I hear thee, O thou rushing stream!--thou’rt from my native dell,
Thou’rt bearing thence a mournful sound--a murmur of farewell!
And fare _thee_ well--flow on, my stream!--flow on, thou bright
and free!
I do but dream that in thy voice one tone laments for me;
But I have been a thing unloved from childhood’s loving years,
And therefore turns my soul to thee, for thou hast known my tears!
The mountains, and the caves, and thou, my secret tears have known:
The woods can tell where _he_ hath wept, that ever wept alone!
“I see thee once again, my home! thou’rt there amidst thy vines,
And clear upon thy gleaming roof the light of summer shines.
It is a joyous hour when eve comes whispering through thy groves--
The hour that brings the son from toil, the hour the mother loves.
The hour _the mother_ loves!--for _me_ beloved it hath not been;
Yet ever in its purple smile, _thou_ smilest, a blessed scene!
Whose quiet beauty o’er my soul through distant years will come--
Yet what but as the dead, to thee, shall I be then, my home?
“Not as the dead!--no, not the dead! We speak of _them_--we keep
_Their_ names, like light that must not fade, within our bosoms
deep:
We hallow even the lyre they touch’d, we love the lay they sung,
We pass with softer step the place _they_ fill’d our band among!
But I depart like sound, like dew, like aught that leaves on earth
No trace of sorrow or delight, no memory of its birth!
I go!--the echo of the rock a thousand songs may swell
When mine is a forgotten voice. Woods, mountains, home, farewell!
“And farewell, mother! I have borne in lonely silence long,
But now the current of my soul grows passionate and strong;
And I will speak! though but the wind that wanders through the sky,
And but the dark, deep-rustling pines and rolling streams reply.
Yes! I will speak! Within my breast, whate’er hath seem’d to be,
There lay a hidden fount of love that would have gush’d for thee!
Brightly it would have gush’d--but thou, my mother! thou hast thrown
Back on the forests and the wilds, what should have been thine own!
“Then fare thee well! I leave thee not in loneliness to pine,
Since thou hast sons of statelier mien and fairer brow than mine.
Forgive me that thou couldst not love!--it may be that a tone
Yet from my burning heart may pierce through thine, when I am gone;
And thou, perchance, mayst weep for him on whom thou ne’er hast
smiled,
And the grave give his birthright back to thy neglected child!
Might but my spirit _then_ return, and midst its kindred dwell,
And quench its thirst with love’s free tears! ’Tis all a
dream--farewell!”
“Farewell!”--the echo died with that deep word;
Yet died not so the late repentant pang
By the strain quicken’d in the mother’s breast!
There had pass’d many changes o’er her brow,
And cheek, and eye; but into one bright flood
Of tears at last all melted; and she fell
On the glad bosom of her child, and cried,
“Return, return, my son!” The echo caught
A lovelier sound than song, and woke again,
Murmuring, “Return, my son!”
THE SULIOTE MOTHER.
[It is related, in a French life of Ali Pasha, that several of the
Suliote women, on the advance of the Turkish troops into the mountain
fastnesses, assembled on a lofty summit, and, after chanting a wild
song, precipitated themselves, with their children, into the chasm
below, to avoid becoming the slaves of the enemy.]
She stood upon the loftiest peak,
Amidst the clear blue sky;
A bitter smile was on her cheek,
And a dark flash in her eye.
“Dost thou see them, boy?--through the dusky pines
Dost thou see where the foeman’s armour shines?
Hast thou caught the gleam of the conqueror’s crest?
My babe, that I cradled on my breast!
Wouldst thou spring from thy mother’s arms with joy?
--That sight hath cost thee a father, boy!”
For in the rocky strait beneath,
Lay Suliote sire and son:
They had heap’d high the piles of death
Before the pass was won.
“They have cross’d the torrent, and on they come:
Woe for the mountain hearth and home!
There, where the hunter laid by his spear,
There, where the lyre hath been sweet to hear,
There, where I sang thee, fair babe! to sleep,
Naught but the blood-stain our trace shall keep!”
And now the horn’s loud blast was heard,
And now the cymbal’s clang,
Till even the upper air was stirr’d,
As cliff and hollow rang.
“Hark! they bring music, my joyous child!
What saith the trumpet to Suli’s wild?
Doth it light thine eye with so quick a fire,
As if at a glance of thine armèd sire?
Still!--be thou still!--there are brave men low:
Thou wouldst not smile couldst thou see him now!”
But nearer came the clash of steel,
And louder swell’d the horn,
And farther yet the tambour’s peal
Through the dark pass was borne.
“Hear’st thou the sound of their savage mirth?
Boy! thou wert free when I gave thee birth,--
Free, and how cherish’d, my warrior’s son!
He too hath bless’d thee, as I have done!
Ay, and unchain’d must his loved ones be--
Freedom, young Suliote! for thee and me!”
And from the arrowy peak she sprung,
And fast the fair child bore:--
A veil upon the wind was flung,
A cry--and all was o’er!
THE FAREWELL TO THE DEAD.
[The following piece is founded on a beautiful part of the Greek
funeral service, in which relatives and friends are invited to
embrace the deceased (whose face is uncovered) and to bid their final
adieu.--See _Christian Researches in the Mediterranean_.]
“’Tis hard to lay into the earth
A countenance so benign! a form that walk’d
But yesterday so stately o’er the earth!” Wilson.
Come near! Ere yet the dust
Soil the bright paleness of the settled brow,
Look on your brother; and embrace him now,
In still and solemn trust!
Come near!--once more let kindred lips be press’d
On his cold cheek; then bear him to his rest!
Look yet on this young face!
What shall the beauty, from amongst us gone,
Leave of its image, even where most it shone,
Gladdening its hearth and race?
Dim grows the semblance on man’s heart impress’d.
Come near, and bear the beautiful to rest!
Ye weep, and it is well!
For tears befit earth’s partings! Yesterday,
Song was upon the lips of this pale clay,
And sunshine seem’d to dwell
Where’er he moved--the welcome and the bless’d.
Now gaze! and bear the silent unto rest!
Look yet on him whose eye
Meets yours no more, in sadness or in mirth.
Was he not fair amidst the sons of earth,
The beings born to die?--
But not where death has power may love be bless’d.
Come near! and bear ye the beloved to rest!
How may the mother’s heart
Dwell on her son, and dare to hope again?
The spring’s rich promise hath been given in vain--
The lovely must depart!
Is _he_ not gone, our brightest and our best?
Come near! and bear the early-call’d to rest!
Look on him! Is he laid
To slumber from the harvest or the chase?--
Too still and sad the smile upon his face;
Yet that, even that must fade:
Death holds not long unchanged his fairest guest.
Come near! and bear the mortal to his rest!
His voice of mirth hath ceased
Amidst the vineyards! there is left no place
For him whose dust receives your vain embrace,
At the gay bridal-feast!
Earth must take earth to moulder on her breast.
Come near! weep o’er him! bear him to his rest.
Yet mourn ye not as they
Whose spirits’ light is quench’d! For him the past
Is seal’d: he may not fall, he may not cast
His birthright’s hope away!
All is not _here_ of our beloved and bless’d.
Leave ye the sleeper with his God to rest!
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
I GO, SWEET FRIENDS!
I go, sweet friends! yet think of me
When spring’s young voice awakes the flowers;
For we have wander’d far and free
In those bright hours, the violet’s hours.
I go; but when you pause to hear,
From distant hills, the Sabbath-bell
On summer-winds float silvery clear,
Think on me then--I loved it well!
Forget me not around your hearth,
When cheerly smiles the ruddy blaze;
For dear hath been its evening mirth
To me, sweet friends, in other days.
And oh! when music’s voice is heard
To melt in strains of parting woe,
When hearts to love and grief are stirr’d,
Think of me then!--I go, I go!
ANGEL VISITS.
“No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent and with him partake
Rural repast.” Milton.
Are ye for ever to your skies departed?
Oh! will ye visit this dim world no more?
Ye, whose bright wings a solemn splendour darted
Through Eden’s fresh and flowering shades of yore!
Now are the fountains dried on that sweet spot,
And ye--our faded earth beholds you not.
Yet, by your shining eyes not all forsaken,
Man wander’d from his Paradise away;
Ye, from forgetfulness his heart to waken,
Came down, high guests! in many a later day,
And with the patriarchs, under vine or oak,
Midst noontide calm or hush of evening, spoke.
From you, the veil of midnight darkness rending,
Came the rich mysteries to the sleeper’s eye,
That saw your hosts ascending and descending
On those bright steps between the earth and sky:
Trembling he woke, and bow’d o’er glory’s trace,
And worshipp’d awe-struck, in that fearful place.
By Chebar’s[321] brook ye pass’d, such radiance wearing
As mortal vision might but ill endure;
Along the stream the living chariot bearing,
With its high crystal arch, intensely pure;
And, the dread rushing of your wings that hour
Was like the noise of waters in their power.
But in the Olive Mount, by night appearing,
Midst the dim leaves, your holiest work was done.
Whose was the voice that came divinely cheering,
Fraught with the breath of God to aid his Son?
--Haply of those that, on the moonlit plains,
Wafted good tidings unto Syrian swains.
Yet one more task was Yours! your heavenly dwelling,
Ye left, and by th’ unseal’d sepulchral stone,
In glorious raiment, sat; the weepers telling,
That _He_ they sought had triumph’d and was gone.
Now have ye left us for the brighter shore;
Your presence lights the lonely groves no more.
But may ye not, unseen, around us hover,
With gentle promptings and sweet influence yet.
Though the fresh glory of those days be over,
When, midst the palm-trees, man your footsteps met?
Are ye not near when faith and hope rise high,
When love, by strength, o’ermasters agony?
Are ye not near when sorrow, unrepining,
Yields up life’s treasures unto Him who gave?
When martyrs, all things for His sake resigning,
Lead on the march of death, serenely brave?
Dreams! But a deeper thought our souls may fill:
One, One is near--a spirit holier still!
[321] Ezekiel, chap. x.
IVY SONG.
WRITTEN ON RECEIVING SOME IVY-LEAVES GATHERED FROM THE RUINED CASTLE OF
RHEINFELS, ON THE RHINE.
Oh! how could Fancy crown with _thee_
In ancient days the God of Wine,
And bid thee at the banquet be
Companion of the vine?
_Thy_ home, wild plant! is where each sound
Of revelry hath long been o’er,
Where song’s full notes once peal’d around,
But now are heard no more.
The Roman on his battle-plains,
Where kings before his eagles bent,
Entwined thee with exulting strains
Around the victor’s tent:
Yet there, though fresh in glossy green,
Triumphantly thy boughs might wave,
Better thou lovest the silent scene
Around the victor’s grave.
Where sleeps the sons of ages flown,
The bards and heroes of the past;
Where, through the halls of glory gone,
Murmurs the wintry blast;
Where years are hastening to efface
Each record of the grand and fair;
Thou, in thy solitary grace,
Wreath of the tomb! art there.
Oh! many a temple, once sublime,
Beneath a blue Italian sky,
Hath naught of beauty left by time,
Save thy wild tapestry!
And, rear’d midst crags and clouds, ’tis thine
To wave where banners waved of yore,
O’er towers that crest the noble Rhine,
Along his rocky shore.
High from the fields of air look down
Those eyries of a vanish’d race--
Homes of the mighty, whose renown
Hath pass’d, and left no trace.
But there thou art!--thy foliage bright
Unchanged the mountain storm can brave;
Thou, that wilt climb the loftiest height,
Or deck the humblest grave!
’Tis still the same! Where’er we tread,
The wrecks of human power we see--
The marvels of all ages fled
Left to decay and thee!
And still let man his fabrics rear,
August in beauty, grace, and strength;
Days pass--thou ivy never sere![322]--
And all is thine at length!
[322] “Ye myrtles brown, and ivy never sere.”--Lycidas.
TO ONE OF THE AUTHOR’S CHILDREN ON HIS BIRTHDAY.
Where sucks the bee now? Summer is flying,
Leaves round the elm-tree faded are lying;
Violets are gone from their grassy dell,
With the cowslip cups, where the fairies dwell;
The rose from the garden hath pass’d away--
Yet happy, fair boy, is thy natal day!
For love bids it welcome, the love which hath smiled
Ever around thee, my gentle child!
Watching thy footsteps, and guarding thy bed,
And pouring out joy on thy sunny head.
Roses may vanish, but _this_ will stay--
Happy and bright is thy natal day!
ON A SIMILAR OCCASION.
Thou wakest from rosy sleep, to play
With bounding heart, my boy!
Before thee lies a long bright day
Of summer and of joy.
Thou hast no heavy thought or dream
To cloud thy fearless eye:
Long be it thus!--life’s early stream
Should still reflect the sky.
Yet, ere the cares of life lie dim
On thy young spirit’s wings,
Now in thy mom forget not Him
From whom each pure thought springs.
So, in the onward vale of tears,
Where’er thy path may be,
When strength hath bow’d to evil years,
_He_ will remember thee!
CHRIST STILLING THE TEMPEST.
Fear was within the tossing bark
When stormy winds grew loud,
And waves came rolling high and dark,
And the tall mast was bow’d.
And men stood breathless in their dread,
And baffled in their skill;
But One was there, who rose and said
To the wild sea--_Be still!_
And the wind ceased--it ceased! that word
Pass’d through the gloomy sky:
The troubled billows knew their Lord,
And fell beneath His eye.
And slumber settled on the deep,
And silence on the blast;
They sank, as flowers that fold to sleep
When sultry day is past.
O Thou! that in its wildest hour
Didst rule the tempest’s mood,
Send thy meek spirit forth in power,
Soft on our souls to brood!
Thou that didst bow the billow’s pride
Thy mandate to fulfil!
Oh, speak to passion’s raging tide,
Speak, and say, “_Peace, be still!_”
EPITAPH
OVER THE GRAVE OF TWO BROTHERS, A CHILD AND A YOUTH.
[Amongst the numerous friends Mrs Hemans was fortunate enough to
possess in Scotland, there was one to whom she was linked by so
peculiar a bond of union, and whose unwearied kindness is so precious
an inheritance to her children, that it is hoped the owner of a name
so dear to them, (though it be a part of her nature to shrink from
publicity,) will forgive its being introduced into these pages.
