The Poems of Felicia Hemans
[These sonnets, written in the months of April, May, and June, were
intended, together with the Records of the Autumn of 1834, to form
a continuation of the series entitled “Sonnets, Devotional and
Memorial.”]
A VERNAL THOUGHT.
O festal Spring! midst thy victorious glow,
Far-spreading o’er the kindled woods and plains,
And streams, that bound to meet thee from their chains,
Well might there lurk the shadow of a woe
For human hearts, and in the exulting flow
Of thy rich songs a melancholy tone,
Were we of mould all earthly--_we_ alone,
Sever’d from thy great spell, and doom’d to go
Farther, still farther, from our sunny time,
Never to feel the breathings of our prime,
Never to flower again! But we, O Spring!
Cheer’d by deep spirit-whispers not of earth,
Press to the regions of thy heavenly birth,
As here thy flowers and birds press on to bloom and sing.
TO THE SKY.
Far from the rustlings of the poplar-bough,
Which o’er my opening life wild music made,
Far from the green hills with their heathery glow
And flashing streams whereby my childhood play’d;
In the dim city, midst the sounding flow
Of restless life, to thee in love I turn
O thou rich Sky! and from thy splendours learn
How song-birds come and part, flowers wane and blow.
With thee all shapes of glory find their home,
And thou hast taught me well, majestic dome!
By stars, by sunsets, by soft clouds which rove
Thy blue expanse, or sleep in silvery rest,
That Nature’s God hath left _no_ spot unbless’d
With founts of beauty for the eye of love.
ON RECORDS OF IMMATURE GENIUS.[432]
Oh! judge in thoughtful tenderness of those
Who, richly dower’d for life, are call’d to die
Ere the soul’s flame, through storms, hath won repose
In truth’s divinest ether, still and high!
Let their mind’s riches claim a trustful sigh!
Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain,
First notes of some yet struggling harmony,
By the strong rush, the crowding joy and pain
Of many inspirations met, and held
From its true sphere,--oh! soon it might have swell’d
Majestically forth! Nor doubt that He,
Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve
Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve
Their grand consummate hymn, from passion-gusts made free!
[432] Written after reading some of the earlier poems of the late Mrs
Tighe, which had been lent her in manuscript.
ON WATCHING THE FLIGHT OF A SKYLARK.
Upward and upward still!--in pearly light
The clouds are steep’d! the vernal spirit sighs
With bliss in every wind, and crystal skies
Woo thee, O bird! to thy celestial height.
Bird, piercing heaven with music! thy free flight
Hath meaning for all bosoms; most of all
For those wherein the rapture and the might
Of poesy lie deep, and strive, and burn,
For their high place. O heirs of genius! learn
From the sky’s bird your way! No joy may fill
Your hearts, no gift of holy strength be won
To bless your songs, ye children of the sun!
Save by the unswerving flight, upward and upward still!
A THOUGHT OF THE SEA.
My earliest memories to thy shores are bound,
Thy solemn shores, thou ever-chanting main!
The first rich sunsets, kindling thought profound
In my lone being, made thy restless plain
As the vast, shining floor of some dread fane,
All paved with glass and fire. Yet, O blue deep!
Thou that no trace of human hearts dost keep,
Never to thee did love with silvery chain
Draw my soul’s dream, which through all nature
sought
What waves deny,--some bower of _steadfast_ bliss,
A _home_ to twine with fancy, feeling, thought,
As with sweet flowers. But chasten’d hope for this
Now turns from earth’s green valleys, as from thee,
To that sole changeless world, where “there is no more sea.”[433]
[433] [The sight and sound of the sea were always connected in her mind
with melancholy associations; with
“Doubt, and something dark.
Of the old sea some reverential fear;”
with images of storm and desolation, of shipwreck and sea-burial: the
last, indeed, was so often present to her imagination, and has so
frequently been introduced into her poetry, that any one inclined to
superstitious presentiments might almost have been disposed to fancy it
a foreshadowing of some such dark fate in store either for herself or
for some one dear to her. These associations, like those awakened by
the wind, were perfectly distinct from any thing of personal timidity,
and were the more indefinable, as she had never suffered any calamity
at all connected with the sea: none of those she loved had been
consigned to its reckless waters, nor had she ever seen it in all its
terrors, for the coast on which her early years were passed is by no
means a rugged or dangerous one, and is seldom visited by disaster.
“Are all these notes in thee, wild wind! these many notes
in thee? Far in our own unfathom’d souls their fount must
surely be; Yes! buried, but unsleeping there, thought
watches, memory lies, From whose deep urn the tones are
poured through all earth’s harmonies.”
In one of her later sonnets on this subject, a chord is struck which
may perhaps find an echo in other bosoms:--
----“Yet, O blue deep!” etc.
The same feeling is expressed in one of her letters:--“Did you ever
observe how strangely sounds and images of waters--rushing torrents,
and troubled ocean-waves, are mingled with the visionary distresses of
dreams and delirium? To me there is no more perfect emblem of peace
than that expressed by the Scriptural phrase, ‘There shall be no more
sea.’”
