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 WOMAN, 
 
 THE ANGEL OF LIFE. 
 
 3 i)ocm. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT MONTGOMERY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY, 
 " THE MESSIAH," &C. 
 
 Woman is the blood royal of Life. 
 
 l!t:nNS. 
 
 ^cronlJ Ctn'tton. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN TURRILL, 250, REGENT STREET. 
 
 1833.
 
 i (i.n uon: 
 
 rKKDERIUK Mlcil.nil., >UN.| 4, UROMXU ITREZT.IIICISTEH sqUARF..
 
 go??!* 
 
 Thi empire of women is not theirs because men have willed it. but 
 because it U the will of nature. Miserable must be the age in whirl, 
 tllis empire is lost, and in which the judgments of women are counted as 
 UOthiog by man. 
 
 Rousseau. 
 
 !
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SKCOND EDITION 
 
 The Author has availed himself of the pub- 
 lication of a Second Edition of this Poem to 
 introduce a few verbal alterations, and to eon- 
 dense some passages in the first Canto, which 
 have been pronounced too diffuse. 
 
 Lincoln College, Oxon, 
 July 5th, 183H.
 
 CANTO FIRST. 
 
 Without whom,—" le commencement <le la vie est sans sccours, le 
 milieu sans plairir, et la fin sans consolation." — 
 
 Miss Edoeworth.
 
 WOMAN, 
 
 THE ANGEL OF LIFE. 
 
 CANTO FIRST. 
 
 Earth, air, and ocean! glorious three, 
 Whose power is living poesy ! 
 More gladly than a hird regains 
 The freedom of unbounded plains, 
 And wanders on ecstatic wing 
 O'er meadow, lake, or laughing spring, — 
 A spirit from the world retreats, 
 Again the bright creation greets, 
 And learns how Nature's smile can bless 
 The hearts that love her loneliness.
 
 10 WOMAN. 
 
 How beautiful this quiet hour ! 
 Surrender'd to its lovely power, 
 The soul forgets that tears are shed, 
 That hopes are dim, and pleasures dead 
 A hue of heaven on earth descends, 
 Th' immortal with the mortal blends, 
 And all we fancy, frame, or see, 
 Is found in faultless harmony ! 
 Oh ! ever thus, while men can feel, 
 And worship, with undying zeal, 
 The glories that for good combine, 
 The universe becomes divine : 
 Behind the veil of sense they dwell, 
 Encinctured with a dazzling spell ; 
 And meanings flow from all they view, 
 Of vast in form, or fair in hue ; 
 \nd not a ray of sunshine gleams, 
 But there the smile of Godhead seems 
 A token of paternal love, 
 Reflected from His face above !
 
 WOMAN. 1 1 
 
 His torpid mind I envy not, 
 Though crown and kingdom were his lot, 
 Who here, amid this morning balm, 
 With Nature eloquently calm, — 
 With tender sky and tranquil sea 
 Partook no inhorn sympathy. 
 The canopy of heaven is hung 
 As hlue as poet ever sung ; 
 Though here and there serenely glide 
 Along the air's cerulean tide 
 Pale clouds, that seem too delicate 
 For hreeze to touch their fairy state. — 
 Beneath a window, far away, 
 Oh, stranger, let thy fancy stray, 
 For seldom can thy dreams expand 
 Their wings o'er more delightful land : 
 The warble of yon distant waves, 
 As lightly oft the hillow laves 
 The greenwood hank, and grassy shore, 
 That hounds the sea of Elsinore ; 
 
 b 2
 
 12 WOMAN. 
 
 Yon mountain's dim and dusky form, 
 ^ Inch, like a dying thunder-storm, 
 Glooms on the air with awful swell ; ' 
 The chiming of the castle bell, 
 From frowning turret faintly heard ; 
 The fruited boughs by breezes stirred ; 
 With every sound that summer brings 
 From bird, and bee, and happy things, — 
 How exquisitely all combine 
 To make exulting morn divine ! 
 
 And look adown yon dimpled sea, 
 As bright as liquid sun could be, 
 The tiny skiffs of Norway sail, 
 And glitter cloud-like in the gale; 
 While frequent oars with flashing stroke 
 Appear, as oft the tide is broke 
 By fleet-wing'd bark, that gaily flies 
 To where the sand-girt Sweden lies. — 
 To him who loves a haunted scene, 
 Where grief or glory once hath been,
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 Grey Cronburgh lifts her storied pile, 
 And darkens o'er the Danish Isle ; 2 
 Whose vanity depths and caves profound 
 Have echoed to the wizard sound 
 Of clanging shield, and shaken lance, 
 With each grim voice of old Romance. 
 But, ere thou leave the castled height, 
 Survey o'er all a patriot sight, 
 A scene that makes the life-hlood start, 
 And pictures England in his heart. 
 The banners Nelson thrill'd to see — 
 Behold them wave ! — how gallantly 
 They flout the wind with haughty threat, 
 And shew the deep her victor vet ! 
 When bravely down the beauteous tide 
 The monarchs of the ocean ride; 
 Or, tranced amid the drowsing air, 
 They whiten in the noontide glare 
 Those wings that wait the driving breeze, 
 To waft them o'er a hundred seas !
 
 H 
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 Reflected on the wave is cast 
 The symmetry of sail and mast, 
 Or, booming o'er the startled deep, 
 Loud echoes of their cannon sweep, 
 Whose thunders in their dauntless tone 
 Can mock the Tempest on his throne ! 
 
 Yet not on earth exists a scene 
 Where shades of sorrow have not been : 
 The softest verdure mead can spread 
 Hath oft been paced by Misery's tread ; 
 The magic of the clearest sky 
 Hath mock'd how many a clouded eye ! 
 And, link'd with all that local grace, 
 The wizard Fancy loves to trace, 
 Wherever Nature weaves a spell 
 Round wood, or crag, or hoary dell, 
 Live recollections sad as deep, 
 To bid imagination weep. 
 And thus, in this elysian hour, 
 Oh ! who can gaze on Cronburgh town.
 
