The Poems of Felicia Hemans
Hence with young love and life I go,
In the summer’s joyous train.
With sunshine, with sweet odour,
With every precious thing,
Upon the last warm southern breeze
My soul its flight shall wing.
Alone I shall not linger,
When the days of hope are past,
To watch the fall of leaf by leaf,
To wait the rushing blast.
Triumphantly, triumphantly!
Sing to the woods, I go!
For me, perchance, in other lands,
The glorious rose may blow.
The sky’s transparent azure,
And the greensward’s violet breath,
And the dance of light leaves in the wind,
May there know naught of death.
No more, no more sing mournfully!
Swell high, then break, my heart!
With love, the spirit of the woods,
With summer I depart!
THE DIVER.
“They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”--Shelley.
Thou hast been where the rocks of coral grow,
Thou hast fought with eddying waves;--
Thy cheek is pale, and thy heart beats low,
Thou searcher of ocean’s caves!
Thou hast look’d on the gleaming wealth of old,
And wrecks where the brave have striven:
The deep is a strong and a fearful hold,
But thou its bar hast riven!
A wild and weary life is thine--
A wasting task and lone,
Though treasure-grots for thee may shine,
To all besides unknown!
A weary life! but a swift decay
Soon, soon shall set thee free;
Thou’rt passing fast from thy toils away,
Thou wrestler with the sea!
In thy dim eye, on thy hollow cheek,
Well are the death-signs read--
Go! for the pearl in its cavern seek,
Ere hope and power be fled!
And bright in beauty’s coronal
That glistening gem shall be;
A star to all in the festive hall--
But who will think on _thee_?
None!--as it gleams from the queen-like head,
Not one midst throngs will say,
“A life hath been, like a raindrop, shed
For that pale, quivering ray!”
Woe for the wealth thus dearly bought!
--And are not those like thee,
Who win for earth the gems of thought?
O wrestler with the sea!
Down to the gulfs of the soul they go,
Where the passion-fountains burn,
Gathering the jewels far below
From many a buried urn:
Wringing from lava-veins the fire,
That o’er bright words is pour’d;
Learning deep sounds, to make the lyre
A spirit in each chord.
But, oh! the price of bitter tears
Paid for the lonely power
That throws at last, o’er desert years,
A darkly glorious dower!
Like flower-seeds, by the wild wind spread,
So radiant thoughts are strew’d;
--The soul whence those high gifts are shed
May faint in solitude!
And who will think, when the strain is sung
Till a thousand hearts are stirr’d,
What life-drops, from the minstrel wrung,
Have gush’d with every word?
None, none!--his treasures live like thine,
_He_ strives and dies like thee;
--Thou, that hast been to the pearl’s dark shrine,
O wrestler with the sea!
THE REQUIEM OF GENIUS.
“Les poetes, dont l’imagination tient la puissance d’aimer et de
souffrir, ne sont-ils pas les bannis d’une autre region?”
Madame de Stael--“De L’Allemagne.”
No tears for thee!--though light be from us gone
With thy soul’s radiance, bright, yet restless one!
No tears for thee!
They that have loved an exile, must not mourn
To see him parting for his native bourne
O’er the dark sea.
All the high music of thy spirit here
Breathed but the language of another sphere,
Unecho’d round;
And strange, though sweet, as midst our weeping skies
Some half-remember’d strain of Paradise
Might sadly sound.
Hast thou been answer’d?--thou, that from the night,
And from the voices of the tempest’s might,
And from the past,
Wert seeking still some oracle’s reply,
To pour the secrets of man’s destiny
Forth on the blast!
Hast thou been answer’d?--thou, that through the gloom,
And shadow, and stern silence of the tomb,
A cry didst send,
So passionate and deep?--to pierce, to move,
To win back token of unburied love
From buried friend!
And hast thou found where living waters burst?
Thou that didst pine amidst us in the thirst
Of fever-dreams!
Are the true fountains thine for evermore?
O lured so long by shining mists that wore
The light of streams!
Speak! is it well with thee? We call, as _thou_,
With thy lit eye, deep voice, and kindled brow,
Wert wont to call
On the departed! Art thou bless’d and free?
--Alas! the lips earth covers, even to _thee_
Were silent all!
Yet shall our hope rise fann’d by quenchless faith,
As a flame, foster’d by some warm wind’s breath,
In light upsprings:
Freed soul of song! yes, thou hast found the sought;
Borne to thy home of beauty and of thought,
On morning’s wings.
And we will dream it is _thy_ joy we hear,
When life’s young music, ringing far and clear,
O’erflows the sky.
No tears for _thee_! the lingering gloom is ours--
Thou art for converse with all glorious powers,
Never to die!
TRIUMPHANT MUSIC.
“Tacete, tacete, O suoni trionfanti
Risvegliate in vano ’l cor che non puo liberarsi.”
Wherefore and whither bear’st thou up my spirit,
On eagle wings, through every plume that thrill?
It hath no crown of victory to inherit--
Be still, triumphant harmony! be still!
