The Poems of Felicia Hemans
Just lifts its head above the billowy sands--
Some mouldering shrine still consecrates the scene,
And tells that glory’s footstep there hath been.
There hath the spirit of the mighty pass’d,
Not without record; though the desert blast,
Borne on the wings of Time, hath swept away
The proud creations rear’d to brave decay.
But _thou_, lone region! whose unnoticed name
No lofty deeds have mingled with their fame,
Who shall unfold thine annals?--who shall tell
If on thy soil the sons of heroes fell,
In those far ages which have left no trace,
No sunbeam, on the pathway of their race?
Though, haply, in the unrecorded days
Of kings and chiefs who pass’d without their praise,
Thou mightst have rear’d the valiant and the free,
In history’s page there is no tale of thee.
Yet hast thou thy memorials. On the wild,
Still rise the cairns, of yore all rudely piled,[151]
But hallow’d by that instinct which reveres
Things fraught with characters of elder years.
And such are these. Long centuries are flown,
Bow’d many a crest, and shatter’d many a throne,
Mingling the urn, the trophy, and the bust,
With what they hide--their shrined and treasured dust.
Men traverse Alps and oceans, to behold
Earth’s glorious works fast mingling with her mould;
But still these nameless chronicles of death,
Midst the deep silence of the unpeopled heath,
Stand in primeval artlessness, and wear
The same sepulchral mien, and almost share
Th’ eternity of nature, with the forms
Of the crown’d hills beyond, the dwellings of the storms.
Yet what avails it if each moss-grown heap
Still on the waste its lonely vigils keep,
Guarding the dust which slumbers well beneath
(Nor needs such care) from each cold season’s breath?
Where is the voice to tell _their_ tale who rest,
Thus rudely pillow’d, on the desert’s breast?
Doth the sword sleep beside them? Hath there been
A sound of battle midst the silent scene
Where now the flocks repose?--did the scythed car
Here reap its harvest in the ranks of war?
And rise these piles in memory of the slain,
And the red combat of the mountain-plain?
It may be thus:--the vestiges of strife,
Around yet lingering, mark the steps of life,
And the rude arrow’s barb remains to tell[152]
How by its stroke, perchance, the mighty fell
To be forgotten. Vain the warrior’s pride,
The chieftain’s power--they had no bard, and died.[153]
But other scenes, from their untroubled sphere,
The eternal stars of night have witness’d here.
There stands an altar of unsculptured stone,[154]
Far on the moor, a thing of ages gone,
Propp’d on its granite pillars, whence the rains
And pure bright dews have laved the crimson stains
Left by dark rites of blood: for here, of yore,
When the bleak waste a robe of forest wore,
And many a crested oak, which now lies low,
Waved its wild wreath of sacred mistletoe--
Here, at dim midnight, through the haunted shade,
On druid-harps the quivering moonbeam play’d,
And spells were breathed, that fill’d the deepening gloom
With the pale, shadowy people of the tomb.
Or, haply, torches waving through the night
Bade the red cairn-fires blaze from every height,[155]
Like battle-signals, whose unearthly gleams
Threw o’er the desert’s hundred hills and streams,
A savage grandeur; while the starry skies
Rang with the peal of mystic harmonies,
As the loud harp its deep-toned hymns sent forth
To the storm-ruling powers, the war-gods of the North.
But wilder sounds were there: th’ imploring cry
That woke the forest’s echo in reply,
But not the heart’s! Unmoved the wizard train
Stood round their human victim, and in vain
His prayer for mercy rose; in vain his glance
Look’d up, appealing to the blue expanse,
Where in their calm immortal beauty shone
Heaven’s cloudless orbs. With faint and fainter moan,
Bound on the shrine of sacrifice he lay,
Till, drop by drop, life’s current ebb’d away;
Till rock and turf grew deeply, darkly red,
And the pale moon gleam’d paler on the dead.
Have such things been, and here?--where stillness dwells
Midst the rude barrows and the moorland swells,
Thus undisturb’d? Oh! long the gulf of time
Hath closed in darkness o’er those days of crime,
And earth no vestige of their path retains,
Save such as these, which strew her loneliest plains
With records of man’s conflicts and his doom,
His spirit and his dust--the altar and the tomb.
But ages roll’d away: and England stood
With her proud banner streaming o’er the flood;
And with a lofty calmness in her eye,
And regal in collected majesty,
To breast the storm of battle. Every breeze
Bore sounds of triumph o’er her own blue seas;
And other lands, redeem’d and joyous, drank
The life-blood of her heroes, as they sank
On the red fields they won; whose wild flowers wave
Now in luxuriant beauty o’er their grave.
’Twas then the captives of Britannia’s war[156]
Here for their lovely southern climes afar
In bondage pined; the spell-deluded throng
Dragg’d at ambition’s chariot-wheels so long
To die--because a despot could not clasp
A sceptre fitted to his boundless grasp!