 WOMAN. 15 
 
 Nor dream of her, the young and gay, 
 Whose captive spirit pined away, 
 The victim of a royal hate, 3 
 In the vile gloom of dungeon state ! 
 Dejected queen ! I view thee now, 
 With pleading eye, and pensive hrow 
 As pale as moonlight and as mild ; 
 Or watching o'er thy cradled child, 
 While visions of regretted youth 
 Around thee float in fairy truth, 
 Till the full past o'ercrowds thy brain, 
 And thou art in thy home again ! — 
 O ! when at night the thund'ring sound 
 Of wave on wave, in deep rebound, 
 Rang echoed o'er the castle wall, 
 How wildly did that night appal ! 
 How many a terror shook thy form, 
 As Midnight roused the yelling storm ! 
 And, like the rush of demons, past 
 The pinions of the northern blast,
 
 16 WOMAN. 
 
 And through a grated window broke 
 
 The flashes of each lightning-stroke ! — 
 
 But oft arose a milder mood, 
 
 When gladness e'en an exile wooed, 
 
 As, gazing from a rampart's height, 
 
 Her eye might gather free delight, * 
 
 When slowly pealed the turret bell, 
 
 And richly over Zealand fell 
 
 The flushes of retiring dav, 
 
 Till earth one mass of glory lay ! — 
 
 Beneath her roam'd the Baltic wave, 
 
 Where oft an English banner gave, 
 
 While roil'd the guns saluting roar, — 
 
 A dream of that remember'd shore 
 
 Her heart was doom'd to hail no more ! 
 
 There, oft as gradual eve decayed, 
 
 And glimmer'd o'er the beechen shade, 
 
 How Denmark's bloom her smile would bless, 
 
 Laid forth in Eden loveliness, 
 
 Of bank and meadow, bush and stream, 
 
 Like landscape in a painter's dream!
 
 WOMAN. 17 
 
 Or where the rocky Sweden lowers 
 She mark'd Landscrona's faded towers ; 
 Or musing saw in verdant rest 
 The garden once by Hamlet prest, 
 As haunted by majestic grief 
 The princely mourner scorned relief, 
 And dared to nurse in dreaming pain 
 The might and madness of his brain. — 
 But when, at Britain's high behest, 
 The exile found a foreign rest ; 
 Entranced upon the deck she stood, 
 And, while her straining vision could, 
 As o'er the billows' bounding plav 
 Her wafted vessel flew away, — 
 On Cronburgh's battlemented pile, 
 Array'd by evening's rosy smile, 
 Matilda fixed her yearning eyes, 
 While heaved her breast with broken sighs ; 
 And on her cheek rose meek despair, 
 That mourn'd a child deserted there ! — 
 
 b 5
 
 18 WOMAN. 
 
 There, in that tower, -where time had been 
 
 A sad but still maternal scene : 
 
 How thrilling was that farewell hour. 
 
 Sublimed by Pity's godlike power ! 
 
 The mariner subdued his tone, 
 
 To make a mother's grief his own ; 
 
 And souls that mock'd the lightning-flash, 
 
 Or dared the billows' wildest dash, 
 
 Felt more than milder bosoms fear, 
 
 And soften'd down to woman's tear ! 
 
 But, hark ! tbe wind hath changed his tone ; 
 The sun hath veil'd his burning throne ; 
 And o'er the dazzling blue of heaven 
 Prophetic shades of storm are driven ; 
 And fiercely shoots the slanting rain 
 On garden, bower, and window-pane, 
 While leaflets fall from branch and tree, 
 Like hopes from human vanity ; 
 And, like the moan of billows, heard 
 From yon dim ocean, tempest-stirr'd,
 
 WOMAN. li* 
 
 With sounds that tell a dreary track, 
 The waves of life come rolling hack — 
 That awful life ! whose endless roar 
 Breaks loud upon th' eternal shore ! 
 
 A moment is a mighty thing 
 Beyond the soul's imagining, 
 For in it, though we trace it not, 
 How much there crowds of varied lot ! 
 How much of life, life cannot see, 
 Darts onward to eternity ! 
 While vacant hours of beauty roll 
 Their magic o'er some yielded soul, 
 Ah ! little do the happy guess 
 The sum of human wretchedness , 
 Or dream, amid the soft farewell 
 
 That Time of them is taking, 
 How frequent moans the funeral knell, 
 
 What noble hearts are breaking. 
 While myriads to their tombs descend 
 Without a mourner, creed, or friend !
 
 20 WOMAN. 
 
 And is it thus dark life appears 
 A fountain of unfailing tears, 
 While to each minute's flight is given 
 The gloom of hell, or glance of heaven ? 
 Lo ! Nature speaks to all who look, 
 And read aright her glorious book, 
 How much there dawns to mitigate 
 The bleakness of our barren state. 
 Oh, who can hail the breeze- wing'd morn, 
 When beauty in the heavens is born, 
 Or wander forth in sun or storm, 
 Nor love Creation's living form ! 
 And life, though oft a wilderness 
 By passion made, and wild distress, 
 Where, like a leaf by autumn blown, 
 The wither'd heart must fade alone, — 
 To spirits nerved by glad desire, 
 And pure from each debasing fire, 
 How much it yields of great and good, 
 To make existence gratitude ! —
 
 WOMAN. 21 
 
 The wielding of colossal pow'rs, 
 
 By which all earth is rendered ours ; 
 
 The arts, that, link'd with lovely grace, 
 
 Form paradise round scene and place ; 
 
 The pleasures proud as undefined 
 
 From fellowship with man and mind, — 
 
 If bliss like this a world display, 
 
 How weak to frown that world awav ! 
 