Thine are no sounds for earth, thus proudly swelling
Into rich floods of joy. It is but pain
To mount so high, yet find on high no dwelling,
To sink so fast, so heavily again!
No sounds for earth? Yes, to young chieftain dying
On his own battle-field, at set of sun,
With his freed country’s banner o’er him flying,
Well mightst thou speak of fame’s high guerdon won.
No sounds for earth? Yes, for the martyr, leading
Unto victorious death serenely on;
For patriot by his rescued altars bleeding,
Thou hast a voice in each majestic tone.
But speak not thus to one whose heart is beating
Against life’s narrow bound, in conflict vain!
For power, for joy, high hope, and rapturous greeting,
Thou wakest lone thirst--be hush’d, exulting strain!
Be hush’d, or breathe of grief!--of exile yearnings
Under the willows of the stranger-shore;
Breathe of the soul’s untold and restless burnings
For looks, tones, footsteps, that return no more.
Breathe of deep love--a lonely vigil keeping
Through the night-hours, o’er wasted wealth to pine;
Rich thoughts and sad, like faded rose-leaves, heaping
In the shut heart, at once a tomb and shrine.
Or pass as if thy spirit-notes came sighing
From worlds beneath some blue Elysian sky;
Breathe of repose, the pure, the bright, th’ undying--
Of joy no more--bewildering harmony!
SECOND-SIGHT.
“Ne’er err’d the prophet-heart that grief inspired,
Though joy’s illusions mock their votarist.”--Maturin.
A mournful gift is mine, O friends!
A mournful gift is mine!
A murmur of the soul which blends
With the flow of song and wine.
An eye that through the triumph’s hour
Beholds the coming woe,
And dwells upon the faded flower
Midst the rich summer’s glow.
Ye smile to view fair faces bloom
Where the father’s board is spread;
I see the stillness and the gloom
Of a home whence all are fled.
I see the wither’d garlands lie
Forsaken on the earth,
While the lamps yet burn, and the dancers fly
Through the ringing hall of mirth.
I see the blood-red future stain
On the warrior’s gorgeous crest;
And the bier amidst the bridal train
When they come with roses drest.
I hear the still small moan of time
Through the ivy branches made,
Where the palace, in its glory’s prime,
With the sunshine stands array’d.
The thunder of the seas I hear,
The shriek along the wave,
When the bark sweeps forth, and song and cheer
Salute the parting brave.
With every breeze a spirit sends
To me some warning sign,--
A mournful gift is mine, O friends!
A mournful gift is mine!
O prophet-heart! thy grief, thy power,
To all deep souls belong--
The shadow in the sunny hour,
The wail in the mirthful song.
Their sight is all too sadly clear--
For them a veil is riven;
Their piercing thoughts repose not here,
Their home is but in heaven.
THE SEA-BIRD FLYING INLAND.
“Thy path is not as mine;--where thou art blest
My spirit would but wither; mine own grief
Is in mine eyes a richer, holier thing,
Than all thy happiness.”
Hath the summer’s breath on the south-wind borne,
Met the dark seas in their sweeping scorn?
Hath it lured thee, bird! from their sounding caves
To the river shores where the osier waves?
Or art thou come on the hills to dwell,
Where the sweet-voiced echoes have many a cell?
Where the moss bears print of the wild-deer’s tread,
And the heath like a royal robe is spread?
Thou hast done well, O thou bright sea-bird!
There is joy where the song of the lark is heard,
With the dancing of waters through copse and dell,
And the bee’s low tune in the fox-glove’s bell.
Thou hast done well: oh! the seas are lone,
And the voice they send up hath a mournful tone;
A mingling of dirges and wild farewells,
Fitfully breathed through its anthem swells.
The proud bird rose as the words were said--
The rush of his pinion swept o’er my head,
And the glance of his eye, in its bright disdain,
Spoke him a child of the haughty main.
He hath flown from the woods to the ocean’s breast,
To his throne of pride on the billow’s crest.
Oh! who shall say to a spirit free--
“_There_ lies the pathway of bliss for thee?”
THE SLEEPER.
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
A holy thing is sleep,
On the worn spirit shed,
And eyes that wake to weep.
A holy thing from heaven,
A gracious dewy cloud,
A covering mantle given
The weary to enshroud.
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
Revere the pale still brow,
The meekly drooping head,
The long hair’s willowy flow.
Ye know not what ye do,
That call the slumberer back
From the world unseen by you
Unto life’s dim, faded track.
Her soul is far away,
In her childhood’s land perchance,
Where her young sisters play,
Where shines her mother’s glance.
Some old sweet native sound
Her spirit haply weaves;
A harmony profound
Of woods with all their leaves;
A murmur of the sea,
A laughing tone of streams:--
Long may her sojourn be
In the music-land of dreams!
Each voice of love is there,
Each gleam of beauty fled,
Each lost one still more fair--
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
THE MIRROR IN THE DESERTED HALL.
O dim, forsaken mirror!
How many a stately throng
Hath o’er thee gleam’d, in vanish’d hours
Of the wine-cup and the song!
The song hath left no echo;
The bright wine hath been quaff’d;