Awoke my childhood’s glee;
The measured chime--the thundering burst--
Where is my own blue sea?
Oh! rich your myrtle’s breath may rise,
Soft, soft your winds may be;
Yet my sick heart within me dies--
Where is my own blue sea?
I hear the shepherd’s mountain flute,
I hear the whispering tree;
The echoes of my soul are mute,
--Where is my own blue sea?
[All this time, her imagination was at work more busily than ever;
new thoughts and fresh fancies seemed to spring up “as willows by the
water-courses:” and the facility with which her lyrics were poured
forth, approached, in many instances, to actual improvisation. When
confined to her bed, and unable to use a pen, she would often employ
the services of those about her, to write down what she had composed.
“Felicia has just sent for me,” wrote her amanuensis on one of these
occasions, “with pencil and paper, to put down a little song, (‘Where
is the Sea?’) which, she said, had come to her like a strain of music,
whilst lying in the twilight under the infliction of a blister; and
as I really think ‘a scrap’ (as our late eccentric visitor would
call it) composed under such circumstances, is, to use the words of
Coleridge, a ‘psychological curiosity,’ I cannot resist copying it for
you. It was suggested by a story she somewhere read lately, of a Greek
islander, carried off to the Vale of Tempe, and pining amidst all its
beauties for the sight and sound of his native sea.”--_Memoir_, p.
134.]
TO MY OWN PORTRAIT.
How is it that before mine eyes,
While gazing on thy mien,
All my past years of life arise,
As in a mirror seen?
What spell within thee hath been shrined
To image back my own deep mind?
Even as a song of other times
Can trouble memory’s springs;
Even as a sound of vesper-chimes
Can wake departed things;
Even as a scent of vernal flowers
Hath records fraught with vanish’d hours,--
Such power is thine! They come, the dead,
From the grave’s bondage free,
And smiling back the changed are led
To look in love on thee;
And voices that are music flown
Speak to me in the heart’s full tone:
Till crowding thoughts my soul oppress--
The thoughts of happier years--
And a vain gush of tenderness
O’erflows in child-like tears;
A passion which I may not stay,
A sudden fount that must have way.
But thou, the while--oh! almost strange,
Mine imaged self! it seems
That on _thy_ brow of peace no change
Reflects my own swift dreams;
Almost I marvel not to trace
Those lights and shadows in _thy_ face.
To see _thee_ calm, while powers thus deep--
Affection, Memory, Grief--
Pass o’er my soul as winds that sweep
O’er a frail aspen leaf!
Oh, that the quiet of thine eye
Might sink there when the storm goes by!
Yet look thou still serenely on,
And if sweet friends there be
That when my song and soul are gone
Shall seek my form in thee,--
Tell them of one for whom ’twas best
To flee away and be at rest!
[In the autumn of 1827, at the urgent request of Mr Alaric Watts,
who was then forming a gallery of portraits of the living authors of
Great Britain, Mrs Hemans was prevailed upon to sit for her picture.
The artist selected on this occasion was Mr W. E. West, an American
by birth, who had passed some time in Italy, and painted the last
likeness ever taken of Lord Byron, and also one of Madame Guiccioli,
which was engraved in one of the annuals. During his stay at Rhyllon,
where he remained for some weeks, he finished three several portraits
of Mrs Hemans--one for Mr Alaric Watts, one which is now in the
possession of Professor Norton, and a third, which he most courteously
presented to Mrs Hemans’ sister, to whom it was even then a treasure,
and is now become one of inestimable value. This likeness, considered
by her family as the best ever taken of her, is the one which
suggested Mrs Hemans’s affecting lines, “To my own Portrait.” ... It
is, however, only fair to repeat the remark already made, and in which
all those who were accustomed to study the play of her features must
concur--that there never was a countenance more difficult to transfer
to canvass; so varying were its expressions, and so impossible is it
to be satisfied with the _one_ which can alone be perpetuated by the
artist. The great charm of Mr West’s picture is its perfect freedom
from any thing set or constrained in the air; and the sweet, serious
expression, so accordant with her maternal character, which recalls
her own lines--
“Mother! with thine earnest eye
Ever following silently;”
and which made one of her children remark, in glancing from it to
the bust, executed some years after by Mr Angus Fletcher[386]--“The
bust is the poetess, but the picture is _all mother_.”--_Memoir_, p.
129-130.]
[386] An engraving from Mr Fletcher’s admirable bust forms the
frontispiece to the present volume.
NO MORE.
_No more!_ A harp-string’s deep and breaking tone,
A last, low, summer breeze, a far-off swell,
A dying echo of rich music gone,
Breathe through those words--those murmurs of farewell--
No more!
To dwell in peace, with home-affections bound,
To know the sweetness of a mother’s voice,
To feel the spirit of her love around,
And in the blessing of her eye rejoice--
No more!
A dirge-like sound! To greet the early friend
Unto the hearth, his place of many days;
In the glad song with kindred lips to blend,
Or join the household laughter by the blaze--
No more!
Through woods that shadow’d our first years to rove
With all our native music in the air;
To watch the sunset with the eyes we love,
And turn, and read our own heart’s answer _there_--
No more!
Words of despair!--yet earth’s, all earth’s the woe
Their passion breathes--the desolately deep!
That sound in heaven--oh! image then the flow
Of gladness in its tones--to part, to weep--
No more!
To watch, in dying hope, affection’s wane,
To see the beautiful from life depart,
To wear impatiently a secret chain,
To waste the untold riches of the heart--
No more!
Through long, long years to seek, to strive, to yearn
For human love[387]--and never quench that thirst;
To pour the soul out, winning no return,
O’er fragile idols, by delusion nursed--
No more!
On things that fail us, reed by reed, to lean,
To mourn the changed, the far away, the dead;
To send our troubled spirits through the unseen,
Intensely questioning for treasures fled--
No more!
Words of triumphant music! Bear we on
The weight of life, the chain, the ungenial air;
Their deathless meaning, when our tasks are done,
To learn in joy,--to struggle, to despair--
No more!
[387] “_Jamais, jamais, je ne serai aimé comme j’aime_!” was a mournful
expression of Madame de Staël’s.
THOUGHT FROM AN ITALIAN POET.
Where shall I find, in all this fleeting earth,
This world of changes and farewells, a friend
That will not fail me in his love and worth,
Tender and firm, and faithful to the end?
Far hath my spirit sought a place of rest--
Long on vain idols its devotion shed;
Some have forsaken, whom I loved the best,
And some deceived, and some are with the dead.
But _thou_, my Saviour! thou, my hope and trust,
Faithful art thou when friends and joys depart;
Teach me to lift these yearnings from the dust,
And fix on thee, th’ Unchanging One, my heart!
PASSING AWAY.
“‘Passing away’ is written on the world, and all the world contains.”
It is written on the rose,
In its glory’s full array;
Read what those buds disclose--
“Passing away.”
It is written on the skies
Of the soft blue summer day;
It is traced in sunset’s dyes--
“Passing away.”
It is written on the trees,
As their young leaves glistening play,
And on brighter things than these--
“Passing away.”
It is written on the brow
Where the spirit’s ardent ray
Lives, burns, and triumphs now--
“Passing away.”
It is written on the _heart_;
Alas! that _there_ Decay
Should claim from Love a part--
“Passing away.”
Friends, friends!--oh! shall we meet
In a land of purer day,
Where lovely things and sweet
Pass not away?
Shall we know each other’s eyes,
And the thoughts that in them lay
When we mingled sympathies
“Passing away?”
Oh! if this may be so,
Speed, speed, thou closing day!
How blest from earth’s vain show
To pass away!
THE ANGLER.[388]
“I in these flowery meads would be;
These crystal streams should solace me;
To whose harmonious bubbling noise
I with my angle would rejoice;
...
And angle on, and beg to have
A quiet passage to a welcome grave.”
Isaac Walton.
Thou that hast loved so long and well
The vale’s deep, quiet streams,
Where the pure water-lilies dwell,
Shedding forth tender gleams;
And o’er the pool the May-fly’s wing
Glances in golden eves of spring!
Oh, lone and lovely haunts are thine!
Soft, soft the river flows,
Wearing the shadow of thy line,
The gloom of alder-boughs;
And in the midst a richer hue,
One gliding vein of heaven’s own blue.
And there but low sweet sounds are heard--
The whisper of the reed,
The plashing trout, the rustling bird,
The scythe upon the mead;
Yet, through the murmuring osiers near,
There steals a step which mortals fear.
’Tis not the stag, that comes to lave
At noon his panting breast;
’Tis not the bittern, by the wave
Seeking her sedgy nest;
The air is fill’d with summer’s breath,
The young flowers laugh--yet look! ’tis Death!
But if, where silvery currents rove,
Thy heart, grown still and sage,
Hath learn’d to read the words of love
That shine o’er nature’s page;
If holy thoughts thy guests have been
Under the shade of willows green;
Then, lover of the silent hour
By deep lone waters pass’d!
Thence hast thou drawn a faith, a power,
To cheer thee through the last;
And, wont on brighter worlds to dwell,
May’st calmly bid thy streams farewell.
[388] This, and the following poem, were originally written for a work
entitled _Death’s Doings_, edited by Mr Alaric Watts.
DEATH AND THE WARRIOR.
“Ay, warrior, arm! and wear thy plume
On a proud and fearless brow!
I am the lord of the lonely tomb,
And a mightier one than thou!
“Bid thy soul’s love farewell, young chief--
Bid her a long farewell!
Like the morning’s dew shall pass that grief:
Thou comest with me to dwell!
“Thy bark may rush through the foaming deep,
Thy steed o’er the breezy hill;
But they bear thee on to a place of sleep,
Narrow, and cold, and chill!”
“Was the voice I heard _thy_ voice, O Death!
And is thy day so near?
Then on the field shall my life’s last breath
Mingle with victory’s cheer!
“Banners shall float, with the trumpet’s note,
Above me as I die!
And the palm-tree wave o’er my noble grave,
Under the Syrian sky.
“High hearts shall burn in the royal hall,
When the minstrel names that spot;
And the eyes I love shall weep my fall.--
Death, Death, I fear thee not!”
“Warrior! thou bear’st a haughty heart,
But I can bend its pride!
How shouldst thou know that thy soul will part
In the hour of victory’s tide?
“It may be far from thy steel-clad bands
That I shall make thee mine;
It may be lone on the desert sands,
Where men for fountains pine!
“It may be deep amidst heavy chains,
In some deep Paynim hold;
I have slow, dull steps and lingering pains
Wherewith to tame the bold!”
“Death, Death! I go to a doom unblest,
If this indeed must be;
But the Cross is bound upon my breast,
And I may not shrink for thee!
“Sound, clarion! sound!--for my vows are given
To the cause of the holy shrine;
I bow my soul to the will of heaven,
O Death!--and not to thine!”
SONG FOR AN AIR BY HUMMEL.
Oh! if thou wilt not give thine heart,
Give back my own to me;
For if in thine I have no part,
Why should mine dwell with thee?[389]
Yet no! this mournful love of mine
I will not from me cast;
Let me but dream ’twill win me thine
By its deep truth at last!
Can aught so fond, so faithful, live
Through years without reply?
--Oh! if thy heart thou wilt not give,
Give me a thought, a sigh!
[389] The first verse of this song is a literal translation from the
German.
TO THE
MEMORY OF LORD CHARLES MURRAY,
SON OF THE DUKE OF ATHOLL, WHO DIED IN THE CAUSE AND LAMENTED BY THE
PEOPLE OF GREECE.
“Time cannot teach forgetfulness,
When grief’s full heart is fed by fame.”--Byron.
Thou shouldst have slept beneath the stately pines,
And with th’ ancestral trophies of thy race;
Thou that hast found, where alien tombs and shrines
Speak of the past, a lonely dwelling-place!
Far from thy brethren hath thy couch been spread,
Thou bright young stranger midst the mighty dead!
Yet to thy name a noble rite was given,
Banner and dirge met proudly o’er thy grave,
Under that old and glorious Grecian heaven,
Which unto death so oft hath lit the brave:
And thy dust blends with mould heroic there,
With all that sanctifies the inspiring air.
Vain voice of fame! sad sound for those that weep!
For her, the mother, in whose bosom lone
Thy childhood dwells--whose thoughts a record keep
Of smiles departed and sweet accents gone;
Of all thine early grace and gentle worth--
A vernal promise, faded now from earth!
But a bright memory claims a proud regret--
A lofty sorrow finds its own deep springs
Of healing balm; and she hath treasures yet
Whose soul can number with love’s holy things,
A name like thine! Now, past all cloud or spot,
A gem is hers, laid up where change is not.
THE BROKEN CHAIN.
I am free!--I have burst through my galling chain,
The life of young eagles is mine again;
I may cleave with my bark the glad sounding sea,
I may rove where the wind roves--my path is free!
The streams dash in joy down the summer hill,
The birds pierce the depths of the sky at will,
The arrow goes forth with the singing breeze,--
And is not my spirit as one of these?
Oh! the green earth with its wealth of flowers,
And the voices that ring through its forest bowers,
And the laughing glance of the founts that shine,
Lighting the valleys--all, all are mine!
I may urge through the desert my foaming steed,
The wings of the morning shall lend him speed;
I may meet the storm in its rushing glee--
Its blasts and its lightnings are not more free!
Captive! and hast thou then rent thy chain?
Art thou free in the wilderness, free on the main?
Yes! there thy spirit may proudly soar,
But must thou not mingle with throngs the more?
