The Poems of Felicia Hemans
May swell to burst its chain--
Bring me the music of the sweeping sea!
Within me dwells a flame,
An eagle caged and tame,
Till call’d forth by the harping of the blast;
_Then_ is its triumph’s hour,
It springs to sudden power,
As mounts the billow o’er the quivering mast.
Then, then, the canvass o’er,
With hurried hand I pour
The lava-waves and gusts of my own soul!
Kindling to fiery life
Dreams, worlds, of pictured strife--
Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!
Wake, rise! the reed may bend,
The shivering leaf descend,
The forest branch give way before your might;
But I, your strong compeer,
Call, summon, wait you here--
Answer, my spirit!--answer, storm and night!
THE TWO VOICES.
Two solemn Voices, in a funeral strain,
Met as rich sunbeams and dark bursts of rain
Meet in the sky:
“Thou art gone hence!” one sang; “our light is flown,
Our beautiful, that seem’d too much our own
Ever to die!
“Thou art gone hence!--our joyous hills among
Never again to pour thy soul in song,
When spring-flowers rise!
Never the friend’s familiar step to meet
With loving laughter, and the welcome sweet
Of thy glad eyes.”
“Thou art gone home, gone _home_!” then, high and clear,
Warbled that other Voice. “Thou hast no tear
Again to shed;
Never to fold the robe o’er secret pain;
Never, weigh’d down by memory’s clouds, again
To bow thy head.
“Thou art gone home! O early crown’d and blest!
Where could the love of that deep heart find rest
With aught below?
Thou must have seen rich dream by dream decay,
All the bright rose-leaves drop from life away--
Thrice bless’d to go!”
Yet sigh’d again that breeze-like Voice of grief--
“Thou art gone hence! Alas, that aught so brief
So loved should be!
Thou takest our summer hence!--the flower, the tone,
The music of our being, all in one,
Depart with thee!
“Fair form, young spirit, morning vision fled!
Canst _thou_ be of the dead, the awful dead--
The dark unknown?
Yes! to the dwelling where no footsteps fall,
Never again to light up hearth or hall,
Thy smile is gone!”
“Home, _home_!” once more the exulting Voice arose:
“Thou art gone home!--from that divine repose
Never to roam!
Never to say farewell, to weep in vain,
To read of change, in eyes beloved, again--
Thou art gone home!
“By the bright waters now thy lot is cast--
Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark hath past
The rough sea’s foam!
Now the long yearnings of thy soul are still’d,
Home! home!--thy peace is won, thy heart is fill’d:
Thou art gone home!”
THE PARTING SHIP.
“A glittering ship, that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain.” Wordsworth.
Go, in thy glory, o’er the ancient sea,
Take with thee gentle winds thy sails to swell;
Sunshine and joy upon thy streamers be,
Fare thee well, bark! farewell!
Proudly the flashing billow thou hast cleft,
The breeze yet follows thee with cheer and song;
Who now of storms hath dream or memory left?
And yet the deep is strong!
But go thou triumphing, while still the smiles
Of summer tremble on the water’s breast!
Thou shalt be greeted by a thousand isles,
In lone, wild beauty drest.
To thee a welcome breathing o’er the tide,
The genii groves of Araby shall pour;
Waves that enfold the pearl shall bathe thy side,
On the old Indian shore.
Oft shall the shadow of the palm-tree lie
O’er glassy bays wherein thy sails are furl’d,
And its leaves whisper, as the winds sweep by,
Tales of the elder world.
Oft shall the burning stars of southern skies,
On the mid-ocean see thee chain’d in sleep,
A lonely home for human thoughts and ties,
Between the heavens and deep.
Blue seas that roll on gorgeous coasts renown’d,
By night shall sparkle where thy prow makes way;
Strange creatures of the abyss that none may sound,
In thy broad wake shall play.
From hills unknown, in mingled joy and fear,
Free dusky tribes shall pour, thy flag to mark;--
Blessings go with thee on thy lone career!
Hail, and farewell, thou bark!
A long farewell! Thou wilt not bring us back
All whom thou bearest far from home and hearth:
Many are thine, whose steps no more shall track
Their own sweet native earth!
Some wilt thou leave beneath the plantain’s shade,
Where through the foliage Indian suns look bright;
Some in the snows of wintry regions laid,
By the cold northern light.
And some, far down below the sounding wave.
Still shall they lie, though tempests o’er them sweep;
Never may flower be strewn above their grave,
Never may sister weep!
And thou, the billow’s queen--even thy proud form
On our glad sight no more perchance may swell;
Yet God alike is in the calm and storm--
Fare thee well, bark! farewell!
THE LAST TREE OF THE FOREST.
Whisper, thou Tree, thou lonely Tree,
One, where a thousand stood!
Well might proud tales be told by thee,
Last of the solemn wood!
Dwells there no voice amidst thy boughs,
With leaves yet darkly green?
