The Poems of Felicia Hemans
And breathe and move, the records of your power.
Inspired of heaven! what heighten’d pomp ye cast
O’er all the deathless trophies of the past!
Round many a marble fane and classic dome,
Asserting still the majesty of Rome--
Round many a work that bids the world believe
What Grecian Art could image and achieve,
Again, creative minds, your visions throw
Life’s chasten’d warmth and Beauty’s mellowest glow.
And when the Morn’s bright beams and mantling dyes
Pour the rich lustre of Ausonian skies,
Or evening suns illume with purple smile
The Parian altar and the pillar’d aisle,
Then, as the full or soften’d radiance falls
On angel-groups that hover o’er the walls,
Well may those temples, where your hand has shed
Light o’er the tomb, existence round the dead,
Seem like some world, so perfect and so fair,
That nought of earth should find admittance there,
Some sphere, where beings, to mankind unknown,
Dwell in the brightness of their pomp alone!
Hence, ye vain fictions! fancy’s erring theme!
Gods of illusion! phantoms of a dream!
Frail, powerless idols of departed time,
Fables of song, delusive, though sublime!
To loftier tasks has Roman Art assign’d
Her matchless pencil, and her mighty mind!
From brighter streams her vast ideas flow’d,
With purer fire her ardent spirit glow’d.
To her ’twas given in fancy to explore
The land of miracles, the holiest shore;
That realm where first the Light of Life was sent,
The loved, the punish’d, of th’ Omnipotent!
O’er Judah’s hills her thoughts inspired would stray,
Through Jordan’s valleys trace their lonely way;
By Siloa’s brook, or Almotana’s deep,[10]
Chain’d in dead silence, and unbroken sleep;
Scenes, whose cleft rocks and blasted deserts tell
Where pass’d th’ Eternal, where his anger fell!
Where oft his voice the words of fate reveal’d,
Swell’d in the whirlwind, in the thunder peal’d,
Or, heard by prophets in some palmy vale,
“Breathed still small” whispers on the midnight gale.
There dwelt her spirit--there her hand portray’d,
Midst the lone wilderness or cedar-shade,
Ethereal forms with awful missions fraught,
Or patriarch-seers absorb’d in sacred thought,
Bards, in high converse with the world of rest,
Saints of the earth, and spirits of the blest.
But chief to Him, the Conqueror of the grave,
Who lived to guide us, and who died to save;
Him, at whose glance the powers of evil fled,
And soul return’d to animate the dead;
Whom the waves own’d--and sunk beneath his eye,
Awed by one accent of Divinity;
To Him she gave her meditative hours,
Hallow’d her thoughts, and sanctified her powers.
O’er her bright scenes sublime repose she threw,
As all around the Godhead’s presence knew,
And robed the Holy One’s benignant mien
In beaming mercy, majesty serene.
Oh! mark where Raphael’s pure and perfect line
Portrays that form ineffably divine!
Where with transcendant skill his hand has shed
Diffusive sunbeams round the Saviour’s head;[11]
Each heaven-illumined lineament imbued
With all the fulness of beatitude,
And traced the sainted group, whose mortal sight
Sinks overpower’d by that excess of light!
Gaze on that scene, and own the might of Art,
By truth inspired, to elevate the heart!
To bid the soul exultingly possess,
Of all her powers, a heighten’d consciousness;
And, strong in hope, anticipate the day,
The last of life, the first of freedom’s ray;
To realise, in some unclouded sphere,
Those pictured glories feebly imaged here!
Dim, cold reflections from her native sky,
Faint effluence of “the Dayspring from on high!”
[This poem is thus alluded to by Lord Byron, in one of his published
letters to Mr Murray, dated from Diodati, Sept. 30th, 1818:--“Italy or
Dalmatia and another summer may, or may not, set me off again.... I
shall take Felicia Hemans’s _Restoration_, &c., with me--it is a good
poem--very.”]
[6] The Belvidere Torso, the favourite study of Michael Angelo, and of
many other distinguished artists.
[7] “Quoique cette statue d’Hercule ait été maltraitée et mutilée d’une
manière étrange, se trouvant sans tête, sans bras, et sans jambes, elle
est cependant encore un chef-d’œuvre aux yeux des connoisseurs; et ceux
qui savent percer dans les mystères de l’art, se la représentent dans
toute sa beauté. L’Artiste, en voulant représenter Hercule, a formé
un corps idéal audessus de la nature * * * Cet Hercule paroît donc
ici tel qu’il put être lorsque, purifié par le feu des foiblesses de
l’humanité, il obtint l’immortalité et prit place auprès des Dieux.
Il est représenté sans aucun besoin de nourriture et de réparation de
forces. Les veines y sont tout invisibles.”--Winckelmann, _Histoire de
l’Art chez les Anciens_, torn. ii. p. 248.
[8] “Le Torso d’Hercule paroît un des derniers ouvrages parfaits que
l’art ait produit en Grèce, avant la perte de sa libérté. Car après que
la Grèce fut réduite en province Romaine, l’histoire ne fait mention
d’aucun artiste célèbre de cette nation, jusqu’aux temps du Triumvirat
Romain.”--Winckelmann, _ibid._ tom. ii. p. 250.
[9] “It is not, in the same manner, in the agonised limbs, or in
the convulsed muscles of the Laocoon, that the secret grace of its
composition resides; it is in the majestic air of the head, which has
not _yielded to suffering_, and in the deep serenity of the forehead,
which seems to be still _superior_ to all its _afflictions_, and
significant of a mind that cannot be subdued.”--Alison’s _Essays_, vol.
ii. p. 400.