The bird when he pineth, may hush his song,
Till the hour when his heart shall again be strong;
But thou--canst thou turn in thy woe aside,
And weep, midst thy brethren? No, not for pride.
May the fiery word from thy lip find way,
When the thoughts burning in thee shall spring to day?
May the care that sits in thy weary breast
Look forth from thine aspect, the revel’s guest?
No! with the shaft in thy bosom borne,
Thou must hide the wound in thy fear of scorn;
Thou must fold thy mantle that none may see,
And mask thee with laughter, and say thou art free.
No! thou art chain’d till thy race is run,
By the power of all in the soul of one;
On thy heart, on thy lip, must the fetter be--
Dreamer! fond dreamer! oh, who is free?
THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER.
“La voila telle que la mort nous l’a faite.”--Bossuet.
[“Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that
exquisite one of Kircher, Digby, and others, who discovered in the
ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by
the power of heat. The ashes of roses, say they, will again revive in
roses, unsubstantial and unodoriferous; they are not roses which grow
on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions, and, like apparitions,
they are seen but for a moment.”--_Curiosities of Literature._]
’Twas a dream of olden days
That Art, by some strange power,
The visionary form could raise
From the ashes of a flower.
That a shadow of the rose,
By its own meek beauty bow’d,
Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose,
Like pictures in a cloud.
Or the hyacinth, to grace,
As a second rainbow, spring;
Of summer’s path a dreary trace,
A fair, yet mournful thing!
For the glory of the bloom
That a flush around it shed,
And the soul within, the rich perfume,
Where were they? Fled, all fled!
Naught but the dim, faint line
To speak of vanish’d hours.--
Memory! what are joys of thine?
--Shadows of buried flowers!
LINES TO A BUTTERFLY RESTING ON A SKULL.
Creature of air and light!
Emblem of that which will not fade or die!
Wilt thou not speed thy flight,
To chase the south wind through the glowing sky?
What lures thee thus to stay
With silence and decay,
Fix’d on the wreck of cold mortality?
The thoughts once chamber’d there,
Have gather’d up their treasures and are gone;--
Will the dust tell thee where
That which hath burst the prison-house is flown?
Rise, nursling of the day!
If thou wouldst trace its way--
Earth has no voice to make the secret known.
Who seeks the vanish’d bird
Near the deserted nest and broken shell?
Far thence, by us unheard,
He sings, rejoicing in the woods to dwell:
Thou of the sunshine born,
Take the bright wings of morn!
_Thy_ hope springs heavenward from yon ruin’d cell.
THE BELL AT SEA.
[The dangerous islet called the Bell Rock, on the coast of
Forfarshire, used formerly to be marked only by a bell, which was so
placed as to be swung by the motion of the waves, when the tide rose
above the rock. A lighthouse has since been erected there.]
When the tide’s billowy swell
Had reach’d its height,
Then toll’d the rock’s lone bell
Sternly by night.
Far over cliff and surge
Swept the deep sound,
Making each wild wind’s dirge
Still more profound.
Yet that funereal tone
The sailor bless’d,
Steering through darkness on
With fearless breast.
E’en so may we, that float
On life’s wide sea,
Welcome each warning note,
Stern though it be![390]
[390] It may be scarcely necessary to remind the reader, that the
stealing of this bell by a Pirate forms the subject of Southey’s
spirited ballad, “The Inchcape Rock.”
THE SUBTERRANEAN STREAM.
“Thou stream,
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
--Thou imagest my life.”
Darkly thou glidest onward,
Thou deep and hidden wave!
The laughing sunshine hath not look’d
Into thy secret cave.
Thy current makes no music--
A hollow sound we hear,
A muffled voice of mystery,
And know that thou art near.
No brighter line of verdure
Follows thy lonely way;
No fairy moss, or lily’s cup
Is freshen’d by thy play.
The halcyon doth not seek thee,
Her glorious wings to lave;
Thou know’st no tint of the summer sky,
Thou dark and hidden wave!
Yet once will day behold thee,
When to the mighty sea,
Fresh bursting from their cavern’d veins,
Leap thy lone waters free.
There wilt thou greet the sunshine
For a moment, and be lost,
With all thy melancholy sounds,
In the ocean’s billowy host.
Oh! art thou not, dark river!
Like the fearful thoughts untold
Which haply, in the hush of night,
O’er many a soul have roll’d?
Those earth-born strange misgivings--
Who hath not felt their power?
Yet who hath breathed them to his friend,
E’en in his fondest hour?
They hold no heart-communion,
They find no voice in song,
They dimly follow far from earth
The grave’s departed throng.
Wild is their course and lonely,
And fruitless in man’s breast;
They come and go, and leave no trace
Of their mysterious guest.
Yet surely must their wanderings
At length be like thy way;
Their shadows, as thy waters, lost
In one bright flood of day!
THE SILENT MULTITUDE.
“For we are many in our solitudes.”--Lament of Tasso.
A mighty and a mingled throng
Were gather’d in one spot;
The dwellers of a thousand homes--
Yet midst them voice was not.
The soldier and his chief were there--
The mother and her child:
The friends, the sisters of one hearth--
None spoke--none moved--none smiled.
There lovers met, between whose lives
Years had swept darkly by;
After that heart-sick hope deferr’d,
They met--but silently.
You might have heard the rustling leaf,
The breeze’s faintest sound,
The shiver of an insect’s wing,
On that thick-peopled ground.
Your voice to whispers would have died
For the deep quiet’s sake;
Your tread the softest moss have sought,
Such stillness not to break.
What held the countless multitude
Bound in that spell of peace?
How could the ever-sounding life
Amid so many cease?
Was it some pageant of the air--
Some glory high above,
That link’d and hush’d those human souls
In reverential love?
Or did some burdening passion’s weight
Hang on their indrawn breath?
Awe--the pale awe that freezes words?
Fear--the strong fear of death?
A mightier thing--Death, Death himself
Lay on each lonely heart!
Kindred were there--yet hermits all,
Thousands--but each apart.
THE ANTIQUE SEPULCHRE.[391]
[“Les sarcophages même chez les anciens, ne rapellent que des idées
guerrières ou riantes: on voit des jeux, des danses, représentés en
bas-relief sur les tombeaux.”--_Corinne._
O ever-joyous band
Of revellers amidst the southern vines!
On the pale marble, by some gifted hand,
Fix’d in undying lines!
Thou, with the sculptured bowl,
And thou, that wearest the immortal wreath,
And thou, from whose young lip and flute the soul
Of music seems to breathe;
And ye, luxuriant flowers!
Linking the dancers with your graceful ties,
And cluster’d fruitage, born of sunny hours,
Under Italian skies:
Ye, that a thousand springs,
And leafy summers with their odorous breath,
May yet outlast,--what do ye there, bright things!
Mantling the place of death?
Of sunlight and soft air,
And Dorian reeds, and myrtles ever green,
Unto the heart a glowing thought ye bear;--
Why thus, where dust hath been?
Is it to show how slight
The bound that severs festivals and tombs,
Music and silence, roses and the blight,
Crowns and sepulchral glooms?
Or, when the father laid
Haply his child’s pale ashes here to sleep,
When the friend visited the cypress shade
Flowers o’er the dead to heap;
Say if the mourners sought,
In these rich images of summer mirth,
These wine-cups and gay wreaths, to lose the thought
Of our last hour on earth?
Ye have no voice, no sound,
Ye flutes and lyres! to tell me what I seek:
Silent ye are, light forms with vine-leaves crown’d,
Yet to my soul ye speak.
Alas! for those that lay
Down in the dust without their hope of old!
Backward they look’d on life’s rich banquet-day,
But all beyond was cold.
Every sweet wood-note then,
And through the plane-trees every sunbeam’s glow,
And each glad murmur from the homes of men,
Made it more hard to go.
But we, when life grows dim,
When its last melodies float o’er our way,
Its changeful hues before us faintly swim,
Its flitting lights decay;--
E’en though we bid farewell
Unto the spring’s blue skies and budding trees,
Yet may we lift our hearts in hope to dwell
Midst brighter things than these;
And think of deathless flowers,
And of bright streams to glorious valleys given,
And know the while, how little dream of ours
Can shadow forth of heaven.
[391] Transcriber’s Note: Footnote not found on original page 493
footnote 1.
EVENING SONG OF THE TYROLESE PEASANTS.[392]
Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman’s axe lies free,
And the reaper’s work is done.
The twilight star to heaven,
And the summer dew to flowers,
And rest to us, is given
By the cool, soft evening hours.
Sweet is the hour of rest!
Pleasant the wind’s low sigh,
And the gleaming of the west,
And the turf whereon we lie;
When the burden and the heat
Of labour’s task are o’er,
And kindly voices greet
The tired one at his door.
Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman’s axe lies free,
And the reaper’s work is done.
Yes! tuneful is the sound
That dwells in whispering boughs;
Welcome the freshness round,
And the gale that fans our brows!
But rest more sweet and still
Than ever nightfall gave,
Our yearning hearts shall fill
In the world beyond the grave.
There shall no tempest blow,
No scorching noontide heat;
There shall be no more snow,[393]
No weary, wandering feet.
So we lift our trusting eyes
From the hills our fathers trode,
To the quiet of the skies,
To the Sabbath of our God.
Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman’s axe lies free,
And the reaper’s work is done.
[392] “The loved hour of repose is striking. Let us come to the sunset
tree.”--See Captain Sherer’s interesting _Notes and Reflections during
a Ramble in Germany_.
[393]
“Wohl ihm, er ist hingegangen
Wo _kein Schnee_ mehr ist.”
Schiller’s _Nadowessiche Todtenklage_.
THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD.
Forget them not!--though now their name
Be but a mournful sound,
Though by the hearth its utterance claim
A stillness round.
Though for their sake this earth no more
As it hath been may be,
And shadows, never mark’d before,
Brood o’er each tree;
And though their image dim the sky,
Yet, yet forget them not!
Nor, where their love and life went by,
Forsake the spot!
They have a breathing influence there,
A charm, not elsewhere found;
Sad--yet it sanctifies the air,
The stream, the ground.
Then, though the wind an alter’d tone
Through the young foliage bear,
Though every flower, of something gone
A tinge may wear;
Oh! fly it not! No _fruitless_ grief,
Thus in their presence felt,
A record links to every leaf
There, where they dwelt.
Still trace the path which knew their tread,
Still tend their garden-bower,
Still commune with the holy dead
In each lone hour!
The _holy_ dead!--oh! bless’d we are,
That we may call them so,
And to their image look afar
Through all our woe!
Bless’d, that the things they loved on earth
As relics we may hold,
That wake sweet thoughts of parted worth
By springs untold!
Bless’d, that a deep and chastening power
Thus o’er our souls is given,
If but to bird, or song, or flower,
Yet all for heaven!
HE WALKED WITH GOD.
GENESIS, V. XXIV.
[“These two little pieces,” (“He walked with God,” and “The Rod
of Aaron,”) says the author in one of her letters, “are part of a
collection I think of forming, to be called Sacred Lyrics. They are
all to be on scriptural subjects, and to go through the most striking
events of the Old Testament, to those far more deeply affecting ones
of the New.” Two others (“The Voice of God” and “The Fountain of
Marah”) are subjoined, as having been probably intended to form a part
of the same series.]
He walk’d with God, in holy joy,
While yet his days were few;
The deep, glad spirit of the boy
To love and reverence grew.
Whether, each nightly star to count,
The ancient hills he trode,
Or sought the flowers by stream and fount--
Alike he walk’d with God.
The graver noon of manhood came,
The full of cares and fears;
One voice was in his heart--the same
It heard through childhood’s years.
Amidst fair tents, and flocks, and swains,
O’er his green pasture-sod,
A shepherd-king on Eastern plains--
The patriarch walk’d with God.
And calmly, brightly, that pure life
Melted from earth away;
No cloud it knew, no parting strife,
No sorrowful decay:
He bow’d him not, like all beside,
Unto the spoiler’s rod,
But join’d at once the glorified,
Where angels walk with God!
So let _us_ walk! The night must come
To us that comes to all;
We through the darkness must go home,
Hearing the trumpet’s call.
Closed is the path for ever more
Which without death he trode;
Not so that way, wherein of yore
His footsteps walk’d with God!
THE ROD OF AARON.
NUMBERS, XVII. VIII.
Was it the sigh of the southern gale
That flush’d the almond bough?
Brightest and first the young spring to hail,
Still its red blossoms glow.
Was it the sunshine that woke its flowers
With a kindling look of love?
Oh! far and deep, and through hidden bowers,
That smile of heaven can rove!
No! from the breeze and the living light
Shut was the sapless rod;
But it felt in the stillness a secret might,
And thrill’d to the breath of God.
E’en so may that breath, like the vernal air,
O’er our glad spirits move;
And all such things as are good and fair
Be the blossoms, its track that prove!
THE VOICE OF GOD.
“I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid.”--Gen. iii. 10.
Amidst the thrilling leaves, Thy voice
At evening’s fall drew near;
Father! and did not man rejoice
That blessed sound to hear?
Did not his heart within him burn,
Touch’d by the solemn tone?
Not so!--for, never to return,
Its purity was gone.
Therefore, midst holy stream and bower,
His spirit shook with dread,
And call’d the cedars, in that hour,
To veil his conscious head.
Oh! in each wind, each fountain-flow,
Each whisper of the shade,
Grant me, my God! thy voice to know,
And not to be afraid!
THE FOUNTAIN OF MARAH.
“And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of
Marah, for they were bitter.
