The Poems of Felicia Hemans
Still, by thine arm upheld, our ancient landmarks stood.
Be they eternal!--be thy children found
Still to their country’s altars true like thee!
And while “the name of Briton” is a sound
Of rallying music to the brave and free,
With the high feelings at the word which swell,
To make the breast a shrine for Freedom’s flame,
Be mingled thoughts of him who loved so well,
Who left so pure, its heritage of fame!
Let earth with trophies guard the conqueror’s dust,
Heaven in our souls embalms the memory of the just.
All else shall pass away!--the thrones of kings,
The very traces of their _tombs_ depart;
But number not with perishable things
The holy records Virtue leaves the heart,
Heir-looms from race to race! And oh! in days
When, by the yet unborn, thy deeds are blest,
When our sons learn “as household words” thy praise,
Still on thine offspring may thy spirit rest!
And many a name of that imperial line,
Father and patriot! blend, in England’s songs, with thine!
[193] The glittering meteor, like a star, which often appears about a
ship during tempests; if seen upon the main-mast, is considered by the
sailors as an omen of good weather.--See Dampier’s _Voyages_.
[“The last poem is to the memory of his late Majesty: unlike courtly
themes in general, this is one of the deepest and most lasting
interest. Buried as the King had long been in mental and visual
darkness, and dead to the common joys of the world, his death,
perhaps, did not occasion the shock, or the piercing sorrow which
we have felt on some other public losses; but the heart must be
cold indeed that could, on reflection, regard the whole fortune and
fate of that venerable, gallant, tender-hearted, and pious man,
without a more than common sympathy. There was something in his
character so truly national--his very errors were of so amiable
a kind, his excellences bore so high a stamp, his nature was so
genuine and unsophisticated, he stood in his splendid court, amidst
his large and fine family, so true a husband, so good a father, so
safe an example--he so thoroughly understood the feelings, and so
duly appreciated the virtues, even the uncourtly virtues of his
subjects--and, with all this, the sorrows from heaven rained down upon
his head in so ‘pitiless and pelting a storm:’ all these--his high
qualities and unparalleled sufferings--form such a subject for poetry,
as nothing, we should imagine, but its difficulty and the expectation
attending it, would prevent from being seized upon by the greatest
poets of the day. We will not say that Mrs Hemans has filled the whole
canvass as it might have been filled, but unquestionably her poem is
beyond all comparison with any which we have seen on the subject; it
is full of fine and pathetic passages, and it leads us up through all
the dismal colourings of the foreground to that bright and consoling
prospect which should close every Christian’s reflections on such a
matter. An analysis of so short a poem is wholly unnecessary, and we
have already transgressed our limits; we will, therefore, give but one
extract of that soothing nature alluded to, and release our readers:--
‘Yet was there mercy still! If joy no more,’ etc.
“It is time to close this article.[194] Our readers will have seen,
and we do not deny, that we have been much interested by our subject.
Who or what Mrs Hemans is, we know not: we have been told that, like a
poet of antiquity--
----‘Tristia vitæ
Solatur cantu,’----
If it be so, (and the most sensible hearts are not uncommonly nor
unnaturally the most bitterly wounded,) she seems, from the tenor of
her writings, to bear about her a higher and a surer balsam than the
praises of men, or even the ‘sacred muse’ herself can impart. Still
there is a pleasure, an innocent and an honest pleasure, even to a
wounded spirit, in fame fairly earned; and such fame as may wait upon
our decision, we freely and conscientiously bestow. In our opinion,
all her poems are elegant and pure in thought and language; her later
poems are of higher promise, they are vigorous, picturesque, and
pathetic.”--_Quarterly Review_, vol. xxiv.]
[194] This critique, from the pen of the venerable and distinguished
Editor, William Gifford, Esq., comprehended strictures on “The
Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,”--“Tales and Historic Scenes
in Verse,”--“Translations from Camoens,” etc.,--“The Sceptic,” and
“Stanzas to the Memory of the late King.”
TALES AND HISTORIC SCENES.
SECOND SERIES.
[After the first collection of her Tales and Historic Scenes, it is
pretty evident that Mrs Hemans contemplated a second series, although
her design was never so extensively carried out as to induce the
publication of another volume under the same title. But, as the
compositions we refer to all belong to this period of our author’s
literary progress, we have ventured not only so to class, but so to
christen them, as Malachi Malgrowther would say, “for uniformity’s
sake.”
THE MAREMMA.
[“Nello della Pietra had espoused a lady of noble family at Sienna,
named Madonna Pia. Her beauty was the admiration of Tuscany, and
excited in the heart of her husband a jealousy, which, exasperated by
false reports and groundless suspicions, at length drove him to the
desperate resolution of Othello. It is difficult to decide whether
the lady was quite innocent, but so Dante represents her. Her husband
brought her into the Maremma, which, then as now, was a district
destructive of health. He never told his unfortunate wife the reason
of her banishment to so dangerous a country. He did not deign to utter
complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in cold silence,
without answering her questions, or listening to her remonstrances.
