[Gutenberg 58692] • The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem

Excerpt from The Vigil of Brunhild: A Narrative Poem

The intervention of women in the course of the world's history has nearly always been attended by those events upon which poets delight to meditate: events of sinister and tragic significance, the chief value of which is to show in rude collision the ideals and the realities of life; the common humanity of the central figures in direct conflict with the inhuman march of circumstance; and the processes through which these central figures, like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, are made to transcend all conventional morality, and, though completely evil in the ordinary sense, to redeem themselves and win our sympathy by a moment of heroic fortitude, or of supreme and consuming.