“And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
“And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree,
which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made
sweet.”--Exodus, xv. 23-25.
Where is the tree the prophet threw
Into the bitter wave?
Left it no scion where it grew,
The thirsting soul to save?
Hath nature lost the hidden power
Its precious foliage shed?
Is there no distant Eastern bower
With such sweet leaves o’erspread?
Nay, wherefore ask?--since gifts are ours
Which yet may well imbue
Earth’s many troubled founts with showers
Of heaven’s own balmy dew.
Oh! mingled with the cup of grief
Let faith’s deep spirit be!
And every prayer shall win a leaf
From that bless’d healing tree!
THE PENITENT’S OFFERING.
ST LUKE, VII. XXXVII.-IX.
Thou that with pallid cheek,
And eyes in sadness meek,
And faded locks that humbly swept the ground,
From thy long wanderings won,
Before the all-healing Son,
Did’st bow thee to the earth--O lost and found!
When thou wouldst bathe his feet
With odours richly sweet,
And many a shower of woman’s burning tear,
And dry them with that hair,
Brought low the dust to wear,
From the crown’d beauty of its festal year.
Did He reject thee then,
While the sharp scorn of men
On thy once bright and stately head was cast?
No! from the Saviour’s mien,
A solemn light serene
Bore to thy soul the peace of God at last.
For thee, their smiles no more
Familiar faces wore;
Voices, once kind, had learn’d the stranger’s tone:
Who raised thee up, and bound
Thy silent spirit’s wound?--
He, from all guilt the stainless, He alone!
But which, O erring child,
From home so long beguiled!--
Which of thine offerings won those words of heaven,
That o’er the bruisèd reed,
Condemn’d of earth to bleed,
In music pass’d, “Thy sins are all forgiven?”
Was it that perfume, fraught
With balm and incense, brought
From the sweet woods of Araby the Blest?
Or that fast-flowing rain
Of tears, which not in vain,
To Him who scorn’d not tears, thy woes confess’d?
No! not by these restored
Unto thy Father’s board,
Thy peace, that kindled joy in heaven, was made;
But, costlier in his eyes,
By that bless’d sacrifice,
Thy heart, thy full deep heart, before Him laid.
THE SCULPTURED CHILDREN.
ON CHANTREY’S MONUMENT IN LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL.
[“The monument by Chantrey in Lichfield Cathedral, to the memory of
the two children of Mrs Robinson, is one of the most affecting works
of art ever executed. He has given a pathos to marble which one who
trusts to his natural feelings, and admires and is touched only at
their bidding, might have thought, from any previous experience,
that it was out of the power of statuary to attain. The monument
is executed with all his beautiful simplicity and truth. The two
children, two little girls, are represented as lying in each other’s
arms, and, at first glance, appear to be sleeping:--
‘But something lies
Too deep and still on those soft-sealed eyes.’
It is while lying in the helplessness of innocent sleep that infancy
and childhood are viewed with the most touching interest; and this,
and the loveliness of the children, the uncertainty of the expression
at first view, the dim shadowing forth of that sleep from which they
cannot be awakened--their hovering, as it were, upon the confines of
life, as if they might still be recalled--all conspire to render the
last feeling, that death is indeed before us, most deeply affecting.
They were the only children of their mother, and she was a widow. A
tablet commemorative of their father hangs over the monument. This
stands at the end of one of the side-aisles of the choir, where there
is nothing to distract the attention from it, or weaken its effect.
It may be contemplated in silence and alone. The inscription, in
that subdued tone of strong feeling which seeks no relief in words,
harmonizes with the character of the whole. It is as follows:--
‘Sacred to the Memory of
Ellen Jane and Marianne, only children
Of the late Rev. William Robinson, and Ellen Jane, his wife,
Their affectionate Mother,
In fond remembrance of their heaven-loved innocence,
Consigns their resemblance to this sanctuary,
In humble gratitude for the glorious assurance
That ‘of such is the kingdom of God.’[394] A. N.”]
Fair images of sleep,
Hallow’d, and soft, and deep,
On whose calm lids the dreamy quiet lies,
Like moonlight on shut bells
Of flowers in mossy dells,
Fill’d with the hush of night and summer skies!
How many hearts have felt
Your silent beauty melt
Their strength to gushing tenderness away!
How many sudden tears,
From depths of buried years
All freshly bursting, having confess’d your sway!
How many eyes will shed
Still, o’er your marble bed,
Such drops from memory’s troubled fountains wrung!
While hope hath blights to bear,
While love breathes mortal air,
While roses perish ere to glory sprung!
Yet from a voiceless home,
If some sad mother come
Fondly to linger o’er your lovely rest,
As o’er the cheek’s warm glow,
And the sweet breathings low,
Of babes that grew and faded on her breast;
If then the dove-like tone
Of those faint murmurs gone,
O’er her sick sense too piercingly return;
If for the soft bright hair,
And brow and bosom fair,
And life, now dust, her soul too deeply yearn;
O gentle forms, entwined
Like tendrils, which the wind
May wave, so clasp’d, but never can unlink!
Send from your calm profound
A still, small voice--a sound
Of hope, forbidding that lone heart to sink!
By all the pure, meek mind
In your pale beauty shrined,
By childhood’s love--too bright a bloom to die
O’er her worn spirit shed,
O fairest, holiest dead!
The faith, trust, joy, of immortality!
[394] From _The Offering_, an American annual.
WOMAN AND FAME.
Thou hast a charmèd cup, O Fame!
A draught that mantles high,
And seems to lift this earthly frame
Above mortality.
Away! to me--a woman--bring
Sweet waters from affection’s spring!
Thou hast green laurel leaves, that twine
Into so proud a wreath,
For that resplendent gift of thine
Heroes have smiled in death:
Give _me_ from some kind hand a flower,
The record of one happy hour!
Thou hast a voice, whose thrilling tone
Can bid each life-pulse beat,
As when a trumpet’s note hath blown,
Calling the brave to meet:
But mine, let mine--a woman’s breast,
By words of home-born love be bless’d.
A hollow sound is in thy song,
A mockery in thine eye,
To the sick heart that doth but long
For aid, for sympathy--
For kindly looks to cheer it on,
For tender accents that are gone.
Fame! Fame! thou canst not be the stay
Unto the drooping reed,
The cool, fresh fountain in the day
Of the soul’s feverish need:
Where must the lone one turn or flee!--
Not unto thee--oh! not to thee!
A THOUGHT OF THE FUTURE.
Dreamer! and wouldst thou know
If love goes with us to the viewless bourne?
Wouldst thou bear hence th’ unfathom’d source of woe
In thy heart’s lonely urn?
What hath it been to thee,
That power, the dweller of thy secret breast?
A dove sent forth across a stormy sea,
Finding no place of rest:
A precious odour cast
On a wild stream, that recklessly swept by;
A voice of music utter’d to the blast,
And winning no reply.
Even were such answer thine,
Wouldst thou be bless’d? Too sleepless, too profound,
Are the soul’s hidden springs; there is no line
Their depth of love to sound.
Do not words faint and fail
When thou wouldst fill them with that ocean’s power?
As thine own cheek, before high thoughts grows pale
In some o’erwhelming hour.
Doth not thy frail form sink
Beneath the chain that binds thee to one spot,
When thy heart strives, held down by many a link,
Where thy beloved are not?
Is not thy very soul
Oft in the gush of powerless blessing shed,
Till a vain tenderness, beyond control,
Bows down thy weary head?
And wouldst thou bear all _this_--
The burden and the shadow of thy life--
To trouble the blue skies of cloudless bliss
With earthly feelings’ strife?
Not thus, not thus--oh, no!
Not veil’d and mantled with dim clouds of care,
That spirit of my soul should with me go
To breathe celestial air.
But as the skylark springs
To its own sphere, where night afar is driven,
As to its place the flower-seed findeth wings,
So must love mount to heaven!
Vainly it shall not strive
There on weak words to pour a stream of fire;
Thought unto thought shall kindling impulse give,
As light might wake a lyre.
And oh! its blessings _there_,
Shower’d like rich balsam forth on some dear head,
Powerless no more, a gift shall surely bear,
A joy of sunlight shed.
Let me, then--let me dream
That love goes with us to the shore unknown;
So o’er its burning tears a heavenly gleam
In mercy shall be thrown!
THE VOICE OF MUSIC.
“Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.”
Childe Harold.
Whence is the might of thy master-spell?
Speak to me, voice of sweet sound! and tell:
How canst thou wake, by one gentle breath,
Passionate visions of love and death?
How call’st thou back, with a note, a sigh,
Words and low tones from the days gone by--
A sunny glance, or a fond farewell?--
Speak to me, voice of sweet sound! and tell.
What is thy power, from the soul’s deep spring
In sudden gushes the tears to bring?
Even midst the swells of thy festal glee,
Fountains of sorrow are stirr’d by thee!
Vain are those tears!--vain and fruitless all--
Showers that refresh not, yet still must fall;
For a purer bliss while the full heart burns,
For a brighter home while the spirit yearns!
Something of mystery there surely dwells,
Waiting thy touch, in our bosom-cells;
Something that finds not its answer here--
A chain to be clasp’d in another sphere.
Therefore a current of sadness deep
Through the stream of thy triumphs is heard to sweep,
Like a moan of the breeze through a summer sky--
Like a name of the dead when the wind foams high!
Yet speak to me still, though thy tones be fraught
With vain remembrance and troubled thought;
Speak! for thou tellest my soul that its birth
Links it with regions more bright than earth.
THE ANGEL’S GREETING.
“Hark!--they whisper!--Angels say,
Sister spirit! come away.” Pope.
Come to the land of peace!
Come where the tempest hath no longer sway,
The shadow passes from the soul away,
The sounds of weeping cease.
Fear hath no dwelling there!
Come to the mingling of repose and love,
Breathed by the silent spirit of the dove
Through the celestial air.
Come to the bright, and blest,
And crown’d for ever! Midst that shining band,
Gather’d to heaven’s own wreath from every land,
Thy spirit shall find rest!
Thou hast been long alone:
Come to thy mother! On the Sabbath shore,
The heart that rock’d thy childhood, back once more
Shall take its wearied one.
In silence wert thou left:
Come to thy sisters! Joyously again
All the home-voices, blent in one sweet strain,
Shall greet their long bereft.
Over thine orphan head
The storm hath swept, as o’er a willow’s bough:
Come to thy father! It is finish’d now;
Thy tears have all been shed.
In thy divine abode,
Change finds no pathway, memory no dark trace,
And, oh! bright victory--death by love no place.
Come, spirit! to thy God.
A FAREWELL TO WALES,
FOR THE MELODY CALLED “THE ASH GROVE,” ON LEAVING THAT COUNTRY WITH MY
CHILDREN.
The sound of thy streams in my spirit I bear--
Farewell, and a blessing be with thee, green land!
On thy hearths, on thy halls, on thy pure mountain air,
On the chords of the harp, and the minstrel’s free hand,
From the love of my soul with my tears it is shed,
As I leave thee, green land of my home and my dead!
I bless thee!--yet not for the beauty which dwells
In the heart of thy hills, on the rocks of thy shore;
And not for the memory set deep in thy dells,
Of the bard and the hero, the mighty of yore;
And not for thy songs of those proud ages fled--
Green land, poet-land of my home and my dead!
I bless thee for all the true bosoms that beat
Where’er a low hamlet smiles up to thy skies;
For thy cottage-hearths burning the stranger to greet,
For the soul that shines forth from thy children’s kind eyes!
May the blessing, like sunshine, about thee be spread,
Green land of my childhood, my home, and my dead!
[“It was about this time (1828) that ‘The Farewell to Wales’ was
written.
‘I bless thee for all the true bosoms that beat
Where’er a low hamlet smiles up to thy skies;
For thy cottage-hearths burning the stranger to greet,
For the soul that shines forth from thy children’s kind eyes.’
Mrs Hemans always spoke of this ‘land of her childhood, her home,
and her dead,’ with interest and affection. When she sailed from
its shore, she covered her face in her cloak, desiring her boys to
tell her when the hills were out of sight, that she might then look
up. She would often, too, refer to the pain she had suffered--in
addition to the sorrow of parting from her kindred and friends, for
the first time since her birth, to make actual acquaintance with
the daily cares of life--upon taking leave of the simple and homely
peasantry of the neighbourhood, by whom she was beloved with that
old-fashioned heartiness which yet lingers in some of the nooks and
remote places of England. Many of them rushed forward to touch the
posts of the gate through which the poetess had passed; and when,
three years afterwards, she paid a visit to St Asaph, came and wept
over her, and entreated her to return and make her home among them
again.”--Chorley’s _Memorials of Mrs Hemans_, p. 206-7.]
IMPROMPTU LINES,
ADDRESSED TO MISS F. A. L., ON RECEIVING FROM HER SOME FLOWERS WHEN
CONFINED BY ILLNESS.
Ye tell me not of birds and bees,
Not of the summer’s murmuring trees,
Not of the streams and woodland bowers--
A sweeter tale is yours, fair flowers!
Glad tidings to my couch ye bring,
Of one still bright, still flowing spring--
A fount of kindness ever new,
In a friend’s heart, the good and true.
A PARTING SONG.
“O mes amis! rapellez-vous quelquefois mes vers! mon ame y est
empreinte.”--Corinne.
When will ye think of me, my friends?
When will ye think of me?--
When the last red light, the farewell of day,
From the rock and the river is passing away--
When the air with a deepening hush is fraught,
And the heart grows burden’d with tender thought,
Then let it be!
