Drewsteignton.
_Chamisso._--Chamisso, in his poem of "The Three Sisters," who, crushed
with misery, contended that each had the hardest lot, has this fine passage
by the last speaker:
"In one brief sentence all my bitter cause
Of sorrow dwells--thou arbiter! oh, pause
Ere yet thy final judgment thou assign,
And learn my better right--too clearly proved.
Four words comprise it--I was never loved:
The palm of grief thou wilt allow is mine."
"He knew humanity--there can be no grief like that grief. Death had
bereaved one sister of her lover--the second mourned over her fallen
idol's shame--the third exultingly says,--
'Have they not lived and loved?'"
The above is written in a beautiful Italian female hand on the fly-leaf-of
the _Basia_, 1775.