This invaluable friend was Lady Wedderburn,[323] the mother of those
“two brothers, a child and a youth,” for whose monument Mrs Hemans had
written an inscription, which, with its simple pathos, has doubtless
sunk deep into the heart of many a mourner, as well as of many a yet
rejoicing parent, there called upon to remember that for them, too,
“Speaks the grave,
Where God hath seal’d the fount of hope He gave.”
Into the gentle heart, which has found relief for its own sorrows in
soothing the griefs and promoting the enjoyments of others, the author
of this sacred tribute was taken with a warmth and loving-kindness
which extended its genial influence to all belonging to her;
and during their stay in Edinburgh, whither they proceeded from
Abbotsford, Mrs Hemans and her children were cherished with a true
home welcome at the house of Sir David Wedderburn.--_Memoir_, p. 192.]
Thou, that canst gaze upon thine own fair boy,
And hear his prayer’s low murmur at thy knee,
And o’er his slumber bend in breathless joy,
Come to this tomb!--it hath a voice for thee!
Pray! Thou art blest--ask strength for sorrow’s hour:
Love, deep as thine, lays here its broken flower.
Thou that art gathering from the smile of youth
Thy thousand hopes, rejoicing to behold
All the heart’s depths before thee bright with truth,
All the mind’s treasures silently unfold,
Look on this tomb!--for thee, too, speaks the grave,
Where God hath seal’d the fount of hope He gave.
[323] The lady of Sir David Wedderburn, Bart., and sister of the late
Viscountess Hampden. The monument on which the lines are inscribed, is
at Glynde, in Sussex, near Lord Hampden’s seat. This excellent lady
only survived Mrs Hemans a few years.
MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTION.
Earth! guard what here we lay in holy trust,
That which hath left our home a darken’d place,
Wanting the form, the smile, now veil’d with dust,
The light departed with our loveliest face.
Yet from thy bonds our sorrow’s hope is free--
We have but lent the beautiful to thee.
But thou, O heaven! keep, keep what _thou_ hast taken,
And with our treasure keep our hearts on high;
The spirit meek, and yet by pain unshaken,
The faith, the love, the lofty constancy--
Guide us where these are with our sister flown:
They were of Thee, and thou hast claim’d thine own!
THE SOUND OF THE SEA.
Thou art sounding on, thou mighty sea!
For ever and the same;
The ancient rocks yet ring to thee--
Those thunders naught can tame.
Oh! many a glorious voice is gone
From the rich bowers of earth,
And hush’d is many a lovely one
Of mournfulness or mirth.
The Dorian flute that sigh’d of yore
Along the wave, is still;
The harp of Judah peals no more
On Zion’s awful hill.
And Memnon’s lyre hath lost the chord
That breathed the mystic tone;
And the songs at Rome’s high triumphs pour’d
Are with her eagles flown.
And mute the Moorish horn that rang
O’er stream and mountain free;
And the hymn the leagued Crusaders sang
Hath died in Galilee.
But thou art swelling on, thou deep!
Through many an olden clime,
Thy billowy anthem, ne’er to sleep
Until the close of time.
Thou liftest up thy solemn voice
To every wind and sky,
And all our earth’s green shores rejoice
In that one harmony.
It fills the noontide’s calm profound,
The sunset’s heaven of gold;
And the still midnight hears the sound,
Even as first it roll’d.
Let there be silence, deep and strange,
Where sceptred cities rose!
_Thou_ speak’st of One who doth not change--
So. may our hearts repose.
THE CHILD AND DOVE.
SUGGESTED BY CHANTREY’S STATUE OF LADY LOUISA RUSSELL.
Thou art a thing on our dreams to rise,
Midst the echoes of long-lost melodies,
And to fling bright dew from the morning back,
Fair form! on each image of childhood’s track.
Thou art a thing to recall the hours
When the love of our souls was on leaves and flowers,
When a world was our own in some dim sweet grove,
And treasure untold in one captive dove.
Are they gone? can we think it, while _thou_ art there,
Thou joyous child with the clustering hair?
Is it not spring that indeed breathes free
And fresh o’er each thought, while we gaze on thee?
No! never more may we smile as thou
Sheddest round smiles from thy sunny brow;
Yet something it is, in our hearts to shrine
A memory of beauty undimm’d as thine--
To have met the joy of thy speaking face,
To have felt the spell of thy breezy grace,
To have linger’d before thee, and turn’d, and borne
One vision away of the cloudless morn.
A DIRGE.
[The two first stanzas of this dirge may be found in the last scene of
“The Siege of Valencia;” but they are more particularly worthy of the
reader’s consideration, as having been selected for inscription on the
tablet placed above the vault beneath St Ann’s Church, Dublin, where
the remains of the author repose.]
Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Young spirit! rest thee now!
Even while with us thy footstep trod,
His seal was on thy brow.
Dust, to its narrow house beneath!
Soul, to its place on high!--
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die.
Lone are the paths, and sad the bowers,
Whence thy meek smile is gone;
But oh!--a brighter home than ours,
In heaven, is now thine own.
SCENE IN A DALECARLIAN MINE.
“Oh! fondly, fervently, those two had loved,
Had mingled minds in Love’s own perfect trust;
Had watch’d bright sunsets, dreamt of blissful years,
----And thus they met!”
“Haste, with your torches, haste! make firelight round!”--
They speed, they press: what hath the miner found?
Relic or treasure--giant sword of old?
Gems bedded deep--rich veins of burning gold?
--Not so--the dead, the dead! An awe-struck band
In silence gathering round the silent stand,
Chain’d by one feeling, hushing e’en their breath,
Before the thing that, in the might of death,
Fearful, yet beautiful, amidst them lay--
A sleeper, dreaming not!--a youth with hair
Making a sunny gleam (how sadly fair!)
O’er his cold brow: no shadow of decay
Had touch’d those pale, bright features--yet he wore
A mien of other days, a garb of yore.
Who could unfold that mystery? From the throng
A woman wildly broke; her eye was dim,
As if through many tears, through vigils long,
Through weary strainings:--all had been for him!
Those two had loved! And there he lay, the dead,
In his youth’s flower--and she, the living, stood
With her gray hair, whence hue and gloss had fled--
And wasted form, and cheek, whose flushing blood
Had long since ebb’d--a meeting sad and strange!
--Oh! are not meetings in this world of change
Sadder than partings oft! She stood there, still,
And mute, and gazing--all her soul to fill
With the loved face once more--the young, fair face,
Midst that rude cavern, touch’d with sculpture’s grace,
By torchlight and by death: until at last
From her deep heart the spirit of the past
Gush’d in low broken tones:--“And there thou art!
And thus we meet, that loved, and did but part
As for a few brief hours! My friend, my friend!
First love, and only one! Is this the end
Of hope deferr’d, youth blighted! Yet thy brow
Still wears its own proud beauty, and thy cheek
Smiles--how unchanged!--while I, the worn, and weak,
And faded--oh! thou wouldst but scorn me now,
If thou couldst look on me!--a wither’d leaf,
Sear’d--though for thy sake--by the blast of grief!
Better to see thee thus! For thou didst go
Bearing my image on thy heart, I know,
Unto the dead. My Ulric! through the night
How have I call’d thee! With the morning light
How have I watch’d for thee!--wept, wander’d, pray’d,
Met the fierce mountain-tempest, undismay’d,
In search of thee!--bound my worn life to one--
One torturing hope! Now let me die! ’Tis gone.
Take thy betrothed!” And on his breast she fell,
Oh! since their youth’s last passionate farewell,
How changed in all but love!--the true, the strong,
Joining in death whom life had parted long!
They had one grave--one lonely bridal-bed,
No friend, no kinsman there a tear to shed!
_His_ name had ceased--_her_ heart outlived each tie,
Once more to look on that dead face, and die!
ENGLISH SOLDIERS SONG OF MEMORY.
TO THE AIR OF “AM RHEIN, AM RHEIN!”
Sing, sing in memory of the brave departed,
Let song and wine be pour’d!
Pledge to their fame, the free and fearless hearted,
Our brethren of the sword!
Oft at the feast, and in the fight, their voices
Have mingled with our own;
Fill high the cup! but when the soul rejoices,
Forget not who are gone.
They that stood with us, midst the dead and dying,
On Albuera’s plain;
They that beside us cheerily track’d the flying,
Far o’er the hills of Spain;
They that amidst us, when the shells were showering
From old Rodrigo’s wall,
The rampart scaled, through clouds of battle towering,
First, first at Victory’s call;
They that upheld the banners, proudly waving,
In Roncesvalles’ dell,
With England’s blood the southern vineyards laving--
Forget not how they fell!
Sing, sing in memory of the brave departed,
Let song and wine be pour’d!
Pledge to their fame, the free and fearless hearted,
Our brethren of the sword!
HAUNTED GROUND.
“And slight, withal, may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside for ever--it may be a sound,
A tone of music, summer eve, or spring,
A flower--the wind--the ocean--which shall wound,
Striking the electric train, wherewith we are darkly bound.”
Byron.
Yes, it _is_ haunted, this quiet scene,
Fair as it looks, and all softly green;
Yet fear not thou--for the spell is thrown,
And the might of the shadow, on me alone.
Are thy thoughts wandering to elves and fays,
And spirits that dwell where the water plays?
Oh! in the heart there are stronger powers,
That sway, though viewless, this world of ours!
Have I not lived midst these lonely dells,
And loved, and sorrow’d, and heard farewells,
And learn’d in my own deep soul to look,
And tremble before that mysterious book?
Have I not, under these whispering leaves,
Woven such dreams as the young heart weaves?
Shadows--yet unto which life seem’d bound;
And is it not--is it not haunted ground?
Must I not hear what _thou_ hearest not,
Troubling the air of the sunny spot?
Is there not something to rouse but me,
Told by the rustling of every tree?
Song hath been here, with its flow of thought;
Love, with its passionate visions fraught;
Death, breathing stillness and sadness round;
And is it not--is it not haunted ground?
Are there no phantoms, but such as come
By night from the darkness that wraps the tomb?
A sound, a scent, or a whispering breeze,
Can summon up mightier far than these!
But I may not linger amidst them here!
Lovely they are, and yet things to fear;
Passing and leaving a weight behind,
And a thrill on the chords of the stricken mind.
Away, away!--that my soul may soar
As a free bird of blue skies once more!
Here from its wing it may never cast
The chain by those spirits brought back from the past.
Doubt it not--smile not--but go thou, too,
Look on the scenes where thy childhood grew--
Where thou hast pray’d at thy mother’s knee,
Where thou hast roved with thy brethren free;
Go thou, when life unto thee is changed,
Friends thou hast loved as thy soul, estranged;
When from the idols thy heart hath made,
Thou hast seen the colours of glory fade.
Oh! painfully then, by the wind’s low sigh,
By the voice of the stream, by the flower-cup’s dye,
By a thousand tokens of sight and sound,
Thou wilt feel thou art treading on haunted ground.
THE CHILD OF THE FORESTS.
WRITTEN AFTER READING THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN HUNTER.
[On one occasion, Mrs Hemans was somewhat ludicrously disenchanted,
through the medium of a _North American Review_, on the subject of a
self-constituted hero, whose history (which suggested her little poem,
“The Child of the Forests”) she had read with unquestioning faith and
lively interest. This was the redoubtable John Dunn Hunter, whose
marvellous adventures amongst the Indians--by whom he represented
himself to have been carried away in childhood--were worked up into
a plausible narrative, admirably calculated to excite the sympathies
of its readers. But how far it was really deserving of them, may be
judged by the following extract from a letter to a friend who had
been similarly mystified:--“I send you a _North American Review_,
which will mortify C. and you with the sad intelligence that John
Hunter--even our own John Dunn--the man of the panther’s skin--the
adopted of the Kansas--the shooter with the rifle--no, with the long
bow--is, I blush to say it, neither more nor less than an impostor; no
better than Psalmanazar; no, no better than Carraboo herself. After
this, what are we to believe again? Are there any Loo Choo Islands?
Was there ever any Robinson Crusoe? Is there any Rammohun Roy? All
one’s faith and trust is shaken to its foundations. No one here
sympathises with me properly on this annoying occasion; but you, I
think, will know how to feel, who have been quite as much devoted to
that vile John Dunn as myself.”--_Memoir_, pp. 95-6.]
Is not thy heart far off amidst the woods,
Where the red Indian lays his father’s dust,
And, by the rushing of the torrent floods,
To the Great Spirit bows in silent trust?
Doth not thy soul o’ersweep the foaming main,
To pour itself upon the wilds again?
They are gone forth, the desert’s warrior race,
By stormy lakes to track the elk and roe;
But where art thou, the swift one in the chase,
With thy free footstep and unfailing bow?
Their singing shafts have reach’d the panther’s lair,
And where art thou?--thine arrows are not there.
They rest beside their streams--the spoil is won--
They hang their spears upon the cypress bough;
The night-fires blaze, the hunter’s work is done--
They hear the tales of old--but where art thou?
The night-fires blaze beneath the giant pine,
And there a place is fill’d that once was thine.
For thou art mingling with the city’s throng,
And thou hast thrown thine Indian bow aside;
Child of the forests! thou art borne along,
E’en as ourselves, by life’s tempestuous tide.
But will this be? and canst thou _here_ find rest?
Thou hadst thy nurture on the desert’s breast.
Comes not the sound of torrents to thine ear
From the savannah land, the land of streams?
Hear’st thou not murmurs which none else may hear?
Is not the forest’s shadow on thy dreams?
They call--wild voices call thee o’er the main,
Back to thy free and boundless woods again.
Hear them not! hear them not!--thou canst not find
In the far wilderness what once was thine!
Thou hast quaff’d knowledge from the founts of mind,
And gather’d loftier aims and hopes divine.
Thou know’st the soaring thought, the immortal strain--
Seek not the deserts and the woods again!
STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF * * *
In the full tide of melody and mirth,
While joy’s bright spirit beams from every eye,
Forget not him, whose soul, though fled from earth,
Seems yet to speak in strains that cannot die.
Forget him not, for many a festal hour,
Charm’d by those strains, for us has lightly flown:
And memory’s visions, mingling with their power,
Wake the heart’s thrill at each familiar tone.
Blest be the harmonist, whose well-known lays
Revive life’s morning dreams, when youth is fled,
And, fraught with images of other days,
Recall the loved, the absent, and the dead.
His the dear art whose spells awhile renew
Hope’s first illusions in their tenderest bloom--
Oh! what were life, unless such moments threw
Bright gleams, “like angel visits,” o’er its gloom?
THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS.
