiness to those affectionate mothers, whose mutual friendship
acquired new strength at the sight of their children, alike the offspring
of unhappy love. They delighted to place their infants together in the same
bath, to nurse them in the same cradle, and sometimes changed the maternal
bosom at which they received nourishment, as if to blend with the ties of
friendship that instinctive affection which this act produces.
'My friend,' cried Madame de la Tour, 'we shall each of us have two
children, and each of our children will have two mothers.
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