The Poems of Felicia Hemans
Smilest thou, gorgeous flower?
Oh! within the spells
Of thy beauty’s power,
Something dimly dwells,
At variance with a world of sorrows and farewells.
All the soul forth flowing
In that rich perfume,
All the proud life glowing
In that radiant bloom--
Have they no place but _here_, beneath th’ o’ershadowing tomb?
Crown’st thou but the daughters
Of our tearful race?
Heaven’s own purest waters
Well might wear the trace
Of thy consummate form, melting to softer grace.
Will that clime enfold thee
With immortal air?
Shall we not behold thee
Bright and deathless there?
In spirit-lustre clothed, transcendantly more fair!
Yes! my fancy sees thee
In that light disclose,
And its dream thus frees thee
From the mist of woes,
Darkening thine earthly bowers, O bridal royal rose!
NIGHT-BLOWING FLOWERS.
Children of night! unfolding meekly, slowly,
To the sweet breathings of the shadowy hours,
When dark-blue heavens look softest and most holy,
And glow-worm light is in the forest bowers;
To solemn things and deep,
To spirit-haunted sleep,
To thoughts, all purified
From earth, ye seem allied;
O dedicated flowers!
Ye, from the gaze of crowds your beauty veiling,
Keep in dim vestal urns the sweetness shrined;
Till the mild moon, on high serenely sailing,
Looks on you tenderly and sadly kind.
--So doth love’s dreaming heart
Dwell from the throng apart,
And but to shades disclose
The inmost thought, which glows
With its pure life entwined.
Shut from the sounds wherein the day rejoices,
To no triumphant song your petals thrill,
But send forth odours with the faint, soft voices
Rising from hidden streams, when all is still.
--So doth lone prayer arise,
Mingling with secret sighs,
When grief unfolds, like you,
Her breast, for heavenly dew
In silent hours to fill.
THE WANDERER AND THE NIGHT-FLOWERS.
“Call back your odours, lovely flowers!
From the night-winds call them back;
And fold your leaves till the laughing hours
Come forth in the sunbeam’s track!
“The lark lies couch’d in her grassy nest,
And the honey-bee is gone,
And all bright things are away to rest--
Why watch ye here alone?
“Is not your world a mournful one,
When your sisters close their eyes,
And your soft breath meets not a lingering tone
Of song in the starry skies?
“Take ye no joy in the dayspring’s birth
When it kindles the sparks of dew?
And the thousand strains of the forest’s mirth,
Shall they gladden all but you?
“Shut your sweet bells till the fawn comes out
On the sunny turf to play,
And the woodland child with a fairy shout
Goes dancing on its way!”
“Nay! let our shadowy beauty bloom
When the stars give quiet light,
And let us offer our faint perfume
On the silent shrine of night.
“Call it not wasted, the scent we lend
To the breeze, when no step is nigh:
Oh, thus for ever the earth should send
Her grateful breath on high!
“And love us as emblems, night’s dewy flowers,
Of hopes unto sorrow given,
That spring through the gloom of the darkest hours
Looking alone to heaven!”
ECHO-SONG.
In thy cavern-hall,
Echo! art thou sleeping?
By the fountain’s fall
Dreamy silence keeping?
Yet one soft note borne
From the shepherd’s horn,
Wakes thee, Echo! into music leaping!
--Strange, sweet Echo! into music leaping.
Then the woods rejoice,
Then glad sounds are swelling
From each sister-voice
Round thy rocky dwelling;
And their sweetness fills
All the hollow hills,
With a thousand notes, of _one_ life telling!
--Softly mingled notes, of one life telling.
Echo! in my heart
Thus deep thoughts are lying,
Silent and apart,
Buried, yet undying;
Till some gentle tone
Wakening haply _one_,
Calls a thousand forth, like thee replying!
--Strange, sweet Echo! even like thee replying.[414]
[414] This song is in the possession of Mr Power.
THE MUFFLED DRUM.[415]
The muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which told the hamlets round
Of a soldier’s burial-rite.
But it told them not how dear,
In a home beyond the main,
Was the warrior-youth laid low that hour
By a mountain-stream of Spain.
The oaks of England waved
O’er the slumbers of his race,
But a pine of the Ronceval made moan
Above _his_ last, lone place;
When the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which call’d strange echoes round
To the soldier’s burial-rite.
Brief was the sorrowing _there_,
By the stream from battle red,
And tossing on its wave the plumes
Of many a stately head:
But a mother--soon to die,
And a sister--long to weep,
Even then were breathing prayers for him
In that home beyond the deep;
While the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
And the dark pines mourn’d round,
O’er the soldier’s burial-rite.
[415] Set to beautiful music by John Lodge, Esq.
THE SWAN AND THE SKYLARK.
“Adieu, adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades.” Keats.
“Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.”
Shelley.
Midst the long reeds that o’er a Grecian stream
Unto the faint wind sigh’d melodiously,
And where the sculpture of a broken shrine
Sent out thro’ shadowy grass and thick wild-flowers
Dim alabaster gleams--a lonely swan
Warbled his death-chant; and a poet stood
Listening to that strange music, as it shook
The lilies on the wave; and made the pines
And all the laurels of the haunted shore
Thrill to its passion. Oh! the tones were sweet,
Even painfully--as with the sweetness wrung
From parting love; and to the poet’s thought
_This_ was their language.
“Summer! I depart--
O light and laughing summer! fare thee well:
No song the less through thy rich woods will swell,
For one, one broken heart.
“And fare ye well, young flowers!
Ye will not mourn! ye will shed odour still,
And wave in glory, colouring every rill,
Known to my youth’s fresh hours.
“And ye, bright founts! that lie
Far in the whispering forests, lone and deep,
My wing no more shall stir your shadowy sleep--
Sweet waters! I must die.
“Will ye not send one tone
Of sorrow through the pines?--one murmur low?
Shall not the green leaves from your voices know
That I, your child, am gone?
“No! ever glad and free
Ye have no sounds a tale of death to tell:
Waves, joyous waves! flow on, and fare ye well?
Ye will not mourn for me.
“But thou, sweet boon! too late
Pour’d on my parting breath, vain gift of song!
Why com’st thou thus, o’ermastering, rich and strong,
In the dark hour of fate?
“Only to wake the sighs
Of echo-voices from their sparry cell;
Only to say--O sunshine and blue skies!
O life and love! farewell.”
Thus flow’d the death-chant on; while mournfully
Low winds and waves made answer, and the tones
Buried in rocks along the Grecian stream--
Rocks and dim caverns of old Prophecy--
Woke to respond: and all the air was fill’d
With that one sighing sound--_Farewell! farewell!_
Fill’d with that sound? High in the calm blue heav’n
Even then a skylark hung; soft summer clouds
Were floating round him, all transpierced with light,
And midst that pearly radiance his dark wings
Quiver’d with song: such free, triumphant song,
As if tears were not,--as if breaking hearts
Had not a place below; and _thus_ that strain
Spoke to the poet’s ear exultingly:--
“The summer is come; she hath said _Rejoice!_
The wild-woods thrill to her merry voice;
Her sweet breath is wandering around, on high:
Sing, sing through the echoing sky!
“There is joy in the mountains! The bright waves leap
Like the bounding stag when he breaks from sleep;
Mirthfully, wildly, they flash along--
Let the heavens ring with song!
“There is joy in the forests! The bird of night
Hath made the leaves tremble with deep delight;
But _mine_ is the glory to sunshine given--
Sing, sing through the echoing heaven!
“Mine are the wings of the soaring morn,
Mine are the fresh gales with dayspring born:
Only young rapture can mount so high--
Sing, sing through the echoing sky!”
So those two voices met; so Joy and Death
Mingled their accents; and, amidst the rush
Of many thoughts, the listening poet cried,--
“Oh! thou art mighty, thou art wonderful,
Mysterious nature! Not in thy free range
Of woods and wilds alone, thou blendest thus
The dirge-note and the song of festival;
But in one _heart_, one changeful human heart--
Ay, and within one hour of that strange world--
Thou call’st their music forth, with all its tones,
To startle and to pierce!--the dying swan’s,
And the glad skylark’s--triumph and despair!”
THE CURFEW-SONG OF ENGLAND.
Hark! from the dim church-tower,
The deep, slow Curfew’s chime!
--A heavy sound unto hall and bower
In England’s olden time!
Sadly ’twas heard by him who came
From the fields of his toil at night,
And who might not see his own hearth-flame
In his children’s eyes make light.
Sternly and sadly heard,
As it quench’d the wood-fire’s glow,
Which had cheer’d the board with the mirthful word,
And the red wine’s foaming flow!
Until that sullen, boding knell,
Flung out from every fane,
On harp, and lip, and spirit, fell,
With a weight and with a chain.
Woe for the pilgrim then
In the wild-deer’s forest far!
No cottage lamp, to the haunts of men,
Might guide him, as a star.
And woe for him whose wakeful soul,
With lone aspirings fill’d,
Would have lived o’er some immortal scroll,
While the sounds of earth were still’d!
And yet a deeper woe
For the watcher by the bed,
Where the fondly-loved in pain lay low,
In pain and sleepless dread!
For the mother, doom’d unseen to keep
By the dying babe, her place,
And to feel its flitting pulse, and weep,
Yet not behold its face!
Darkness in chieftain’s hall!
Darkness in peasant’s cot!
While freedom, under that shadowy pall,
Sat mourning o’er her lot.