Yes! thou hast met the sun’s last smile
From the haunted hills of Rome;
By many a bright Ægean isle
Thou hast seen the billows foam.
From the silence of the Pyramid,
Thou hast watch’d the solemn flow
Of the Nile, that with its waters hid
The ancient realm below.
Thy heart hath burn’d, as shepherds sung
Some wild and warlike strain,
Where the Moorish horn once proudly rung
Through the pealing hills of Spain.
And o’er the lonely Grecian streams
Thou hast heard the laurels moan,
With a sound yet murmuring in thy dreams
Of the glory that is gone.
But go thou to the pastoral vales
Of the Alpine mountains old,
If thou wouldst hear immortal tales
By the wind’s deep whispers told!
Go, if thou lovest the soil to tread
Where man hath nobly striven,
And life, like incense, hath been shed,
An offering unto heaven.
For o’er the snows, and round the pines,
Hath swept a noble flood;
The nurture of the peasant’s vines
Hath been the martyr’s blood!
A spirit, stronger than the sword,
And loftier than despair,
Through all the heroic region pour’d,
Breathes in the generous air.
A memory clings to every steep
Of long-enduring faith,
And the sounding streams glad record keep
Of courage unto death.
Ask of the peasant _where_ his sires
For truth and freedom bled?
Ask, where were lit the torturing fires,
Where lay the holy dead!
And he will tell thee, all around,
On fount, and turf, and stone,
Far as the chamois’ foot can bound,
Their ashes have been sown!
Go, when the Sabbath-bell is heard[324]
Up through the wilds to float,
When the dark old woods and caves are stirr’d
To gladness by the note;
When forth, along their thousand rills,
The mountain people come,
Join thou their worship on those hills
Of glorious martyrdom.
And while the song of praise ascends,
And while the torrent’s voice,
Like the swell of many an organ, blends,
Then let thy soul rejoice.
Rejoice, that human hearts, through scorn,
Through shame, through death, made strong,
Before the rocks and heavens have borne
Witness of God so long!
[324] See Gilly’s _Researches among the Mountains of Piedmont_, for an
interesting account of a Sabbath-day among the upper regions of the
Vaudois. The inhabitants of these Protestant valleys, who, like the
Swiss, repair with their flocks and herds to the summit of the hills
during the summer, are followed thither by their pastors, and at that
season of the year assemble on that sacred day to worship in the open
air.
SONG OF THE SPANISH WANDERER.
Pilgrim! oh say, hath thy cheek been fann’d
By the sweet winds of my sunny land?
Know’st thou the sound of its mountain pines?
And hast thou rested beneath its vines?
Hast thou heard the music still wandering by,
A thing of the breezes, in Spain’s blue sky,
Floating away o’er hill and heath,
With the myrtle’s whisper, the citron’s breath?
Then say, are there fairer vales than those
Where the warbling of fountains for ever flows?
Are there brighter flowers than mine own, which wave
O’er Moorish ruin and Christian grave?
O sunshine and song! they are lying far
By the streams that look to the western star;
My heart is fainting to hear once more
The water-voices of that sweet shore.
Many were they that have died for thee,
And brave, my Spain! though thou art not free;
But I call them blest--they have rent _their_ chain--
They sleep in thy valleys, my sunny Spain!
THE CONTADINA.
WRITTEN FOR A PICTURE.
Not for the myrtle, and not for the vine,
Though its grape, like a gem, be the sunbeam’s shrine;
And not for the rich blue heaven that showers
Joy on thy spirit, like light on the flowers;
And not for the scent of the citron trees--
Fair peasant! I call thee not blest for _these_.
Not for the beauty spread over thy brow,
Though round thee a gleam, as of spring, it throw;
And not for the lustre that laughs from thine eye,
Like a dark stream’s flash to the sunny sky,
Though the south in its riches naught lovelier sees--
Fair peasant! I call thee not blest for _these_.
But for those breathing and loving things--
For the boy’s fond arm that around thee clings,
For the smiling cheek on thy lap that glows,
In the peace of a trusting child’s repose--
For the hearts whose home is thy gentle breast,
Oh! richly I call thee, and deeply blest!
TROUBADOUR SONG.
The warrior cross’d the ocean’s foam
For the stormy fields of war;
The maid was left in a smiling home
And a sunny land afar.
_His_ voice was heard where javelin showers
Pour’d on the steel-clad line;
_Her_ step was midst the summer flowers,
Her seat beneath the vine.
His shield was cleft, his lance was riven,
And the red blood stain’d his crest;
While she--the gentlest wind of heaven
Might scarcely fan her breast!
Yet a thousand arrows pass’d him by,
And again he cross’d the seas;
But she had died as roses die
That perish with a breeze--
As roses die, when the blast is come
For all things bright and fair:
There was death within the smiling home--
How had death found her there?
THE TREASURES OF THE DEEP.[325]
What hidest thou in thy treasure caves and cells,
Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main?--
Pale glistening pearls, and rainbow-colour’d shells
Bright things which gleam unreck’d of, and in vain.
Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea!
We ask not such from thee.
Yet more, the depths have more! What wealth untold,
Far down, and shining through their stillness lies!
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,
Won from ten thousand royal Argosies.--
Sweep o’er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main!
Earth claims not _these_ again.
Yet more, the depths have more! Thy waves have roll’d
Above the cities of a world gone by!
Sand hath fill’d up the palaces of old,
Sea-weed o’ergrown the halls of revelry.--
Dash o’er them, ocean! in thy scornful play:
Man yields them to decay.
Yet more! the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gather’d to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters roar,
The battle-thunders will not break their rest.--
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave!
Give back the true and brave!
Give back the lost and lovely!--those for whom
The place was kept at board and hearth so long,
The prayer went up through midnight’s breathless gloom,
And the vain yearning woke midst festal song!
Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o’erthrown--
But all is not thine own.
To thee the love of woman hath gone down,
Dark flow thy tides o’er manhood’s noble head,
O’er youth’s bright locks, and beauty’s flowery crown:
Yet must thou hear a voice--Restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee!--
Restore the dead, thou sea!
[325] Originally introduced in the “Forest Sanctuary.”
[“The only public mention that I have made of Mrs Hemans,” says
Mr Montgomery of Sheffield, in a letter regarding her, with which
we have been favoured by that excellent man and distinguished
poet, “was in a series of lectures on the principal British Poets,
delivered at the Royal Institution from ten to twelve years ago. In
one of these, having to notice very briefly the ‘Female Poets,’ I
said, ‘Mrs Hemans, in many of her lyrics, has struck out a new and
attractive style of mingling the picturesque and the sentimental with
such grace and beauty that, in her best pieces, she is better than
almost any poet of either sex in that sprightly, yet pathetic vein,
which she has exercised.’ I gave ‘The Treasures of the Deep’ as an
example; and, indeed, I know nothing in our language--of the kind and
the character I mean--comparable with it, either in conception or
execution, for wealth of thought, felicity of diction, and commanding
address:--The Ocean summoned to give an account of all that it has
been doing through six thousand years, and the answers dictated by
the questioner, till all the secrets of the abyss are revealed in the
light by which poetry alone, of the purest order, can discover them.
The last stanza is a crown of glory to the perfect whole.”
We beg to remind the author of “The World before the Flood,” and “The
Pelican Island,” that the lectures to which he alludes have never been
published. They were flatteringly successful, both when delivered at
the Royal Institution, and before the literary societies of several of
the principal provincial towns of England; and could not fail being
acceptable to the great reading public, as the recorded opinions
concerning the leading poets of Great Britain of past and present
times, deliberately formed by one of their own number, who has himself
written so much and so well, and who, in popularity as a lyrist, has
no superior among contemporaries.]
BRING FLOWERS.
Bring flowers, young flowers, for the festal board,
To wreath the cup ere the wine is pour’d!
Bring flowers! they are springing in wood and vale:
Their breath floats out on the southern gale,
And the touch of the sunbeam hath waked the rose,
To deck the hall where the bright wine flows.
Bring flowers to strew in the conqueror’s path!
He hath shaken thrones with his stormy wrath:
He comes with the spoils of nations back,
The vines lie crush’d in his chariot’s track,
The turf looks red where he won the day.
Bring flowers to die in the conqueror’s way!
Bring flowers to the captive’s lonely cell!
They have tales of the joyous woods to tell--
Of the free blue streams, and the glowing sky,
And the bright world shut from his languid eye;
They will bear him a thought of the sunny hours,
And the dream of his youth. Bring him flowers, wild flowers!
Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear!
They were born to blush in her shining hair.
She is leaving the home of her childhood’s mirth,
She hath bid farewell to her father’s hearth,
Her place is now by another’s side.
Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride!
Bring flowers, pale flowers, o’er the bier to shed,
A crown for the brow of the early dead!
For this through its leaves hath the white rose burst,
For this in the woods was the violet nursed!
Though they smile in vain for what once was ours,
They are love’s last gift. Bring ye flowers, pale flowers!
Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer--
They are nature’s offering, their place is _there_!
They speak of hope to the fainting heart,
With a voice of promise they come and part,
They sleep in dust through the wintry hours,
They break forth in glory. Bring flowers, bright flowers!
THE CRUSADER’S RETURN.
“Alas! the mother that him bare,
If she had been in presence there,
In his wan cheeks and sunburnt hair
She had not known her child.”
Marmion.
Rest, pilgrim, rest! Thou’rt from the Syrian land,
Thou’rt from the wild and wondrous East, I know
By the long-wither’d palm-branch in thy hand,
And by the darkness of thy sunburnt brow.
Alas! the bright, the beautiful, who part
So full of hope, for that far country’s bourne!
Alas! the weary and the changed in heart,
And dimm’d in aspect, who like thee return!
Thou’rt faint--stay, rest thee from thy toils at last:
Through the high chestnuts lightly plays the breeze,
The stars gleam out, the _Ave_ hour is past,
The sailor’s hymn hath died along the seas.
Thou’rt faint and worn--hear’st thou the fountain welling
By the gray pillars of yon ruin’d shrine?
Seest thou the dewy grapes before thee swelling?
--He that hath left me train’d that loaded vine!
He was a child when thus the bower he wove,
(Oh! hath a day fled since his childhood’s time?)
That I might sit and hear the sound I love,
Beneath its shade--the convent’s vesper-chime.
And sit _thou_ there!--for he was gentle ever,
With his glad voice he would have welcomed thee,
And brought fresh fruits to cool thy parch’d lips’ fever.
There in his place thou’rt resting--where is he?
If I could hear that laughing voice again,
But once again! How oft it wanders by,
In the still hours, like some remember’d strain,
Troubling the heart with its wild melody!--
Thou hast seen much, tired pilgrim! hast thou seen
In that far land, the chosen land of yore,
A youth--my Guido--with the fiery mien
And the dark eye of this Italian shore?
The dark, clear, lightning eye! On heaven and earth
It smiled--as if man were not dust it smiled!
The very air seem’d kindling with his mirth,
And I--my heart grew young before my child!
My blessed child!--I had but him--yet he
Fill’d all my home even with o’erflowing joy,
Sweet laughter, and wild song, and footstep free.
Where is he now?--my pride, my flower, my boy!
His sunny childhood melted from my sight,
Like a spring dew-drop. Then his forehead wore
A prouder look--his eye a keener light:
I knew these woods might be his world no more!
He loved me--but he left me! Thus they go
Whom we have rear’d, watch’d, bless’d, too much adored!
He heard the trumpet of the Red Cross blow,
And bounded from me with his father’s sword!
Thou weep’st--I tremble! Thou hast seen the slain
Pressing a bloody turf--the young and fair,
With their pale beauty strewing o’er the plain
Where hosts have met: speak! answer!--was _he_ there?
Oh! hath his smile departed? Could the grave
Shut o’er those bursts of bright and tameless glee?
No! I shall yet behold his dark locks wave!----
That look gives hope--I knew it could not be!
Still weep’st thou, wanderer? Some fond mother’s glance
O’er thee, too, brooded in thine early years--
Think’st thou of her, whose gentle eye, perchance,
Bathed all thy faded hair with parting tears?
Speak, for thy tears disturb me!--what art thou?
Why dost thou hide thy face, yet weeping on?
Look up! Oh! is it--that wan cheek and brow!--
Is it--alas! yet joy!--my son, my son!
THEKLA’S SONG; OR, THE VOICE OF A SPIRIT.
FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER.
----“’Tis not merely
The human being’s pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance;
Since likewise for the stricken heart of love
This visible nature, and this common world,
Are all too narrow.”--Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
[This song is said to have been composed by Schiller in answer to the
inquiries of a friend respecting the fate of _Thekla_, whose beautiful
character is withdrawn from the tragedy of _Wallenstein’s Death_,
after her resolution to visit the grave of her lover is made known.]
Ask’st thou my home?--my pathway wouldst thou know,
When from thine eye my floating shadow pass’d?
Was not my work fulfill’d and closed below?
Had I not lived and loved? My lot was cast.
Wouldst thou ask where the nightingale is gone,
That, melting into song her soul away,
Gave the spring-breeze what witch’d thee in its tone?
But while she loved, she lived, in that deep lay!
Think’st thou my heart its lost one hath not found?
Yes! we are one: oh! trust me, we have met,
Where naught again may part what love hath bound,
Where falls no tear, and whispers no regret.
There shalt _thou_ find us, there with us be blest,
If, as _our_ love, _thy_ love is pure and true!
There dwells my father,[326] sinless and at rest,
Where the fierce murderer may no more pursue.
And well he feels, no error of the dust
Drew to the stars of heaven his mortal ken;
There it is with us even as is our trust--
He that believes is near the holy _then_.
There shall each feeling, beautiful and high,
Keep the sweet promise of its earthly day.
Oh! fear thou not to dream with waking eye!
There lies deep meaning oft in childish play.
[326] Wallenstein.
THE REVELLERS.
Ring, joyous chords!--ring out again!
A swifter, and a wilder strain!
They are here--the fair face and the careless heart,
And stars shall wane ere the mirthful part.----
But I met a dimly mournful glance,
In a sudden turn of the flying dance;
I heard the tone of a heavy sigh
In a pause of the thrilling melody!
And it is not well that woe should breathe
On the bright spring-flowers of the festal wreath!--
Ye that to thought or to grief belong,
Leave, leave the hall of song!
Ring, joyous chords!----But who art _thou_
With the shadowy locks o’er thy pale young brow,
And the world of dreamy gloom that lies
In the misty depths of thy soft dark eyes?
