The Poems of Felicia Hemans
she never ceases to be strictly _feminine_ in the whole current of
her thought and feeling, nor approaches by any chance the verge of
that free and intrepid course of speculation, of which the boldness
is more conspicuous than the wisdom, but into which some of the most
remarkable among the female literati of our times have freely and
fearlessly plunged. She has, in the poem before us, made choice of a
subject of which it would have been very difficult to have reconciled
the treatment, in the hands of some female authors, to the delicacy
which belongs to the sex, and the tenderness and enthusiasm which
form its finest characteristics. A coarse and chilling cento of
the exploded fancies of modern scepticism, done into rhyme by the
hand of a woman, would have been doubly disgusting, by the revival
of absurdities long consigned to oblivion, and by the revolting
exhibition of a female mind shorn of all its attractions, and wrapt
in darkness and defiance. But Mrs Hemans has chosen the better and
the nobler cause, and, while she has left in the poem before us every
trace of vigorous intellect of which the subject admitted, and has far
transcended in energy of thought the prosing pioneers of unbelief,
she has sustained throughout a tone of warm and confiding piety, and
has thus proved that the humility of hope and of faith has in it none
of the weakness with which it has been charged by the arrogance of
impiety, but owns a divine and mysterious vigour residing under the
very aspect of gentleness and devotion.”
_Quarterly Review._--“Her last two publications are works of a higher
stamp; works, indeed, of which no living poet need to be ashamed.
The first of them is entitled The Sceptic, and is devoted, as our
readers will easily anticipate, to advocating the cause of religion.
Undoubtedly the poem must have owed its being to the circumstances of
the times--to a laudable indignation at the course which literature in
many departments seemed lately to be taking in this country, and at
the doctrines disseminated with industry, principally (but by no means
exclusively, as has been falsely supposed) among the lower orders. Mrs
Hemans, however, does not attempt to reason learnedly or laboriously
in verse; few poems, ostensibly philosophical or didactic, have
ever been of use, except to display the ingenuity and talent of the
writers. People are not often taught a science or an art in poetry,
and much less will an infidel be converted by a theological treatise
in verse. But the argument of The Sceptic is one of irresistible force
to confirm a wavering mind; it is simply resting the truth of religion
on the necessity of it--on the utter misery and helplessness of man
without it. This argument is in itself available for all the purposes
of poetry: it appeals to the imagination and passions of man; it is
capable of interesting all our affectionate hopes and charities, of
acting upon all our natural fears. Mrs Hemans has gone through this
range with great feeling and ability; and when she comes to the mind
which has clothed itself in its own strength, and relying proudly on
that alone in the hour of affliction, has sunk into distraction in the
contest, she rises into a strain of moral poetry not often surpassed:--
‘Oh, what is nature’s strength? The vacant eye,
By mind deserted, hath a dread reply,’ etc.”]
SUPERSTITION AND REVELATION,
AN UNFINISHED POEM.
I.
Beings of brighter worlds! that rise at times
As phantoms with ideal beauty fraught,
In those brief visions of celestial climes
Which pass like sunbeams o’er the realms of thought,
Dwell ye around us?--are ye hovering nigh,
Throned on the cloud, or buoyant in the air?
And in deep solitudes, where human eye
Can trace no step, Immortals! are ye there?
Oh! who can tell?--what power, but Death alone,
Can lift the mystic veil that shades the world unknown?
II.
But Earth hath seen the days, ere yet the flowers
Of Eden wither’d, when reveal’d ye shone
In all your brightness midst those holy bowers--
Holy, but not unfading, as your own!
While He, the child of that primeval soil,
With you its paths in high communion trode,
His glory yet undimm’d by guilt or toil,
And beaming in the image of his God,
And his pure spirit glowing from the sky,
Exulting in its light, a spark of Deity.
III.
Then, haply, mortal and celestial lays,
Mingling their tones, from nature’s temple rose,
When nought but that majestic song of praise
Broke on the sanctity of night’s repose,
With music since unheard: and man might trace
By stream and vale, in deep embow’ring shade,
Devotion’s first and loveliest dwelling-place,
The footsteps of th’ Omnipotent, who made
That spot a shrine, where youthful nature cast
Her consecrated wealth, rejoicing as He pass’d.
IV.
Short were those days, and soon, O sons of Heaven!
Your aspect changed for man. In that dread hour,
When from his paradise the alien driven
Beheld your forms in angry splendour tower,
Guarding the clime where he no more might dwell
With meteor-swords: he saw the living flame,
And his first cry of misery was--“Farewell!”
His heart’s first anguish, exile: he became
A pilgrim on the earth, whose children’s lot
Is still for happier lands to pine--and reach them not.
V.
Where now the chosen bowers that once beheld
Delight and Love their first bright sabbath keep?
From all its founts the world of waters swell’d,
And wrapt them in the mantle of the deep!
For He, to whom the elements are slaves,
In wrath unchain’d the oceans of the cloud,
And heaved the abyss beneath, till waves on waves
Folded creation in their mighty shroud;
Then left the earth a solitude, o’erspread
With its own awful weeks--a desert of the dead.
VI.