When will ye think of me, kind friends?
When will ye think of me?--
When the rose of the rich midsummer-time
Is fill’d with the hues of its glorious prime--
When ye gather its bloom, as in bright hours fled,
From the walks where my footsteps no more may tread--
Then let it be!
When will ye think of me, sweet friends?
When will ye think of me?--
When the sudden tears o’erflow your eye
At the sound of some olden melody--
When ye hear the voice of a mountain stream,
When ye feel the charm of a poet’s dream--
Then let it be!
Thus let my memory be with you, friends!
Thus ever think of me!
Kindly and gently, but as of one
For whom ’tis well to be fled and gone--
As of a bird from a chain unbound,
As of a wanderer whose home is found--
So let it be.
[“The description of her feelings, when the actual parting took place,
proves that there was no exaggeration in the affectionate sadness of
her ‘Farewell to Wales,’ and the blessing she thus fondly left with
it:--
‘The sound of thy streams in my spirit I bear--
Farewell! and a blessing be with thee, green land!
On thy hearths, on thy halls, on thy pure mountain air,
On the chords of the harp, and the minstrel’s free hand,
From the love of my soul with my tears it is shed,
As I leave thee, green land of my home and my dead!
‘Oh! that Tuesday morning!’ (thus she wrote in her first letter to St
Asaph.) ‘I literally covered my face all the way from Bronwylfa, until
the boys told me we had passed the Clwyd range of hills. Then something
of the bitterness was over.
‘Miss P. met me at Bagillt, and on board the packet we found Mr
D., who was kinder to me than I can possibly tell you. He really
watched over me all the way with a care I shall not soon forget; and
notwithstanding all you may say of _female_ protection, I felt that
of a gentleman to be a great comfort, for we had a difficult and
disagreeable landing. As we entered the port, a vessel, coming out,
struck against ours, and caused a great concussion: there was no
danger, I imagine, but it gave one a faint notion of what the meeting
must have been between the Comet and the Aire. We had a pretty sight on
the water; another packet, loaded, clustered all over with blue-coat
boys, sailed past. It was their annual holiday, on which they have a
water excursion; and as they went by, all the little fellows waved
their hats, and sent forth three cheers, which made our vessel ring
again. Only imagine a ship-load of happiness! That word reminds me of
my own boys, who are enjoying themselves greatly. Of myself, what can
I say to you?... When I look back on the short time that has elapsed
since I left this place, I am astonished; I seem in it to have lived an
age of deep, strong, vain feeling.” --_Memoir_, p. 151-3.]
WE RETURN NO MORE![395]
“When I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise; and the Spring
Come forth, her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
I turn’d from all she brought to all she could not bring.”
Childe Harold.
“We return!--we return!--we return no more!”
So comes the song to the mountain shore,
From those that are leaving their Highland home
For a world far over the blue sea’s foam:
“We return no more!” and through cave and dell
Mournfully wanders that wild farewell.
“We return!--we return!--we return no more!”
So breathe sad voices our spirits o’er;
Murmuring up from the depths of the heart,
Where lovely things with their light depart:
And the inborn sound hath a prophet’s tone,
And we feel that a joy is for ever gone.
“We return!--we return!--we return no more!”
Is it heard when the days of flowers are o’er?
When the passionate soul of the night-bird’s lay
Hath died from the summer woods away?
When the glory from sunset’s robe hath pass’d,
Or the leaves are borne on the rushing blast?
No! It is not the rose that returns no more;--
A breath of spring shall its bloom restore;
And it is not the voice that o’erflows the bowers
With a stream of love through the starry hours;
Nor is it the crimson of sunset hues,
Nor the frail flush’d leaves which the wild wind strews.
“We return!--we return!--we return no more!”
Doth the bird sing thus from a brighter shore?
Those wings that follow the southern breeze,
Float they not homeward o’er vernal seas?
Yes! from the lands of the vine and palm
They come, with the sunshine, when waves grow calm.
“But we!--we return!--we return no more!”
The heart’s young dreams, when their spring is o’er;
The love it hath pour’d so freely forth--
The boundless trust in ideal worth;
The faith in affection--deep, fond, yet vain--
_These_ are the lost that return not again!
[395] _Ha til!--ha til!--ha til mi tulidle!_--“we return!--we
return!--we return no more!”--the burden of the Highland song of
emigration.
TO A WANDERING FEMALE SINGER.
Thou hast loved and thou hast suffer’d!
Unto feeling deep and strong,
Thou hast trembled like a harp’s frail string--
I know it by thy song!
Thou hast loved--it may be vainly--
But well--oh, but too well!
Thou hast suffer’d all that woman’s breast
May bear--but must not tell.
Thou hast wept, and thou hast parted,
Thou hast been forsaken long,
Thou hast watch’d for steps that came not back--
I know it by thy song!
By the low, clear silvery gushing
Of its music from thy breast;
By the quivering of its flute-like swell--
A sound of the heart’s unrest;
By its fond and plaintive lingering
On each word of grief so long.
Oh! thou hast loved and suffer’d much--
I know it by thy song!
LIGHTS AND SHADES.
The gloomiest day hath gleams of light;
The darkest wave hath light foam near it;
And twinkles through the cloudiest night
Some solitary star to cheer it.
The gloomiest soul is not all gloom;
The saddest heart is not all sadness;
And sweetly o’er the darkest doom
There shines some lingering beam of gladness.
Despair is never _quite_ despair;
Nor life nor death the future closes;
And round the shadowy brow of Care
Will Hope and Fancy twine their roses.
[These spirited and graceful stanzas appeared in the “For-get-me-Not”
for 1829, and are here for the first time admitted into the general
collection of the author’s works. In all probability, they are an
early effusion, and poured forth when the poetry of Moore was fresh in
her mind.]
THE PALMER.
“The faded palm-branch in his hand
Show’d pilgrim from the Holy Land.” Scott.
Art thou come from the far-off land at last?
Thou that hast wander’d long!
Thou art come to a home whence the smile hath pass’d
With the merry voice of song.
For the sunny glance and the bounding heart
Thou wilt seek--but all are gone;
They are parted, e’en as waters part,
To meet in the deep alone!
And thou--from thy lip is fled the glow,
From thine eye the light of morn;
And the shades of thought o’erhang thy brow,
And thy cheek with life is worn.
Say what hast thou brought from the distant shore
For thy wasted youth to pay?
Hast thou treasure to win thee joys once more?
Hast thou vassals to smooth thy way?
“I have brought but the palm-branch in my hand,
Yet I call not my bright youth lost!
I have won but high thought in the Holy Land,
Yet I count not too dear the cost!
“I look on the leaves of the deathless tree--
These records of my track;
And better than youth in its flush of glee,
Are the memories they give me back!
“They speak of toil, and of high emprise,
As in words of solemn cheer;
They speak of lonely victories
O’er pain, and doubt, and fear.
“They speak of scenes which have now become
Bright pictures in my breast;
Where my spirit finds a glorious home,
And the love of my heart can rest.
“The colours pass not from _these_ away,
Like tints of shower or sun;
Oh! beyond all treasures that know decay,
Is the wealth my soul hath won!
“A rich light thence o’er my life’s decline,
An inborn light is cast;
For the sake of the palm from the holy shrine,
I bewail not my bright days past!”
THE CHILD’S FIRST GRIEF.
Oh! call my brother back to me!
I cannot play alone;
The summer comes with flower and bee--
Where is my brother gone?
“The butterfly is glancing bright
Across the sunbeam’s track;
I care not now to chase its flight--
Oh! call my brother back!
“The flowers run wild--the flowers we sow’d
Around our garden tree;
Our vine is drooping with its load--
Oh! call him back to me!”
“He would not hear thy voice, fair child!
He may not come to thee;
The face that once like spring-time smiled,
On earth no more thou’lt see.
“A rose’s brief, bright life of joy,
Such unto him was given:
Go--thou must play alone, my boy!
Thy brother is in heaven.”
“And has he left his birds and flowers;
And must I call in vain?
And through the long, long summer hours,
Will he not come again?
“And by the brook and in the glade
Are all our wanderings o’er?
Oh! while my brother with me play’d,
_Would I had loved him more_!”
TO THE NEW-BORN.[396]
A blessing on thy head, thou child of many hopes and fears!
A rainbow-welcome thine hath been, of mingled smiles and tears.
Thy father greets thee unto life with a full and chasten’d heart,
For a solemn gift from God thou comest, all precious as thou art!
I see thee not asleep, fair boy! upon thy mother’s breast,
Yet well I know how guarded there shall be thy rosy rest;
And how her soul with love, and prayer, and gladness, will o’erflow,
While bending o’er thy soft-seal’d eyes, thou dear one! well I know.
A blessing on thy gentle head! and bless’d thou _art_ in truth,
For a home where God is felt awaits thy childhood and thy youth:
Around thee pure and holy thoughts shall dwell as light and air,
And steal unto thine heart, and wake the germs now folded there.
Smile on thy mother! while she feels that unto her is given,
In that young day-spring glance, the pledge of a soul to rear for
heaven!
Smile! and sweet peace be o’er thy sleep, joy o’er thy wakening
shed!
Blessings and blessings evermore, fair boy! upon thy head!
[396] Addressed to the child of her eldest brother.
THE DEATH-SONG OF ALCESTIS.
She came forth in her bridal robes array’d,
And midst the graceful statues, round the hall
Shedding the calm of their celestial mien,
Stood pale yet proudly beautiful as they:
Flowers in her bosom, and the star-like gleam
Of jewels trembling from her braided hair,
And _death_ upon her brow!--but glorious death!
Her own heart’s choice, the token and the seal
Of love, o’ermastering love; which, till that hour,
Almost an anguish in the brooding weight
Of its unutterable tenderness,
Had burden’d her full soul. But now, oh! now,
Its time was come--and from the spirit’s depths,
The passion and the mighty melody
Of its immortal voice in triumph broke,
Like a strong rushing wind!
The soft pure air
Came floating through that hall--the Grecian air,
Laden with music--flute-notes from the vales,
Echoes of song--the last sweet sounds of life
And the glad sunshine of the golden clime
Stream’d, as a royal mantle, round her form--
The glorified of love! But she--she look’d
Only on _him_ for whom ’twas joy to die,
Deep--deepest, holiest joy! Or if a thought
Of the warm sunlight, and the scented breeze,
And the sweet Dorian songs, o’erswept the tide
Of her unswerving soul--’twas but a thought
That own’d the summer loveliness of life
For _him_ a worthy offering! So she stood,
Wrapt in bright silence, as entranced awhile;
Till her eye kindled, and her quivering frame
With the swift breeze of inspiration shook,
As the pale priestess trembles to the breath
Of inborn oracles! Then flush’d her cheek,
And all the triumph, all the agony,
Borne on the battling waves of love and death,
All from her woman’s heart, in sudden song,
Burst like a fount of fire.
“I go, I go!
Thou sun! thou golden sun! I go
Far from thy light to dwell:
Thou shalt not find my place below,
Dim is that world--bright sun of Greece, farewell!
“The laurel and the glorious rose
Thy glad beam yet may see;
But where no purple summer glows,
O’er the dark wave _I_ haste from them and thee.
“Yet doth my spirit faint to part?
--I mourn thee not, O sun!
Joy, solemn joy, o’erflows my heart:
Sing me triumphal songs!--my crown is won!
“Let not a voice of weeping rise--
My heart is girt with power!
Let the green earth and festal skies
Laugh, as to grace a conqueror’s closing hour!
“For thee, for _thee_, my bosom’s lord!
Thee, my soul’s loved! I die;
Thine is the torch of life restored,
Mine, mine the rapture, mine the victory!
“Now may the boundless love, that lay
Unfathom’d still before,
In one consuming burst find way--
In one bright flood all, all its riches pour!
“Thou know’st, thou know’st what love is _now_!
Its glory and its might--
Are they not written on my brow?
And will that image ever quit thy sight?
“No! deathless in thy faithful breast,
There shall my memory keep
Its own bright altar-place of rest,
While o’er my grave the cypress branches weep.
“Oh, the glad light!--the light is fair,
The soft breeze warm and free;
And rich notes fill the scented air,
And all are gifts--_my_ love’s last gifts to thee!
“Take me to thy warm heart once more!
Night falls--my pulse beats low:
Seek not to quicken, to restore--
Joy is in every pang. I go, I go!
“I feel thy tears, I feel thy breath,
I meet thy fond look still;
Keen is the strife of love and death;
Faint and yet fainter grows my bosom’s thrill.
“Yet swells the tide of rapture strong,
Though mists o’ershade mine eye!
--Sing, Pæan! sing a conqueror’s song!
For thee, for _thee_, my spirit’s lord, I die!”
THE HOME OF LOVE.
Thou mov’st in visions, Love! Around thy way,
E’en through this world’s rough path and changeful day,
For ever floats a gleam--
Not from the realms of moonlight or the morn,
But thine own soul’s illumined chambers born--
The colouring of a dream!
Love! shall I read thy dream? Oh! is it not
All of some sheltering wood-embosom’d spot--
A bower for thee and thine?
Yes! lone and lowly is that home; yet there
Something of heaven in the transparent air
Makes every flower divine.
Something that mellows and that glorifies,
Breathes o’er it ever from the tender skies,
As o’er some blessed isle;
E’en like the soft and spiritual glow
Kindling rich woods, whereon th’ ethereal bow
Sleeps lovingly awhile.
The very whispers of the wind have there
A flute-like harmony, that seems to bear
Greeting from some bright shore,
Where none have said _farewell_!--where no decay
Lends the faint crimson to the dying day;
Where the storm’s might is o’er.
