Ellen Sturgis Hooper was an American poet. A member of the Transcendental Club, she was widely regarded as one of the most gifted poets among the New England Transcendentalists. Her work is occasionally reprinted in anthologies.
She was, besides, sister of Caroline Sturgis Tappan, also a Transcendentalist and poet, as well as an acquaintance of William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, Sr. Wikipedia
Life a Duty, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Straight is the line of Duty, / Curved is the line of Beauty, / Follow the straight line, thou hall see / The curved line ever follow thee", William Maccall (c. 1830).
