The Poems of Felicia Hemans
The high in soul have brightly lived and died;
For thee the light of soaring genius glow’d
O’er the fair arts it form’d and glorified.
Thine were the minds whose energies sublime
So distanced ages in their lightning-race,
The task they left the sons of later time
Was but to follow their illumined trace.
--Now, bow’d to earth, thy children, to be free,
Must break each link that binds their filial hearts to thee.
XI.
Lo! to the scenes of fiction’s wildest tales,
Her own bright East, thy son, Morea! flies,[14]
To seek repose midst rich, romantic vales,
Whose incense mounts to Asia’s vivid skies.
There shall he rest?--Alas! his hopes in vain
Guide to the sun-clad regions of the palm:
Peace dwells not now on oriental plain,
Though earth is fruitfulness, and air is balm;
And the sad wanderer finds but lawless foes,
Where patriarchs reign’d of old in pastoral repose.
XII.
Where Syria’s mountains rise, or Yemen’s groves,
Or Tigris rolls his genii-haunted wave,
Life to his eye, as wearily it roves,
Wears but two forms--the tyrant and the slave!
There the fierce Arab leads his daring horde
Where sweeps the sand-storm o’er the burning wild;
There stern Oppression waves the wasting sword
O’er plains that smile as ancient Eden smiled;
And the vale’s bosom, and the desert’s gloom,
Yield to the injured there no shelter save the tomb.
XIII.
But thou, fair world! whose fresh unsullied charms
Welcomed Columbus from the western wave,
Wilt thou receive the wanderer to thine arms,[15]
The lost descendant of the immortal brave?
Amidst the wild magnificence of shades
That o’er thy floods their twilight-grandeur cast,
In the green depth of thine untrodden glades
Shall he not rear his bower of peace at last?
Yes! thou hast many a lone, majestic scene,
Shrined in primeval woods, where despot ne’er hath been.
XIV.
There by some lake, whose blue expansive breast
Bright from afar, an inland ocean, gleams,
Girt with vast solitudes, profusely dress’d
In tints like those that float o’er poet’s dreams;
Or where some flood from pine-clad mountain pours
Its might of waters, glittering in their foam,
Midst the rich verdure of its wooded shores,
The exiled Greek hath fix’d his sylvan home:
So deeply lone, that round the wild retreat
Scarce have the paths been trod by Indian huntsman’s feet.
XV.
The forests are around him in their pride,
The green savannas, and the mighty waves;
And isles of flowers, bright-floating o’er the tide,[16]
That images the fairy worlds it laves,
And stillness, and luxuriance. O’er his head
The ancient cedars wave their peopled bowers,
On high the palms their graceful foliage spread,
Cinctured with roses the magnolia towers;
And from those green arcades a thousand tones
Wake with each breeze, whose voice through Nature’s temple moans.
XVI.
And there, no traces left by brighter days
For glory lost may wake a sigh of grief;
Some grassy mound, perchance, may meet his gaze,
The lone memorial of an Indian chief.
There man not yet hath mark’d the boundless plain
With marble records of his fame and power;
The forest is his everlasting fane,
The palm his monument, the rock his tower:
Th’ eternal torrent and the giant tree
Remind him but that they, like him, are wildly free.
XVII.
But doth the exile’s heart serenely there
In sunshine dwell?--Ah! when was exile blest?
When did bright scenes, clear heavens, or summer air,
Chase from his soul the fever of unrest?
--There is a heart-sick weariness of mood,
That like slow poison wastes the vital glow,
And shrines itself in mental solitude,
An uncomplaining and a nameless woe.
That coldly smiles midst pleasure’s brightest ray,
As the chill glacier’s peak reflects the flush of day.
XVIII.
Such grief is theirs, who, fix’d on foreign shore,
Sigh for the spirit of their native gales,
As pines the seaman, midst the ocean’s roar,
For the green earth, with all its woods and vales.
Thus feels thy child, whose memory dwells with thee,
Loved Greece! all sunk and blighted as thou art
Though thought and step in western wilds be free,
Yet thine are still the daydreams of his heart:
The deserts spread between, the billows foam,
Thou, distant and in chains, are yet his spirit’s home.
XIX.
In vain for him the gay liannes entwine,
Or the green fire-fly sparkles through the brakes,
Or summer-winds waft odours from the pine,
As eve’s last blush is dying on the lakes.
Through thy fair vales his fancy roves the while,
Or breathes the freshness of Cithæron’s height,
Or dreams how softly Athens’ towers would smile,
Or Sunium’s ruins, in the fading light;
On Corinth’s cliff what sunset hues may sleep,
Or, at that placid hour, how calm th’ Ægean deep!
XX.
What scenes, what sunbeams, are to him like thine?
(The all of thine no tyrant could destroy!)
E’en to the stranger’s roving eye, they shine
Soft as a vision of remember’d joy.
And he who comes, the pilgrim of a day,
A passing wanderer o’er each Attic hill,
Sighs as his footsteps turn from thy decay,
To laughing climes, where all is splendour still;
And views with fond regret thy lessening shore,
As he would watch a star that sets to rise no more.
XXI.