“Laocoon nous offre le spectacle de la nature humaine dans la plus
grande douleur dont elle soit susceptible, sous l’image d’un homme qui
tâche de rassembler contre elle toute la force de l’esprit. Tandis que
l’excès de la souffrance enfle les muscles, et tire violemment les
nerfs, le courage se montre sur le front gonflé: la poitrine s’élève
avec peine par la nécessité de la respiration, qui est également
contrainte par le silence que la force de l’âme impose à la douleur
qu’elle voudrait étouffer * * * * Son air est plaintif, et non
criard.”---Winckelmann, _Histoire de l’Art chez les Anciens_, tom. ii.
p. 214.
[10] _Almotana._ The name given by the Arabs to the Dead Sea.
[11] _The Transfiguration_, thought to be so perfect a specimen of
art, that, in honour of Raphael, it was carried before his body to the
grave.
MODERN GREECE.
“O Greece! thou sapient nurse of finer arts,
Which to bright Science blooming Fancy bore,
Be this thy praise, that thou, and thou alone,
In these hast led the way, in these excell’d,
Crown’d with the laurel of assenting Time.”
Thomson’s _Liberty_.
I.
Oh! who hath trod thy consecrated clime,
Fair land of Phidias! theme of lofty strains!
And traced each scene that, midst the wrecks of time,
The print of Glory’s parting step retains;
Nor for awhile, in high-wrought dreams, forgot,
Musing on years gone by in brightness there,
The hopes, the fears, the sorrows of his lot,
The hues his fate hath worn, or yet may wear;
As when, from mountain-heights, his ardent eye
Of sea and heaven hath track’d the blue infinity?
II.
Is there who views with cold unalter’d mien,
His frozen heart with proud indifference fraught,
Each sacred haunt, each unforgotten scene,
Where Freedom triumph’d, or where Wisdom taught?
Souls that too deeply feel! oh, envy not
The sullen calm your fate hath never known:
Through the dull twilight of that wintery lot
Genius ne’er pierced, nor Fancy’s sunbeam shone,
Nor those high thoughts that, hailing Glory’s trace,
Glow with the generous flames of every age and race.
III.
But blest the wanderer whose enthusiast mind
Each muse of ancient days hath deep imbued
With lofty lore, and all his thoughts refined
In the calm school of silent solitude;
Pour’d on his ear, midst groves and glens retired,
The mighty strains of each illustrious clime,
All that hath lived, while empires have expired,
To float for ever on the winds of time;
And on his soul indelibly portray’d
Fair visionary forms, to fill each classic shade.
IV.
Is not this mind, to meaner thoughts unknown,
A sanctuary of beauty and of light?
There he may dwell in regions all his own,
A world of dreams, where all is pure and bright.
For him the scenes of old renown possess
Romantic charms, all veil’d from other eyes;
There every form of nature’s loveliness
Wakes in his breast a thousand sympathies;
As music’s voice, in some lone mountain dell,
From rocks and caves around calls forth each echo’s swell.
V.
For him Italia’s brilliant skies illume
The bard’s lone haunts, the warrior’s combat-plains,
And the wild rose yet lives to breath and bloom
Round Doric Pæstum’s solitary fanes.[12]
But most, fair Greece! on thy majestic shore
He feels the fervours of his spirit rise;
Thou birth-place of the Muse! whose voice of yore
Breathed in thy groves immortal harmonies;
And lingers still around the well-known coast,
Murmuring a wild farewell to fame and freedom lost.
VI.
By seas that flow in brightness as they lave
Thy rocks, th’ enthusiast rapt in thought may stray,
While roves his eye o’er that deserted wave,
Once the proud scene of battle’s dread array.
--O ye blue waters! ye, of old that bore
The free, the conquering, hymn’d by choral strains,
How sleep ye now around the silent shore,
The lonely realm of ruins and of chains!
How are the mighty vanish’d in their pride!
E’en as their barks have left no traces on your tide.
VII.
Hush’d are the Pæans whose exulting tone
Swell’d o’er that tide[13]--the sons of battle sleep--
The wind’s wild sigh, the halcyon’s voice alone
Blend with the plaintive murmur of the deep.
Yet when those waves have caught the splendid hues
Of morn’s rich firmament, serenely bright,
Or setting suns the lovely shore suffuse
With all their purple mellowness of light,
Oh! who could view the scene, so calmly fair,
Nor dream that peace, and joy, and liberty were there?
VIII.
Where soft the sunbeams play, the zephyrs blow,
’Tis hard to deem that misery can be nigh;
Where the clear heavens in blue transparence glow,
Life should be calm and cloudless as the sky;
--Yet o’er the low, dark dwellings of the dead,
Verdure and flowers in summer-bloom may smile,
And ivy-boughs their graceful drapery spread
In green luxuriance o’er the ruin’d pile;
And mantling woodbine veil the wither’d tree;--
And thus it is, fair land! forsaken Greece, with thee.
IX.
For all the loveliness, and light, and bloom
That yet are thine, surviving many a storm,
Are but as heaven’s warm radiance on the tomb,
The rose’s blush that masks the canker-worm.
And thou art desolate--thy morn hath pass’d!
So dazzling in the splendour of its sway,
That the dark shades the night hath o’er thee cast
Throw tenfold gloom around thy deep decay.
Once proud in freedom, still in ruin fair,
Thy fate hath been unmatch’d--in glory and despair.
X.
For thee, lost land! the hero’s blood hath flow’d,