And there thou dreamest of Elysian rest,
In the deep sanctuary of one true breast
Hidden from earthly ill:
There wouldst thou watch the homeward step, whose sound
Wakening all nature to sweet echoes round,
Thine inmost soul can thrill.
There by the hearth should many a glorious page,
From mind to mind the immortal heritage,
For thee its treasures pour;
Or music’s voice at vesper hours be heard,
Or dearer interchange of playful word,
Affection’s household lore.
And the rich unison of mingled prayer,
The melody of hearts in heavenly air,
Thence duly should arise;
Lifting th’ eternal hope, th’ adoring breath,
Of spirits, not to be disjoin’d by death,
Up to the starry skies.
There, dost thou well believe, no storm should come
To mar the stillness of that angel-home;
There should thy slumbers be
Weigh’d down with honey-dew, serenely bless’d,
Like theirs who first in Eden’s grove took rest
Under some balmy tree.
Love! Love! thou passionate in joy and woe!
And canst _thou_ hope for cloudless peace below--
_Here_, where bright things must die?
O thou! that, wildly worshipping, dost shed
On the frail altar of a mortal head
Gifts of infinity!
Thou must be still a trembler, fearful Love!
Danger seems gathering from beneath, above,
Still round thy precious things;
Thy stately pine-tree, or thy gracious rose,
In their sweet shade can yield thee no repose,
Here, where the blight hath wings.
And as a flower, with some fine sense imbued,
To shrink before the wind’s vicissitude,
So in thy prescient breast
Are lyre-strings quivering with prophetic thrill
To the low footstep of each coming ill:
Oh! canst _thou_ dream of rest?
Bear up thy dream! thou mighty and thou weak!
Heart, strong as death, yet as a reed to break--
As a flame, tempest-sway’d!
He that sits calm on high is yet the source
Whence thy soul’s current hath its troubled course,
He that great deep hath made!
Will He not pity?--He whose searching eye
Reads all the secrets of thine agony?--
Oh! pray to be forgiven
Thy fond idolatry, thy blind excess,
And seek with _Him_ that bower of blessedness.
Love! _thy_ sole home is heaven!
BOOKS AND FLOWERS.
“La vue d’une fleur caresse mon imagination, et flatte mes sens a un
point inexprimable. Sous le tranquille abri du toit paternel j’etais
nourrie des l’enfance avec des fleurs et des livres; dans l’etroite
enceinte d’une prison, au milieu des fers imposies par la tyrannie,
j’oublie l’injustice des hommes, leurs sottises et mes maux, avec des
livres et des fleurs.”
Come! let me make a sunny realm around thee
Of thought and beauty! Here are books and flowers,
With spells to loose the fetter which hath bound thee
The ravel’d coil of this world’s feverish hours.
The soul of song is in these deathless pages,
Even as the odour in the flower enshrined;
Here the crown’d spirits of departed ages
Have left the silent melodies of mind.
Their thoughts, that strove with time, and change, and anguish,
For some high place where faith her wing might rest,
Are burning here--a flame that may not languish--
Still pointing upward to that bright hill’s crest!
Their grief, the veil’d infinity exploring
For treasures lost, is here;--their boundless love,
Its mighty streams of gentleness outpouring
On all things round, and clasping all above.
And the bright beings, their own heart’s creations,
Bright, yet all human, here are breathing still;
Conflicts, and agonies, and exultations
Are here, and victories of prevailing will!
Listen! oh, listen! let their high words cheer thee!
Their swan-like music ringing through all woes;
Let my voice bring their holy influence near thee--
The Elysian air of their divine repose!
Or would’st thou turn to earth? _Not_ earth all furrow’d
By the old traces of man’s toil and care,
But the green peaceful world that never sorrow’d,
The world of leaves, and dews, and summer air!
Look on these flowers! as o’er an altar shedding,
O’er Milton’s page, soft light from colour’d urns!
They are the links, man’s heart to nature wedding,
When to her breast the prodigal returns.
They are from lone wild places, forest dingles,
Fresh banks of many a low-voiced hidden stream,
Where the sweet star of eve looks down and mingles
Faint lustre with the water-lily’s gleam.
They are from where the soft winds play in gladness,
Covering the turf with flowery blossom-showers;
--Too richly dower’d, O friend! are we for sadness--
Look on an empire--mind and nature--ours!
[“The ‘brightly associated hours’ she passed with Mrs Lawrence, have
been alluded to by Mrs Hemans, in the dedication to the ‘National
Lyrics,’ and recorded by ‘her friend, and the sister of her friend,
Colonel D’Aguilar,’ in her own affectionate ‘Recollections.’ The
‘Books and Flowers’ of Wavertree Hall were ever fondly identified
with their dear mistress; and, years after the enjoyment of them had
passed away from all senses but memory, she who was then herself, too,
‘passing away,’ thus tenderly alluded to them from her sick couch at
Redesdale:--‘When I write to you, my imagination always brightens, and
pleasant thoughts of lovely flowers, and dear old books, and strains
of antique Italian melody, come floating over me, as Bacon says the
rich scents go ‘to and fro like music in the air.’”]
FOR A PICTURE OF ST CECILIA ATTENDED BY ANGELS.
“How rich that forehead’s calm expanse!
How bright that heaven-directed glance!
--Waft her to glory, winged powers!
Ere sorrow be renew’d,
And intercourse with mortal hours
Bring back a humbler mood!” Wordsworth.
How can that eye, with inspiration beaming,
Wear yet so deep a calm? O child of song!
Is not the music-land a world of dreaming,
Where forms of sad, bewildering beauty throng?
Hath it not sounds from voices long departed?
Echoes of tones that rung in childhood’s ear?
Low haunting whispers, which the weary-hearted,
Stealing midst crowds away, have wept to hear?
No, not to thee! _Thy_ spirit, meek, yet queenly,
On its own starry height, beyond all this,
Floating triumphantly and yet serenely,
Breathes no faint under-tone through songs of bliss.
Say by what strain, through cloudless ether swelling,
Thou hast drawn down those wanderers from the skies?
Bright guests! even such as left of yore their dwelling
For the deep cedar-shades of Paradise!
What strain? Oh! not the nightingale’s, when, showering
Her own heart’s life-drops on the burning lay,
She stirs the young woods in the days of flowering,
And pours her strength, but not her grief, away:
And not the exile’s--when, midst lonely billows,
He wakes the Alpine notes his mother sung,
Or blends them with the sigh of alien willows,
Where, murmuring to the wind, his harp is hung:
And not the pilgrim’s--though his thoughts be holy,
And sweet his avè-song when day grows dim;
Yet, as he journeys, pensively and slowly,
Something of sadness floats through that low hymn.
But thou!--the spirit which at eve is filling
All the hush’d air and reverential sky--
Founts, leaves, and flowers, with solemn rapture thrilling--
This is the soul of _thy_ rich harmony.
This bears up high those breathings of devotion
Wherein the currents of thy heart gush free;
Therefore no world of sad and vain emotion
Is the dream-haunted music-land for _thee_.
THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE.
SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF EASTLAKE’S.
Dark chieftain of the heath and height!
Wild feaster on the hills by night!
See’st thou the stormy sunset’s glow
Flung back by glancing spears below?
Now for one strife of stern despair!
The foe hath track’d thee to thy lair.
Thou, against whom the voice of blood
Hath risen from rock and lonely wood;
And in whose dreams a moan should be,
Not of the water, nor the tree;
Haply thine own last hour is nigh,--
Yet shalt thou not forsaken die.
There’s one that pale beside thee stands,
More true than all thy mountain-bands!
She will not shrink in doubt and dread
When the balls whistle round thy head:
Nor leave thee, though thy closing eye
No longer may to hers reply.
Oh! many a soft and quiet grace
Hath faded from her form and face;
And many a thought, the fitting guest
Of woman’s meek, religious breast,
Hath perish’d in her wanderings wide,
Through the deep forests by thy side.
Yet, mournfully surviving all,
A flower upon a ruin’s wall--
A friendless thing, whose lot is cast
Of lovely ones to be the last--
Sad, but unchanged through good and ill,
Thine is her lone devotion still.
And oh! not wholly lost the heart
Where that undying love hath part;
Not worthless all, though far and long
From home estranged, and guided wrong;
Yet may its depths by heaven be stirr’d,
Its prayer for thee be pour’d and heard!
THE CHILD’S RETURN FROM THE WOODLANDS.
SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S.
“All good and guiltless as thou art,
Some transient griefs will touch thy heart--
Griefs that along thy alter’d face
Will breathe a more subduing grace,
Than even those looks of joy that lie
On the soft cheek of infancy.” Wilson.
Hast thou been in the woods with the honey-bee?
Hast thou been with the lamb in the pastures free?
With the hare through the copses and dingles wild?
With the butterfly over the heath, fair child?
Yes! the light fall of thy bounding feet
Hath not startled the wren from her mossy seat:
Yet hast thou ranged the green forest-dells,
And brought back a treasure of buds and bells.
Thou know’st not the sweetness, by antique song
Breathed o’er the names of that flowery throng:
The woodbine, the primrose, the violet dim,
The lily that gleams by the fountain’s brim;
These are old words, that have made each grove
A dreaming haunt for romance and love--
Each sunny bank, where faint odours lie,
A place for the gushings of poesy.
Thou know’st not the light wherewith fairy lore
Sprinkles the turf and the daisies o’er:
Enough for thee are the dews that sleep
Like hidden gems in the flower-urns deep;
Enough the rich crimson spots that dwell
Midst the gold of the cowslip’s perfumed cell;
And the scent by the blossoming sweetbriers shed,
And the beauty that bows the wood-hyacinth’s head.
O happy child! in thy fawn-like glee,
What is remembrance or thought to thee?
Fill thy bright locks with those gifts of spring,
O’er thy green pathway their colours fling;
Bind them in chaplet and wild festoon--
What if to droop and to perish soon?
Nature hath mines of such wealth--and thou
Never will prize its delights as now!
For a day is coming to quell the tone
That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!
And to dim thy brow with a touch of care,
Under the gloss of its clustering hair;
And to tame the flash of thy cloudless eyes
Into the stillness of autumn skies;
And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part
Midst the hidden things of each human heart.
Yet shall we mourn, gentle child! for this?
Life hath enough of yet holier bliss!
Such be thy portion!--the bliss to look,
With a reverent spirit, through nature’s book;
By fount, by forest, by river’s line,
To track the paths of a love divine;
To read its deep meanings--to see and hear
God in earth’s garden--and not to fear!
THE FAITH OF LOVE.
Thou hast watch’d beside the bed of death,
O fearless human Love!
Thy lip received the last, faint breath,
Ere the spirit fled above.
Thy prayer was heard by the parting bier,
In a low and farewell tone;
Thou hast given the grave both flower and tear--
--O Love! thy task is done.
Then turn thee from each pleasant spot
Where thou wert wont to rove;
For there the friend of thy soul is not,
Nor the joy of thy youth, O Love!
Thou wilt meet but mournful Memory there;
Her dreams in the grove she weaves,
With echoes filling the summer air,
With sighs the trembling leaves.
Then turn thee to the world again,
From those dim, haunted bowers,
And shut thine ear to the wild, sweet strain
That tells of vanish’d hours.
And wear not on thine aching heart
The image of the dead;
For the tie is rent that gave thee part
In the gladness its beauty shed.
And gaze on the pictured smile no more
That thus can life outlast:
All between parted souls is o’er.--
Love! Love! forget the past!
“Voice of vain boding! away, be still!
Strive not against the faith
That yet my bosom with light can fill,
Unquench’d, and undim’d by death.
“From the pictured smile I will not turn,
Though sadly now it shine;
Nor quit the shades that in whispers mourn
For the step once link’d with mine;
“Nor shut mine ear to the song of old,
Though its notes the pang renew.
--Such memories deep in my heart I hold,
To keep it pure and true.
“By the holy instinct of my heart,
By the hope that bears me on,
I have still my own undying part
In the deep affection gone.
“By the presence that about me seems
Through night and day to dwell,
Voice of vain bodings and fearful dreams!
--I have breathed no _last_ farewell!”
THE SISTER’S DREAM.
[Suggested by a picture in which a young girl is represented as
sleeping, and visited during her slumbers by the spirits of her
departed sisters.]
She sleeps!--but not the free and sunny sleep
That lightly on the brow of childhood lies:
Though happy be her rest, and soft, and deep,
Yet, ere it sank upon her shadow’d eyes,
Thoughts of past scenes and kindred graves o’erswept
Her soul’s meek stillness--she had pray’d and wept.
And now in visions to her couch they come,
The early lost--the beautiful--the dead!
That unto her bequeath’d a mournful home,
Whence with their voices all sweet laughter fled
They rise--the sisters of her youth arise,
As from the world where no frail blossom dies.
And well the sleeper knows them not of earth--
Not as they were when binding up the flowers,
Telling wild legends round the winter-hearth,
Braiding their long, fair hair for festal hours:
These things are past--a spiritual gleam,
A solemn glory, robes them in that dream.
Yet, if the glee of life’s fresh budding years
In those pure aspects may no more be read,
Thence, too, hath sorrow melted--and the tears
Which o’er their mother’s holy dust they shed,
Are all effaced. There earth hath left no sign
Save its deep love, still touching every line.
But oh! more soft, more tender--breathing more
A thought of pity, than in vanish’d days!