He patiently waited till the pestilential air should destroy the
health of this young lady. In a few months she died. Some chronicles,
indeed, tell us that Nello used the dagger to hasten her death. It
is certain that he survived her, plunged in sadness and perpetual
silence. Dante had, in this incident, all the materials of an ample
and very poetical narrative. But he bestows on it only four verses. He
meets in Purgatory three spirits. One was a captain who fell fighting
on the same side with him in the battle of Campaldino; the second,
a gentleman assassinated by the treachery of the House of Este; the
third was a woman unknown to the poet, and who, after the others had
spoken, turned towards him with these words:--
Recorditi di me; che son la Pia,
Sienna mi fe, disfecerni Maremma,
Salsi colui che inanellata pria
Disposando m’ avea con la sua gemma.’”
Purgatorio, cant. v.
--_Edinburgh Review_, No. lvii.]
There are bright scenes beneath Italian skies,
Where glowing suns there purest light diffuse,
Uncultured flowers in wild profusion rise,
And nature lavishes her warmest hues;
But trust thou not her smile, her balmy breath--
Away! her charms are but the pomp of Death!
He in the vine-clad bowers, unseen, is dwelling,
Where the cool shade its freshness round thee throws;
His voice, in every perfumed zephyr swelling,
With gentlest whisper lures thee to repose;
And the soft sounds that through the foliage sigh
But woo thee still to slumber and to die.
Mysterious danger lurks, a syren there,
Not robed in terrors, or announced in gloom,
But stealing o’er thee in the scented air,
And veil’d in flowers, that smile to deck thy tomb;
How may we deem, amidst their deep array,
That heaven and earth but flatter to betray?
Sunshine, and bloom, and verdure! Can it be
That these but charm us with destructive wiles?
Where shall we turn, O Nature, if in _thee_
Danger is mask’d in beauty--death in smiles?
Oh! still the Circe of that fatal shore,
Where she, the Sun’s bright daughter, dwelt of yore!
There, year by year, that secret peril spreads,
Disguised in loveliness, its baleful reign,
And viewless blights o’er many a landscape sheds,
Gay with the riches of the south, in vain;
O’er fairy bowers and palaces of state
Passing unseen, to leave them desolate.
And pillar’d halls, whose airy colonnades
Were form’d to echo music’s choral tone,
Are silent now, amidst deserted shades,
Peopled by sculpture’s graceful forms alone;
And fountains dash unheard, by lone alcoves,
Neglected temples, and forsaken groves.
And there, where marble nymphs, in beauty gleaming,
Midst the deep shades of plane and cypress rise.
By wave or grot might Fancy linger, dreaming
Of old Arcadia’s woodland deities.
Wild visions!--there no sylvan powers convene:
Death reigns the genius of th’ Elysian scene.
Ye, too, illustrious hills of Rome! that bear
Traces of mightier beings on your brow,
O’er you that subtle spirit of the air
Extends the desert of his empire now;
Broods o’er the wrecks of altar, fane, and dome,
And makes the Cæsars’ ruin’d halls his home.
Youth, valour, beauty, oft have felt his power.
His crown’d and chosen victims: o’er their lot
Hath fond affection wept--each blighted flower
In turn was loved and mourn’d, and is forgot.
But one who perish’d, left a tale of woe,
Meet for as deep a sigh as pity can bestow.
A voice of music, from Sienna’s walls,
Is floating joyous on the summer air;
And there are banquets in her stately halls,
And graceful revels of the gay and fair,
And brilliant wreaths the altar have array’d,
Where meet her noblest youth and loveliest maid.
To that young bride each grace hath Nature given
Which glows on Art’s divinest dream: her eye
Hath a pure sunbeam of her native heaven--
Her cheek a tinge of morning’s richest dye;
Fair as that daughter of the south, whose form
Still breathes and charms, in Vinci’s colours warm.[195]
But is she blest?--for sometimes o’er her smile
A soft sweet shade of pensiveness is cast;
And in her liquid glance there seems awhile
To dwell some thought whose soul is with the past;
Yet soon it flies--a cloud that leaves no trace,
On the sky’s azure, of its dwelling-place.
Perchance, at times, within her heart may rise
Remembrance of some early love or woe,
Faded, yet scarce forgotten--in her eyes
Wakening the half-formed tear that may not flow,
Yet radiant seems her lot as aught on earth,
Where still some pining thought comes darkly o’er our mirth.
The world before her smiles--its changeful gaze
She hath not proved as yet; her path seems gay
With flowers and sunshine, and the voice of praise
Is still the joyous herald of her way;
And beauty’s light around her dwells, to throw
O’er every scene its own resplendent glow.
Such is the young Bianca--graced with all
That nature, fortune, youth, at once can give;
Pure in their loveliness, her looks recall
Such dreams as ne’er life’s early bloom survive;
And when she speaks, each thrilling tone is fraught
With sweetness, born of high and heavenly thought.
And he to whom are breathed her vows of faith
Is brave and noble--child of high descent,
He hath stood fearless in the ranks of death,
Mid slaughter’d heaps, the warrior’s monument;
And proudly marshall’d his carroccio’s[196] way
Amidst the wildest wreck of war’s array.
And his the chivalrous commanding mien,
Where high-born grandeur blends with courtly grace;