Thou hast loved, fair girl! thou hast loved too well!
Thou art mourning now o’er a broken spell;
Thou hast pour’d thy heart’s rich treasures forth,
And art unrepaid for their priceless worth!
Mourn on!--yet come thou not _here_ the while,
It is but a pain to see thee smile!
There is not a tone in our songs for thee--
Home with thy sorrows flee!
Ring, joyous chords!--ring out again!----
But what dost thou with the revel’s train?
A silvery voice through the soft air floats,
But thou hast no part in the gladdening notes;
There are bright young faces that pass thee by,
But they fix no glance of thy wandering eye!
Away! there’s a void in thy yearning breast,
Thou weary man! wilt thou _here_ find rest!
Away! for thy thoughts from the scene have fled,
And the love of _thy_ spirit is with the dead:
Thou art but more lone midst the sounds of mirth--
Back to thy silent hearth!
Ring, joyous chords!--ring forth again!
A swifter still, and a wilder strain!----
But _thou_, though a reckless mien be thine,
And thy cup be crown’d with the foaming wine,
By the fitful bursts of thy laughter loud,
By thine eye’s quick flash through its troubled cloud,
I know thee! it is but the wakeful fear
Of a haunted bosom that brings thee here!
I know thee!--thou fearest the solemn night,
With her piercing stars and her deep wind’s might!
There’s a tone in her voice which thou fain wouldst shun,
For it asks what the secret soul hath done!
And thou--there’s a dark weight on thine--away!--
Back to thy home, and pray!
Ring, joyous chords!--ring out again!
A swifter still, and a wilder strain!
And bring fresh wreaths!--we will banish all
Save the free in heart from our festive hall.
On! through the maze of the fleet dance, on!--
But where are the young and the lovely gone?
Where are the brows with the Red Rose crown’d,
And the floating forms with the bright zone bound?
And the waving locks and the flying feet,
That still should be where the mirthful meet?--
They are gone--they are fled--they are parted all:
Alas! the forsaken hall!
THE CONQUEROR’S SLEEP.
Sleep midst thy banners furl’d!
Yes! thou art there, upon thy buckler lying,
With the soft wind unfelt around thee sighing,
Thou chief of hosts, whose trumpet shakes the world!
Sleep, while the babe sleeps on its mother’s breast.
Oh! strong is night--for thou too art at rest!
Stillness hath smooth’d thy brow,
And now might love keep timid vigils by thee,
Now might the foe with stealthy foot draw nigh thee,
Alike unconscious and defenceless thou!
Tread lightly, watchers! Now the field is won,
Break not the rest of nature’s weary son!
Perchance some lovely dream
Back from the stormy fight thy soul is bearing,
To the green places of thy boyish daring,
And all the windings of thy native stream.
Why, this were joy! Upon the tented plain,
Dream on, thou Conqueror!--be a child again!
But thou wilt wake at morn,
With thy strong passions to the conflict leaping,
And thy dark troubled thoughts all earth o’ersweeping;
So wilt thou rise, O thou of woman born!
And put thy terrors on, till none may dare
Look upon thee--the tired one, slumbering there!
Why, so the peasant sleeps
Beneath his vine!--and man must kneel before thee,
And for his birthright vainly still implore thee!
Shalt thou be stay’d because thy brother weeps?--
Wake! and forget that midst a dreaming world,
Thou hast lain thus, with all thy banners furl’d!
Forget that thou, even thou,
Hast feebly shiver’d when the wind pass’d o’er thee,
And sunk to rest upon the earth which bore thee,
And felt the night-dew chill thy fever’d brow!
Wake with the trumpet, with the spear press on!--
Yet shall the dust take home its mortal son.
OUR LADY’S WELL.[327]
Fount of the woods! thou art hid no more
From heaven’s clear eye, as in time of yore.
For the roof hath sunk from thy mossy walls,
And the sun’s free glance on thy slumber falls;
And the dim tree-shadows across thee pass,
As the boughs are sway’d o’er thy silvery glass;
And the reddening leaves to thy breast are blown,
When the autumn wind hath a stormy tone;
And thy bubbles rise to the flashing rain--
Bright Fount! thou art nature’s own again!
Fount of the vale! thou art sought no more
By the pilgrim’s foot, as in time of yore,
When he came from afar, his beads to tell,
And to chant his hymn at Our Lady’s Well.
There is heard no _Ave_ through thy bowers,
Thou art gleaming lone midst thy water-flowers!
But the herd may drink from thy gushing wave,
And there may the reaper his forehead lave,
And the woodman seeks thee not in vain--
Bright Fount! thou art nature’s own again!
Fount of the Virgin’s ruin’d shrine!
A voice that speaks of the past is thine!
It mingles the tone of a thoughtful sigh
With the notes that ring through the laughing sky;
Midst the mirthful song of the summer bird,
And the sound of the breeze, it will yet be heard!--
Why is it that thus we may gaze on thee,
To the brilliant sunshine sparkling free?
’Tis that all on earth is of _Time’s_ domain--
He hath made thee nature’s own again!
Fount of the chapel with ages gray!
Thou art springing freshly amidst decay;
Thy rites are closed, and thy cross lies low,
And the changeful hours breathe o’er thee now.
Yet if at thine altar one holy thought
In man’s deep spirit of old hath wrought;
If peace to the mourner hath here been given,
Or prayer, from a chasten’d heart, to heaven--
Be the spot still hallow’d while Time shall reign,
Who hath made thee nature’s own again!
[327] A beautiful spring in the woods near St Asaph, formerly covered
in with a chapel, now in ruins. It was dedicated to the Virgin, and,
according to Pennant, much the resort of pilgrims.
[Those who only know the neighbourhood of St Asaph from travelling
along its highways, can be little aware how much delightful scenery
is attainable within walks of two or three miles’ distance from Mrs
Hemans’s residence. The placid beauty of the Clwyd, and the wilder
graces of the sister stream, the Elwy, particularly in the vicinity of
“Our Lady’s Well,” and the interesting rocks and caves at Cefn, are
little known to general tourists; though, by the lovers of her poetry,
it will be remembered how sweetly she has apostrophised the
“Fount of the chapel with ages gray;”
and how tenderly, amid far different scenes, her thoughts reverted to
the
“Cambrian river with slow music gliding, By pastoral hills, old woods,
and ruin’d towers.”
--(Sonnet to the River Clwyd.) --_Memoir_, p. 92-3.]
THE PARTING OF SUMMER.
Thou’rt bearing hence thy roses,
Glad summer, fare thee well!
Thou’rt singing thy last melodies
In every wood and dell.
But ere the golden sunset
Of thy latest lingering day,
Oh! tell me, o’er this checker’d earth,
How hast thou pass’d away?
Brightly, sweet Summer! brightly
Thine hours have floated by,
To the joyous birds of the woodland boughs,
The rangers of the sky;
And brightly in the forests,
To the wild deer wandering free;
And brightly, ’midst the garden flowers,
To the happy murmuring bee:
But how to human bosoms,
With all their hopes and fears,
And thoughts that make them eagle-wings,
To pierce the unborn years?
Sweet Summer! to the captive
Thou hast flown in burning dreams
Of the woods, with all their whispering leaves,
And the blue rejoicing streams;--
To the wasted and the weary
On the bed of sickness bound,
In swift delirious fantasies,
That changed with every sound;--
To the sailor on the billows,
In longings, wild and vain,
For the gushing founts and breezy hills,
And the homes of earth again!
And unto me, glad Summer!
How hast thou flown to me?
_My_ chainless footstep naught hath kept
From thy haunts of song and glee.
Thou hast flown in wayward visions,
In memories of the dead--
In shadows from a troubled heart,
O’er thy sunny pathway shed:
In brief and sudden strivings
To fling a weight aside--
Midst these thy melodies have ceased,
And all thy roses died.
But oh! thou gentle Summer!
If I greet thy flowers once more,
Bring me again the buoyancy
Wherewith my soul should soar!
Give me to hail thy sunshine
With song and spirit free;
Or in a purer air than this
May that next meeting be!
THE SONGS OF OUR FATHERS.
----“Sing aloud
Old songs, the precious music of the heart.”
Wordsworth
Sing them upon the sunny hills,
When days are long and bright,
And the blue gleam of shining rills
Is loveliest to the sight!
Sing them along the misty moor,
Where ancient hunters roved,
And swell them through the torrent’s roar,
The songs our fathers loved!--
The songs their souls rejoiced to hear
When harps were in the hall,
And each proud note made lance and spear
Thrill on the banner’d wall:
The songs that through our valleys green,
Sent on from age to age,
Like his own river’s voice, have been
The peasant’s heritage.
The reaper sings them when the vale
Is fill’d with plumy sheaves;
The woodman, by the starlight pale,
Cheer’d homeward through the leaves:
And unto them the glancing oars
A joyous measure keep,
Where the dark rocks that crest our shores
Dash back the foaming deep.
So let it be! a light they shed
O’er each old fount and grove;
A memory of the gentle dead,
A lingering spell of love.
Murmuring the names of mighty men,
They bid our streams roll on,
And link high thoughts to every glen
Where valiant deeds were done.
Teach them your children round the hearth,
When evening fires burn clear,
And in the fields of harvest mirth,
And on the hills of deer.
So shall each unforgotten word,
When far those loved ones roam,
Call back the hearts which once it stirr’d,
To childhood’s holy home.
The green woods of their native land
Shall whisper in the strain,
The voices of their household band
Shall breathe their names again;
The heathery heights in vision rise,
Where, like the stag, they roved.
Sing to your sons those melodies,
The songs your fathers loved!
THE WORLD IN THE OPEN AIR.
Come, while in freshness and dew it lies,
To the world that is under the free blue skies!
Leave ye man’s home, and forget his care--
There breathes no sigh on the dayspring’s air.
Come to the woods, in whose mossy dells
A light, all made for the poet dwells--
A light, colour’d softly by tender leaves,
Whence the primrose a mellower glow receives.
The stock-dove is there in the beechen tree,
And the lulling tone of the honey-bee;
And the voice of cool waters midst feathery fern,
Shedding sweet sounds from some hidden urn.
There is life, there is youth, there is tameless mirth,
Where the streams, with the lilies they wear, have birth;
There is peace where the alders are whispering low:
Come from man’s dwellings with all their woe!
Yes! we will come--we will leave behind
The homes and the sorrows of human kind.
It is well to rove where the river leads
Its bright blue vein along sunny meads:
It is well through the rich wild woods to go,
And to pierce the haunts of the fawn and doe;
And to hear the gushing of gentle springs,
When the heart has been fretted by worldly stings;
And to watch the colours that flit and pass,
With insect-wings, through the wavy grass;
And the silvery gleams o’er the ash-tree’s bark,
Borne in with a breeze through the foliage dark.
Joyous and far shall our wanderings be,
As the flight of birds o’er the glittering sea:
To the woods, to the dingles where violets blow,
We will bear no memory of earthly woe.
But if, by the forest-brook, we meet
A line like the pathway of former feet;
If, midst the hills, in some lonely spot,
We reach the gray ruins of tower or cot;--
If the cell, where a hermit of old hath pray’d,
Lift up its cross through the solemn shade;
Or if some nook, where the wild flowers wave,
Bear token sad of a mortal grave,--
Doubt not but _there_ will our steps be stay’d,
There our quick spirits awhile delay’d;
There will thought fix our impatient eyes,
And win back our hearts to their sympathies.
For what though the mountains and skies be fair,
Steep’d in soft hues of the summer air?
’Tis the soul of man, by its hopes and dreams,
That lights up all nature with living gleams.
Where it hath suffer’d and nobly striven,
Where it hath pour’d forth its vows to heaven;
Where to repose it hath brightly pass’d,
O’er this green earth there is glory cast.
And by that soul, midst groves and rills,
And flocks that feed on a thousand hills,
Birds of the forest, and flowers of the sod,
_We_, only _we_, may be link’d to God!
KINDRED HEARTS.
Oh! ask not, hope thou not too much
Of sympathy below!
Few are the hearts whence one same touch
Bids the sweet fountains flow--
Few, and by still conflicting powers
Forbidden here to meet:
Such ties would make this life of ours
Too fair for aught so fleet.
It may be that thy brother’s eye
Sees not as thine, which turns
In such deep reverence to the sky,
Where the rich sunset burns:
It may be that the breath of spring,
Born amidst violets lone,
A rapture o’er thy soul can bring--
A dream, to his unknown.
The tune that speaks of other times--
A sorrowful delight!
The melody of distant chimes,
The sound of waves by night,
The wind that, with so many a tone,
Some chord within can thrill,--
These may have language all thine own,
To _him_ a mystery still.
Yet scorn thou not, for this, the true
And steadfast love of years;
The kindly, that from childhood grew,
The faithful to thy tears!
If there be one that o’er the dead
Hath in thy grief borne part,
And watch’d through sickness by thy bed,--
Call _his_ a kindred heart!
But for those bonds all perfect made,
Wherein bright spirits blend,
Like sister flowers of one sweet shade
With the same breeze that bend--
For that full bliss of thought allied
Never to mortals given,
Oh! lay thy lovely dreams aside,
Or lift them unto heaven.
THE TRAVELLER AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
In sunset’s light, o’er Afric thrown,
A wanderer proudly stood
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,
Of Egypt’s awful flood--
The cradle of that mighty birth,
So long a hidden thing to earth!
He heard its life’s first murmuring sound,
A low mysterious tone--
A music sought, but never found
By kings and warriors gone.
He listen’d--and his heart beat high:
That was the song of victory!
The rapture of a conqueror’s mood
Rush’d burning through his frame,--
The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame;
Though stillness lay, with eve’s last smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile.
Night came with stars. Across his soul
There swept a sudden change:
E’en at the pilgrim’s glorious goal,
A shadow dark and strange
Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall
O’er triumph’s hour--_and is this all_?[328]
No more than this! What seem’d it now
First by that spring to stand?
A thousand streams of lovelier flow
Bathed his own mountain-land!
Whence, far o’er waste and ocean track,
Their wild, sweet voices, call’d him back.
They call’d him back to many a glade,
His childhood’s haunt of play,
Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanced away;
They call’d him, with their sounding waves,
Back to his father’s hills and graves.
But, darkly mingling with the thought
Of each familiar scene,
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught
With all that lay between--
The Arab’s lance, the desert’s gloom,
The whirling sands, the red simoom!
Where was the glow of power and pride?
The spirit born to roam?