Realm of sad beauty! thou art as a shrine
That Fancy visits with Devotion’s zeal,
To catch high thoughts and impulses divine,
And all the glow of soul enthusiasts feel
Amidst the tombs of heroes--for the brave
Whose dust, so many an age, hath been thy soil,
Foremost in honour’s phalanx, died to save
The land redeem’d and hallow’d by their toil;
And there is language in thy lightest gale,
That o’er the plains they won seems murmuring yet their tale.
XXII.
And he, whose heart is weary of the strife
Of meaner spirits, and whose mental gaze
Would shun the dull cold littleness of life,
Awhile to dwell amidst sublimer days,
Must turn to thee, whose every valley teems
With proud remembrances that cannot die.
Thy glens are peopled with inspiring dreams,
Thy winds, the voice of oracles gone by;
And midst thy laurel shades the wanderer hears
The sound of mighty names, the hymns of vanish’d years.
XXIII.
Through that deep solitude be his to stray,
By Faun and Oread loved in ages past,
Where clear Peneus winds his rapid way
Though the cleft heights, in antique grandeur vast.
Romantic Tempe! thou art yet the same--
Wild, as when sung by bards of elder time:[17]
Years, that have changed thy river’s classic name,[18]
Have left thee still in savage pomp sublime;
And from thine Alpine clefts and marble caves,
In living lustre still break forth the fountain waves.
XXIV.
Beneath thy mountain battlements and towers,
Where the rich arbute’s coral berries glow,[19]
Or midst th’ exuberance of thy forest bowers,
Casting deep shadows o’er the current’s flow,
Oft shall the pilgrim pause, in lone recess,
As rock and stream some glancing light have caught,
And gaze, till Nature’s mighty forms impress
His soul with deep sublimity of thought;
And linger oft, recalling many a tale,
That breeze, and wave, and wood seem whispering through thy dale.
XXV.
He, thought-entranced, may wander where of old
From Delphi’s chasm the mystic vapour rose,
And trembling nations heard their doom foretold
By the dread spirit throned midst rocks and snows.
Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust,
And silence now the hallow’d haunt possess,
Still is the scene of ancient rites august,
Magnificent in mountain loneliness;
Still inspiration hovel’s o’er the ground,
Where Greece her councils held,[20] her Pythian victors crown’d.
XXVI.
Or let his steps the rude gray cliffs explore
Of that wild pass, once dyed with Spartan blood,
When by the waves that break on Œta’s shore,
The few, the fearless, the devoted, stood!
Or rove where, shadowing Mantinea’s plain,
Bloom the wild laurels o’er the warlike dead,[21]
Or lone Platæa’s ruins yet remain
To mark the battle-field of ages fled:
Still o’er such scenes presides a sacred power,
Though Fiction’s gods have fled from fountain, grot, and bower.
XXVII.
Oh! still unblamed may fancy fondly deem
That, lingering yet, benignant genii dwell
Where mortal worth has hallow’d grove or stream,
To sway the heart with some ennobling spell;
For mightiest minds have felt their blest control
In the wood’s murmur, in the zephyr’s sigh,
And these are dreams that lend a voice and soul,
And a high power, to Nature’s majesty!
And who can rove o’er Grecian shores, nor feel,
Soft o’er his inmost heart, their secret magic steal?
XXVIII.
Yet many a sad reality is there,
That Fancy’s bright illusions cannot veil.
Pure laughs the light, and balmy breathes the air,
But Slavery’s mien will tell its bitter tale;
And there, not Peace, but Desolation, throws
Delusive quiet o’er full many a scene--
Deep as the brooding torpor of repose
That follows where the earthquake’s track hath been;
Or solemn calm on Ocean’s breast that lies,
When sinks the storm, and death has hush’d the seamen’s cries.
XXIX.
Hast thou beheld some sovereign spirit, hurl’d
By Fate’s rude tempest from its radiant sphere,
Doom’d to resign the homage of a world,
For Pity’s deepest sigh and saddest tear?
Oh! hast thou watch’d the awful wreck of mind
That weareth still a glory in decay?
Seen all that dazzles and delights mankind--
Thought, science, genius--to the storm a prey;
And o’er the blasted tree, the wither’d ground,
Despair’s wild nightshade spread, and darkly flourish round?
XXX.
So mayst thou gaze, in sad and awe-struck thought,
On the deep fall of that yet lovely clime:
Such there the ruin Time and Fate have wrought,
So changed the bright, the splendid, the sublime.
There the proud monuments of Valour’s name,
The mighty works Ambition piled on high,
The rich remains by Art bequeath’d to Fame--
Grace, beauty, grandeur, strength, and symmetry,
Blend in decay; while all that yet is fair
Seems only spared to tell how much hath perish’d there!
XXXI.
There, while around lie mingling in the dust
The column’s graceful shaft, with weeds o’er grown,
The mouldering torso, the forgotten bust.
The warrior’s urn, the altar’s mossy stone--
Amidst the loneliness of shatter’d fanes,
Still matchless monuments of other years--
O’er cypress groves or solitary plains,
Its eastern form the minaret proudly rears:
As on some captive city’s ruin’d wall
The victor’s banner waves, exulting o’er its fall.
XXXII.
Still, where that column of the mosque aspires,
Landmark of slavery, towering o’er the waste,