Yes! they whose march had rock’d the ancient thrones
And temples of the world--the deepening tones
Of whose advancing trumpet from repose
Had startled nations, wakening to their woes--
Were prisoners here. And there were some whose dreams
Were of sweet homes, by chainless mountain-streams,
And of the vine-clad hills, and many a strain
And festal melody of Loire or Seine;
And of those mothers who had watch’d and wept,
When on the field the unshelter’d conscript slept,
Bathed with the midnight dews. And some were there
Of sterner spirits, harden’d by despair;
Who, in their dark imaginings, again
Fired the rich palace and the stately fane,
Drank in their victim’s shriek, as music’s breath,
And lived o’er scenes, the festivals of death!
And there was mirth, too!--strange and savage mirth,
More fearful far than all the woes of earth!
The laughter of cold hearts, and scoffs that spring
From minds for which there is no sacred thing;
And transient bursts of fierce, exulting glee--
The lightning’s flash upon its blasted tree!
But still, howe’er the soul’s disguise were worn,
If from wild revelry, or haughty scorn,
Or buoyant hope, it won an outward show,
Slight was the mask, and all beneath it--woe.
Yet, was this all? Amidst the dungeon-gloom,
The void, the stillness of the captive’s doom,
Were there no deeper thoughts? And that dark power
To whom guilt owes one late but dreadful hour,
The mighty debt through years of crime delay’d,
But, as the grave’s, inevitably paid;
Came _he_ not thither, in his burning force,
The lord, the tamer of dark souls--Remorse?
Yes! as the night calls forth from sea and sky,
From breeze and wood, a solemn harmony,
Lost when the swift triumphant wheels of day
In light and sound are hurrying on their way:
Thus, from the deep recesses of the heart,
The voice which sleeps, but never dies, might start,
Call’d up by solitude, each nerve to thrill
With accents heard not, save when all is still!
The voice, inaudible when havoc’s strain
Crush’d the red vintage of devoted Spain;
Mute, when sierras to the war-whoop rung,
And the broad light of conflagration sprung
From the south’s marble cities; hush’d midst cries
That told the heavens of mortal agonies;
But gathering silent strength, to wake at last
In concentrated thunders of the past!
And there, perchance, some long-bewilder’d mind,
Torn from its lowly sphere, its path confined
Of village duties, in the Alpine glen,
Where nature cast its lot midst peasant men;
Drawn to that vortex, whose fierce ruler blent
The earthquake power of each wild element,
To lend the tide which bore his throne on high
One impulse more of desperate energy;
Might--when the billow’s awful rush was o’er
Which toss’d its wreck upon the storm-beat shore,
Won from its wanderings past, by suffering tried,
Search’d by remorse, by anguish purified--
Have fix’d, at length, its troubled hopes and fears
On the far world, seen brightest through our tears;
And, in that hour of triumph or despair,
Whose secrets all must learn--but none declare,
When, of the things to come, a deeper sense
Fills the dim eye of trembling penitence,
Have turn’d to Him whose bow is in the cloud,
Around life’s limits gathering as a shroud--
The fearful mysteries of the heart who knows,
And, by the tempest, calls it to repose!
Who visited that deathbed? Who can tell
Its brief sad tale, on which the soul might dwell,
And learn immortal lessons? Who beheld
The struggling hope, by shame, by doubt repell’d--
The agony of prayer--the bursting tears--
The dark remembrances of guilty years,
Crowding upon the spirit in their might?
He, through the storm who look’d, and there was light!
That scene is closed!--that wild, tumultuous breast,
With all its pangs and passions, is at rest!
He, too, is fallen, the master-power of strife,
Who woke those passions to delirious life;
And days, prepared a brighter course to run,
Unfold their buoyant pinions to the sun!
It is a glorious hour when Spring goes forth
O’er the bleak mountains of the shadowy north,
And with one radiant glance, one magic breath,
Wakes all things lovely from the sleep of death;
While the glad voices of a thousand streams,
Bursting their bondage, triumph in her beams!
But Peace hath nobler changes! O’er the mind,
The warm and living spirit of mankind,
_Her_ influence breathes, and bids the blighted heart,
To life and hope from desolation start!
She with a look dissolves the captive’s chain,
Peopling with beauty widow’d homes again;
Around the mother, in her closing years,
Gathering her sons once more, and from the tears
Of the dim past but winning purer light,
To make the present more serenely bright.
Nor rests that influence here. From clime to clime,
In silence gliding with the stream of time,
Still doth it spread, borne onwards, as a breeze
With healing on its wings, o’er isles and seas.
And as Heaven’s breath call’d forth, with genial power,
From the dry wand the almond’s living flower,
So doth its deep-felt charm in secret move
The coldest heart to gentle deeds of love;
While round its pathway nature softly glows,
And the wide desert blossoms as the rose.
Yes! let the waste lift up the exulting voice!
Let the far-echoing solitude rejoice!
And thou, lone moor! where no blithe reaper’s song
E’er lightly sped the summer hours along,
Bid thy wild rivers, from each mountain-source
Rushing in joy, make music on their course!
Thou, whose sole records of existence mark
The scene of barbarous rites in ages dark,
And of some nameless combat; hope’s bright eye
Beams o’er thee in the light of prophecy!
Yet shalt thou smile, by busy culture drest,
And the rich harvest wave upon thy breast!
Yet shall thy cottage smoke, at dewy morn,
Rise in blue wreaths above the flowering thorn,