About this book

The Poems of Felicia Hemans

Mrs. Hemans

High in the illumined chambers of the mind-- And thou, divine Imagination! keeping Thy lamp’s lone star mid shadowy hosts enshrined; How in one moment rent and disentwined, At Fever’s fiery touch, apart they fall, Your glorious combinations! broken all, As the sand-pillars by the desert’s wind Scatter’d to whirling dust! Oh, soon uncrown’d! Well may your parting swift, your strange return, Subdue the soul to lowliness profound, Guiding its chasten’d vision to discern How by meek Faith heaven’s portals must be pass’d, Ere it can hold your gifts inalienably fast. SICKNESS LIKE NIGHT. Thou art like Night, O Sickness! deeply stilling Within my heart the world’s disturbing sound, And the dim quiet of my chamber filling With low, sweet voices by Life’s tumult drown’d. Thou art like awful Night! thou gatherest round The things that are unseen--though close they lie; And with a truth, clear, startling, and profound, Giv’st their dread presence to our mental eye. Thou art like starry, spiritual Night! High and immortal thoughts attend thy way, And revelations, which the common light Brings not, though wakening with its rosy ray All outward life:--Be welcome, then, thy rod, Before whose touch my soul unfolds itself to God. ON RETZSCH’S DESIGN OF THE ANGEL OF DEATH.[441] Well might thine awful image thus arise With that high calm upon thy regal brow, And the deep, solemn sweetness in those eyes, Unto the glorious artist! Who but thou The fleeting forms of beauty can endow For him with permanence? who make those gleams Of brighter life, that colour his lone dreams, Immortal things? Let others _trembling_ bow, Angel of Death! before thee;--not to those Whose spirits with Eternal Truth repose, Art thou a fearful shape! And oh! for me, How full of welcome would thine aspect shine, Did not the cords of strong affection twine So fast around my soul, it _cannot_ spring to thee! [441] This sonnet was suggested by the following passage out of Mrs Jameson’s _Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad_, in a description she gives of a visit paid to the artist Retzsch, near Dresden:--“Afterwards he placed upon his easel a wondrous face which made me shrink back--not with terror, for it was perfectly beautiful,--but with awe, for it was unspeakably fearful: the hair streamed back from the pale brow--the orbs of sight appeared at first two dark, hollow, unfathomable spaces, like those in a skull; but when I drew nearer and looked attentively, two lovely living eyes looked at me again out of the depth of the shadow, as if from the bottom of an abyss. The mouth was divinely sweet, but sad, and the softest repose rested on every feature. This, he told me, was the Angel of Death.” REMEMBRANCE OF NATURE. O Nature! thou didst rear me for thine own, With thy free singing-birds and mountain-brooks; Feeding my thoughts in primrose-haunted nooks, With fairy fantasies and wood-dreams lone; And thou didst teach me every wandering tone Drawn from thy many-whispering trees and waves, And guide my steps to founts and sparry caves, And where bright mosses wove thee a rich throne Midst the green hills: and now that, far estranged From all sweet sounds and odours of thy breath, Fading I lie, within my heart unchanged, So glows the love of thee, that not for death Seems that pure passion’s fervour--but ordain’d To meet on brighter shores thy majesty unstain’d. FLIGHT OF THE SPIRIT. Whither, oh! whither wilt thou wing thy way? What solemn region first upon thy sight Shall break, unveil’d for terror or delight? What hosts, magnificent in dread array, My spirit! when thy prison-house of clay, After long strife is rent? Fond, fruitless quest! The unfledged bird, within his narrow nest, Sees but a few green branches o’er him play, And through their parting leaves, by fits reveal’d, A glimpse of summer sky; nor knows the field Wherein his dormant powers must yet be tried. Thou art that bird!--of what beyond thee lies Far in the untrack’d, immeasurable skies, Knowing but this--that thou shalt find thy Guide? FLOWERS. Welcome, O pure and lovely forms! again Unto the shadowy stillness of my room! For not alone ye bring a joyous train Of summer-thoughts attendant on your bloom-- Visions of freshness, of rich bowery gloom, Of the low murmurs filling mossy dells, Of stars that look down on your folded bells Through dewy leaves, of many a wild perfume Greeting the wanderer of the hill and grove Like sudden music: more than this ye bring-- Far more; ye whisper of the all-fostering love Which thus hath clothed you, and whose dove-like wing Broods o’er the sufferer drawing fever’d breath, Whether the couch be that of life or death. RECOVERY.[442] Back, then, once more to breast the waves of life, To battle on against the unceasing spray, To sink o’erwearied in the stormy strife, And rise to strive again; yet on my way, Oh! linger still, thou light of better day! Born in the hours of loneliness: and you, Ye childlike thoughts! the holy and the true-- Ye that came bearing, while subdued I lay, The faith, the insight of life’s vernal morn Back on my soul, a clear, bright sense, new-born, Now leave me not! but as, profoundly pure, A blue stream rushes through a darker lake Unchanged, e’en thus with me your journey take, Wafting sweet airs of heaven thro’ this low world obscure. [442] Written under the false impression occasioned by a temporary improvement in strength. SABBATH SONNET.