While, hovering silently and brightly o’er
The lone one’s head, they meet her spirit’s gaze
With their immortal eyes, that seem to say,
“Yet, sister! yet we love thee--come away!”
’Twill fade, the radiant dream! And will she not
Wake with more painful yearning at her heart?
Will not her home seem yet a lonelier spot,
Her task more sad, when those bright shadows part?
And the green summer after them look dim,
And sorrow’s tone be in the bird’s wild hymn?
But let her hope be strong, and let the dead
Visit her soul in heaven’s calm beauty still;
Be their names utter’d, be their memory spread
Yet round the place they never more may fill!
All is not over with earth’s broken tie--
Where, where should sisters love, if not on high?
A FAREWELL TO ABBOTSFORD.
[These lines were given to Sir Walter Scott, at the gate of
Abbotsford, in the summer of 1829. He was then apparently in the
vigour of an existence whose energies promised long continuance; and
the glance of his quick, smiling eye, and the very sound of his kindly
voice, seemed to kindle the gladness of his own sunny and benignant
spirit in all who had the happiness of approaching him.]
Home of the gifted! fare thee well,
And a blessing on thee rest!
While the heather waves its purple bell
O’er moor and mountain-crest;
While stream to stream around thee calls,
And braes with broom are drest,
Glad be the harping in thy halls--
A blessing on thee rest!
While the high voice from thee sent forth
Bids rock and cairn reply,
Wakening the spirits of the North
Like a chieftain’s gathering-cry;
While its deep master-tones hold sway
As a king’s o’er every breast,
Home of the Legend and the Lay!
A blessing on thee rest!
Joy to thy hearth, and board, and bower!
Long honours to thy line!
And hearts of proof, and hands of power,
And bright names worthy thine!
By the merry step of childhood, still
May thy free sward be prest!
--While one proud pulse in the land can thrill,
A blessing on thee rest!
O’CONNOR’S CHILD.
[This piece was suggested by a picture in the possession of Mrs
Lawrence of Wavertree Hall. It represents the “Hero’s Child” of
Campbell’s Poem, seated beside a solitary tomb of rock, marked with
a cross, in a wild and desert place. A tempest seems gathering in
the angry skies above her, but the attitude of the drooping figure
expresses the utter carelessness of desolation, and the countenance
speaks of entire abstraction from all external objects. A bow and
quiver lie beside her, amongst the weeds and wild-flowers of the
desert.]
“I fled the home of grief
At Connocht Moran’s tomb to fall,
I found the helmet of my chief,
His bow still hanging on our wall;
And took it down, and vow’d to rove
This desert place a huntress bold;
Nor would I change my buried love
For any heart of living mould.”
Campbell.
The sleep of storms is dark upon the skies,
The weight of omens heavy in the cloud:--
Bid the lorn huntress of the desert rise,
And gird the form whose beauty grief hath bow’d,
And leave the tomb, as tombs are left--alone,
To the star’s vigil, and the wind’s wild moan.
Tell her of revelries in bower and hall,
Where gems are glittering, and bright wine is pour’d;
Where to glad measures chiming footsteps fall,
And soul seems gushing from the harp’s full chord;
And richer flowers amid fair tresses wave,
Than the sad _Love-lies-bleeding_ of the grave.
Oh! little know’st thou of th’ o’ermastering spell
Wherewith love binds the spirit, strong in pain,
To the spot hallow’d by a wild farewell,
A parting agony,--intense, yet vain,
A look--and darkness when its gleam hath flown,
A voice--and silence when its words are gone!
She hears thee not: her full, deep, fervent heart
Is set in her dark eyes;--and _they_ are bound
Unto that cross, that shrine, that world apart,
Where faithful blood hath sanctified the ground;
And love with death striven long by tear and prayer,
And anguish frozen into still despair.
Yet on her spirit hath arisen at last
A light, a joy, of its own wanderings born;
Around her path a vision’s glow is cast,
Back, back her lost one comes in hues of morn![397]
For her the gulf is fill’d--the dark night fled,
Whose mystery parts the living and the dead.
And she can pour forth in such converse high
All her soul’s tide of love, the deep, the strong.
Oh! lonelier far, perchance, _thy_ destiny,
And more forlorn, amidst the world’s gay throng,
Than hers--the queen of that majestic gloom,
The tempest, and the desert, and the tomb!
[397] “A son of light, a lovely form, He comes, and makes her
glad.”--Campbell.
THE PRAYER FOR LIFE.
O sunshine and fair earth!
Sweet is your kindly mirth;
Angel of death! yet, yet awhile delay!
Too sad it is to part,
Thus in my spring of heart,
With all the light and laughter of the day.
For me the falling leaf
Touches no chord of grief,
No dark void in the rose’s bosom lies:
Not one triumphal tone,
One hue of hope, is gone
From song or bloom beneath the summer skies.
Death, Death! ere yet decay,
Call me not hence away!
Over the golden hours no shade is thrown:
The poesy that dwells
Deep in green woods and dells
Still to my spirit speaks of joy alone.
Yet not for this, O Death!
Not for the vernal breath
Of winds that shake forth music from the trees:
Not for the splendour given
To night’s dark, regal heaven,
Spoiler! I ask thee not reprieve for these.
But for the happy love
Whose light, where’er I rove,
Kindles all nature to a sudden smile,
Shedding on branch and flower
A rainbow-tinted shower
Of richer life--spare, spare me yet awhile.
Too soon, too fast thou’rt come!
Too beautiful is home--
A home of gentle voices and kind eyes!
And I the loved of all,
On whom fond blessings fall
From every lip. Oh! wilt thou rend such ties?
Sweet sisters! weave a chain
My spirit to detain:
Hold me to earth with strong affection back;
Bind me with mighty love
Unto the stream, the grove,
Our daily paths--our life’s familiar track.
Stay with me! gird me round!
Your voices bear a sound
Of hope--a light comes with you and departs;
Hush my soul’s boding swell,
That murmurs of farewell.
How can I leave this ring of kindest hearts?
Death! grave!--and are there those
That woo your dark repose
Midst the rich beauty of the glowing earth?
Surely about them lies
No world of loving eyes.
Leave me, oh! leave me unto home and hearth!
THE WELCOME TO DEATH.
Thou art welcome, O thou warning voice!
My soul hath pined for thee;
Thou art welcome as sweet sounds from shore
To wanderer on the sea.
I hear thee in the rustling woods,
In the sighing vernal airs;
Thou call’st me from the lonely earth
With a deeper tone than theirs.
The lonely earth! Since kindred steps
From its green paths are fled,
A dimness and a hush have lain
O’er all its beauty spread.
The silence of th’ unanswering soul
Is on me and around;
My heart hath echoes but for _thee_,
Thou still, small, warning sound!
Voice after voice hath died away,
Once in my dwelling heard;
Sweet household name by name hath changed
To grief’s forbidden word!
From dreams of night on each I call,
Each of the far removed;
And waken to my own wild cry--
“Where are ye, my beloved?”
Ye left me! and earth’s flowers were dim
With records of the past;
And stars pour’d down another light
Than o’er my youth they cast.
Birds will not sing as once they sung,
When ye were at my side,
And mournful tones are in the wind
Which I heard not till ye died!
Thou art welcome, O thou summoner!
Why should the last remain?
What eye can reach my heart of hearts,
Bearing in light again?
E’en could this be, too much of fear
O’er love would now be thrown.--
Away! away! from time, from change,
Once more to meet my own!
THE VICTOR.
“De tout ce qui t’aimoit n’est-il plus rien qui t’aime?”
Lamartine.
Mighty ones, Love and Death!
Ye are the strong in this world of ours;
Ye meet at the banquets, ye dwell midst the flowers,
--Which hath the conqueror’s wreath?
_Thou_ art the victor, Love!
_Thou_ art the fearless, the crown’d, the free,
The strength of the battle is given to thee--
The spirit from above!
Thou hast look’d on Death, and smiled!
Thou hast borne up the reed-like and fragile form
Through the waves of the fight, through the rush of the storm,
On field, and flood, and wild!
No!--_Thou_ art the victor, Death!
Thou comest, and where is that which spoke,
From the depths of the eye, when the spirit woke?
--Gone with the fleeting breath!
Thou comest--and what is left
Of all that loved us, to say if aught
_Yet loves_--yet answers the burning thought
Of the spirit lone and reft?
Silence is where thou art!
Silently there must kindred meet,
No smile to cheer, and no voice to greet,
No bounding of heart to heart!
Boast not thy victory, Death!
It is but as the cloud’s o’er the sunbeam’s power,
It is but as the winter’s o’er leaf and flower,
That slumber the snow beneath.
It is but as a tyrant’s reign
O’er the voice and the lip which he bids be still;
But the fiery thought and the lofty will
Are not for him to chain!
They shall soar his might above!
And thus with the root whence affection springs,
Though buried, it is not of mortal things--
_Thou_ art the victor, Love!
LINES WRITTEN FOR THE ALBUM AT ROSANNA.[398]
Oh! lightly tread through these deep chestnut-bowers,
Where a sweet spirit once in beauty moved!
And touch with reverent hand these leaves and flowers--
Fair things, which well a gentle heart hath loved!
A gentle heart, of love and grief th’ abode,
Whence the bright stream of song in tear-drops flow’d.
And bid its memory sanctify the scene!
And let th’ ideal presence of the dead
Float round, and touch the woods with softer green,
And o’er the streams a charm, like moonlight, shed,
Through the soul’s depths in holy silence felt--
A spell to raise, to chasten, and to melt!
[398] A beautiful place in the county of Wicklow, formerly the abode of
the authoress of “Psyche.”
THE VOICE OF THE WAVES.
WRITTEN NEAR THE SCENE OF A RECENT SHIPWRECK.
“How perfect was the calm! It seem’d no sleep,
No mood which season takes away or brings;
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
...
But welcome fortitude and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne.”
Wordsworth.
Answer, ye chiming waves
That now in sunshine sweep!
Speak to me from thy hidden caves,
Voice of the solemn deep!
Hath man’s lone spirit here
With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
Hath anguish cried to heaven?
--Then the sea’s voice arose
Like an earthquake’s under-tone:
“Mortal! the strife of human woes
_Where_ hath _not_ nature known?
“Here to the quivering mast
Despair hath wildly clung;
The shriek upon the wind hath pass’d,
The midnight sky hath rung.
“And the youthful and the brave,
With their beauty and renown,
To the hollow chambers of the wave
In darkness have gone down.
“They are vanish’d from their place--
Let their homes and hearths make moan!
But the rolling waters keep no trace
Of pang or conflict gone.”
--Alas! thou haughty deep!
The strong, the sounding far!
My heart before thee dies,--I weep
To think on what we are!
To think that so we pass--
High hope, and thought, and mind--
Even as the breath-stain from the glass,
Leaving no sign behind!
Saw’st thou naught else, thou main?
Thou and the midnight sky?
Naught save the struggle, brief and vain,
The parting agony!
--And the sea’s voice replied:
“Here nobler things have been!
Power, with the valiant when they died,
To sanctify the scene:
“Courage, in fragile form,
Faith, trusting to the last,
Prayer, breathing heavenwards thro’ the storm:
But all alike have pass’d.”
Sound on, thou haughty sea!
_These_ have not pass’d in vain;
My soul awakes, my hope springs free
On victor wings again.
_Thou_, from thine empire driven,
May’st vanish with thy powers;
But, by the hearts that here have striven,
A loftier doom is ours!
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
“I seem like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but me departed.” Moore.
See’st thou yon gray, gleaming hall,
Where the deep elm-shadows fall?
Voices that have left the earth
Long ago,
Still are murmuring round its hearth,
Soft and low:
Ever there;--yet one alone
Hath the gift to hear their tone.
Guests come thither, and depart,
Free of step, and light of heart;
Children, with sweet visions bless’d,
In the haunted chambers rest;
One alone unslumbering lies
When the night hath seal’d all eyes,
One quick heart and watchful ear,
Listening for those whispers clear.
See’st thou where the woodbine-flowers
O’er yon low porch hang in showers?
Startling faces of the dead,
Pale, yet sweet,
One lone woman’s entering tread
There still meet!
Some with young, smooth foreheads fair,
Faintly shining through bright hair;
Some with reverend locks of snow--
All, all buried long ago!
All, from under deep sea-waves,
Or the flowers of foreign graves,
Or the old and banner’d aisle,
Where their high tombs gleam the while;
Rising, wandering, floating by,
Suddenly and silently,
Through their earthly home and place,
But amidst another race.
Wherefore, unto one alone,
Are those sounds and visions known?
Wherefore hath that spell of power
Dark and dread,
On _her_ soul, a baleful dower,
Thus been shed?
Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes,
No strange gift of mystery lies!
She is lone where once she moved
Fair, and happy, and beloved!
Sunny smiles were glancing round her,
Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her.
Now those silver chords are broken,
Those bright looks have left no token--
Not one trace on all the earth,
Save her memory of their mirth.
She is lone and lingering now,
Dreams have gather’d o’er her brow,
Midst gay songs and children’s play,
She is dwelling far away,
Seeing what none else may see--
Haunted still her place must be!
[“Mrs Hemans resided in the immediate vicinity of this old house (in
the village of Wavertree) for nearly three years’: it (Wavertree Hall)
suggested her beautiful poem, ‘Books and Flowers;’ and one of her most
exquisite lyrics, ‘The Haunted House,’ describes its local scenery,
and gives ‘a brief abstract’ of the sufferings and feelings of one of
its inhabitants.”--_Recollections of Mrs Hemans_, by Mrs Lawrence.