 But, ah ! there is a brighter charm, 
 
 No shade can dim, no cloud disarm ; 
 
 A star enthroned o'er change and time, 
 
 Though meek, unmoved, though soft, sublime ; 
 
 A glory, with whose beam is blent 
 
 A ray that crowns the heart's content ; 
 
 A spell beyond the world to break, 
 
 Which, when our eyes this orb forsake, 
 
 Will cling around the parting soul, 
 
 And gird it with divine control, 
 
 For man design' d by heaven above, — 
 
 And wafted down in woman's love!
 
 22 WOMAN. 
 
 That power without whose added spell, 
 So vast, yet so invisible, 
 The lustre of our spirit wanes, 
 And pleasures are but smiling pains — 
 Is holy love, by hearts enjoy'd, 
 Unchill'd, unchanged, and unalloy'd ! 
 And will the stoic deem me wrong, 
 A martyr of mistaken song ? 
 Without it, what are crowns and kings, 
 But barren toys and blighted things ! 
 Art, Wit, and Genius, all we glow 
 To think cold earth contains below, 
 Bv woman's voice, or woman's name, 
 Have gather'd fortune, might, and fame. — 
 And ask him whom the world hath worn , 
 Whose brain is rack'd, whose bosom torn. 
 Amid the dust, the heat, and strife, 
 
 Around the day concenter'd, 
 How exquisite that purer life, 
 At eve, when he hath enter'd
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 The garden path where Peace can wind, 
 
 And cast the demon Care behind ! 
 
 The tottering pace of infant feet, 
 
 That haste a homeward sire to greet ; 
 
 Each budding thought, and broken word, 
 
 So faintly seen and softly heard ; 
 
 The tones of air, the tender hues 
 
 Affection pours on all it views ; 
 
 And, sweeter far, those eyes that live 
 
 Upon the rays his own can give, 
 
 Now kindled into fond excess 
 
 Of light that speaks, and looks that bless, - 
 
 To him who feels such blended power 
 
 To hallow eve's domestic hour, 
 
 The star of life, where'er he roam, 
 
 Is she whose ray attracts him home. 
 
 But godlike is the creature man ! 
 The past is glittering where he ran 
 Triumphantly his onward track, 
 With prints of glory ! — trace them back ; 
 
 2.3
 
 24 WOMAN. 
 
 Behold him stamp o'er land and sea 
 The might of immortality ! 
 To him whom waves nor winds restrain, 
 The Elements resign their reign ; 
 While cowering Earth and Ocean meet, 
 To lay their sceptres at his feet, 
 Whose hand the rock or mountain fells, 
 Or strews the globe with miracles 
 Of form and motion — wond'rous things, 
 That mimic God's imaginings ! — 
 And in his mind there is a sense 
 That gasps to reach omnipotence ; 
 Who, half almighty, would be more 
 Than life can feel, or thought explore ! 
 
 Yet, not because with bolder light 
 The traits of manhood court the sight, 
 And Action, with incessant claim, 
 Can summon forth each high-born aim, 
 The softer tints of woman's soul 
 Pervade the world with less control.
 
 WOMAN. 2o 
 
 The thunder is the king of sound, 
 
 But ever may the hreeze abound, 
 
 And quiver on melodious wing, 
 
 Where beauty walks, or health can spring : 
 
 The forest wears inspiring gloom, 
 
 But yet we seek the flowerets' bloom ; 
 
 Old Ocean hath terrific grace 
 
 Imprinted on his hoary face, 
 
 But oh ! how dear some tranquil dream, 
 
 That haunts the bank of village stream ! — 
 
 And thus, methinks, doth woman's heart 
 
 A gentler, not less glorious part 
 
 In Life's dim tragedy fulfil, — 
 
 The feebler, but the perfect still : 
 
 And as in Nature charms there be, 
 
 Which all enjoy, though none can see, 
 
 The light and love of female power 
 
 Have graced how many a graceless hour, 
 
 And round the spirit twined a zone 
 
 Too delicate for eyes to own L
 
 26 WOMAN. 
 
 Let Valour, Strength, and Wisdom, claim 
 Their summit on the throne of fame ; 
 Yet meeken'd heart and mind subdued 
 Become the charm of womanhood ; 
 And thoughts that might creation wield, 
 Bv man's dominion taught to yield, 
 Lie mute and dead in lonely rest, 
 And leave the soul but half exprest ! — 
 For man, not nature, is the power 
 That darkens from its natal hour 
 The mind which decks the softer race, 
 And dooms them to a second place. 
 
 Yet even thus, no formal chain 
 Can frighten, fetter, or restrain 
 That spirit-burst, from time to time, 
 When, blazing forth with beam sublime, 
 The mind of woman proves a spell 
 To make a truth shine visible — 
 That Genius of no sex can he, 
 When radiant with divinity!
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 And though in life her lovely sway 
 Fail dew-like o'er the parched day, 
 She rules that noiseless under-tide 
 Of happy thoughts by home supplied. — 
 But, see ! when Peril claims her part, 
 The hero of a woman's heart ! 
 Though weak in hand, and frail in form. 
 Her spirit strengthens with the storm ; 
 In vain the warning thunders roll, 
 They rally, not subdue, her soul ! 
 
