The Poems of Felicia Hemans
Spoiler! I ask thee not reprieve for these.
But for the happy love
Whose light, where’er I rove,
Kindles all nature to a sudden smile,
Shedding on branch and flower
A rainbow-tinted shower
Of richer life--spare, spare me yet awhile.
Too soon, too fast thou’rt come!
Too beautiful is home--
A home of gentle voices and kind eyes!
And I the loved of all,
On whom fond blessings fall
From every lip. Oh! wilt thou rend such ties?
Sweet sisters! weave a chain
My spirit to detain:
Hold me to earth with strong affection back;
Bind me with mighty love
Unto the stream, the grove,
Our daily paths--our life’s familiar track.
Stay with me! gird me round!
Your voices bear a sound
Of hope--a light comes with you and departs;
Hush my soul’s boding swell,
That murmurs of farewell.
How can I leave this ring of kindest hearts?
Death! grave!--and are there those
That woo your dark repose
Midst the rich beauty of the glowing earth?
Surely about them lies
No world of loving eyes.
Leave me, oh! leave me unto home and hearth!
THE WELCOME TO DEATH.
Thou art welcome, O thou warning voice!
My soul hath pined for thee;
Thou art welcome as sweet sounds from shore
To wanderer on the sea.
I hear thee in the rustling woods,
In the sighing vernal airs;
Thou call’st me from the lonely earth
With a deeper tone than theirs.
The lonely earth! Since kindred steps
From its green paths are fled,
A dimness and a hush have lain
O’er all its beauty spread.
The silence of th’ unanswering soul
Is on me and around;
My heart hath echoes but for _thee_,
Thou still, small, warning sound!
Voice after voice hath died away,
Once in my dwelling heard;
Sweet household name by name hath changed
To grief’s forbidden word!
From dreams of night on each I call,
Each of the far removed;
And waken to my own wild cry--
“Where are ye, my beloved?”
Ye left me! and earth’s flowers were dim
With records of the past;
And stars pour’d down another light
Than o’er my youth they cast.
Birds will not sing as once they sung,
When ye were at my side,
And mournful tones are in the wind
Which I heard not till ye died!
Thou art welcome, O thou summoner!
Why should the last remain?
What eye can reach my heart of hearts,
Bearing in light again?
E’en could this be, too much of fear
O’er love would now be thrown.--
Away! away! from time, from change,
Once more to meet my own!
THE VICTOR.
“De tout ce qui t’aimoit n’est-il plus rien qui t’aime?”
Lamartine.
Mighty ones, Love and Death!
Ye are the strong in this world of ours;
Ye meet at the banquets, ye dwell midst the flowers,
--Which hath the conqueror’s wreath?
_Thou_ art the victor, Love!
_Thou_ art the fearless, the crown’d, the free,
The strength of the battle is given to thee--
The spirit from above!
Thou hast look’d on Death, and smiled!
Thou hast borne up the reed-like and fragile form
Through the waves of the fight, through the rush of the storm,
On field, and flood, and wild!
No!--_Thou_ art the victor, Death!
Thou comest, and where is that which spoke,
From the depths of the eye, when the spirit woke?
--Gone with the fleeting breath!
Thou comest--and what is left
Of all that loved us, to say if aught
_Yet loves_--yet answers the burning thought
Of the spirit lone and reft?
Silence is where thou art!
Silently there must kindred meet,
No smile to cheer, and no voice to greet,
No bounding of heart to heart!
Boast not thy victory, Death!
It is but as the cloud’s o’er the sunbeam’s power,
It is but as the winter’s o’er leaf and flower,
That slumber the snow beneath.
It is but as a tyrant’s reign
O’er the voice and the lip which he bids be still;
But the fiery thought and the lofty will
Are not for him to chain!
They shall soar his might above!
And thus with the root whence affection springs,
Though buried, it is not of mortal things--
_Thou_ art the victor, Love!
LINES WRITTEN FOR THE ALBUM AT ROSANNA.[398]
Oh! lightly tread through these deep chestnut-bowers,
Where a sweet spirit once in beauty moved!
And touch with reverent hand these leaves and flowers--
Fair things, which well a gentle heart hath loved!
A gentle heart, of love and grief th’ abode,
Whence the bright stream of song in tear-drops flow’d.
And bid its memory sanctify the scene!
And let th’ ideal presence of the dead
Float round, and touch the woods with softer green,
And o’er the streams a charm, like moonlight, shed,
Through the soul’s depths in holy silence felt--
A spell to raise, to chasten, and to melt!
[398] A beautiful place in the county of Wicklow, formerly the abode of
the authoress of “Psyche.”
THE VOICE OF THE WAVES.
WRITTEN NEAR THE SCENE OF A RECENT SHIPWRECK.
“How perfect was the calm! It seem’d no sleep,
No mood which season takes away or brings;
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
...
But welcome fortitude and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne.”
Wordsworth.
Answer, ye chiming waves
That now in sunshine sweep!
