from Waking Stone: Inventions on the Life of Harriet Hosmer

The Critics Comment on Zenobia

If it were the work of a man, it would be considered more than clever; but as it is from the chisel of a woman, why, it is an innovation.

Hosmer and any other women who feel the desire for work stirring within them should be true to their characteristic gift and use their time decorating buildings with sculptured flower-and-leaf ornament instead of making ideal sculptures.

That head is bowed only because she is a woman, and she will not give the look of love to the man who has forced her after him . . . She is a lady, and knows that there is something higher than joy or pain.

The statue tells its story most successfully. It lives and moves with the solemn grace of a dethroned Queen. I know enough of the sculptor's art to recognize the labor, as well as talent, which Miss Hosmer must have brought to this masterpiece, not only in its original conception, but in the details of its execution. I rejoice in such a work by an American artist . . . 

In dealing with this subject Miss Hosmer has united womanly dignity and delicacy, with the best qualities of the masculine hand.

Zenobia is not Hosmer's work at all but that of an Italian workman at Rome.

The Queen of the East gives audience, for she has arisen again under the loving hands of a woman. The Queen is Zenobia, and the woman is Harriet Hosmer. It is of the one rather than the other, we write to-day. And we want to tell you of a delicate little New England girl . . . 

Zenobia . . . Yonder there is left for thee
A palace-garden in the purple wall
Of those calm hills to close thy destiny . . . 
Thou shall learn to love and hate the throne
That robs an empire but repays a home.

To Hatty on Easter Sunday, Among Spirits

I read how on your moonlight ride alone
from Lexington, your first meeting
with Lydia Maria Child,
the fence rail rose vertical
before you. Awed, not fearful,
you "most religiously" viewed it.

Then the "curious incident" in Rome:
having just lain down you felt impelled
to say aloud to Cornelia "I have such a
feeling of a carriage accident."
She said you'd been dreaming; nothing
of the sort, you answered, repeating
your premonition. Ten minutes later
a "tremendous crash" under your windows:
the princess Orsini's carriage upside down
her face cut by broken glass, she pulled
through the window in her red evening gown
and you concluding "see what a witch I am."

Among your friends you gained a reputation
for the inner flashes that showed you
where lost articles hid – Lady Ashburton's key,
her despatch box already sought and overlooked
in the bank where you saw it
buried in your head.

Your maid Rosa ill with the familiar consumption –
just after visiting her you slept
waking at 5 to hear the clock strike
and Rosa appearing from behind the screen
in your bedroom. Adesso sono contento,
adesso sono felice she told you,
then was gone. You sprang up
searched behind the screen, the curtains
. . .  then recalled your door was locked
and recognized a vision.
The messenger you sent returned with news
Rosa had died at 5 o'clock.
That experience you said was real
as any of your life.

When my blue brother Gary was born
with a hole in his heart
my mother woke in the middle of the night
to find her own mother, years departed,
at the foot of her hospital bed
announcing "I'm going to take him with me"
and five days later kept her word.

I once opened the front door
into an empty house and heard
the piano play a chord
the...