The same subject has been treated by the late lamented Thomas Hood
in a poem under a similar title.--_Vide Poems_, vol. i. p. 48. It is
worth referring to, if for nothing else than observing how it has been
dealt with by two ingenious and original minds. Mrs Hemans’s lyric was
first published.]
THE SHEPHERD-POET OF THE ALPS.
“God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom’s cause--
A spirit to his rocks akin,
The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!” Coleridge.
Singing of the free blue sky,
And the wild-flower glens that lie
Far amidst the ancient hills,
Which the fountain-music fills;
Singing of the snow-peaks bright,
And the royal eagle’s flight,
And the courage and the grace
Foster’d by the chamois-chase;
In his fetters, day by day,
So the Shepherd-poet lay.
Wherefore, from a dungeon-cell
Did those notes of freedom swell,
Breathing sadness not their own
Forth with every Alpine tone?
Wherefore!--can a tyrant’s ear
Brook the mountain-winds to hear,
When each blast goes pealing by
With a song of liberty?
Darkly hung th’ oppressor’s hand
O’er the Shepherd-poet’s land;
Sounding there the waters gush’d,
While the lip of man was hush’d;
There the falcon pierced the cloud,
While the fiery heart was bow’d.
But this might not long endure,
Where the mountain-homes were pure;
And a valiant voice arose,
Thrilling all the silent snows;
_His_--now singing far and lone,
Where the young breeze ne’er was known;
Singing of the glad blue sky,
Wildly--and how mournfully!
Are none but the Wind and the Lammer-Geyer
To be free where the hills unto heaven aspire?
Is the soul of song from the deep glens past,
Now that their poet is chain’d at last?--
Think of the mountains, and deem not so!
Soon shall each blast like a clarion blow!
Yes! though forbidden be every word
Wherewith that spirit the Alps hath stirr’d,
Yet even as a buried stream through earth
Rolls on to another and brighter birth,
So shall the voice that hath seem’d to die
Burst forth with the anthem of liberty!
And another power is moving
In a bosom fondly loving:
Oh! a sister’s heart is deep,
And her spirit strong to keep
Each light link of early hours,
All sweet scents of childhood’s flowers!
Thus each lay by Erni sung,
Rocks and crystal caves among,
Or beneath the linden-leaves,
Or the cabin’s vine-hung eaves,
Rapid though as bird-notes gushing,
Transient as a wan cheek’s flushing,
Each in young Teresa’s breast
Left its fiery words impress’d;
Treasured there lay every line,
As a rich book on a hidden shrine.
Fair was that lone girl, and meek,
With a pale, transparent cheek,
And a deep-fringed violet eye
Seeking in sweet shade to lie,
Or, if raised to glance above,
Dim with its own dews of love;
And a pure Madonna brow,
And a silvery voice and low,
Like the echo of a flute,
Even the last, ere all be mute.
But a loftier soul was seen
In the orphan sister’s mien,
From that hour when chains defiled
Him, the high Alps’ noble child.
Tones in her quivering voice awoke,
As if a harp of battle spoke;
Light, that seem’d born of an eagle’s nest,
Flash’d from her soft eyes unrepress’d;
And her form, like a spreading water-flower,
When its frail cup swells with a sudden shower,
Seem’d all dilated with love and pride,
And grief for that brother, her young heart’s guide.
Well might they love!--those two had grown
Orphans together and alone:
The silence of the Alpine sky
Had hush’d their hearts to piety;
The turf, o’er their dead mother laid,
Had been their altar when they pray’d;
There, more in tenderness than woe,
The stars had seen their young tears flow;
The clouds, in spirit-like descent,
Their deep thoughts by one touch had blent,
And the wild storms link’d them to each other--
How dear can peril make a brother!
Now is their hearth a forsaken spot,
The vine waves unpruned o’er their mountain cot:
Away, in that holy affection’s might,
The maiden is gone, like a breeze of the night.
She is gone forth alone, but her lighted face,
Filling with soul every secret place,
Hath a dower from heaven, and a gift of sway,
To arouse brave hearts in its hidden way,
Like the sudden flinging forth on high
Of a banner, that startleth silently!
She hath wander’d through many a hamlet-vale,
Telling its children her brother’s tale;
And the strains by his spirit pour’d away
Freely as fountains might shower their spray,
From her fervent lip a new life have caught,
And a power to kindle yet bolder thought;
While sometimes a melody, all her own,
Like a gush of tears in its plaintive tone,
May be heard midst the lonely rocks to flow,
Clear through the water-chimes--clear, yet low
“Thou’rt not where wild-flowers wave
O’er crag and sparry cave;
Thou’rt not where pines are sounding,
Or joyous torrents bounding--
Alas, my brother!
“Thou’rt not where green, on high,
The brighter pastures lie;
Ev’n those, thine own wild places,
Bear of our chain dark traces:
Alas, my brother!
“Far hath the sunbeam spread,
Nor found thy lonely bed;
Long hath the fresh wind sought thee,
Nor one sweet whisper brought thee--
Alas, my brother!
“Thou, that for joy wert born,
Free as the wings of morn!
Will aught thy young life cherish,
Where the Alpine rose would perish?--
Alas, my brother!
“Canst thou be singing still,
As once on every hill?
Is not thy soul forsaken,
And the bright gift from thee taken?--
Alas, alas, my brother!”
And _was_ the bright gift from the captive fled?
Like the fire on his hearth, was his spirit dead?
Not so!--but as rooted in stillness deep,
The pure stream-lily its place will keep,
Though its tearful urns to the blast may quiver,
While the red waves rush down the foaming river;
So freedom’s faith in his bosom lay,
Trembling, yet not to be borne away!
He thought of the Alps and their breezy air,
And felt that his country no chains might bear;
He thought of the hunter’s haughty life,
And knew there must yet be noble strife.
But, oh! when he thought of that orphan maid,
His high heart melted--he wept and pray’d!
For he saw her not as she moved e’en then,
A wakener of heroes in every glen,
With a glance inspired which no grief could tame,
Bearing on hope like a torch’s flame;
While the strengthening voice of mighty wrongs
Gave echoes back to her thrilling songs.
But his dreams were fill’d by a haunting tone,
Sad as a sleeping infant’s moan;
And his soul was pierced by a mournful eye,
Which look’d on it--oh! how beseechingly!
And there floated past him a fragile form,
With a willowy droop, as beneath the storm;
Till wakening in anguish, his faint heart strove
In vain with its burden of helpless love!
Thus woke the dreamer one weary night--
There flash’d through his dungeon a swift strong light;
He sprang up--he climb’d to the grating-bars.
--It was not the rising of moon or stars,
But a signal-flame from a peak of snow,
Rock’d through the dark skies to and fro!
There shot forth another--another still--
A hundred answers of hill to hill!
Tossing like pines in the tempest’s way,
Joyously, wildly, the bright spires play,
And each is hail’d with a pealing shout,
For the high Alps waving their banners out!
Erni! young Erni! the land hath risen!--
Alas! to be lone in thy narrow prison!
Those free streamers glancing, and thou not there!
--Is the moment of rapture, or fierce despair?
--Hark! there’s a tumult that shakes his cell,
At the gates of the mountain citadel!
Hark! a clear voice through the rude sounds ringing!
Doth he know the strain, and the wild, sweet singing?
“There may not long be fetters,
Where the cloud is earth’s array,
And the bright floods leap from cave and steep,
Like a hunter on the prey!
“There may not long be fetters,
Where the white Alps have their towers;
Unto Eagle-homes, if the arrow comes,
The chain is not for ours!”
It is she! She is come like a dayspring beam,
She that so mournfully shadow’d his dream!
With her shining eyes and her buoyant form,
She is come! her tears on his cheek are warm;
And oh! the thrill in that weeping voice!
“My brother! my brother! come forth, rejoice!”
Poet! the land of thy love is free,--
Sister! thy brother is won by thee!
TO THE MOUNTAIN WINDS.
----“How divine
The liberty, for frail, for mortal man,
To roam at large among unpeopled glens,
And mountainous retirements, only trod
By devious footsteps!--Regions consecrate
To oldest time! And reckless of the storm
That keeps the raven quiet in his nest,
Be as a presence or a motion--One
Among the many there.” Wordsworth.
Mountain winds! oh, whither do ye call me?
Vainly, vainly would my steps pursue!
Chains of care to lower earth enthrall me,
Wherefore thus my weary spirit woo?
Oh! the strife of this divided being!
Is there peace where ye are born on high?
Could we soar to your proud eyries fleeing,
In our hearts would haunting memories die?
Those wild places are not as a dwelling
Whence the footsteps of the loved are gone!
Never from those rocky halls came swelling
Voice of kindness in familiar tone!
Surely music of oblivion sweepeth
In the pathway of your wanderings free;
And the torrent, wildly as it leapeth,
Sings of no lost home amidst its glee.
There the rushing of the falcon’s pinion
Is not from some hidden pang to fly;
All things breathe of power and stern dominion--
Not of hearts that in vain yearnings die.
Mountain winds! oh! is it, is it only
Where man’s trace hath been that so we pine!
Bear me up, to grow in thought less lonely,
Even at nature’s deepest, loneliest shrine!
Wild, and mighty, and mysterious singers!
At whose tone my heart within me burns;
Bear me where the last red sunbeam lingers,
Where the waters have their secret urns!
There to commune with a loftier spirit
Than the troubling shadows of regret;
There the wings of freedom to inherit,
Where the enduring and the wing’d are met.
Hush, proud voices! gentle be your falling!
Woman’s lot thus chainless may not be;
Hush! the heart your trumpet-sounds are calling,
Darkly still may grow--but never free!
THE PROCESSION.
“‘The peace which passeth all understanding,’ disclosed itself in
her looks and movements. It lay on her countenance like a steady
unshadowed moonlight.”--Coleridge.
There were trampling sounds of many feet,
And music rush’d through the crowded street:
Proud music, such as tells the sky
Of a chief return’d from victory.
There were banners to the winds unroll’d,
With haughty words on each blazon’d fold;
High battle-names, which had rung of yore
When lances clash’d on the Syrian shore.
Borne from their dwellings, green and lone,
There were flowers of the woods on the pathway strown;
And wheels that crush’d as they swept along;--
Oh! what doth the violet amidst the throng?
I saw where a bright procession pass’d
The gates of a minster old and vast;
And a king to his crowning-place was led,
Through a sculptured line of the warrior-dead.
I saw, far gleaming, the long array
Of trophies, on those high tombs that lay,
And the colour’d light, that wrapp’d them all,
Rich, deep, and sad, as a royal pall.
But a lowlier grave soon won mine eye
Away from th’ ancestral pageantry--
A grave by the lordly minster’s gate,
Unhonour’d, and yet not desolate.
It was a dewy greensward bed,
Meet for the rest of a peasant head;
But Love--oh, lovelier than all beside!--
That lone place guarded and glorified.
For a gentle form stood watching there,
Young--but how sorrowfully fair!
Keeping the flowers of the holy spot,
That reckless feet might profane them not.
Clear, pale and clear, was the tender cheek,
And her eye, though tearful, serenely meek;
And I deem’d, by its lifted gaze of love,
That her sad heart’s treasure was all above.
For alone she seem’d midst the throng to be,
Like a bird of the waves far away at sea;
Alone, in a mourner’s vest array’d,
And with folded hands, e’en as if she pray’d.
It faded before me, that mask of pride,
The haughty swell of the music died;
Banner, and armour, and tossing plume,
All melted away in the twilight’s gloom.
But that orphan form, with its willowy grace,
And the speaking prayer in that pale, calm face,
Still, still o’er my thoughts in the night-hour glide--
--Oh! Love is lovelier than all beside!
THE BROKEN LUTE.
“When the lamp is shatter’d,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scatter’d,
The rainbow’s glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet sounds are remember’d not;
When the words are spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute.” Shelley.
She dwelt in proud Venetian halls,
Midst forms that breathed from the pictured walls
But a glow of beauty like her own,
There had no dream of the painter thrown.
Lit from within was her noble brow,
As an urn, whence rays from a lamp may flow;
Her young, clear cheek, had a changeful hue,
As if ye might see how the soul wrought through,
And every flash of her fervent eye
Seem’d the bright wakening of Poesy.
Even thus it was! From her childhood’s years
A being of sudden smiles and tears--
Passionate visions, quick light and shade--
Such was that high-born Italian maid!
And the spirit of song in her bosom-cell
Dwelt, as the odours in violets dwell,
Or as the sounds in Æolian strings,
Or in aspen-leaves the quiverings;
There, ever there, with the life enshrined,
Waiting the call of the faintest wind.
Oft, on the wave of the Adrian sea,
In the city’s hour of moonlight glee--
Oft would that gift of the southern sky
O’erflow from her lips in melody;
Oft amid festal halls it came,
Like the springing forth of a sudden flame--
Till the dance was hush’d, and the silvery tone
Of her inspiration was heard alone.
And fame went with her, the bright, the crown’d,
And music floated her steps around;
And every lay of her soul was borne
Through the sunny land, as on wings of morn.
And was the daughter of Venice blest,
With a power so deep in her youthful breast?
Could she be happy, o’er whose dark eye
So many changes and dreams went by?
And in whose cheek the swift crimson wrought
As if but born from the rush of thought?
Yes! in the brightness of joy awhile
She moved as a bark in the sunbeam’s smile;
For her spirit, as over her lyre’s full chord,
All, all on a happy love was pour’d!
How loves a heart whence the stream of song
Flows, like the life-blood, quick, bright, and strong?