 Yet some there be who soil her worth 
 With every shade of vulgar earth, 
 Nor dream her highest glory can 
 Ascend beyond — a slave for man ! 
 But vile that soul, however fraught, 
 If pride of sex be only taught : 
 The mind has lost its master grace, 
 And thoughts demean their lofty race, 
 When female love and virtue claim 
 No laurel in the wreath of fame,
 
 28 WOMAN. 
 
 While all that Genius should adore 
 Is laugh'd away, to live no more ! — 
 Not thus the bright and perfect One, 
 Whose blood redeem' d a world undone, 
 Of woman spake, when man had flown, 
 And Mary watch'd and wept alone ! — 
 
 Another and a darker race, 
 Whose doctrine might the brute disgrace, 
 So vilely from the dust of earth 
 It sprang, to prove its sullied birth, — 
 Oh ! name it not, but let it be 
 Entomb'd in voiceless infamy ! 
 If he who dares a shrine deface, 
 Where time has left a holy trace, 
 Is branded for his impious zeal 
 By all who ancient glory feel, — 
 What damning tones can language find 
 For him who would profane the mind, 
 And dare, with sacrilegious smile, 
 The temple of the soul defile ! —
 
 WOMAN. 29 
 
 Affection, deep as hearts desire, 
 
 Yet fed by intellectual fire ; 
 
 Those graces felt, but undefined, 
 
 In gleams and glances of the mind, 
 
 Developed in a myriad ways, 
 
 By mien or manner, look or gaze ; 
 
 The tones in dewy cadence heard 
 
 From lips that harmonize each word, 
 
 All, all the bright attraction bred, 
 
 From each fond smile a soul hath shed, — 
 
 Oh ! these transcend what Passion's might 
 
 Can raise, to charm her maniac sight. 
 
 And when disease's poison'd breath 
 Hath tainted life with hues of death ; 
 When time has dimm'd that starry gaze 
 Whose magic thrill' d our younger days, — 
 There is a love whose light remains 
 To warm the heart, when passion wanes : 
 For beauty born within the mind 
 
 Admits no mean decay ;
 
 30 WOMAN. 
 
 The earth may shrink, the sun grow blind, 
 Ere that dissolve away ! 
 
 Then let them boast, base epicures ! 
 Whom naught but sense to love allures ; 
 To them may coarse Derision give 
 No hearts but where like passions live, 
 While, dungeon'd in a sensual grave, 
 Their spirit rots, and dies a slave ! 
 
 Alas ! how oft since time began 
 Hath woman been abased by man ; 
 To wisdom's rank denied a claim, 
 Beyond the worst or weakest aim ; 
 Or, doom'd by others, living toys 
 For brutal dreams, or selfish joys ! 
 But thou, my England ! first to be 
 In heart refined, in spirit free, 
 For ever may the virgin smile 
 Of woman consecrate thine isle ! —
 
 WOMAN. 31 
 
 To guard thee should fond ocean fail, 
 Thy banners cease to awe the gale, 
 Thy throne become a crushing weight 
 Of tyranny on rank and state, — 
 Thy genius and thy glory fled, 
 With each proud pulse of freedom dead — 
 E'en then, with female worth to throw 
 Its heavenliness round want and woe, 
 Ruled by the heart's unsullied reign, 
 A kingdom might revive again. 
 But, trample once upon that shrine 
 Where Love hath sainted as divine 
 That beauty which our dreams adore, — 
 Religion, virtue, truth, — are o'er! 
 And sooner shall Gomorrah rise 
 From out her grave to greet the skies, 
 Than empires where no morals bloom 
 Awaken from their living tomb ! 
 
 Oh ! what a curse for them who can 
 So beautify the world of man,
 
 32 WOMAN. 
 
 Yet prostitute their lofty line, 
 To render woman less divine. 
 A tvrant, when his wrath is o'er, 
 Can break the chain, and back restore 
 The dungeon'd captive into day ; 
 And tears may suffer'd wrong allay ; 
 And scarce a pang the good endure, 
 But some atoning sigh may cure ; 
 But what is written — that is writ ! 
 No soul-wrung tear may cancel it ; 
 Like demons on dark errand sent 
 From out their fiendish element, — 
 Polluting thoughts, by passion fired, 
 Career the world, untamed, untired ; 
 From heart to heart their plague is spread, 
 From soul to soul corruption bred, 
 Till myriads, by their baneful spell, 
 Are tempted to the brink of hell ! — 
 
 I envy not the unconfess'd 
 Remorse that gnaws his lonely breast,
 
 WOMAN. 33 
 
 Who weeps o'er his perverted mind, 
 
 That, godlike, should have graced mankind, — 
 
 Yet, how'd to be the mental slave 
 
 Of crimes that curse beyond the grave ! 
 
 For when at noon of life he sees 
 
 His children circling round his knees ; 
 
 Or triumphs in each dimpling grace 
 
 That dawns within a daughter's face, — 
 
 What pangs with that proud moment cope, 
 
 What terror blights each blooming hope ! 
 
 Perchance within his dying brain 
 
 Shall ring some recollected strain, 
 
 And gloomily those visions throng, 
 
 Corruption loved to shape in song, 
 
 And, while they darken round his head, 
 
 Portray the crimes their poison bred ; 
 
 Till Fancy hears the parting groan 
 
 Of souls that shudder'd like his own ! 
 
 Then, not for that unloving race, 
 Who scorn each intellectual grace j
 
 34 WOMAN. 
 
 Or them, whose coarseness would destroy 
 
 The elegance of human joy, — 
 
 He mine the lay. Yet should there be 
 
 A heart that loves true heart to see ; 
 
 A father who has felt how dear 
 
 The woman whom his thoughts revere ; 
 
 A mother in whose watchful eye 
 
 Affections deep and endless lie ; 
 
 A maiden who hath known how sweet 
 
 The sister of her soul to greet ; 
 
 Or lover, who in lofty youth 
 
 Hath pleaded with impassioned truth 
 
 To shape of Beauty, by whose light 
 
 The universe became so bright ! — 
 
 If such one hour this page beguile, 
 
 My guerdon be their grateful smile. 
 