His alter’d heart within him died
With yearnings for his home!
All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.
He wept! The stars of Afric’s heaven
Beheld his bursting tears,
E’en on that spot where fate had given
The meed of toiling years!--
O Happiness! how far we flee
Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!
[328] Bruce’s mingled feelings on arriving at the source of the Nile,
are thus portrayed by him:--“I was, at that very moment, in possession
of what had for many years been the principal object of my ambition and
wishes; indifference, which, from the usual infirmity of human nature,
follows, at least for a time, complete enjoyment, had taken place of
it. The marsh and the fountains of the Nile, upon comparison with the
rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in my sight. I
remembered that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the
Tweed, Clyde, and Annan, rise in one hill. I began, in my sorrow, to
treat the inquiry about the source of the Nile as a violent effort of a
distempered fancy.”
CASABIANCA.[329]
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm--
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.
The flames roll’d on--he would not go
Without his father’s word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
He call’d aloud:--“Say, father! say
If yet my task is done!”
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
“Speak, father!” once again he cried,
“If I may yet be gone!”
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames roll’d on.
Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And look’d from that lone post of death
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but once more aloud,
“My father! must I stay?”
While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.
They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And stream’d above the gallant child
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder-sound--
The boy--oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strew’d the sea!--
With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing which perish’d there
Was that young faithful heart!
[329] Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the
Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile)
after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and
perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached
the powder.
THE DIAL OF FLOWERS.[330]
’Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours,
As they floated in light away,
By the opening and the folding flowers,
That laugh to the summer’s day.
Thus had each moment its own rich hue,
And its graceful cup and bell,
In whose colour’d vase might sleep the dew,
Like a pearl in an ocean-shell.
To such sweet signs might the time have flow’d
In a golden current on,
Ere from the garden, man’s first abode,
The glorious guests were gone.
So might the days have been brightly told--
Those days of song and dreams--
When shepherds gather’d their flocks of old
By the blue Arcadian streams.
So in those isles of delight, that rest
Far off in a breezeless main,
Which many a bark, with a weary quest,
Has sought, but still in vain.
Yet is not life, in its real flight,
Mark’d thus--even thus--on earth,
By the closing of one hope’s delight,
And another’s gentle birth?
Oh! let us live, so that flower by flower,
Shutting in turn, may leave
A lingerer still for the sunset hour,
A charm for the shaded eve.
[330] This dial was, I believe, formed by Linnæus, and marked the
hours by the opening and closing, at regular intervals, of the flowers
arranged in it.
OUR DAILY PATHS.[331]
“Naught shall prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.” Wordsworth.
There’s beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes
Can trace it midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise;
We may find it where a hedgerow showers its blossoms o’er our way,
Or a cottage window sparkles forth in the last red light of day.
We may find it where a spring shines clear beneath an aged tree,
With the foxglove o’er the water’s glass, borne downwards by the
bee;
Or where a swift and sunny gleam on the birchen stems is thrown,
As a soft wind playing parts the leaves, in copses green and lone.
We may find it in the winter boughs, as they cross the cold blue
sky,
While soft on icy pool and stream their pencil’d shadows lie,
When we look upon their tracery, by the fairy frost-work bound,
Whence the flitting redbreast shakes a shower of crystals to the
ground.
Yes! beauty dwells in all our paths--but sorrow too is there:
How oft some cloud within us dims the bright, still summer air!
When we carry our sick hearts abroad amidst the joyous things,
That through the leafy places glance on many-colour’d wings,
With shadows from the past we fill the happy woodland shades,
And a mournful memory of the dead is with us in the glades;
And our dream-like fancies lend the wind an echo’s plaintive tone
Of voices, and of melodies, and of silvery laughter gone.
But are we free to do even thus--to wander as we will,
Bearing sad visions through the grove, and o’er the breezy hill?
No! in our daily paths lie cares, that ofttimes bind us fast,
While from their narrow round we see the golden day fleet past.
They hold us from the woodlark’s haunts, and violet dingles, back,
And from all the lovely sounds and gleams in the shining river’s
track;
They bar us from our heritage of spring-time, hope, and mirth,
And weigh our burden’d spirits down with the cumbering dust of
earth.
Yet should this be? Too much, too soon, despondingly we yield!
A better lesson we are taught by the lilies of the field!
A sweeter by the birds of heaven--which tell us, in their flight,
Of One that through the desert air for ever guides them right.
Shall not this knowledge calm our hearts, and bid vain conflicts
cease?
Ay, when they commune with themselves in holy hours of peace,
And feel that by the lights and clouds through which our pathway
lies,
By the beauty and the grief alike, we are training for the skies!
[331] This little poem derives an additional interest from being
affectingly associated with a name no less distinguished than that of
the late Mr Dugald Stewart. The admiration he always expressed for
Mrs Hemans’s poetry, was mingled with regret that she so generally
made choice of melancholy subjects; and on one occasion, he sent
her, through a mutual friend, a message suggestive of his wish that
she would employ her fine talents in giving more consolatory views
of the ways of Providence, thus infusing comfort and cheer into the
bosoms of her readers, in a spirit of Christian philosophy, which, he
thought, would be more consonant with the pious mind and loving heart
displayed in every line she wrote, than dwelling on what was painful
and depressing, however beautifully and touchingly such subjects might
be treated of. This message was faithfully transmitted, and almost by
return of post, Mrs Hemans (who was then residing in Wales) sent to
the kind friend to whom it had been forwarded, the poem of “Our Daily
Paths,” requesting it might be given to Mr Stewart, with an assurance
of her gratitude for the interest he took in her writings, and alleging
as the reason of the mournful strain which pervaded them, “that a cloud
hung over her life which she could not always rise above.”
The letter reached Mr Stewart just as he was stepping into the
carriage, to leave his country residence (Kinneil House, the property
of the Duke of Hamilton) for Edinburgh--the last time, alas! his
presence was ever to gladden that happy home, as his valuable life
was closed very shortly afterwards. The poem was read to him by
his daughter, on his way to Edinburgh, and he expressed himself in
the highest degree charmed and gratified with the result of his
suggestions; and some of the lines which pleased him more particularly
were often repeated to him during the few remaining weeks of his life.
THE CROSS IN THE WILDERNESS.
Silent and mournful sat an Indian chief,
In the red sunset, by a grassy tomb;
His eyes, that might not weep, were dark with grief,
And his arms folded in majestic gloom;
And his bow lay unstrung, beneath the mound
Which sanctified the gorgeous waste around.
For a pale cross above its greensward rose,
Telling the cedars and the pines that there
Man’s heart and hope had struggled with his woes,
And lifted from the dust a voice of prayer.
Now all was hush’d--and eve’s last splendour shone
With a rich sadness on th’ attesting stone.
There came a lonely traveller o’er the wild,
And he, too, paused in reverence by that grave,
Asking the tale of its memorial, piled
Between the forest and the lake’s bright wave;
Till, as a wind might stir a wither’d oak,
On the deep dream of age his accents broke.
And the gray chieftain, slowly rising, said--
“I listen’d for the words, which, years ago,
Pass’d o’er these waters. Though the voice is fled
Which made them as a singing fountain’s flow,
Yet, when I sit in their long-faded track,
Sometimes the forest’s murmur gives them back.
“Ask’st thou of him whose house is lone beneath?
I was an eagle in my youthful pride,
When o’er the seas he came, with summer’s breath,
To dwell amidst us, on the lake’s green side.
Many the times of flowers have been since then--
Many, but bringing naught like _him_ again!
“Not with the hunter’s bow and spear he came,
O’er the blue hills to chase the flying roe;
Not the dark glory of the woods to tame,
Laying their cedars, like the corn-stalks, low;
But to spread tidings of all holy things,
Gladdening our souls, as with the morning’s wings.
“Doth not yon cypress whisper how we met,
I and my brethren that from earth are gone,
Under its boughs to hear his voice, which yet
Seems through their gloom to send a silvery tone?
He told of One the grave’s dark bonds who broke,
And our hearts burn’d within us as he spoke.
“He told of far and sunny lands, which lie
Beyond the dust wherein our fathers dwell:
Bright must they be! for _there_ are none that die,
And none that weep, and none that say ‘Farewell!’
He came to guide us thither; but away
The Happy call’d him, and he might not stay.
“We saw him slowly fade--athirst, perchance,
For the fresh waters of that lovely clime;
Yet was there still a sunbeam in his glance,
And on his gleaming hair no touch of time--
Therefore we hoped: but now the lake looks dim,
For the green summer comes--and finds not him!
“We gather’d round him in the dewy hour
Of one still morn, beneath his chosen tree;
From his clear voice, at first, the words of power
Came low, like moanings of a distant sea;
But swell’d and shook the wilderness ere long,
As if the spirit of the breeze grew strong.
“And then once more they trembled on his tongue,
And his white eyelids flutter’d, and his head
Fell back, and mist upon his forehead hung----
Know’st thou not how we pass to join the dead?
It is enough! he sank upon my breast--
Our friend that loved us, he was gone to rest!
“We buried him where he was wont to pray,
By the calm lake, e’en here, at eventide;
We rear’d this cross in token where he lay,
For on the cross, he said, his Lord had died!
Now hath he surely reach’d, o’er mount and wave,
That flowery land whose green turf hides no grave.
“But I am sad! I mourn the clear light taken
Back from my people, o’er whose place it shone,
The pathway to the better shore forsaken,
And the true words forgotten, save by one,
Who hears them faintly sounding from the past,
Mingled with death-songs in each fitful blast.”
Then spoke the wanderer forth with kindling eye:
“Son of the wilderness! despair thou not,
Though the bright hour may seem to thee gone by,
And the cloud settled o’er thy nation’s lot!
Heaven darkly works--yet, where the seed hath been,
There shall the fruitage, glowing yet, be seen.
“Hope on, hope ever!--by the sudden springing
Of green leaves which the winter hid so long;
And by the bursts of free, triumphant singing,
After cold silent months the woods among;
And by the rending of the frozen chains,
Which bound the glorious rivers on their plains.
“Deem not the words of light that here were spoken,
But as a lovely song, to leave no trace;
Yet shall the gloom which wraps thy hills be broken,
And the full dayspring rise upon thy race!
And fading mists the better path disclose,
And the wide desert blossom as the rose.”
So by the cross they parted, in the wild,
Each fraught with musings for life’s after day,
Memories to visit _one_, the forest’s child,
By many a blue stream in its lonely way;
And upon _one_, midst busy throngs to press
Deep thoughts and sad, yet full of holiness.
[“‘The Cross in the Wilderness,’ by Mrs Hemans, is in every way worthy
of her delightful genius; and nothing but want of room prevents us
from quoting it entire. Mrs Hemans is, indeed, the star that shines
most brightly in the hemisphere; and in every thing she writes, there
is, along with a fine spirit of poetry, a still finer spirit of moral
and religious truth. Of all the female poets of the day, Mrs Hemans
is, in the best sense of the word, the most truly feminine--no false
glitter about her--no ostentatious display--no gaudy and jingling
ornaments--but, as an English matron ought to be, simple, sedate,
cheerful, elegant, and religious.”--Professor Wilson in _Blackwood’s
Magazine_. Dec. 1826.
LAST RITES.
By the mighty minster’s bell,
Tolling with a sudden swell;
By the colours half-mast high,
O’er the sea hung mournfully;
Know, a prince hath died!
By the drum’s dull muffled sound,
By the arms that sweep the ground,
By the volleying muskets’ tone,
Speak ye of a soldier gone
In his manhood’s pride.
By the chanted psalm that fills
Reverently the ancient hills,[332]
Learn, that from his harvests done,
Peasants hear a brother on
To his last repose.
By the pall of snowy white
Through the yew-trees gleaming bright;
By the garland on the bier,
Weep! a maiden claims thy tear--
Broken is the rose!
Which is the tenderest rite of all?--
Buried virgin’s coronal,
Requiem o’er the monarch’s head,
Farewell gun for warrior dead,
Herdsman’s funeral hymn?
Tells not each of human woe?
Each of hope and strength brought low?
Number each with holy things,
If one chastening thought it brings
Ere life’s day grow dim!
[332] A custom still retained at rural funerals in some parts of
England and Wales.
THE HEBREW MOTHER.[333]
The rose was in rich bloom on Sharon’s plain,
When a young mother, with her first-born, thence
Went up to Zion; for the boy was vow’d
Unto the Temple service. By the hand
She led him, and her silent soul, the while,
Oft as the dewy laughter of his eye
Met her sweet serious glance, rejoiced to think
That aught so pure, so beautiful was hers,
To bring before her God. So pass’d they on
O’er Judah’s hills; and wheresoe’er the leaves
Of the broad sycamore made sounds at noon,
Like lulling rain-drops, or the olive boughs,
With their cool dimness, cross’d the sultry blue
Of Syria’s heaven, she paused, that he might rest;
Yet from her own meek eyelids chased the sleep
That weigh’d their dark fringe down, to sit and watch
The crimson deepening o’er his cheek’s repose,
As at a red flower’s heart. And where a fount
Lay, like a twilight star, midst palmy shades,
Making its bank green gems along the wild,
There, too, she linger’d, from the diamond wave
Drawing bright water for his rosy lips,
And softly parting clusters of jet curls
To bathe his brow. At last the fane was reach’d,
The earth’s one sanctuary--and rapture hush’d
Her bosom, as before her, through the day,
It rose, a mountain of white marble, steep’d
In light like floating gold. But when that hour
Waned to the farewell moment, when the boy
Lifted, through rainbow-gleaming tears, his eye
Beseechingly to hers, and half in fear,
Turn’d from the white-robed priest, and round her arm
Clung even as joy clings--the deep spring-tide
Of nature then swell’d high, and o’er her child
Bending, her soul broke forth in mingled sounds
Of weeping and sad song. “Alas!” she cried,--
“Alas! my boy, thy gentle grasp is on me,
The bright tears quiver in thy pleading eyes;
And now fond thoughts arise,
And silver cords again to earth have won me,
And like a vine thou claspest my full heart--
How shall I hence depart?
“How the lone paths retrace where thou wert playing
So late, along the mountains, at my side?
And I, in joyous pride,
By every place of flowers my course delaying,
Wove, e’en as pearls, the lilies round thy hair,
Beholding thee so fair!
“And, oh! the home whence thy bright smile hath parted,
Will it not seem as if the sunny day
Turn’d from its door away?