How forcible is the contrast between the essential womanliness of these
associations, so full of “the still, sad music of humanity,” and the
“stern delight” with which Lord Byron, in his magnificent apostrophe
to the Sea, exults in its ministry of wrath, and recounts, as with a
fierce joy, its dealings with its victim, man!
----“The vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth--there let them lay.”
Childe Harold.]
DISTANT SOUND OF THE SEA AT EVENING.
Yet, rolling far up some green mountain-dale,
Oft let me hear, as ofttimes I have heard,
Thy swell, thou deep! when evening calls the bird
And bee to rest; when summer-tints grow pale,
Seen through the gathering of a dewy veil;
And peasant-steps are hastening to repose,
And gleaming flocks lie down, and flower-cups close
To the last whisper of the falling gale.
Then midst the dying of all other sound,
When the soul hears thy distant voice profound,
Lone worshipping, and knows that through the night
’Twill worship still, then most its anthem-tone
Speaks to our being of the Eternal One,
Who girds tired nature with unslumbering might.
THE RIVER CLWYD IN NORTH WALES.
O Cambrian river! with slow music gliding
By pastoral hills, old woods, and ruin’d towers;
Now midst thy reeds and golden willows hiding,
Now gleaming forth by some rich bank of flowers;
Long flow’d the current of my life’s clear hours
Onward with thine, whose voice yet haunts my dream,
Tho’ time and change, and other mightier powers,
Far from thy side have borne me. Thou, smooth stream!
Art winding still thy sunny meads along,
Murmuring to cottage and gray hall thy song,
Low, sweet, unchanged. _My_ being’s tide hath pass’d
Through rocks and storms; yet will I not complain,
If, thus wrought free and pure from earthly stain,
Brightly its waves may reach their parent-deep at last.
ORCHARD-BLOSSOMS.
Doth thy heart stir within thee at the sight
Of orchard-blooms upon the mossy bough?
Doth their sweet household-smile waft back the glow
Of childhood’s morn--the wondering, fresh delight
In earth’s new colouring, then all strangely bright,
A joy of fairyland? Doth some old nook,
Haunted by visions of thy first-loved book,
Rise on thy soul, with faint-streak’d blossoms white
Shower’d o’er the turf, and the lone primrose-knot,
And robin’s nest, still faithful to the spot,
And the bee’s dreary chime? O gentle friend!
The world’s cold breath, not _Time’s_, this life bereaves
Of vernal gifts: time hallows what he leaves,
And will for us endear spring-memories to the end.
8th May.
TO A DISTANT SCENE.
Still are the cowslips from thy bosom springing,
O far-off, grassy dell?--and dost thou see,
When southern winds first wake their vernal singing,
The star-gleam of the wood anemone?
Doth the shy ringdove haunt thee yet? the bee
Hang on thy flowers as when I breathed farewell
To their wild blooms? and, round my beechen tree,
Still, in green softness, doth the moss-bank swell?
Oh, strange illusion! by the fond heart wrought,
Whose own warm life suffuses nature’s face!
_My_ being’s tide of many-colour’d thought
Hath pass’d from thee; and now, rich, leafy place!
I paint thee oft, scarce consciously, a scene,
Silent, forsaken, dim, shadow’d by what hath been.
A REMEMBRANCE OF GRASMERE.[434]
O vale and lake, within your mountain-urn
Smiling so tranquilly, and set so deep!
Oft doth your dreamy loveliness return,
Colouring the tender shadows of my sleep
With light Elysian; for the hues that steep
Your shores in melting lustre, seem to float
On golden clouds from spirit-lands remote,
Isles of the blest; and in our memory keep
Their place with holiest harmonies. Fair scene,
Most loved by evening and her dewy star!
Oh! ne’er may man, with touch unhallow’d, jar
The perfect music of thy charm serene!
Still, still unchanged, may _one_ sweet region wear
Smiles that subdue the soul to love, and tears, and prayer.
[434] It would have been very dear to her, could she have foreseen the
delicate and appropriate commemoration awarded to her by Mr Wordsworth,
in the elegiac stanzas which record the high names of some of his most
distinguished contemporaries, (Scott, Coleridge, Lamb, Crabbe, and
Hogg,) summoned in quick succession “to the land whence none return:”--
“Mourn rather for that holy spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep,
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.”
THOUGHTS CONNECTED WITH TREES.
Trees, gracious trees!--how rich a gift ye are,
Crown of the earth! to human hearts and eyes!
How doth the thought of home, in lands afar,
Link’d with your forms and kindly whisperings rise!
How the whole picture of a childhood lies
Oft midst your boughs forgotten, buried deep!
Till, gazing through them up the summer skies,
As hush’d we stand, a breeze perchance may creep,
And old, sweet leaf-sounds reach the inner world
Where memory coils--and lo! at once unfurl’d,
The past, a glowing scroll, before our sight
Spreads clear; while, gushing from their long-seal’d urn,
Young thoughts, pure dreams, undoubting prayers return,
And a lost mother’s eye gives back its holy light.
THE SAME.
And ye are strong to shelter!--all meek things,
All that need home and covert, love your shade!