 Oh ! might he cull the richest tones 
 Poetical enchantment own-. 
 For melody to waft along 
 The spirit of prevailing song;
 
 WOMAN. :S.i 
 
 And summon from the caves of Thought 
 Whatever shaping dreams had wrought, — 
 A bard might think his visions rife 
 With rays of feeling, caught from life, 
 For in that life what bliss was owed 
 To all that woman's reign bestowed ! — 
 The smoothest voice, the softest word, 
 Delighted moments ever heard ; 
 The dearest smile that Pity shed 
 To tame the darkness sorrow bred ; 
 The shadow of an angel seen, 
 Where Goodness unobserved had been ; 
 And, more than all, devoted truth, 
 Whose years retain'd undying youth, — 
 If such a crowd of memory's charms 
 No passion in the poet warms, 
 It is because no words express 
 The light of woman's loveliness ; 
 And more than Poetry can speak 
 Is mirrored on her brow and cheek ; 
 
 c 2
 
 :?6 WOMAN. 
 
 While feelings oft the most suhlime 
 
 Refuse to be portray'd in rhyme, 
 
 Though brightly round the heart they throng, 
 
 And seem the archetype of song. — 
 
 If doom like this attend my aim, 
 
 The song, but not the subject, blame.
 
 CANTO SECOND. 
 
 Yours was the nobler birth. 
 
 For you from man were made; — man but of earth, 
 
 The son of dust ! 
 
 Randolph.
 
 WOMAN, 
 
 THE ANGEL OF LIFE. 
 
 CANTO SECOND. 
 
 When first the wings of Light unfurl' d 
 Their radiance o'er a new-born world, 
 And choral music, faint and far, 
 Awoke in each melodious star, 
 Until the glowing Earth began 
 To thrill beneath the gaze of man ! — 
 Ah ! who can paint the primal bliss 
 That charm'd an hour superb as this ! 
 
 How beauteous in his dawn of birth. 
 Without a shade of sullied earth,
 
 40 WOMAN. 
 
 Without one touch of deadly sin 
 
 To mar the perfect soul within, — 
 
 The lord of Eden must have stood, 
 
 When God beheld, and call'd him, — good ! 
 
 Oh ! to have heard his lips reveal 
 
 The first delight that dust could feel ; 
 
 Have listen'd to each wild address 
 
 He paid to nature's loveliness; 
 
 Or, flashing from his heaven-turn'd eye 
 
 Have mark'd the spirit's majesty, 
 
 While round his heart Religion stole, 
 
 And mirror'd Him who made the whole ! 
 
 A melody from leaf and flower, 
 Responding to the breeze's power, 
 That caroll'd with exulting tone ; 
 A blooming light on all things thrown, 
 On fruit and foliage, grass and lake ; 
 The song that in sweet gushes brake 
 From birds that flew on fearless wing, 
 And taught the very air to sing ! —
 
 WOMAN. 41 
 
 The mute delight, majestic trance, 
 
 Of things that shunn'd no mortal glance, 
 
 But gazed on man with love or glee, 
 
 And felt that life was amity ; 
 
 While, stainless as an arch of light, 
 
 The bowing heaven hung crystal bright, 
 
 And pour'd upon each perfect limb 
 
 A lustre that apparell'd him ; 
 
 While ever, as he rais'd his eye, 
 
 A seraph, floating through the sky, 
 
 With gleams of glory track'd his way, 
 
 Or arch'd his wings in beaming play, — 
 
 Though all like this composed a scene, 
 
 To testify where God had been, 
 
 A soft disease of soul began 
 
 To prey upon the bliss of man : 
 
 A yearning which no language spoke, 
 
 Within his clouded bosom woke, 
 
 A loneliness with awful weight 
 
 Lay brooding o'er his desert fate, 
 
 c 5
 
 42 WOMAN. 
 
 And darken 'd with ideal shade 
 
 The countenance that heaven display'd ; 
 
 Till sadly was each primal word 
 
 Upon the placid breezes heard ! — 
 
 " Some other Form, oh ! let there be, 
 
 To live, and love, and roam with me 
 
 This lone but gorgeous wilderness 
 
 Of sights that woo and sounds that bless ! 
 
 Some Spirit whom my own can greet, 
 
 Some hand to hold, some eye to meet !" 
 
 More lovely than a vision brought 
 From out the fairy realms of thought ; 
 Serene and silent, with a grace 
 Divinely breath'd o'er form and face, 
 In full array of love and light, 
 That dazzled his adoring sight, 
 By soul and sense to be revered, — 
 The Angel of the world appear'd ! 
 Then, what a starry welcome rang ! 
 Each Orb an hymeneal sang, 
 
 .'
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 43 
 
 While shapes unutterably bright 
 
 From heaven gazed down with new delight. 
 
 When first the ground a woman trod, 
 
 Just moulded by the hand of God ! — 
 
 Around her breast, in wreathy play, 
 
 Her locks like braided sunbeams lay ; 
 
 And limbs unveil'd a radiance cast 
 
 Of purity, as on she pass'd 
 
 Amid the bloom and balm of flowers, 
 
 That clustered round elysian bowers ; 
 
 The bird and breeze together blent 
 
 Their notes of mildest languishment ; 
 
 The sun grew brighter as he shed 
 
 His glory round her living head, — 
 
 As if no orb of space were free 
 
 From one fine spell of sympathy, 
 
 When woman rose upon the scene, 
 
 Creation's fair and faultless queen ! 
 
 When Adam's tranced eyelids woke, 
 Thus brightly on his vision broke
 
 44 WOMAN. 
 
 The living Shape for whom he pined, 
 
 To share his unpartaken mind : — 
 
 Awhile they gazed in hush'd delight, 
 
 Each dazzled with the other's sight, 
 
 Then saw within their mutual eyes 
 
 Attracted rays of soul arise, 
 
 And heard their lips fond tones repeat, 
 
 And heard their hearts in concert beat, 
 
 And felt within electric fire 
 
 Their spirit, blood, and brain, inspire : — 
 
 Then woman was adored by man ! 
 
 The bridal dawn of love began. 
 
 Oh ! then was born of breathing truth 
 
 A foiling in unfaded youth, 
 
 That blooms above the vile decay 
 
 Of things which time and sense array. 
 