While through its chambers wandering, weary-hearted,
I languish for thy voice, which past me still
Went like a singing rill?
“Under the palm-trees thou no more shalt meet me,
When from the fount at evening I return,
With the full water-urn;
Nor will thy sleep’s low dove-like breathings greet me,
As midst the silence of the stars I wake,
And watch for thy dear sake.
“And thou, will slumber’s dewy cloud fall round thee,
Without thy mother’s hand to smooth thy bed?
Wilt thou not vainly spread
Thine arms, when darkness as a veil hath wound thee,
To fold my neck, and lift up, in thy fear,
A cry which none shall hear?
“What have I said, my child! Will _He_ not hear thee,
Who the young ravens heareth from their nest?
Shall He not guard thy rest,
And, in the hush of holy midnight near thee,
Breathe o’er thy soul, and fill its dreams with joy?
Thou shalt sleep soft, my boy.
“I give thee to thy God--the God that gave thee,
A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
And, precious as thou art,
And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
And thou shalt be His child.
“Therefore, farewell! I go--my soul may fail me,
As the hart panteth for the water brooks,
Yearning for thy sweet looks.
But thou, my first-born, droop not, nor bewail me;
Thou in the Shadow of the Rock shalt dwell,
The Rock of Strength.--Farewell!”
[333] “It is long since we have read any thing more beautiful than the
following poem by Mrs Hemans.”--_Blackwood’s Magazine._ Jan. 1826.
[“It would be wearisomely superfluous to enumerate the long series
of lyrics which she now poured forth with increasing earnestness and
rapidity, and without which none of the lighter periodicals of the
day made its appearance. One or two, however, must be mentioned, as
certain to survive so long as the short poem shall be popular in
England. ‘The Treasures of the Deep,’ ‘The Hour of Death,’ ‘The Graves
of a Household,’ ‘The Cross in the Wilderness,’ are all admirable.
With these, too, may be mentioned those poems in which a short
descriptive recitative (to borrow a word from the opera) introduces
a lyrical burst of passion or regret, or lamentation. This form of
composition became so especially popular in America, that hardly
a poet has arisen, since the influence of Mrs Hemans’ genius made
itself felt on the other side of the Atlantic, who has not attempted
something of a similar subject and construction. ‘The Hebrew Mother’
has been followed by an infinite number of sketches from Scripture:
this lyric, too, should be particularised as having made friends for
its authoress among those of the ancient faith in England. Among
the last strangers who visited her, eager to thank her for the
pleasure her writings had afforded them, were a Jewish gentleman
and lady, who entreated to be admitted by the author of the ‘Hebrew
Mother.’”--Chorley’s _Memorials of Mrs Hemans_, p. 114-15.
“Her ‘Voice of Spring,’ her ‘Hour of Death,’ her ‘Treasures of
the Deep,’ her ‘Graves of a Household,’ her ‘England’s Dead,’ her
‘Trumpet,’ her ‘Hebrew Mother,’ and a host of similar pieces--these
are the undying lays, the lumps of pure gold. We do not think thus
with reference to Mrs Hemans’ lyrics only; it strikes us that nearly
all our present poets must depend for future fame on their shorter
pieces.”--_Literary Magnet_, 1826.]
THE WRECK.
All night the booming minute-gun
Had peal’d along the deep,
And mournfully the rising sun
Look’d o’er the tide-worn steep.
A bark from India’s coral strand,
Before the raging blast,
Had vail’d her topsails to the sand,
And bow’d her noble mast.
The queenly ship!--brave hearts had striven,
And true ones died with her!
We saw her mighty cable riven,
Like floating gossamer.
We saw her proud flag struck that morn--
A star once o’er the seas,--
Her anchor gone, her deck uptorn,
And sadder things than these!
We saw her treasures cast away,
The rocks with pearls were sown;
And, strangely sad, the ruby’s ray
Flash’d out o’er fretted stone.
And gold was strewn the wet sands o’er,
Like ashes by a breeze;
And gorgeous robes--but oh! that shore
Had sadder things than these!
We saw the strong man still and low,
A crush’d reed thrown aside;
Yet, by that rigid lip and brow,
Not without strife he died.
And near him on the sea-weed lay--
Till then we had not wept--
But well our gushing hearts might say,
That there a _mother_ slept!
For her pale arms a babe had press’d
With such a wreathing grasp,
Billows had dash’d o’er that fond breast,
Yet not undone the clasp.
Her very tresses had been flung
To wrap the fair child’s form,
Where still their wet long streamers hung
All tangled by the storm.
And beautiful, midst that wild scene,
Gleam’d up the boy’s dead face,
Like slumber’s, trustingly serene,
In melancholy grace.
Deep in her bosom lay his head,
With half-shut violet-eye--
_He_ had known little of her dread,
Naught of her agony!
O human love! whose yearning heart,
Through all things vainly true,
So stamps upon thy mortal part
Its passionate adieu--
Surely thou hast another lot:
There is some home for thee,
Where thou shalt rest, remembering not
The moaning of the sea!
THE TRUMPET.[334]
The trumpet’s voice hath roused the land--
Light up the beacon pyre!
A hundred hills have seen the brand,
And waved the sign of fire.
A hundred banners to the breeze
Their gorgeous folds have cast--
And, hark! was that the sound of seas?
A king to war went past.
The chief is arming in his hall,
The peasant by his hearth;
The mourner hears the thrilling call,
And rises from the earth.
The mother on her first-born son
Looks with a boding eye--
_They_ come not back, though all be won,
Whose young hearts leap so high.
The bard hath ceased his song, and bound
The falchion to his side;
E’en, for the marriage altar crown’d,
The lover quits his bride.
And all this haste, and change, and fear,
By _earthly_ clarion spread!--
How will it be when kingdoms hear
The blast that wakes the dead?
[334] “We cannot refrain quoting another poem by the same distinguished
writer. It has something sublime.”--_Blackwood’s Magazine_, Jan. 1826.
EVENING PRAYER, AT A GIRLS’ SCHOOL.
“Now in thy youth, beseech of Him
Who giveth, upbraiding not,
That His light in thy heart become not dim,
And his love be unforgot;
And thy God, in the darkest of days, will be
Greenness, and beauty, and strength to thee.”
Bernard Barton.
Hush! ’tis a holy hour. The quiet room
Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds
A faint and starry radiance, through the gloom
And the sweet stillness, down on fair young heads,
With all their clustering locks, untouch’d by care,
And bow’d, as flowers are bow’d with night, in prayer.
Gaze on--’tis lovely! Childhood’s lip and cheek,
Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!
Gaze--yet what seest thou in those fair, and meek,
And fragile things, as but for sunshine wrought?--
Thou seest what grief must nurture for the sky,
What death must fashion for eternity!
O joyous creatures! that will sink to rest
Lightly, when those pure orisons are done
As birds with slumber’s honey-dew opprest,
Midst the dim folded leaves, at set of sun--
Lift up your hearts! though yet no sorrow lies
Dark in the summer-heaven of those clear eyes.
Though fresh within your breasts th’ untroubled springs
Of hope make melody where’er ye tread,
And o’er your sleep bright shadows, from the wings
Of spirits visiting but youth, be spread;
Yet in those flute-like voices, mingling low,
Is woman’s tenderness--how soon her woe!
Her lot is on you--silent tears to weep,
And patient smiles to wear through suffering’s hour,
And sumless riches, from affection’s deep,
To pour on broken reeds--a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship. Therefore pray!
Her lot is on you--to be found untired,
Watching the stars out by the bed of pain,
With a pale cheek, and yet a brow inspired,
And a true heart of hope, though hope be vain;
Meekly to bear with wrong, to cheer decay,
And, oh! to love through all things. Therefore pray!
And take the thought of this calm vesper time,
With its low murmuring sounds and silvery light,
On through the dark days fading from their prime,
As a sweet dew to keep your souls from blight!
Earth will forsake--Oh! happy to have given
Th’ unbroken heart’s first fragrance unto heaven.
THE HOUR OF DEATH.
“Il est dans la Nature d’aimer à se livrer à l’idée même qu’on
redoute.”--Corinne.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,
And stars to set--but all,
Thou hast _all_ seasons for thine own, O Death!
Day is for mortal care,
Eve, for glad meetings round the joyous hearth,
Night, for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer--
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth.
The banquet hath its hour--
Its feverish hour, of mirth, and song, and wine;
There comes a day for grief’s o’erwhelming power,
A time for softer tears--but all are thine.
Youth and the opening rose
May look like things too glorious for decay,
And smile at thee--but thou art not of those
That wait the ripen’d bloom to seize their prey.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,
And stars to set--but all,
Thou hast _all_ seasons for thine own, O Death!
We know when moons shall wane,
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea,
When autumn’s hue shall tinge the golden grain--
But who shall teach us when to look for thee!
Is it when spring’s first gale
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie?
Is it when roses in our paths grow pale?--
They have _one_ season--_all_ are ours to die!
Thou art where billows foam,
Thou art where music melts upon the air;
Thou art around us in our peaceful home,
And the world calls us forth--and thou art there.
Thou art where friend meets friend,
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest--
Thou art where foe meets foe, and trumpets rend
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,
And stars to set--but all--
Thou hast _all_ seasons for thine own, O Death!
THE LOST PLEIAD.
“Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.”--Byron.
And is there glory from the heavens departed?
O void unmark’d!--thy sisters of the sky
Still hold their place on high,
Though from its rank thine orb so long hath started,
Thou, that no more art seen of mortal eye!
Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night?
She wears her crown of old magnificence,
Though thou art exiled thence--
No desert seems to part those urns of light,
Midst the far depths of purple gloom intense.
They rise in joy, the starry myriads burning--
The shepherd greets them on his mountains free;
And from the silvery sea
To them the sailor’s wakeful eye is turning--
Unchanged they rise, they have not mourn’d for thee.
Couldst thou be shaken from thy radiant place,
Even as a dew-drop from the myrtle spray,
Swept by the wind away?
Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race,
And was there power to smite them with decay?
Why, who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riven?
Bow’d be our hearts to think on what we are,
When from its height afar
A world sinks thus--and yon majestic heaven
Shines not the less for that one vanish’d star!
THE CLIFFS OF DOVER.
“The inviolate Island of the sage and free.”--Byron.
Rocks of my country! let the cloud
Your crested heights array,
And rise ye like a fortress proud
Above the surge and spray!
My spirit greets you as ye stand,
Breasting the billow’s foam:
Oh! thus for ever guard the land,
The sever’d land of home!
I have left rich blue skies behind,
Lighting up classic shrines,
And music in the southern wind,
And sunshine on the vines.
The breathings of the myrtle flowers
Have floated o’er my way;
The pilgrim’s voice, at vesper hours,
Hath soothed me with its lay.
The isles of Greece, the hills of Spain,
The purple heavens of Rome--
Yes, all are glorious,--yet again
I bless thee, land of home!
For thine the Sabbath peace, my land!
And thine the guarded hearth;
And thine the dead--the noble band,
That make thee holy earth.
Their voices meet me in thy breeze,
Their steps are on thy plains;
Their names, by old majestic trees,
Are whisper’d round thy fanes.
Their blood hath mingled with the tide
Of thine exulting sea;
Oh, be it still a joy, a pride,
To live and die for thee!
THE GRAVES OF MARTYRS.
The kings of old have shrine and tomb
In many a minster’s haughty gloom;
And green, along the ocean side,
The mounds arise where heroes died;
But show me, on thy flowery breast,
Earth! where thy _nameless_ martyrs rest!
The thousands that, uncheer’d by praise,
Have made one offering of their days;
For Truth, for Heaven, for Freedom’s sake,
Resign’d the bitter cup to take;
And silently, in fearless faith,
Bowing their noble souls to death.
Where sleep they, Earth? By no proud stone
Their narrow couch of rest is known;
The still sad glory of their name
Hallows no fountain unto Fame;
No--not a tree the record bears
Of their deep thoughts and lonely prayers.
Yet haply all around lie strew’d
The ashes of that multitude:
It may be that each day we tread
Where thus devoted hearts have bled;
And the young flowers our children sow,
Take root in holy dust below.
Oh, that the many-rustling leaves,
Which round our homes the summer weaves,
Or that the streams, in whose glad voice
Our own familiar paths rejoice,
Might whisper through the starry sky,
To tell where those blest slumberers lie!
Would not our inmost hearts be still’d,
With knowledge of their presence fill’d,
And by its breathings taught to prize
The meekness of self-sacrifice?
--But the old woods and sounding waves
Are silent of those hidden graves.
Yet what if no light footstep there
In pilgrim-love and awe repair,
So let it be! Like him, whose clay
Deep buried by his Maker lay,
They sleep in secret,--but their sod,
Unknown to man, is mark’d of God!
THE HOUR OF PRAYER.
“Pregar, pregar, pregar,
Ch’ altro ponno i mortali al pianger nati?” Alfieri.
Child, amidst the flowers at play,
While the red light fades away;
Mother, with thine earnest eye
Ever following silently;
Father, by the breeze of eve
Call’d thy harvest-work to leave--
Pray: ere yet the dark hours be,
Lift the heart and bend the knee!
Traveller, in the stranger’s land,
Far from thine own household band;
Mourner, haunted by the tone
Of a voice from this world gone;
Captive, in whose narrow cell
Sunshine hath not leave to dwell;
Sailor on the darkening sea--
Lift the heart and bend the knee!
Warrior, that from battle won
Breathest now at set of sun;
Woman, o’er the lowly slain
Weeping on his burial-plain;
Ye that triumph, ye that sigh,
Kindred by one holy tie,
Heaven’s first star alike ye see--
Lift the heart and bend the knee!
THE VOICE OF HOME TO THE PRODIGAL.
“Von Baumen, aus Wellen, aus Mauern,
Wie ruft es dir freundlich und lind;
Was hast du zu wandern, zu trauern?
Komm’ spielen, du freundliches Kind!”
La Motte Fouque.
Oh! when wilt thou return
To thy spirit’s early loves?
To the freshness of the morn,
To the stillness of the groves?
The summer birds are calling
Thy household porch around,
And the merry waters falling
With sweet laughter in their sound.
And a thousand bright-vein’d flowers,
From their banks of moss and fern,
Breathe of the sunny hours--
But when wilt thou return?
Oh! thou hast wander’d long
From thy home without a guide;
And thy native woodland song
In thine alter’d heart hath died.
Thou hast flung the wealth away,
And the glory of thy spring;
And to thee the leaves’ light play
Is a long-forgotten thing.