Stillness is round, and noontide glows--
Tell us what thou hast seen.
“I have seen the forest-shadows lie
Where men now reap the corn;
I have seen the kingly chase rush by
Through the deep glades at morn.
“With the glance of many a gallant spear,
And the wave of many a plume,
And the bounding of a hundred deer,
It has lit the woodland’s gloom.
“I have seen the knight and his train ride past,
With his banner borne on high;
O’er all my leaves there was brightness cast
From his gleaming panoply.
“The pilgrim at my feet hath laid
His palm-branch midst the flowers,
And told his beads, and meekly pray’d,
Kneeling, at vesper hours.
“And the merry men of wild and glen,
In the green array they wore,
Have feasted here, with the red wine’s cheer,
And the hunter’s song of yore.
“And the minstrel, resting in my shade,
Hath made the forest ring
With the lordly tales of the high Crusade,
Once loved by chief and king.
“But now the noble forms are gone
That walk’d the earth of old;
The soft wind has a mournful tone,
The sunny light looks cold.
“There is no glory left us now
Like the glory with the dead;
I would that, where they slumber low,
My latest leaves were shed!”
O thou dark tree, thou lonely tree,
That mournest for the past!
A peasant’s home in thy shades I see,
Embower’d from ever blast.
A lovely and a mirthful sound
Of laughter meets mine ear;
For the poor man’s children sport around
On the turf, with naught to fear.
And roses lend that cabin’s wall
A happy summer-glow:
And the open door stands free to all,
For it recks not of a foe.
And the village bells are on the breeze
That stirs thy leaf, dark tree!
How can I mourn, midst things like these,
For the stormy past, with thee?
THE STREAMS.
“The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths; all those have vanish’d!
They live no longer in the faith of heaven,
But still the heart doth need a language!”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
Ye have been holy, O founts and floods!
Ye of the ancient and solemn woods,
Ye that are born of the valleys deep,
With the water-flowers on your breast asleep,
And ye that gush from the sounding caves--
Hallow’d have been your waves.
Hallow’d by man, in his dreams of old,
Unto beings not of this mortal mould--
Viewless and deathless, and wondrous powers,
Whose voice he heard in his lonely hours,
And sought with its fancied sound to still
The heart earth could not fill.
Therefore the flowers of bright summers gone,
O’er your sweet waters, ye streams! were thrown
Thousands of gifts to the sunny sea
Have ye swept along, in your wanderings free,
And thrill’d to the murmur of many a vow--
Where all is silent now!
Nor seems it strange that the heart hath been
So link’d in love to your margins green;
That still, though ruin’d, your early shrines
In beauty gleam through the southern vines,
And the ivied chapels of colder skies
On your wild banks arise.
For the loveliest scenes of the glowing earth
Are those, bright streams! where your springs have birth;
Whether their cavern’d murmur fills,
With a tone of plaint, the hollow hills,
Or the glad sweet laugh of their healthful flow
Is heard midst the hamlets low.
Or whether ye gladden the desert sands
With a joyous music to pilgrim bands,
And a flash from under some ancient rock,
Where a shepherd king might have watch’d his flock,
Where a few lone palm-trees lift their heads,
And a green acacia spreads.
Or whether, in bright old lands renown’d,
The laurels thrill to your first-born sound,
And the shadow, flung from the Grecian pine,
Sweeps with the breeze o’er your gleaming line,
And the tall reeds whisper to your waves,
Beside heroic graves.
Voices and lights of the lonely place!
By the freshest fern your path we trace;
By the brightest cups on the emerald moss,
Whose fairy goblets the turf emboss;
By the rainbow-glancing of insect wings,
In a thousand mazy rings.
There sucks the bee, for the richest flowers
Are all your own through the summer hours;
There the proud stag his fair image knows,
Traced on your glass beneath alder-boughs;
And the halcyon’s breast, like the skies array’d,
Gleams through the willow shade.
But the wild sweet tales that with elves and fays
Peopled your banks in the olden days,
And the memory left by departed love
To your antique founts in glen and grove,
And the glory born of the poet’s dreams--
_These_ are your charms, bright streams!
Now is the time of your flowery rites
Gone by with its dances and young delights:
From your marble urns ye have burst away,
From your chapel-cells to the laughing day;
Low lie your altars with moss o’ergrown,
And the woods again are lone.
Yet holy still be your living springs,
Haunts of all gentle and gladsome things!
Holy, to converse with nature’s lore,
That gives the worn spirit its youth once more,
And to silent thoughts of the love divine,
Making the heart a shrine!
THE VOICE OF THE WIND.
“There is nothing in the wide world so like the voice of a spirit.”
Gray’s “Letters.”
Oh! many a voice is thine, thou Wind! full many a voice is thine!
From every scene thy wing o’ersweeps thou bear’st a sound and sign;
A minstrel wild and strong thou art, with a mastery all thine own,
And the spirit is thy harp, O Wind! that gives the answering tone.