How loves a heart, which hath never proved
One breath of the world? Even so she loved;
Bless’d, though the lord of her soul, afar,
Was charging the foremost in Moslem war,
Bearing the flag of St Mark’s on high,
As a ruling star in the Grecian sky.
Proud music breathed in her song, when fame
Gave a tone more thrilling to his name;
And her trust in his love was a woman’s faith--
Perfect, and fearing no change but death.
But the fields are won from the Othman host,
In the land that quell’d the Persian’s boast,
And a thousand hearts in Venice burn
For the day of triumph and return!
The day is come! the flashing deep
Foams where the galleys of victory sweep;
And the sceptred city of the wave
With her festal splendour greets the brave;
Cymbal, and clarion, and voice, around,
Make the air one stream of exulting sound;
While the beautiful, with their sunny smiles,
Look from each hall of the hundred isles.
But happiest and brightest that day of all,
Robed for her warrior’s festival,
Moving a queen midst the radiant throng,
Was she, th’ inspired one, the maid of song!
The lute he loved on her arm she bore,
As she rush’d in her joy to the crowded shore;
With a hue on her cheek like the damask glow
By the sunset given unto mountain snow,
And her eye all fill’d with the spirit’s play,
Like the flash of a gem to the changeful day,
And her long hair waving in ringlets bright--
So came that being of hope and light!
One moment, Erminia! one moment more,
And life, all the beauty of life, is o’er!
The bark of her lover hath touch’d the strand--
Whom leads he forth with a gentle hand?
--A young fair form, whose nymph-like grace
Accorded well with the Grecian face,
And the eye, in its clear, soft darkness meek,
And the lashes that droop’d o’er a pale rose cheek,
And he look’d on that beauty with tender pride--
The warrior hath brought back an Eastern bride!
But how stood she, the forsaken, there,
Struck by the lightning of swift despair?
Still, as amazed with grief, she stood,
And her cheek to her heart sent back the blood;
And there came from her quivering lip no word,
Only the fall of her lute was heard,
As it dropp’d from her hand at her rival’s feet,
Into fragments, whose dying thrill was sweet!
What more remaineth? Her day was done;
Her fate and the Broken Lute’s were one!
The light, the vision, the gift of power,
Pass’d from her soul in that mortal hour,
Like the rich sound from the shatter’d string
Whence the gush of sweetness no more might spring!
As an eagle struck in his upward flight.
So was her hope from its radiant height;
And her song went with it for evermore,
A gladness taken from sea and shore!
She had moved to the echoing sound of fame--
Silently, silently, died her name!
Silently melted her life away,
As ye have seen a young flower decay,
Or a lamp that hath swiftly burn’d expire,
Or a bright stream shrink from the summer’s fire,
Leaving its channel all dry and mute--
Woe for the Broken Heart and Lute!
THE BURIAL IN THE DESERT.
“How weeps yon gallant band
O’er him their valour could not save!
For the bayonet is red with gore,
And he, the beautiful and brave,
Now sleeps in Egypt’s sand.” Wilson.
In the shadow of the Pyramid
Our brother’s grave we made,
When the battle-day was done,
And the desert’s parting sun
A field of death survey’d.
The blood-red sky above us
Was darkening into night,
And the Arab watching silently
Our sad and hurried rite;
The voice of Egypt’s river
Came hollow and profound;
And one lone palm-tree, where we stood,
Rock’d with a shivery sound:
While the shadow of the Pyramid
Hung o’er the grave we made,
When the battle-day was done,
And the desert’s parting sun
A field of death survey’d.
The fathers of our brother
Were borne to knightly tombs,
With torch-light and with anthem-note,
And many waving plumes:
But he, the last and noblest
Of that high Norman race,
With a few brief words of soldier-love
Was gather’d to his place;
In the shadow of the Pyramid,
Where his youthful form we laid,
When the battle-day was done,
And the desert’s parting sun
A field of death survey’d.
But let him, let him slumber
By the old Egyptian wave!
It is well with those who bear their fame
Unsullied to the grave!
When brightest names are breathed on,
When loftiest fall so fast,
We would not call our brother back
On dark days to be cast,--
From the shadow of the Pyramid,
Where his noble heart we laid,
When the battle-day was done,
And the desert’s parting sun
A field of death survey’d.
[“Mrs Hemans’ funeral poems are among her most impressive works: the
music of her verse, through which an under-current of sadness may
always be traced, was never more happily employed than in lamenting
the beloved and early called, or in bidding
‘Hope to the world to look beyond the tombs.’
I need only mention a few lyrics, ‘The Farewell to the Dead,’ (in
the Lays of Many Lands;) ‘The Exile’s Dirge,’ (in the Songs of the
Affections;) ‘The Burial of an Emigrant’s Child in the Forest,’ (in
the Scenes and Hymns of Life;) and the ‘Burial in the Desert,’ a noble
poem, published among her poetical remains. The introduction of the
two following stanzas of a more concise and monumental character,[399]
though they have already appeared in print, will not, I am sure, be
objected to as illustrating the above remark.”--Chorley’s _Memorials
of Mrs Hemans_, p. 26-7.]
[399] Vide “Monumental Inscription,” p. 356.
TO A PICTURE OF THE MADONNA.
“Ave Maria! May our spirits dare
Look up to thine, and to thy Son’s above?” Byron.
Fair vision! thou’rt from sunny skies,
Born where the rose hath richest dyes;
To thee a southern heart hath given
That glow of love, that calm of heaven,
And round thee cast th’ ideal gleam,
The light that is but of a dream.
Far hence, where wandering music fills
The haunted air of Roman hills,
Or where Venetian waves of yore
Heard melodies, they hear no more,
Some proud old minster’s gorgeous aisle
Hath known the sweetness of thy smile.
Or haply, from a lone, dim shrine
Mid forests of the Apennine,
Whose breezy sounds of cave and dell
Pass like a floating anthem-swell,
Thy soft eyes o’er the pilgrim’s way
Shed blessings with their gentle ray.
Or gleaming through a chestnut wood,
Perchance thine island-chapel stood,
Where from the blue Sicilian sea
The sailor’s hymn hath risen to thee,
And bless’d thy power to guide, to save,
Madonna! watcher of the wave!
Oh! might a voice, a whisper low,
Forth from those lips of beauty flow!
Couldst thou but speak of all the tears,
The conflicts, and the pangs of years,
Which, at thy secret shrine reveal’d,
Have gush’d from human hearts unseal’d!
Surely to thee hath woman come,
As a tired wanderer back to home!
Unveiling many a timid guest
And treasured sorrow of her breast,
A buried love--a wasting care--
Oh! did those griefs win peace from prayer?
And did the poet’s fervid soul
To thee lay bare its inmost scroll?
Those thoughts, which pour’d their quenchless fire
And passion o’er th’ Italian lyre,
Did they to still submission die
Beneath thy calm, religious eye?
And hath the crested helmet bow’d
Before thee, midst the incense-cloud?
Hath the crown’d leader’s bosom lone
To thee its haughty griefs made known?
Did thy glance break their frozen sleep,
And win th’ unconquer’d one to weep?
Hush’d is the anthem, closed the vow,
The votive garland wither’d now;
Yet holy still to me thou art,
Thou that hath soothed so many a heart!
And still must blessed influence flow
From the meek glory of thy brow.
Still speak to suffering woman’s love,
Of rest for gentle hearts above;
Of hope, that hath its treasure there,
Of home, that knows no changeful air.
Bright form! lit up with thoughts divine,
Ave! such power be ever thine!
A THOUGHT OF THE ROSE.
How much of memory dwells amidst thy bloom,
Rose! ever wearing beauty for thy dower!
The bridal-day--the festival--the tomb--
Thou hast thy part in each, thou stateliest flower!
Therefore with thy soft breath come floating by
A thousand images of love and grief,
Dreams, fill’d with tokens of mortality,
Deep thoughts of all things beautiful and brief.
Not such thy spells o’er those that hail’d thee first,
In the clear light of Eden’s golden day!
There thy rich leaves to crimson glory burst,
Link’d with no dim remembrance of decay.
Rose! for the banquet gather’d, and the bier;
Rose! colour’d now by human hope and pain
Surely where death is not--nor change, nor fear,
Yet may we meet thee, joy’s own flower again!
DREAMS OF HEAVEN.
“We colour heaven with our own human thoughts,
Our vain aspirings, fond remembrances,
Our passionate love, that seems unto itself
An Immortality.”
Dream’st _thou_ of heaven? What dreams are thine?
Fair child, fair gladsome child?
With eyes that like the dewdrop shine,
And bounding footsteps wild!
Tell me what hues th’ immortal shore
Can wear, my bird! to thee?
Ere yet one shadow hath pass’d o’er
Thy glance and spirit free?
“Oh! beautiful is heaven, and bright
With long, long summer days;
I see its lilies gleam in light
Where many a fountain plays.
“And there uncheck’d, methinks, I rove,
And seek where young flowers lie,
In vale and golden-fruited grove--
Flowers that are not to die!”
Thou poet of the lonely thought,
Sad heir of gifts divine!
Say with what solemn glory fraught
Is heaven in dreams of thine?
“Oh! where the living waters flow
Along that radiant shore,
My soul, a wanderer here, shall know
The exile-thirst no more.
“The burden of the stranger’s heart
Which here alone I bear,
Like the night-shadow shall depart,
With my first wakening _there_.
“And borne on eagle wings afar,
Free thought shall claim its dower,
From every realm, from every star,
Of glory and of power.”
O woman! with the soft sad eye,
Of spiritual gleam,
Tell me of those bright worlds on high,
How doth _thy_ fond heart dream?
By the sweet mournful voice I know,
On thy pale brow I see,
That thou hast loved, in fear, and woe--
Say what is heaven to thee?
“Oh! heaven is where no secret dread
May haunt love’s meeting hour,
Where from the past no gloom is shed
O’er the heart’s chosen bower:
“Where every sever’d wreath is bound--
Where none have heard the knell
That smites the heart with that deep sound--
_Farewell, beloved!--farewell!_”
THE WISH.
Come to me, when my soul
Hath but a few dim hours to linger here;
When earthly chains are as a shrivel’d scroll,
Oh! let me feel thy presence! be but near!
That I may look once more
Into thine eyes, which never changed for me;
That I may speak to thee of that bright shore
Where, with our treasure, we have long’d to be.
Thou friend of many days!
Of sadness and of joy, of home and hearth!
Will not thy spirit aid me then to raise
The trembling pinions of my hope from earth?
By every solemn thought
Which on our hearts hath sunk in days gone by,
From the deep voices of the mountains caught,
O’er all th’ adoring silence of the sky;
By every lofty theme
Whereon, in low-toned reverence we have spoken;
By our communion in each fervent dream
That sought from realms beyond the grave a token;
And by our tears for those
Whose loss hath touch’d our world with hues of death;
And by the hopes that with their dust repose,
As flowers await the south-wind’s vernal breath;
Come to me in that day--
The one--the sever’d from all days--O friend!
Even then, if human thought may then have sway
My soul with thine shall yet rejoice to blend.
Nor then, nor _there_ alone:
I ask my heart if all indeed must die--
All that of holiest feelings it hath known?
And my heart’s voice replies--Eternity?
WRITTEN AFTER VISITING A TOMB,
NEAR WOODSTOCK, IN THE COUNTY OF KILKENNY.[400]
“Yes! hide beneath the mouldering heap,
The undelighted, slighted thing;
There in the cold earth, buried deep,
In silence let it wait the Spring.”
Mrs Tighe’s “Poem on the Lily.”
I stood where the lip of song lay low,
Where the dust had gather’d on Beauty’s brow;
Where stillness hung on the heart of Love,
And a marble weeper kept watch above.
I stood in the silence of lonely thought,
Of deep affections that inly wrought,
Troubled, and dreamy, and dim with fear--
They knew themselves exiled spirits here!
Then didst _thou_ pass me in radiance by,
Child of the sunbeam, bright butterfly!
Thou that dost bear, on thy fairy wings,
No burden of mortal sufferings.
Thou wert flitting past that solemn tomb,
Over a bright world of joy and bloom;
And strangely I felt, as I saw thee shine,
The all that sever’d _thy_ life and _mine_.
_Mine_, with its inborn mysterious things,
Of love and grief its unfathom’d springs;
And quick thoughts wandering o’er earth and sky,
With voices to question eternity!
_Thine_, in its reckless and joyous way,
Like an embodied breeze at play!
Child of the sunlight!--thou wing’d and free!
One moment, _one_ moment, I envied thee!
Thou art not lonely, though born to roam,
Thou hast no longings that pine for home;
Thou seek’st not the haunts of the bee and bird,
To fly from the sickness of hope deferr’d:
In thy brief being no strife of mind,
No boundless passion, is deeply shrined;
While I, as I gazed on thy swift flight by,
One hour of my soul seem’d infinity!
And she, that voiceless below me slept,
Flow’d not her song from a heart that wept?
--O Love and Song! though of heaven your powers,
Dark is your fate in this world of ours.
Yet, ere I turn’d from that silent place,
Or ceased from watching thy sunny race,
Thou, even thou, on those glancing wings,
Didst waft me visions of brighter things!
Thou that dost image the freed soul’s birth,
And its flight away o’er the mists of earth,
Oh! fitly thy path is through flowers that rise
Round the dark chamber where Genius lies!
[400] See the “Grave of a Poetess,” p. 411, on the same subject, and
written several years previously to visiting the scene.
EPITAPH.