 And, when the dying world departs, 
 
 Lives freshly in celestial hearts ! 
 
 And thus, with all that forms a friend 
 The finer tints of love to blend ; 

 
 WOMAN. 
 
 To soothe the tempest, share the calm, 
 And pour on grief unfailing balm, — 
 Did woman on the world appear : 
 And hath she fail'd in life's career ? — 
 The warrior wins a bright renown, 
 The poet wears a peerless crown, 
 And History with heroic grace 
 Hath laurcll'd her triumphant race ; 
 But where, in what recording book, 
 Could unforgetting Nature look, 
 To count, since first her ages ran, 
 What woman hath endured for man ? — 
 Alas ! like dews which night hath felt 
 Within ungrateful earth to melt, 
 And freshen into living flowers 
 The grove that smiles at morning hours — 
 The virtues born of woman's soul, 
 Though time has drunk their mild control, 
 And had by them the heart supplied 
 With what the ruder sex denied, — 
 
 45
 
 46 WOMAN. 
 
 Yet, these in dead oblivion fade, 
 Unknown, unsung, and undisplay'd ! 
 
 But might those Spirits who have been 
 Still watchers of our troubled scene, 
 Beholding with dejected eye 
 The throes of human agony, — 
 To earth repeat the tale of life, 
 Since first convulsed with gloom and strife, 
 How much, methinks, would Virtue prize 
 That never dazzled mortal eyes, 
 As angels read the awful story 
 Of empires dim, and ages hoary, 
 And, while they scorn'd a hero's crown, 
 To woman gave the heart's renown ! " — 
 For pangs that tore with secret sway, 
 For tears by night, and toils by day ; 
 For tortures by the world unbraced. 
 When love was wreck'd and truth defaced ; 
 For fondness in the fiercest hour 
 Of tyrant wrath, or ruin's power, —
 
 WOMAN. 4 7 
 
 For every sad and silent wrong 
 
 That weakness suffer'd from the strong, — 
 
 For these, and all young feeling hore, 
 
 When Mis'ry made it love the more ! 
 
 A chaplet of celestial light 
 
 Would angels weave for woman's right. — 
 
 Oh ! she is all that soul can he, 
 
 One deep, undying sympathy ! — 
 
 When life is scarce a moving dream, 
 
 Tis like her spirit's native beam, 
 
 That never from its fountain stays, 
 
 But lives alone within her rays ! 
 
 And, round an infant, how divine 
 
 The wreath a mother's arms can twine ! — 
 
 And when dark years of manhood bring 
 
 Their load of fated suffering, 
 
 As true as echo to the sound, 
 
 Her blessings to his wants abound ! 
 
 In sickness, ah ! how smooth the bed 
 
 Her healing hand alone can spread ;
 
 48 WOMAN. 
 
 And, when the shades of death advance, 
 What paradise within her glance, 
 While all her yearning soul appears 
 Dissolved in love, to die in tears ! — 
 
 Yet, scarce had Eden pass'd away. 
 And Sin begun her blighting sway, 
 Ere woman lost her mental rank, 
 And in domestic thraldom sank ; — 
 A creature whose attractive power 
 Might serve to gild a wanton hour, 
 To feed a passion, sooth a frown, 
 Or magnify her lord's renown, — 
 But ever, with unvalued heart, 
 In life to play the menial part ! — 
 Ay, e'en in Greece, that land sublime 
 Whose glory lit the wings of time, 
 E'en there, where beauty's faultless mould 
 Surpass'd what Sculpture's dreams behold, 
 In vain would truth a model see, — 
 Her love was no divinity !
 
 WOMAN. 49 
 
 From earth it sprung, on earth to live 
 
 On every charm that sense can give, 
 
 But all proud Sentiment could teach, 
 
 Divine in thought, or pure in speech, — 
 
 By her unfelt, or unadmired, 
 
 Hath scarce one classic page inspired, 
 
 And Rome, whose wizard banner waved 
 
 O'er half the isles far ocean laved, 
 
 By conquest was not taught to school 
 
 The passions Heaven alone can rule ; 
 
 But offer'd up each female right 
 
 On altars of their stern delight, 
 
 Where rage might spend its haughty breath, 
 
 And doom a guiltless heart to death. 
 
 But high-born is the zeal that pays 
 True homage to heroic days, 
 When Valour woke the breath of thought, 
 And poets sang the fields they fought ! 
 Yet when prevail'd in Greece or Rome 
 The magic of a modern home ? —
 
 50 WOMAN. 
 
 There lives the light our spirit hails, 
 There beats the heart that never fails, 
 There smiles beyond a realm to bring 
 Round calmest hours are clustering ! 
 Where queens of mild affection reign, 
 The bloom of joy, the balm of pain ; 
 And thus are more, when grey or young, 
 Than Homer dream'd, or Maro sung. 
 
 When first on Rome a tameless horde 
 From forest-depths their myriads pour'd, 
 And down to dust her empire broke, — 
 Refinement's moral dawn awoke. 7 
 The gloomy brow, the glaring eye, 
 The breast that never heaved a sigh, 
 Hut nurtured in its wild domain 
 The glory of surmounted pain, — 
 Amid them all, there lived a sense 
 Of woman's meek pre-eminence, 
 While chastity within the heart 
 Was shrined beyond pollution's art. —
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 51 
 
 O, nature! in thy darkest mood 
 
 How much remains of bright and good ! 
 