[443] COMPOSED BY MRS HEMANS A FEW DAYS BEFORE HER DEATH, AND DICTATED TO HER BROTHER. How many blessed groups this hour are bending, Thro’ England’s primrose meadow-paths, their way Towards spire and tower, midst shadowy elms ascending, Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallow’d day! The halls from old heroic ages gray Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low, With whose thick orchard-blooms the soft winds play, Send out their inmates in a happy flow, Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread With them those pathways--to the feverish bed Of sickness bound; yet, O my God! I bless Thy mercy, that with Sabbath-peace hath fill’d My chasten’d heart, and all its throbbings still’d To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness! 26th April 1835. [443] After the exhausting vicissitudes of days when it seemed that the night of death was indeed at hand--of nights when it was thought that she could never see the light of morning--wonderful even to those who had witnessed, throughout her illness, the clearness and brightness of the never-dying principle, amidst the desolation and decay of its earthly companion, was the consecrated power and facility with which, on Sunday, the 26th of April, she dictated to her brother the “Sabbath Sonnet,” the last strain of the “sweet singer,” whose harp was henceforth to be hung upon the willows. Amongst the many tributes of interest and admiration elicited by a poem, so remarkable to all readers--so precious to many hearts--the following expressions, contained in a letter from the late venerable Bishop of Salisbury to Mrs Joanna Baillie, and already published by the latter, are too pleasingly applicable not to be inserted here. “There is something peculiarly touching in the time, the subject, and the occasion of this deathbed sonnet, and in the affecting contrast between the ‘blessed groups’ she describes, and her own (humanly speaking) helpless state of sickness; and that again contrasted with the hopeful state of mind with which the sonnet concludes, expressive both of the quiet comforts of a Christian Sabbath, and the blessed fruits of profitable application. Her ‘Sweet Chimes’ on ‘Sabbath-peace,’ appear to me very characteristic of the writer.”--_Memoir_, p. 311-12. APPENDIX CRITICISMS ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. DELTA. “We cannot allow these verses[444] to adorn, with a sad beauty, the pages of this Magazine--more especially as they are the last composed by their distinguished writer, and that only a few days before her death--without at least a passing tribute of regret for an event which has cast a shadow of gloom through the sunshiny fields of contemporary literature. But two months ago, the beautiful lyric entitled ‘Despondency and Aspiration,’ appeared in these pages, and now the sweet fountain of music from which that prophetic strain gushed has ceased to flow. The highly gifted and accomplished, the patient, the meek, and long-suffering Felicia Hemans, is no more. She died on the night of Saturday, the 16th of May 1835, at Dublin, and met her fate with all the calm resignation of a Christian, conscious that her spirit was winging its flight to another and a better world, where ‘the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’ “Without disparagement of the living, we scarcely hesitate to say, that in Mrs Hemans our female literature has lost perhaps its brightest ornament. To Joanna Baillie she might be inferior, not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphysically analysing those sentiments and feelings which constitute the basis of human actions,--to Mrs Jameson in the critical perception which, from detached fragments of spoken thought, can discriminate the links which bind all into a distinctive character,--to Miss Landon in eloquent facility,--to Caroline Bowles in simple pathos,--and to Mary Mitford in power of thought; but as a female writer, influencing the female mind, she has undoubtedly stood, for some bypast years, the very first in the first rank; and this pre-eminence has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the eastern Ganges or the western Mississippi. Her path was her own; and shoals of imitators have arisen, alike at home and on the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating genius, have mimicked her themes, and parodied her sentiments and language, without being able to reach its height. In her poetry, religious truth and intellectual beauty meet together; and assuredly it is not the less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature alone. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from purity of morals, delicacy of perception and conception, sublimity of religious faith, and warmth of patriotism; and, turning from the dark and degraded, whether in subject or sentiment, she seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life on which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely feminine--and, in our estimation, this is the highest praise which could be awarded it,--it could have been written by a woman only; for although, in the ‘Records’ of her sex, we have the female character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passion and of ill-requited affection; of heroical self-denial, and of withering hope deferred; of devotedness tried in the furnace of affliction, and of ‘Gentle feelings long subdued, Subdued and cherish’d long;’ yet its energy resembles that of the dove, ‘pecking the hand that hovers o’er its mate,’ and its exaltation of thought is not of the