NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH, an English poet and novelist, born in 1808; died June 15, 1877. She was a granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and in 1827 married Honorable George Norton. In 1830 she left her husband, but returned. His persecutions culminated in 1836 in an accusation of criminal intimacy with Lord Melbourne, then Prime-Minister. Her innocence and wrongs were quickly apparent, and the jury gave their verdict without leaving the box. Her sufferings enlisted her in the cause of reform, which she earnestly urged in A Voice from the Factories (1836); English Laws for English Women (1854); A Letter to the Queen, concerning divorce (1855), and other writings. In verse she published The Dandies' Rout (1825); The Sorrows of Rosalie (1829); The Undying One (1831); The Wife (1835); The Dream, etc. (1840); The Child of the Islands (1845); Aunt Carry's Ballads, Tales and Sketches (1850), and The Lady of La Garaye (1861); and in prose fiction, Stuart of Dunleath (1851); Lost and Saved (1863); Old Sir Douglas (1868), and The Rose of Jericho (1870). Her husband died in 1875, and within a year of his death she was married to Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, who died in 1878. Mrs. Sedgwick, in her Letters from Abroad, described Mrs. Norton as "the perfection of intellectual and physical beauty, uniting masculine force with feminine delicacy." LOVE NOT. Love not, love not, ye hapless sons of clay! When they have blossomed but a few short hours. Love not, love not! The thing you love may die, Love not, love not! Love not, love not! The thing you love may change, Love not, love not! Love not, love not! O warning vainly said, SPRING. The Spring is come again! the breath of May birth, And the young sun beams forth with redder ray The summer stillness with its music clear! But thou art old, my heart! the breath of Spring The wild bird carols brightly on the way, But wakes no smile upon my withered brow. Thou art grown old! No more the generous thought Sends the warm blood more swiftly through the veins; Selfish and cold thou shrinkest-Spring hath naught For thee but memory of vanished pains. Ah, mocking wind, that wanderest o'er my form, With freshened scents from every opening flower! Deep, deep within, the never-dying worm, Life's longings all unquenched, defy thy power! There coolness comes not with the cooling breeze; There music flows not with the gushing rill; There shadows calm not from the spreading trees; Unslaked, the eternal fever burneth still! Mock us not, Nature, with thy symbol vain Of hope succeeding hope, through endless years. Earth's buds may burst, earth's groves be green again, But man-can man forget youth's bitter tears? I thirst, I thirst! but duller day by day Grows the clogged soarings of my spirit's wings; Faintly the sap of life slow ebbs away, And the worn heart denies a second Spring. THE KING OF DENMARK'S RIDE. Word was brought to the Danish king That the love of his heart lay suffering, Better he loves each golden curl On the brow of that Scandinavian girl Than his rich crown jewels of ruby and pearl : (Hurry!) Each one mounting a gallant steed Spurs were stuck in the foaming flank; Bridles were slackened, and girths were burst; His nobles were beaten, one by one; (Hurry!) They have fainted and faltered, and homeward gone; His little, fair page now follows alone, For strength and for courage trying! The king looked back at that faithful child; They passed the drawbridge with clattering din, The king blew a blast on his bugle horn; No answer came; but faint and forlorn None welcomed the king from that weary ride; Who had yearned for his voice while dying! The panting steed, with drooping crest, The king returned from her chamber of rest, And, that dumb companion eying, The tears gushed forth which he strove to check ; To the halls where my love lay dying!" NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT, an American classical scholar, son of Andrews Norton, born at Cambridge, Mass., November 16, 1827. He was graduated at Harvard in 1846, and shortly afterward entered a mercantile counting-house. In 1849 he went as supercargo of a ship sailing for India, returning home in 1851. From December, 1855, to April, 1857, he resided in Italy, making a special study of Dante; and in 1860 published Notes of Travel and Study in Italy. During our Civil War he edited at Boston the series of papers put forth by the Royal Publication Society; from 1864 to 1868 he was joint-editor of the North American Review, and in 1874 became Professor of the History of Art in Harvard College. In 1867 he published a translation of the Vita Nuova of Dante, accompanied with Essays and Notes, a part of which had already appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Other works by Mr. Norton are Memoir of Arthur Hugh Clough, prefixed to an edition of his poems (1862); Sketch of the Life and Works of William Blake, accompanying his illustrations of the Book of Job (1875); List of the Principal Works Relating to Michelangelo (1879); Historical Studies of Church-Building in the Middle Ages (1880). He edited James Russell Lowell's Letters (1893). His translation of the Vita Nuova is spoken of in the article upon Dante in this Cyclopædia. Of this Vita Nuova the translator says: |