But when wilt thou return?--
Sweet dews may freshen soon
The flower, within whose urn
Too fiercely gazed the noon.
O’er the image of the sky,
Which the lake’s clear bosom wore,
Darkly may shadows lie--
But not for evermore.
Give back thy heart again
To the freedom of the woods,
To the birds’ triumphant strain,
To the mountain solitudes!
But when wilt thou return?
Along thine own pure air
There are young sweet voices borne--
Oh! should not thine be there?
Still at thy father’s board
There is kept a place for thee;
And, by thy smile restored,
Joy round the hearth shall be.
Still hath thy mother’s eye,
Thy coming step to greet,
A look of days gone by,
Tender and gravely sweet.
Still, when the prayer is said,
For thee kind bosoms yearn,
For thee fond tears are shed--
Oh! when wilt thou return?
THE WAKENING.
How many thousands are wakening now!
Some to the songs from the forest bough,
To the rustling of leaves at the lattice pane,
To the chiming fall of the early rain.
And some, far out on the deep mid-sea,
To the dash of the waves in their foaming glee,
As they break into spray on the ship’s tall side,
That holds through the tumult her path of pride.
And some--oh, well may _their_ hearts rejoice!--
To the gentle sound of a mother’s voice:
Long shall they yearn for that kindly tone,
When from the board and the hearth ’tis gone.
And some, in the camp, to the bugle’s breath,
And the tramp of the steed on the echoing heath,
And the sudden roar of the hostile gun,
Which tells that a field must ere night be won.
And some, in the gloomy convict cell,
To the dull deep note of the warning bell,
As it heavily calls them forth to die,
When the bright sun mounts in the laughing sky.
And some to the peal of the hunter’s horn,
And some to the din from the city borne,
And some to the rolling of torrent floods,
Far midst old mountains and solemn woods.
So are we roused on this checker’d earth:
Each unto light hath a daily birth;
Though fearful or joyous, though sad or sweet,
Are the voices which first our upspringing meet.
But _one_ must the sound be, and _one_ the call,
Which from the dust shall awaken us all:
One!--but to sever’d and distant dooms,
How shall the sleepers arise from the tombs?
THE BREEZE FROM SHORE.
[“Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the
freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures,
keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our
being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human
nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings;
and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to
lay hold on the future life.”--Channing.]
Joy is upon the lonely seas,
When Indian forests pour
Forth, to the billow and the breeze,
Their odours from the shore;
Joy, when the soft air’s fanning sigh
Bears on the breath of Araby.
Oh! welcome are the winds that tell
A wanderer of the deep
Where, far away, the jasmines dwell,
And where the myrrh-trees weep!
Blest on the sounding surge and foam
Are tidings of the citron’s home!
The sailor at the helm they meet,
And hope his bosom stirs,
Upspringing, midst the waves, to greet
The fair earth’s messengers,
That woo him, from the moaning main,
Back to her glorious bowers again.
They woo him, whispering lovely tales
Of many a flowering glade,
And fount’s bright gleam, in island vales
Of golden-fruited shade:
Across his lone ship’s wake they bring
A vision and a glow of spring.
And, O ye masters of the lay!
Come not even thus your songs
That meet us on life’s weary way,
Amidst her toiling throngs?
Yes! o’er the spirit thus they bear
A current of celestial air.
Their power is from the brighter clime
That in our birth hath part;
Their tones are of the world, which time
Sears not within the heart:
They tell us of the living light
In its green places ever bright.
They call us, with a voice divine,
Back to our early love,--
Our vows of youth at many a shrine,
Whence far and fast we rove.
Welcome high thought and holy strain
That make us Truth’s and Heaven’s again!
THE DYING IMPROVISATORE.[335]
“My heart shall be pour’d over thee--and break.”
Prophecy of Dante.
The spirit of my land,
It visits me once more!--though I must die
Far from the myrtles which thy breeze hath fann’d,
My own bright Italy!
It is, it is thy breath,
Which stirs my soul e’en yet, as wavering flame
Is shaken by the wind,--in life and death
Still trembling, yet the same!
Oh! that love’s quenchless power
Might waft my voice to fill thy summer sky,
And through thy groves its dying music shower,
Italy! Italy!
The nightingale is there,
The sunbeam’s glow, the citron flower’s perfume,
The south wind’s whisper in the scented air--
It will not pierce the tomb!
Never, oh! never more,
On thy Rome’s purple heaven mine eye shall dwell,
Or watch the bright waves melt along thy shore--
My Italy! farewell!
Alas!--thy hills among
Had I but left a memory of my name,
Of love and grief one deep, true, fervent song,
Unto immortal fame!
But like a lute’s brief tone,
Like a rose-odour on the breezes cast,
Like a swift flush of dayspring, seen and gone,
So hath my spirit pass’d--
Pouring itself away
As a wild bird amidst the foliage turns
That which within him triumphs, beats, or burns,
Into a fleeting lay;
That swells, and floats, and dies,
Leaving no echo to the summer woods
Of the rich breathings and impassion’d sighs
Which thrill’d their solitudes.
Yet, yet remember me!
Friends! that upon its murmurs oft have hung,
When from my bosom, joyously and free,
The fiery fountain sprung.
Under the dark rich blue
Of midnight heavens, and on the star-lit sea,
And when woods kindle into spring’s first hue,
Sweet friends! remember me!
And in the marble halls,
Where life’s full glow the dreams of beauty wear,
And poet-thoughts embodied light the walls,
Let me be with you there!
Fain would I bind, for you,
My memory with all glorious things to dwell!
Fain bid all lovely sounds my name renew--
Sweet friends! bright land! farewell!
[335] Sestini, the Roman Improvisatore, when on his deathbed at
Paris, is said to have poured forth a Farewell to Italy, in his most
impassioned poetry.
MUSIC OF YESTERDAY.
“O! mein Geist, ich fuhle es in mir, strebt nach etwas Ueberirdischem,
das keinem Menschen gegonnt ist.”--Tieck
The chord, the harp’s full chord is hush’d,
The voice hath died away,
Whence music, like sweet waters, gush’d
But yesterday.
Th’ awakening note, the breeze-like swell.
The full o’ersweeping tone,
The sounds that sigh’d “Farewell, farewell!”
Are gone--all gone!
The love, whose fervent spirit pass’d
With the rich measure’s flow;
The grief, to which it sank at last--
Where are they now?
They are with the scents by summer’s breath
Borne from a rose now shed:
With the words from lips long seal’d in death--
For ever fled.
The sea-shell of its native deep
A moaning thrill retains;
But earth and air no record keep
Of parted strains.
And all the memories, all the dreams,
They woke in floating by;
The tender thoughts, th’ Elysian gleams--
Could these too die?
They died! As on the water’s breast
The ripple melts away,
When the breeze that stirr’d it sinks to rest--
So perish’d they!
Mysterious in their sudden birth,
And mournful in their close,
Passing, and finding not on earth
Aim or repose.
Whence were they?--like the breath of flowers
Why thus to come and go?
A long, long journey must be ours
Ere this we know!
THE FORSAKEN HEARTH.
“Was mir fehlt?--Mir fehlt ja alles,
Bin so ganz verlassen hier!”
Tyrolese Melody.
The Hearth, the Hearth is desolate! the fire is quench’d and gone
That into happy children’s eyes once brightly laughing shone;
The place where mirth and music met is hush’d through day and night.
Oh! for one kind, one sunny face, of all that there made light!
But scatter’d are those pleasant smiles afar by mount and shore,
Like gleaming waters from one spring dispersed to meet no more.
Those kindred eyes reflect not now each other’s joy or mirth,
Unbound is that sweet wreath of home--alas! the lonely hearth!
The voices that have mingled here now speak another tongue,
Or breathe, perchance, to alien ears the songs their mother sung.
Sad, strangely sad, in stranger lands, must sound each household
tone:
The hearth, the hearth is desolate! the bright fire quench’d and
gone!
But _are_ they speaking, singing yet, as in their days of glee?
Those voices, are they lovely still, still sweet on earth or sea?
Oh! some are hush’d, and some are changed, and never shall one
strain
Blend their fraternal cadences triumphantly again.
And of the hearts that here were link’d by long-remember’d years,
Alas! the brother knows not now when fall the sister’s tears!
One haply revels at the feast, while one may droop alone:
For broken is the household chain, the bright fire quench’d and
gone!
Not so--’tis _not_ a broken chain: thy memory binds them still,
Thou holy hearth of other days! though silent now and chill.
The smiles, the tears, the rites, beheld by thine attesting stone,
Have yet a living power to mark thy children for thine own.
The father’s voice, the mother’s prayer, though call’d from earth
away,
With music rising from the dead, their spirits yet shall sway;
And by the past, and by the grave, the parted yet are one,
Though the loved hearth be desolate, the bright fire quench’d and
gone!
THE DREAMER.
“There is no such thing as forgetting, possible to the mind; a
thousand accidents may, and will, interpose a veil between our present
consciousness and the secret inscription on the mind; but alike,
whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever.”
English Opium-Eater.
“Thou hast been call’d, O sleep! the friend of woe,
But ’tis the happy who have call’d thee so.” Southey.
Peace to thy dreams! thou art slumbering now--
The moonlight’s calm is upon thy brow;
All the deep love that o’erflows thy breast
Lies midst the hush of thy heart at rest--
Like the scent of a flower in its folded bell,
When eve through the woodlands hath sigh’d farewell.
Peace! The sad memories that through the day
With a weight on thy lonely bosom lay,
The sudden thoughts of the changed and dead,
That bow’d thee as winds bow the willow’s head,
The yearnings for faces and voices gone--
All are forgotten! Sleep on, sleep on!
_Are_ they forgotten? It is not so!
Slumber divides not the heart from its woe.
E’en now o’er thine aspect swift changes pass,
Like lights and shades over wavy grass:
Tremblest thou, Dreamer? O love and grief!
Ye have storms that shake e’en the closed-up leaf!
On thy parted lips there’s a quivering thrill,
As on a lyre ere its chords are still;
On the long silk lashes that fringe thine eye,
There’s a large tear gathering heavily--
A rain from the clouds of thy spirit press’d:
Sorrowful Dreamer! this is not rest!
It is Thought at work amidst buried hours--
It is Love keeping vigil o’er perish’d flowers.
--Oh, we bear within us mysterious things!
Of Memory and Anguish, unfathom’d springs;
And Passion--those gulfs of the heart to fill
With bitter waves, which it ne’er may still.
Well might we pause ere we gave them sway,
Flinging the peace of our couch away!
Well might we look on our souls in fear--
They find no fount of oblivion here!
They forget not, the mantle of sleep beneath--
How know we if under the wings of death?
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE.
“Oh, that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at
rest.”--Psalm lv.
Oh, for thy wings, thou dove!
Now sailing by with sunshine on thy breast;
That, borne like thee above,
I too might flee away, and be at rest!
Where wilt thou fold those plumes,
Bird of the forest-shadows, holiest bird?
In what rich leafy glooms,
By the sweet voice of hidden waters stirr’d?
Over what blessed home,
What roof with dark, deep summer foliage crown’d,
O fair as ocean’s foam!
Shall thy bright bosom shed a gleam around?
Or seek’st thou some old shrine
Of nymph or saint, no more by votary woo’d,
Though still, as if divine,
Breathing a spirit o’er the solitude?
Yet wherefore ask thy way?
Blest, ever blest, whate’er its aim, thou art!
Unto the greenwood spray,
Bearing no dark remembrance at thy heart!
No echoes that will blend
A sadness with the whispers of the grove;
No memory of a friend
Far off, or dead, or changed to thee, thou dove!
Oh! to some cool recess
Take, take me with thee on the summer wind,
Leaving the weariness
And all the fever of this life behind:
The aching and the void
Within the heart, whereunto none reply,
The young bright hopes destroy’d--
Bird! bear me with thee through the sunny sky!
Wild wish, and longing vain,
And brief upspringing to be glad and free!
Go to thy woodland reign:
My soul is bound and held--I may not flee.
For even by all the fears
And thoughts that haunt my dreams--untold, unknown,
And burning woman’s tears,
Pour’d from mine eyes in silence and alone;
_Had_ I thy wings, thou dove!
High midst the gorgeous isles of cloud to soar,
Soon the strong cords of love
Would draw me earthwards--homewards--yet once more.
PSYCHE BORNE BY ZEPHYRS TO THE ISLAND OF PLEASURE.[336]
“Souvent l’ame, fortifiée par la contemplation des choses divines,
voudroit déployer ses ailes vers le ciel. Elle croit qu’au terme de
sa carrière un rideau va se lever pour lui découvrir des scènes de
lumière: mais quand la mort touche son corps périssable, elle jette un
regard en arrière vers les plaisirs terrestres et vers ses compagnes
mortelles.”
Schlegel, translated by Madame de Stael.
Fearfully and mournfully
Thou bidd’st the earth farewell;
And yet thou’rt passing, loveliest one!
In a brighter land to dwell.
Ascend, ascend rejoicing!
The sunshine of that shore
Around thee, as a glorious robe,
Shall stream for evermore.
The breezy music wandering
There through th’ Elysian sky,
Hath no deep tone that seems to float
From a happier time gone by.
And there the day’s last crimson
Gives no sad memories birth,
No thought of dead or distant friends,
Or partings--as on earth.
Yet fearfully and mournfully
Thou bidd’st that earth farewell,
Although thou’rt passing, loveliest one!
In a brighter land to dwell.
A land where all is deathless--
The sunny wave’s repose,
The wood with its rich melodies,
The summer and its rose:
A land that sees no parting,
That hears no sound of sighs,
That waits thee with immortal air--
Lift, lift those anxious eyes!
Oh! how like _thee_, thou trembler!
Man’s spirit fondly clings
With timid love, to this, its world
Of old familiar things!
We pant, we thirst for fountains
That gush not here below!
On, on we toil, allured by dreams
Of the living water’s flow:
We pine for kindred natures
To mingle with our own;
For communings more full and high
Than aught by mortal known:
We strive with brief aspirings
Against our bonds in vain;
Yet summon’d to be free at last,
We shrink--and clasp our chain;
And fearfully and mournfully
We bid the earth farewell,
Though passing from its mists, like thee,
In a brighter world to dwell.
[336] Written for a picture in which Psyche, on her flight upwards, is
represented looking back sadly and anxiously to the earth.
THE BOON OF MEMORY.