 What Learning in her proudest day, 
 
 What Genius in her godlike sway, 
 
 With blended power, could never reach, 
 
 These warriors of the wild could teach ! — 
 
 Tis pleasant in the storm to see 
 
 The battle of some glorious tree, 
 
 Whose branches with resentful play 
 
 Can awe the beaten winds away : 
 
 But, beautiful ! in calmer hours 
 
 To view it wave o'er meadow flowers, 
 
 And hearken to its whisper mild, 
 
 Like blessing murmur'd o'er a child : — 
 
 For thus, methinks, the contrast seen, 
 
 When beauty reign'd where war had been ; 
 
 When lion port and eagle eye 
 
 Had laid their horrid menace by, 
 
 And, resting in some oaken shade, 
 
 While round him laughing infants play'd,
 
 0'2 WOMAN. 
 
 The savage of the desert grew 
 Refined beneath a woman's view! — 
 
 Next, Chivalry, heroic child, 
 With brow erect, and features wild, 
 Placed Love upon his matchless throne, 
 For gallantry to guard alone. 
 Then, woman ! in that reign of heart, 
 How peerless was thy magic part ! 
 A word was more than human breath, 
 A smile dissolved the gloom of death, 
 And beauty, while it awed the brave, 
 But made the mind a noble slave 
 To honour, in the chastest light, 
 That ruled the soul, or charm'd the sight. - 
 And shall we, in a sterner age, 
 When love hath grown more coldly sage, 
 With frigid laugh and frown decry 
 The bright return of Chivalry? — 
 The trumpet-music of the past, 
 In talcs of glory dooin'd to last,—
 
 WOMAN. 53 
 
 No longer must one echo stir 
 
 The pride of English character ? 
 
 Alas ! our life is worldly lore ; 
 
 The reign of heart- romance is o'er ; 
 
 And all that fired heroic toil 
 
 Hath now become a meaner spoil, 
 
 For time and circumstance to win, 
 
 While self is throned secure within. — 
 
 Yet, valour in its fine excess, 
 
 A scorn that wither'd littleness, 
 
 Devotion in its grandest shape, 8 
 
 And love, that sought no mean escape, — 
 
 Oh ! darkly sunk, and vilely sway'd, 
 
 The clime that wills their might decay'd ; 
 
 And ever prompts each servile art 
 
 To flourish in th' unweeded heart, 
 
 Till day by day we learn to see 
 
 That self is true philosophy ! 
 
 But, far beyond all forming powers 
 That made expressive beauty ours,
 
 54 WOMAN. 
 
 In that pure shape by Heaven design'd 
 To soften, sooth, and sway, mankind, — 
 The Gospel, like a god, began 
 To rouse the fallen soul of man : 
 Then, spirit, by the sense unbound, 
 Arose with grace immortal crown'd ! 
 Emotions deep, unstain'd desires, 
 Serener hopes, and chaster fires, 
 Came flowing from a fount above, 
 All freshen'd with etherial love ! 
 'Twas then that woman — like a star, 
 Whose beam had flutter'd dim and far, 
 And shed upon the troubled soul 
 A rav of imdiscern'd control, — 
 Advanced above life's daily sphere, 
 Disclosed her radiance, full and near ; 
 And kindled for beclouded man 
 The light that only woman can. 
 Krstored to reign, as fair and good 
 As once in Eden's bower she stood.
 
 WOMAN. OO 
 
 The seraph of the soul to be 
 
 In love's divine fidelity, — 
 
 Religion, when its healing smile 
 
 First trembled o'er our patriot isle, 
 
 By her assuasive meekness won 
 
 A way to visit hearts undone. 
 
 And did her christian valour (make 
 
 To front the vengeance of the stake ? — 
 
 E'en there apostles might have known 
 
 A faith whose firmness match'd their own : n 
 
 Though limb by limb the fire devour'd, 
 
 She neither shook, nor shriek'd, nor cower'd, 
 
 But gloried, in the murd'rous flame, 
 
 To sin"- a martvr'd Saviour's name ! 
 
 And view th' applauded domes that rise 
 In holy grandeur to the skies, — 
 How much to female hands they owe 
 Their power to lessen human woe ! 10 
 But, ah ! how exquisite must be 
 Those charities that^none can see,
 
 56 WOMAN. 
 
 In lovely darkness hid awhile, 
 Surrounded with Jehovah's smile ! — 
 Till, lit hy unexpected light, 
 They glitter on the pilgrim's sight, 
 When haply in some village dale 
 His soul hath drunk the secret tale, 
 How Holiness her beauty shed 
 Around a dying mourner's bed. 
 Thus oft upon the travell'd plain, 
 Where Winter holds his bleakest reign, 
 In sudden bloom young flow'rets rise 
 And blush beneath our gazing eyes ! — 
 For, leaving oft her splendid home, 
 Unheeded will Compassion roam, 
 And, where the roofs of sorrow lie, 
 Give tear for tear, and sigh for sigh, 
 To famine deal the daily bread, 
 For sickness hold the drooping head, 
 Be mother to some orphan boy, 
 Make widow'd hearts to sing for joy,
 
 WOMAN. ol 
 
 And, should the parting soul despair, 
 
 Ope heaven, — and plead for entrance there ! 
 
 And what were life, if woman's heart 
 Attemper'd with no guiding art 
 The moral beauty of the mind. 
 Whereby the world is kept refined, 
 And each soft hue opinion wears 
 Its lovely origin declares ? — 
 Go, find a land where female grace 
 Is honour'd by no gallant race, 
 And man's dominion deems it vile 
 To bend beneath a woman's smile, 
 But tramples with a brute delight 
 On mental rank and moral right, — 
 How darkly do her people sink ! 
 How meanly act, how basely think ! 
 No loftiness that clime reveals, 
 No purity the spirit feels ; 
 Corruption cankers law and throne, 
 The language breathes a dungeon tone, 
 
 D
 
 58 WOMAN. 
 
 And seldom there hath Virtue smiled : — 
 But, wither'd, weaken'd, and defiled, 
 It moulders on from age to age, 
 The scorn of hero, hard, and sage, 
 And seems on glorious earth to be 
 The plague-spot of her infamy ! 
 