But onward flow’d life’s busy course again,
And rolling ages with them bore away--
As to be lost amidst the boundless main,
Rich orient streams their golden sands convey--
The hallow’d lore of old--the guiding light
Left by tradition to the sons of earth,
And the blest memory of each sacred rite
Known in the region of their father’s birth,
When in each breeze around his fair abode
Whisper’d a seraph’s voice, or lived the breath of God.
VII.
Who hath not seen, what time the orb of day,
Cinctured with glory, seeks the ocean’s breast,
A thousand clouds all glowing in his ray,
Catching brief splendour from the purple west?
So round thy parting steps, fair Truth! awhile
With borrow’d hues unnumber’d phantoms shone;
And Superstition, from thy lingering smile,
Caught a faint glow of beauty not her own,
Blending her rites with thine--while yet afar
Thine eye’s last radiance beam’d, a slow-receding star.
VIII.
Yet still one stream was pure--one sever’d shrine
Was fed with holier fire, by chosen hands;
And sounds, and dreams, and impulses divine,
Were in the dwellings of the patriarch bands.
There still the father to his child bequeath’d
The sacred torch of never-dying flame;
There still Devotion’s suppliant accents breathed
The One adored and everlasting Name;
And angel guests would linger and repose
Where those primeval tents amid their palm-trees rose.
IX.
But far o’er earth the apostate wanderers bore
Their alien rites. For them, by fount or shade,
Nor voice, nor vision, holy as of yore,
In thrilling whispers to the soul convey’d
High inspiration: yet in every clime,
Those sons of doubt and error fondly sought
With beings, in their essence more sublime,
To hold communion of mysterious thought;
On some dread power in trembling hope to lean,
And hear in every wind the accents of th’ Unseen.
X.
Yes! we have need to bid our hopes repose
On some protecting influence: here confined,
Life hath no healing balm for mortal woes,
Earth is too narrow for th’ immortal mind.
Our spirits burn to mingle with the day,
As exiles panting for their native coast,
Yet lured by every wild-flower from their way,
And shrinking from the gulf that must be cross’d.
Death hovers round us: in the zephyr’s sigh,
As in the storm, he comes--and lo! Eternity!
XI.
As one left lonely on the desert sands
Of burning Afric, where, without a guide,
He gazes as the pathless waste expands--
Around, beyond, interminably wide;
While the red haze, presaging the Simoom,
Obscures the fierce resplendence of the sky,
Or suns of blasting light perchance illume
The glistening Serab[145] which illudes his eye:
Such was the wanderer Man, in ages flown,
Kneeling in doubt and fear before the dread Unknown.
XII.
His thoughts explored the past--and where were they,
The chiefs of men, the mighty ones gone by?
He turn’d--a boundless void before him lay,
Wrapp’d in the shadows of futurity.
How knew the child of Nature that the flame
He felt within him struggling to ascend,
Should perish not with that terrestrial frame
Doom’d with the earth on which it moved, to blend?
How, when affliction bade his spirit bleed,
If ’twere a Father’s love or Tyrant’s wrath decreed?
XIII.
Oh! marvel not if then he sought to trace
In all sublimities of sight and sound,
In rushing winds that wander through all space,
Or midst deep woods, with holy gloom embrown’d,
The oracles of Fate! or if the train
Of floating forms that throng the world of sleep,
And sounds that vibrate on the slumberer’s brain,
When mortal voices rest in stillness deep,
Were deem’d mysterious revelations, sent
From viewless powers, the lords of each dread element.
XIV.
Was not wild Nature, in that elder-time,
Clothed with a deeper power?--earth’s wandering race,
Exploring realms of solitude sublime,
Not as _we_ see, beheld her awful face!
Art had not tamed the mighty scenes which met
Their searching eyes; unpeopled kingdoms lay
In savage pomp before them--all was yet
Silent and vast, but not as in decay;
And the bright daystar, from his burning throne,
Look’d o’er a thousand shores, untrodden, voiceless, lone.
XV.
The forests in their dark luxuriance waved,
With all their swell of strange Æolian sound;
The fearful deep, sole region ne’er enslaved,
Heaved, in its pomp of terror, darkly round.
Then, brooding o’er the images, imprest
By forms of grandeur thronging on his eye,
And faint traditions, guarded in his breast,
Midst dim remembrances of infancy,
Man shaped unearthly presences, in dreams,
Peopling each wilder haunt of mountains, groves, and streams.
XVI.
Then bled the victim--then in every shade
Of rock or turf arose the votive shrine;
Fear bow’d before the phantoms she portray’d,
And Nature teem’d with many a mystic sign.
Meteors, and storms, and thunders! ye whose course
E’en yet is awful to th’ enlighten’d eye,
As, wildly rushing from your secret source,
Your sounding chariot sweeps the realms on high,
Then o’er the earth prophetic gloom ye cast,
And the wide nations gazed, and trembled as ye pass’d.
XVII.
But you, ye stars! in distant glory burning,
Nurtured with flame, bright altars of the sky!
To whose far climes the spirit, vainly turning,
Would pierce the secrets of infinity--
To you the heart, bereft of other light,
Its first deep homage paid, on Eastern plains,