The Poems of Felicia Hemans

daring kind, which doubts and derides, or even questions, but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forward with faith and reverential fear. “Mrs Hemans has written much, and, as with all authors in like predicament, her strains are of various degrees of excellence. Independently of this, her different works will be differently estimated, as to their relative value, by different minds; but among the lyrics of the English language which can scarcely die, we hesitate not to assign places to ‘The Hebrew Mother’--‘The Treasures of the Deep’--‘The Spirit’s Return’--‘The Homes of England’--‘The Better Land’--‘The Hour of Death’--‘The Trumpet’--and ‘The Graves of a Household.’ In these ‘gems of purest ray serene,’ the peculiar genius of Mrs Hemans breathes, and burns, and shines pre-eminent; for her forte lay in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic life--the gentle overflowings of love and friendship--‘homebred delights and heartfelt happiness’--the associations of local attachment--and the influences of religious feelings over the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and situations of man, or from the aspects of external nature. We would only here add, by way of remark, that the writings of Mrs Hemans seem to divide themselves into two pretty distinct portions--the first comprehending her ‘Modern Greece,’ ‘Wallace,’ ‘Dartmoor,’ ‘Sceptic,’ ‘Historic Scenes,’ and other productions, up to the publication of ‘The Forest Sanctuary;’ and the latter comprehending that volume, ‘The Records of Woman,’ ‘The Scenes and Hymns of Life,’ and all her subsequent productions. In her earlier works, she follows the classic model, as contradistinguished from the romantic, and they are inferior in that polish of style, and almost gorgeous richness of language, in which her maturer compositions are set. It is evident that new stores of thought were latterly opened up to her, in a more extended acquaintance with the literature of Spain and Germany, as well as by a profounder study of the writings of our great poetical regenerator--Wordsworth.”--_Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1835._ [444] “Sabbath Sonnet.” MISS LANDON. “Did we not know this world to be but a place of trial--our bitter probation for another and for a better--how strange in its severity would seem the lot of genius in a woman! The keen feeling--the generous enthusiasm--the lofty aspiration and the delicate perception--are given but to make the possessor unfitted for her actual position. It is well!--such gifts, in their very contrast to the selfishness and the evil with which they are surrounded, inform us of another world--they breathe of their home, which is heaven; the spiritual and the inspired in this life but fit us to believe in that which is to come. With what a sublime faith is this divine reliance expressed in all Mrs Hemans’s later writings! As the clouds towards nightfall melt away on a fine summer evening into the clear amber of the west, leaving a soft and unbroken azure whereon the stars may shine; so the troubles of life, its vain regrets and vainer desires, vanished before the calm close of existence--the hopes of heaven rose steadfast at last--the light shone from the windows of her home, as she approached unto it. ‘No tears for thee!--though light be from us gone With thy soul’s radiance, bright and restless one! No tears for thee! They that have loved an exile must not mourn To see him parting for his native bourne, O’er the dark sea.’ “We have noticed this yearning for affection--unsatisfied, but still unsubdued--as one characteristic of Mrs Hemans’s poetry: the rich picturesque was another. Highly accomplished, the varied stores that she possessed were all subservient to one master science. Mistress both of German and Spanish, the latter country appears to have peculiarly captivated her imagination. At that period when the fancy is peculiarly alive to impression--when girlhood is so new, that the eagerness of childhood is still in its delights--Spain was, of all others, the country on which public attention was fixed--victory after victory carried the British flag from the ocean to the Pyrenees; but, with that craving for the ideal which is so great a feature in her writings, the present was insufficient, and she went back upon the past;--the romantic history of the Moors was like a storehouse, with treasures gorgeous like those of its own Alhambra. “It is observable in her minor poems, that they turn upon an incident rather than a feeling. Feelings, true and deep, are developed; but one single emotion is never the original subject. Some graceful or touching anecdote or situation catches her attention, and its poetry is developed in a strain of mourning melody, and in a vein of gentle moralising. I always wish, in reading my favourite poets, to know what first suggested my favourite poems. Few things would be more interesting than to know under what circumstances they were composed--how much of individual sentiment there was in each, or how, on some incident seemingly even opposed, they had contrived to ingraft their own associations. What a history of the heart would such annals reveal! Every poem is in itself an impulse. “Besides the ideal and the picturesque, Mrs Hemans is distinguished by her harmony. I use the word harmony advisedly, in contradistinction to melody. Melody implies something more careless, more simple, than belongs to her style; it is song by snatches; our English ballads are remarkable for it. To quote an instance or two: there is a verse in that of _Yarrow Water_-- ‘O wind that wandereth from the south! Seek where my love repaireth, And blow a kiss to his dear mouth. And tell me how he fareth.’ Nothing can exceed the tender sweetness of these lines; but there is no skill. Again, in _Faire Rosamonde_, the verse that describes the cruelty of Eleanor-- ‘With that she struck her on the mouth, So dyed double red; Hard was the heart that gave the blow, Soft were the lips that bled.’ How musical is the alliteration! but it is music which, like that of the singing brook, has sprung up of itself. Now, Mrs Hemans has the most perfect skill in her science; nothing can be more polished than her versification. Every poem is like a piece of music, with its eloquent pauses, its rich combinations, and its swelling chords. Who that has ever heard, can forget the exquisite flow of ‘The Voice of Spring?’-- ‘I come! I come!--ye have call’d me long: I come o’er the mountains with light and song! Ye may trace my step o’er the wakening earth, By the winds that tell of the violet’s birth, By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves opening as I pass.’ It is like the finest order of Italian singing--pure, high, and scientific. “I can never sufficiently regret that it was not my good fortune to know Mrs Hemans personally: it was an honour I should have estimated so highly--a happiness that I should have enjoyed so keenly. I never even met with an acquaintance of hers but once; that once, however, was much. I knew Miss Jewsbury, the late lamented Mrs Fletcher. She delighted in speaking of Mrs Hemans; she spoke of her with the appreciation of one fine mind comprehending another, and with the earnest affection of a woman and a friend. She described her conversation as singularly fascinating--full of poetry, very felicitous in illustration by anecdote--happy, too, in quotation, and very rich in imagery; ‘in short, her own poem on “The Treasures of the Deep” would best describe it.’ She mentioned a very striking simile to which a conversation on Mrs Hemans’s own poem of ‘The Sceptic’ had led;--‘Like Sinbad the sailor, we are often shipwrecked on a strange shore. We despair; but hope comes when least expected. We pass through the gloomy caverns of doubt into the free air and blessed sunshine of conviction and belief.’ I asked her if she thought Mrs Hemans a happy person, and she said, ‘No; her enjoyment is feverish, and she desponds. She is like a lamp whose oil is consumed by the very light which it yields.’ What a cruel thing is the weakness of memory! How little can its utmost efforts recall of conversation that was once an instruction and a delight! “To the three characteristics of Mrs Hemans’ poetry which have already been mentioned--viz. the ideal, the picturesque, and the harmonious--a fourth must be added,--the moral. Nothing can be more pure, more feminine and exalted, than the spirit which pervades the whole; it is the intuitive sense of right, elevated and strengthened into a principle. It is a glorious and a beautiful memory to bequeath; but she who left it is little to be envied. Open the volumes which she has left, legacies from many various hours, and what a record of wasted feelings and disappointed hopes may be traced in their sad and sweet complainings! Yet Mrs Hemans was spared some of the keenest mortifications of a literary career. She knew nothing of it as a profession which has to make its way through poverty, neglect, and obstacles: she lived apart in a small, affectionate circle of friends. The high-road of life, with its crowds and contention--its heat, its noise, and its dust that rests on all--was for her happily at a distance; yet even in such green nest, the bird could not fold its wings, and sleep to its own music. There came the aspiring, the unrest, the aching sense of being misunderstood, the consciousness that those a thousand times inferior were yet more beloved. Genius places a woman in an unnatural position; notoriety frightens away affection; and superiority has for its attendant fear, not love. Its pleasantest emotions are too vivid to be lasting: hope may sometimes, ‘Raising its bright face, With a free gush of sunny tears, erase The characters of anguish:’ but, like the azure glimpses between thunder-showers, the clouds gather more darkly around for the passing sunshine. The heart sinks back on its solitary desolation. In every page of Mrs Hemans’ writings is this sentiment impressed. What is the conclusion of ‘Corinne crowned at the Capitol?’ ‘Radiant daughter of the sun! Now thy living wreath is won. Crown’d of Rome!--oh, art thou not Happy in that glorious lot? Happier, happier far than thou With the laurel on thy brow, She that makes the humblest hearth Lovely but to one on earth.’ “What is poetry, and what is a poetical career? The first is to have an organisation of extreme sensibility, which the second exposes bareheaded to the rudest weather. The original impulse is irresistible--all professions are engrossing when once begun; and, acting with perpetual stimulus, nothing takes more complete possession of its follower than literature. But never can success repay its cost. The work appears--it lives in the light of popular applause; but truly might the writer exclaim,-- ‘It is my youth--it is my bloom--it is my glad free heart I cast away for thee--for thee--ill-fated as thou art.’ If this be true even of one sex, how much more true of the other! Ah! Fame to a woman is indeed but a royal mourning in purple for happiness.”--_New Monthly Magazine_ for August 1835. H. F. CHORLEY. “Though respect for the memory of the dead, and delicacy towards the living, enjoin us to be brief in alluding to the events of her life, we may speak freely, and at length, of the history of her mind, and the circumstances of her literary career, in the course of which she deserved and acquired a European reputation as the first of our poetesses living, and still before the public. Few have written so