Speak to me from thy hidden caves,
Voice of the solemn deep!
Hath man’s lone spirit here
With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
Hath anguish cried to heaven?
--Then the sea’s voice arose
Like an earthquake’s under-tone:
“Mortal! the strife of human woes
_Where_ hath _not_ nature known?
“Here to the quivering mast
Despair hath wildly clung;
The shriek upon the wind hath pass’d,
The midnight sky hath rung.
“And the youthful and the brave,
With their beauty and renown,
To the hollow chambers of the wave
In darkness have gone down.
“They are vanish’d from their place--
Let their homes and hearths make moan!
But the rolling waters keep no trace
Of pang or conflict gone.”
--Alas! thou haughty deep!
The strong, the sounding far!
My heart before thee dies,--I weep
To think on what we are!
To think that so we pass--
High hope, and thought, and mind--
Even as the breath-stain from the glass,
Leaving no sign behind!
Saw’st thou naught else, thou main?
Thou and the midnight sky?
Naught save the struggle, brief and vain,
The parting agony!
--And the sea’s voice replied:
“Here nobler things have been!
Power, with the valiant when they died,
To sanctify the scene:
“Courage, in fragile form,
Faith, trusting to the last,
Prayer, breathing heavenwards thro’ the storm:
But all alike have pass’d.”
Sound on, thou haughty sea!
_These_ have not pass’d in vain;
My soul awakes, my hope springs free
On victor wings again.
_Thou_, from thine empire driven,
May’st vanish with thy powers;
But, by the hearts that here have striven,
A loftier doom is ours!
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
“I seem like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but me departed.” Moore.
See’st thou yon gray, gleaming hall,
Where the deep elm-shadows fall?
Voices that have left the earth
Long ago,
Still are murmuring round its hearth,
Soft and low:
Ever there;--yet one alone
Hath the gift to hear their tone.
Guests come thither, and depart,
Free of step, and light of heart;
Children, with sweet visions bless’d,
In the haunted chambers rest;
One alone unslumbering lies
When the night hath seal’d all eyes,
One quick heart and watchful ear,
Listening for those whispers clear.
See’st thou where the woodbine-flowers
O’er yon low porch hang in showers?
Startling faces of the dead,
Pale, yet sweet,
One lone woman’s entering tread
There still meet!
Some with young, smooth foreheads fair,
Faintly shining through bright hair;
Some with reverend locks of snow--
All, all buried long ago!
All, from under deep sea-waves,
Or the flowers of foreign graves,
Or the old and banner’d aisle,
Where their high tombs gleam the while;
Rising, wandering, floating by,
Suddenly and silently,
Through their earthly home and place,
But amidst another race.
Wherefore, unto one alone,
Are those sounds and visions known?
Wherefore hath that spell of power
Dark and dread,
On _her_ soul, a baleful dower,
Thus been shed?
Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes,
No strange gift of mystery lies!
She is lone where once she moved
Fair, and happy, and beloved!
Sunny smiles were glancing round her,
Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her.
Now those silver chords are broken,
Those bright looks have left no token--
Not one trace on all the earth,
Save her memory of their mirth.
She is lone and lingering now,
Dreams have gather’d o’er her brow,
Midst gay songs and children’s play,
She is dwelling far away,
Seeing what none else may see--
Haunted still her place must be!
[“Mrs Hemans resided in the immediate vicinity of this old house (in
the village of Wavertree) for nearly three years’: it (Wavertree Hall)
suggested her beautiful poem, ‘Books and Flowers;’ and one of her most
exquisite lyrics, ‘The Haunted House,’ describes its local scenery,
and gives ‘a brief abstract’ of the sufferings and feelings of one of
its inhabitants.”--_Recollections of Mrs Hemans_, by Mrs Lawrence.
The same subject has been treated by the late lamented Thomas Hood
in a poem under a similar title.--_Vide Poems_, vol. i. p. 48. It is
worth referring to, if for nothing else than observing how it has been
dealt with by two ingenious and original minds. Mrs Hemans’s lyric was
first published.]
THE SHEPHERD-POET OF THE ALPS.
“God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom’s cause--
A spirit to his rocks akin,
The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!” Coleridge.
Singing of the free blue sky,
And the wild-flower glens that lie
Far amidst the ancient hills,
Which the fountain-music fills;
Singing of the snow-peaks bright,
And the royal eagle’s flight,
And the courage and the grace
Foster’d by the chamois-chase;
In his fetters, day by day,
So the Shepherd-poet lay.
Wherefore, from a dungeon-cell
Did those notes of freedom swell,
Breathing sadness not their own
Forth with every Alpine tone?
Wherefore!--can a tyrant’s ear
Brook the mountain-winds to hear,
When each blast goes pealing by
With a song of liberty?
Darkly hung th’ oppressor’s hand
O’er the Shepherd-poet’s land;
Sounding there the waters gush’d,
While the lip of man was hush’d;