“Many things answered me.”--Manfred.
I go, I go!--and must mine image fade
From the green spots wherein my childhood play’d,
By my own streams?
Must my life part from each familiar place,
As a bird’s song, that leaves the woods no trace
Of its lone themes?
Will the friend pass my dwelling, and forget
The welcomes there, the hours when we have met
In grief or glee?
All the sweet counsel, the communion high,
The kindly words of trust, in days gone by,
Pour’d full and free?
A boon, a talisman, O Memory! give,
To shrine my name in hearts where I would live
For evermore!
Bid the wind speak of me where I have dwelt,
Bid the stream’s voice, of all my soul hath felt,
A thought restore!
In the rich rose, whose bloom I loved so well,
In the dim brooding violet of the dell,
Set deep that thought;
And let the sunset’s melancholy glow,
And let the spring’s first whisper, faint and low,
With me be fraught!
And Memory answer’d me:--“Wild wish, and vain!
I have no hues the loveliest to detain
In the heart’s core.
The place they held in bosoms all their own,
Soon with new shadows fill’d, new flowers o’ergrown,
Is theirs no more.”
Hast _thou_ such power, O Love? And Love replied:
--“It is not mine! Pour out thy soul’s full tide
Of hope and trust,
Prayer, tear, devotedness, that boon to gain--
’Tis but to write, with the heart’s fiery rain,
Wild words on dust!”
Song, is the gift with thee? I ask a lay,
Soft, fervent, deep, that will not pass away
From the still breast;
Fill’d with a tone--oh! not for deathless fame,
But a sweet haunting murmur of my name,
Where it would rest.
And Song made answer--“It is not in me,
Though call’d immortal; though my gifts may be
All but divine.
A place of lonely brightness I can give:
A changeless one, where thou with Love wouldst live--
This is not mine!”
Death, Death! wilt _thou_ the restless wish fulfil?
And Death, the Strong One, spoke:--“I can but still
Each vain regret.
What if forgotten?--All thy soul would crave,
Thou, too, within the mantle of the grave,
Wilt soon forget.”
Then did my heart in lone faint sadness die,
As from all nature’s voices one reply,
But one--was given.
“Earth has _no_ heart, fond dreamer! with a tone
To send thee back the spirit of thine own--
Seek it in heaven.”
DRAMATIC SCENE BETWEEN BRONWYLFA AND RHYLLON.
[In the spring of 1825, Mrs Hemans removed from Bronwylfa to Rhyllon,
another house belonging to her brother, not more than a quarter of a
mile from the former place, and in full view from its windows. The
distance being so inconsiderable, this could, in fact, scarcely be
considered as a removal. The two houses, each situated on an eminence
on opposite sides of the river Clwyd, confronted each other so
conveniently, that a telegraphic communication was established between
them, (by means of a regular set of signals and vocabulary, similar
to those made use of in the navy,) and was carried on for a season
with no little spirit, greatly to the amusement of their respective
inhabitants.
Nothing could be less romantic than the outward appearance of Mrs
Hemans’s new residence--a tall, staring brick house, almost destitute
of trees, and unadorned (far, indeed, from being thus “adorned the
most”) by the covering mantle of honeysuckle, jessamine, or any such
charitable drapery.[337] Bronwylfa, on the contrary, was a perfect
bower of roses, and peeped out like a bird’s nest from amidst the
foliage in which it was embosomed. The contrast between the two
dwellings was thus playfully descanted upon by Mrs Hemans, in her
contribution to a set of _jeux d’esprit_ called the Bronwylfa Budget
for 1825.--_Memoir_, p. 87-88.]
Bronwylfa,[338] _after standing for some time in silent contemplation
of_ Rhyllon, _breaks out into the following vehement strain of
vituperation_.
You ugliest of fabrics! you horrible eyesore!
I wish you would vanish, or put on a visor!
In the face of the sun, without covering or rag on,
You stand and outstare me, like any red dragon.
With your great green-eyed windows, in boldness a host,
(The only green things which, indeed, you can boast,)
With your forehead as high, and as bare as the pate
Which an eagle once took for a stone or a slate,[339]
You lift yourself up, o’er the country afar,
As who would say, “Look at me!--here stands great R!”
I plant--I rear forest trees--shrubs great and small,
To wrap myself up in--_you_ peer through them all!
With your lean scraggy neck o’er my poplars you rise;
You watch all my guests with your wide saucer eyes.
(_In a paroxysm of rage._)
You monster! I would I could waken some morning,
And find you had taken French leave without warning;
You should never be sought like Aladdin’s famed palace.
You spoil my sweet temper--you make me bear malice:
For it is a hard fate, I _will_ say it and sing,
Which has fix’d me to gaze on so frightful a thing.
Rhyllon--(_with dignified equanimity_.)
Content thee, Bronwylfa, what means all this rage?
This sudden attack on my quiet old age?
I am no _parvenu_: you and I, my good brother,
Have stood here this century facing each other;
And _I_ can remember the days that are gone,
When _your_ sides were no better array’d than my own.
Nay, the truth shall be told--since you flout me, restore
The tall scarlet woodbine you took from my door!
Since my baldness is mocked, and I’m _forced_ to explain,
Pray give me my large laurustinus again.
(_With a tone of prophetic solemnity._)
Bronwylfa! Bronwylfa! thus insolent grown,
Your pride and your poplars alike must come down!
I look through the future (and far I can see,
As St Asaph and Denbigh will answer for me,)
And in spite of thy scorn, and of all thou hast done,
From my kind heart’s brick bottom, I pity thee, Bron!
The end of thy toiling and planting will be,
That thou wilt want sunshine, and ask it of me.
Thou wilt say, when thou wakest, looking out for the light,
“I suppose it is morning, for Rhyllon looks bright;”
While I--my green eyes with their tears overflow.
(_Tenderly._)
Come!--let us be friends, as we were long ago.”
[337] Its conspicuousness has since been a good deal modified by
the lowering of one storey, and by the growth of the surrounding
plantations.
[338] Bronwylfa is pronounced as written _Bronwylva_; and perhaps the
nearest English approach to the pronunciation of Rhyllon, would be by
supposing it to be spelt _Ruthln_, the _u_ sounded as in but.
[339] Bronwylfa is here supposed to allude to the pate of Æschylus,
upon which an eagle dropped a tortoise to crack the shell.
[In spite, however, of the unromantic exterior of her new abode,
the earlier part of Mrs Hemans’s residence at Rhyllon may, perhaps,
be considered as the happiest of her life; as far, at least, as the
term happiness could ever be fitly applied to any period of it later
than childhood. The house, with all its ugliness, was large and
convenient, the view from its windows beautiful and extensive, and its
situation, on a fine green slope, terminating in a pretty woodland
dingle, peculiarly healthy and cheerful. Never, perhaps, had she more
thorough enjoyment of her boys than in witnessing, and often joining
in, their sports in those pleasant breezy fields, where the kites
soared so triumphantly, and the hoops trundled so merrily, and where
the cowslips grew as cowslips had never grown before. An atmosphere
of home soon gathered round the dwelling; roses were planted and
honeysuckles trained, and the rustling of the solitary poplar near her
window was taken to her heart like the voice of a friend. The dingle
became a favourite haunt, where she would pass many dreamlike hours of
enjoyment with her books, and her own sweet fancies, and her children
playing around her. Every tree and flower, and tuft of moss that
sprang amidst its green recesses, was invested with some individual
charm by that rich imagination, so skilled in
“Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.”
Here, on what the boys would call ‘mamma’s sofa’--a little grassy
mound under her favourite beech-tree--she first read _The Talisman_,
and has described the scene with a loving minuteness in her _Hour of
Romance_:--
“There were thick leaves above me and around,
And low sweet sighs, like those of childhood’s sleep,
Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound
As of soft showers on water. Dark and deep
Lay the oak shadows o’er the turf--so still
They seem’d but pictured glooms; a hidden rill
Made music--such as haunts us in a dream--
Under the fern-tufts; and a tender gleam
Of soft green light, as by the glow-worm shed,
Came pouring through the woven beech-boughs down.”
Many years after, in the sonnet “To a Distant Scene,” she addresses,
with a fond yearning, this well-remembered haunt:--
“Still are the cowslips from thy bosom springing,
O far-off grassy dell!”
How many precious memories has she hung round the thought of the
cowslip--that flower, with its “gold coat” and “fairy favours,” which
is, of all others, so associated with the “voice of happy childhood,”
and was to her ever redolent of the hours when her
“Heart so leapt to that sweet laughter’s tone!”
Another favourite resort was the picturesque old bridge over the
Clwyd, and when her health (which was subject to continual variation,
but was at this time more robust than usual) admitted of more
aspiring achievements, she delighted in roaming to the hills; and the
announcement of a walk to Cwm,[340] a remote little hamlet, nestled
in a mountain hollow, amidst very lovely sylvan scenery, about two
miles from Rhyllon, would be joyously echoed by her elated companions,
to whom the recollection of these happy rambles must always be
unspeakably dear. Very often, at the outset of these expeditions, the
party would be reinforced by the addition of a certain little Kitty
Jones, a child from a neighbouring cottage, who had taken an especial
fancy to Mrs Hemans, and was continually watching her movements. This
little creature never saw her without at once attaching herself to
her side, and confidingly placing its tiny hand in hers. So great
was her love for children, and her repugnance to hurt the feelings
of any living creature, that she never would shake off this singular
appendage, but let little Kitty rejoice in her “pride of place,” till
the walk became too long for her capacity, and she would quietly fall
behind of her own accord.--_Memoir_, p. 87-93.]
[340] Pronounced “Coom.”
RECORDS OF WOMAN.
TO
MRS JOANNA BAILLIE,
THIS VOLUME, AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATEFUL RESPECT AND ADMIRATION, IS
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR.[341]
“Mightier far
Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway
Of magic, potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favourite seat be feeble woman’s breast.” Wordsworth.
“Das ist sas Loos des Schonen auf der erde.” Schiller.
[341] [“The little volume, ‘Records of Woman,’ which you kindly gave
me permission to inscribe to you,” wrote Mrs H. to Mrs Joanna Baillie,
“is now in the press, and I hope I shall soon be able to send you a
copy; and that the dedication, which is in the simplest form, will be
honoured by your approval. Mr Blackwood is its publisher.”
Mrs Hemans always spoke with pleasure of her literary intercourse with
Mr Blackwood, in whose dealings she recognised all that uprightness
and liberality which belonged to the sterling worth of his character.
The “Records of Woman,” the first of her works published by him, was
brought out in May 1828. This volume was, to use the words of its
author the one in which “she had put her heart and individual feelings
more than in any thing else she had written;” and it is also, and
perhaps consequently, the one which has held its ground the most
steadily in public favour.--_Memoir_, p. 136.]
ARABELLA STUART.
[“The Lady Arabella,” as she has been frequently entitled, was
descended from Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII., and
consequently allied by birth to Elizabeth as well as James I. This
affinity to the throne proved the misfortune of her life, as the
jealousies which it constantly excited in her royal relatives,
who were anxious to prevent her marrying, shut her out from the
enjoyment of that domestic happiness which her heart appears to have
so fervently desired. By a secret but early discovered union with
William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, she alarmed the cabinet of
James, and the wedded lovers were immediately placed in separate
confinement. From this they found means to concert a romantic plan of
escape; and having won over a female attendant, by whose assistance
she was disguised in male attire, Arabella, though faint from recent
sickness and suffering, stole out in the night, and at last reached
an appointed spot, where a boat and servants were in waiting. She
embarked; and at break of day a French vessel engaged to receive
her was discovered and gained. As Seymour, however, had not yet
arrived, she was desirous that the vessel should lie at anchor for
him; but this wish was overruled by her companions, who, contrary to
her entreaties, hoisted sail, “which,” says D’Israeli, “occasioned
so fatal a termination to this romantic adventure. Seymour, indeed,
had escaped from the Tower; he reached the wharf, and found his
confidential man waiting with a boat, and arrived at Lee. The time
passed; the waves were rising; Arabella was not there; but in the
distance he descried a vessel. Hiring a fisherman to take him on
board, he discovered, to his grief, on hailing it, that it was not
the French ship charged with his Arabella; in despair and confusion
he found another ship from Newcastle, which for a large sum altered
its course, and landed him in Flanders.” Arabella, meantime, whilst
imploring her attendants to linger, and earnestly looking out for
the expected boat of her husband, was overtaken in Calais Roads by a
vessel in the king’s service, and brought back to a captivity, under
the suffering of which her mind and constitution gradually sank. “What
passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be recovered for
authentic history, but enough is known--that her mind grew impaired,
that she finally lost her reason, and, if the duration of her
imprisonment was short, that it was only terminated by her death. Some
effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent
and rational, yet remain among her papers.”--D’Israeli’s _Curiosities
of Literature_.
The following poem, meant as some record of her fate, and the imagined
fluctuations of her thoughts and feelings, is supposed to commence
during the time of her first imprisonment, whilst her mind was yet
buoyed up by the consciousness of Seymour’s affection, and the
cherished hope of eventual deliverance.]
“And is not love in vain
Torture enough without a living tomb?” Byron.
“Fermossi al fin il cor che balzo tanto.” Pindemonte.
I.
Twas but a dream! I saw the stag leap free,
Under the boughs where early birds were singing;
I stood o’ershadow’d by the greenwood tree,
And heard, it seem’d, a sudden bugle ringing
Far through a royal forest. Then the fawn
Shot, like a gleam of light, from grassy lawn
To secret covert; and the smooth turf shook,
And lilies quiver’d by the glade’s lone brook,
And young leaves trembled, as, in fleet career,
A princely band, with horn, and hound, and spear,
Like a rich masque swept forth. I saw the dance
Of their white plumes, that bore a silvery glance
Into the deep wood’s heart; and all pass’d by
Save one--I met the smile of _one_ clear eye,
Flashing out joy to mine. Yes, _thou_ wert there,
Seymour! A soft wind blew the clustering hair
Back from thy gallant brow, as thou didst rein
Thy courser, turning from that gorgeous train,
And fling, methought, thy hunting spear away,
And, lightly graceful in thy green array,
Bound to my side. And we, that met and parted
Ever in dread of some dark watchful power,
Won back to childhood’s trust, and fearless-hearted,
Blent the glad fulness of our thoughts that hour
Even like the mingling of sweet streams, beneath
Dim woven leaves, and midst the floating breath
Of hidden forest-flowers.
II.