The Poems of Felicia Hemans
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,