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The Poems of Felicia Hemans

Mrs. Hemans

general, perhaps, women are rather bad than good, and slaves altogether bad.’[454] Where women are thus estimated, the domestic charities, our best school of virtue, cannot exist; those affections which are at once the gentlest and the strongest have no place; nor will there be any true refinement, nor quick and generous feeling in the intercourse between man and man: the first and strongest link in the chain of human sympathy is wanting. “When Jesus Christ pronounced these words, ‘_What God has joined together, let not man put asunder_,’ he laid down the fundamental law of human civilisation. But it would have been impossible to render marriage the most solemn and indissoluble of connexions if his religion had not at the same time restored to woman the character designed for her by nature, and raised her to that place she now holds, wherever the truths he taught have had somewhat of their proper influence. “When the feelings that give sanctity to marriage are wanting, the parental affections operate but feebly. The new-born child, instead of being regarded as a gift and a trust from God, a new creature with whom we have become for ever connected, and a living bond of common interest to strengthen the union of its parents, is either looked at, on the one hand, as a present incumbrance, or, on the other, as a probable future support. The whole history of the domestic relations of the ancients establishes this truth. What must have been the state of parental affection among those who practised and tolerated the destruction of infants as a common custom? The absence of such affection is not to be estimated by the number of victims to that custom, but by the fact of its being generally viewed without horror or reprobation. It was a shocking trait of barbarity in the character of the elder Cato, that he recommended that worn-out and disabled slaves should be exposed to perish; but an exposure more inhuman, which showed that man had lost even the feelings of the lower animals, was constantly going on, and was enjoined, under certain circumstances, both by Plato and Aristotle, as a law of their imagined republics. There is a famous saying in one of the comedies of Terence, which has been often quoted as a fine expression of philanthropy: _Homo sum--humani nihil a me alienum puto_.[455] It is put into the mouth of a man whose wife is afterwards represented as in fear before him, because she had not destroyed her female infant as he had commanded, but given it a chance for preservation by causing it to be exposed alive. Maternal love cannot be wholly extinguished; but it is the glow of modern feeling only which pours its beauty over the following lines, to which nothing parallel can be found in the poets of Greece or Rome, though Mrs Hemans apostrophises the Elysium of their imagining:-- ‘Calm, on its leaf-strewn bier, Unlike a gift of nature to decay, Too rose-like still, too beautiful, too dear, The child at rest before the mother lay, E’en so to pass away, With its bright smile. Elysium! what wert thou To her who wept o’er that young slumberer’s brow? ‘Thou hadst no home, green land! For the fair creature from her bosom gone, With life’s fresh flowers just opening in its hand, And all the lovely thoughts and dreams unknown, Which in its clear eye shone Like spring’s first wakening! But that light was past;-- Where went the dew-drop swept before the blast?’ “The ancient popular faith was indeed destitute of consolation; but in the absence of those associations which shed a holy light round an infant, such consolation is less needed. Even the fountain of maternal affection flows with but a scanty and interrupted stream. “Thus religion, by making man of more worth to man, and by strengthening our assurance in each other’s sympathy and virtue, has called forth affections which lay folded up in our nature, or had put forth only a stinted growth. The finer productions of modern poetry are coloured throughout with expressions of their beauty and strength. Moral qualities, good or bad, as they exist in men, unformed directly or indirectly by religion, owe their strength principally to impulse and passion, or depend, like the inconsistent hospitality of the Arab, or the pride of the Roman, on what he thought the glory of his country, upon prejudices which spring partly from generous feelings and partly from selfish regards, and are made strong and binding upon the individual by universal consent. It is only when quickened by religious sentiment, that the human character displays all its complicated variety of feelings. Then affections, which had before seemed almost powerless, become essential elements of our being. Associations, till then unknown, link together their invisible chains; and the feeling with which they thrill us when touched, presents a new phenomenon in our nature. The love of our youthful home may seem to us an universal sentiment, likely to appear in the poetry of all times; yet how little reference to it do we find in any poetry before our own age, and especially how little reference, like the following, to its moral power! ‘“Hast thou come with the heart of thy childhood back, The free, the pure, the kind?” --So murmur’d the trees in my homeward track, As they play’d to the mountain-wind. “Hath thy soul been true to its early love?” Whisper’d my native streams; “Hath the spirit, nursed amidst hill and grove, Still revered its first high dreams?”’ etc. “It is under the continued influence of Christianity, however imperfect that influence may have been, that the human character, which had before manifested itself partially and irregularly in the rudeness and inconsistency of its elementary passions, has begun to struggle toward its full development. It has become alive to feelings, and is putting forth powers, which belong to its immortal nature. We may perceive this unfolding of man in the very structure of language, which, enlarged as it has been with new terms, yet presents so imperfect a means for expressing the different qualities and shades of character, and the modes and combinations of feeling. The study of human nature has thus become a science of far more interest and complexity. Many forms of character now appear, that belong to no period in the progress of the human race preceding that at which we have arrived. To the eye of the poet, man presents himself in new aspects of strength and weakness in multiform relations to the finite and the infinite, and with all the variety of sentiments resulting from the change in his prospects and hopes. He is now ‘a traveller between life and death;’ his highest interests connect him with the boundless, the unearthly, and the mysterious; with all that has most power to affect the imagination, and excite the strongest and deepest feelings. It is only through his relations to God and eternity that man becomes an exhaustless subject of high poetry. When thus viewed, his ruined home may be repeopled with thoughts and images such as these:-- ‘Thou hast heard many sounds, thou hearth, Deserted now by all! Voices at eve here met in mirth, Which eve may ne’er recall. Youth’s buoyant step, and woman’s tone, And childhood’s laughing glee, And song and prayer have all been known, Hearth of the dead! to thee. ‘Thou hast heard blessings fondly pour’d Upon the infant head, As if in every fervent word The living soul were shed: Thou hast seen partings,--such as bear The bloom from life away,-- Alas! for love in changeful air, Where naught beloved can stay!’ etc. “The recognition of the higher relations of man has given a characteristic to modern poetry, particularly English poetry, through which it has peculiar power over the heart. Expressions and descriptions of human suffering, instead of depressing us with melancholy, become sublime or touching, when that suffering is brought into direct or indirect contrast with man’s nature and hopes as an immortal being, or is represented as calling into exercise those virtues which can exist in such a being alone. There is no pathos in the mere lamentations of an individual over his own particular lot, or over the condition of a race to which he feels it an unhappiness to belong. There is nothing that excites any tender or elevating feeling in such verses as the following from an ancient poet:-- ‘Is there a man just, honest, nobly born? Malice shall hunt him down. Does wealth attend him? Trouble is heard behind. Conscience direct? Beggary is at his heels.... ... Account that day Which brings no new mischance, a day of rest. For what is man? What matter is he made of? How born? What is he, and what shall he be? What an unnatural parent is this world, To foster none but villains, and destroy All who are benefactors to mankind!’ “The sufferings to which we are here exposed cease to be a subject that leads to any grateful or ennobling state of mind, when man regards the pleasures of this life as his only good. Among the ancient poets, the contemplation of its evils, when viewed at a distance, is associated with sentiments simply disheartening, or altogether superficial and trifling. Let us take for example a famous ode of Horace. It begins:-- ‘Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni; nec pietas moram Rugis et instanti senectæ Afferet, indomitæque morti.’ “It ends:-- ‘Absumet hæres Cæcuba dignior, Servata centum clavibus; et mero Tinget pavimentum superbo Pontificum potiore cœnis.’ “No modern poet would, or rather could, construct verses after this fashion. “It is in representations of the triumph of our immortal nature over the ills of mortality, of the patience with which they are borne, of the power by which they are overcome--in one word, of the moral qualities which suffering alone brings into action, and in those touches that awaken our best and tenderest affections for the sufferings of others, especially the innocent and helpless, that the sources of the highest pathos are to be found. All that is morally sublime springs upward from our severer trials; and then, only when man feels the nobleness of his nature. Present the calamity nakedly to our view, and its contemplation is merely distressing; picture it in connexion with some effort of virtue, and a glory is spread over the whole. In the Fall of D’Assas by Mrs Hemans, (not one of the most remarkable of her productions,) a young officer, full of the thoughts of his home and the scenes of his earlier years, is represented as surprised and massacred by his enemies. The simple narrative of such a death naturally excites painful emotion, but this emotion is so wholly overborne, as but to give additional strength to the exaltation of feeling produced by the concluding verses:-- ‘“Silence!” in under-tones they cry,’ etc. “We may compare the poem just quoted with a passage from Virgil, which refers to circumstances somewhat similar, and has been praised as very pathetic, in the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, where Nisus perceives that Euryalus has fallen into the hands of his foes, and is just about to be slain. ‘Tum vero, exterritus, amens, Conclamat Nisus: nec se celare tenebris Amplius, aut tantum potuit perferre dolorem: “Me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite ferrum, O Rutuli! mea fraus omnis; nihil iste nec ausus, Nec potuit; cœlum hoc et conscia sidera testor.” Tantum infelicem nimium dilexit amicum.