 And vain would truth reflect in song 
 What nameless fascinations throng 
 Around that quiet hearth alone, 
 Where tenderness hath rear'd its throne. 
 ( )h ! there are feelings, warm but faint, 
 The hues of language cannot paint ; 
 And pleasures, delicately deep, 
 Which, like the palaces of sleep, 
 Melt into dimness, when the Light 
 Would look upon their fairy sight ; 
 And there are chords of happiness 
 Whose spirit-tones our fancy bio-. 
 Ami make the music o'f our joy 
 Complete without one harsh alloy, —
 
 WOMAN. 59 
 
 Yet, vain would words one note reveal 
 
 Of melody which mind can feel ! — 
 
 But who hath left some calm domain 
 
 Where home was charm'd by woman's reign. 
 
 And trifles, through some magic, wore 
 
 An air they never breathed before, — 
 
 And enter'd where a proud abode 
 
 To ruder man its splendour owed, 
 
 Nor felt the contrast sternly cold, 
 
 Like winter o'er his spirit roll'd ? 
 
 Yet there may garden, grove, and bower, 
 
 Attend on each retiring hour; 
 
 There Painting with impassion'd glow 
 
 The poetry of colours show ; 
 
 While volumes rank'd in rich array 
 
 The heroes of the mind display ; — 
 
 Yet, like a face, when death has chill'd 
 
 The light that once each feature fill'd, 
 
 Contrasted with its living power 
 
 Beheld in some excited hour, — 
 
 d 2
 
 GO WOMAN. 
 
 Are homes where single man is seen, 
 With those where woman's spell hath been. 
 
 Alas ! for them whose toil-worn days, 
 Uncheer'd by Love's adorning rays, 
 In wintry loneliness depart, 
 Yet fret the bloom from out the heart. 
 Though Life, as lord of each desire, 
 To intellectual thrones aspire, 
 May win the laurel, wear the crown, 
 And madden envy with renown, — 
 How much beyond what dreams bestow 
 Their loveless hours can never know ! 
 With nothing but cold self to please, 
 The waters of the spirit freeze, 
 And years but harden while they chill 
 A bosom left unsocial still : 
 And like a tree by autumn shorn 
 Of all that summer boughs had borne, — 
 A leafless, bare, and blighted thing, 
 Where scarce a breeze will deign to sing, —
 
 WOMAN. 61 
 
 Is man bereft of that control 
 
 That flashes from a female soul. 
 
 For heart with heart was born to beat, 
 
 And soul with soul was made to meet, 
 
 And sex for sex design'd to be 
 
 The dawn of endless sympathy ! — 
 
 But ye ! the laurell'd host who live 
 A life beyond mere earth to give ; 
 The deities of dazzled Thought, 
 To whom her incense aye is brought ; 
 Ye Alexanders of the mind, 
 Who conquer, but to charm, mankind ! 
 Enchanters ! for the spirit's eyes 
 Remoulding ruin'd paradise ; 
 Interpreters, whose tones declare 
 The dialogues of sea and air ; 
 The priests of Nature, taught to praise 
 And worship her mysterious ways ; 
 Ye intellectual Kings of time ! 
 Triumphant, matchless, and sublime, —
 
 62 WOMAN. 
 
 How fervently your pages own, 
 In music of transcendant tone, 
 That woman in her lovely might 
 Drew worship, wonder, and delight, 
 From souls whose inward glance could see 
 Visions that crowd eternity ! 
 
 Impassioned lords cf deathless song ! 
 To them the lips of Time helong, 
 As, fired with their majestic fame, 
 From age to age, they sound their name, 
 And hid the world enshrine that scene 
 Where once a worshipp'd bard hath been, — 
 For hallow'd seems his natal spot 
 Where thrones are crush'd, and kings forgot ! 
 And they have earn'd that gorgeous debt 
 Of praise, that time is paving yet, 
 Who taught us, — though it bore the curse, — 
 To love the heaven-born universe, 
 And trace, wherever goodness troth 
 The lustre of a living God !
 
 WOMAN. 63 
 
 And glorious is it, when the base 
 Would frown upon Heaven's fairest race, 
 To echo into life again 
 The music of some master strain ; 
 And prove, amid the ranks of fame, 
 How each who won undying name 
 In love's applauding eye could see 
 The ruling star of poetry. 
 
 Then let me from the poet-throng, 
 Who hymn'd on earth unearthly song, 
 Select some all-surpassing few, 
 And, as they rise in proud review, — 
 Let him whose spirit ever bow'd 
 Before the passion it avow'd ; 
 Whose bosom hath been thrill' d or shaken 
 With dream fulfill'd, or hope forsaken, — 
 Exult to find his soul hath felt 
 A power that could the mightiest melt ; 
 That lent to genius half its glow, 
 That taught eternal song to flow,
 
 64 WOMAN. 
 
 For fancy plumed the wing of fire, 
 And warm'd the soul of every lyre, — 
 Whose language was the light of thought 
 From love in adoration wrought ! 
 
 With paleness on his awful brow, 
 Who riseth like a spectre now 
 From darkness, where his fancv dared 
 To wander with an eye unscared, 
 And gaze on visions, such as roll 
 Around that blighted Angel's soul, 
 Who baffles in his dread domain 
 An immortality of pain ? — 
 'T is Dante ! — whose terrific flight, 
 Through caverns of Cimmerian night, 
 Imagination vainly tries 
 To track with unappalled eyes ! 
 Severe, august, and sternly great, 
 The gloom of his remorseless fate " 
 Around him hung that dismal air 
 That broodeth o'er intense despair;
 
 WOMAN. €5 
 
 Till frenzy half began to raise 
 A wildness in his fearful gaze, 
 As, roaming over crag and wood, 
 He battled with bleak solitude ! — 
 For sooner might the maniac roar 
 Of ocean cease to awe the shore, 
 When starlight comes with fairy gleam, 
 Than pity lull his tortured dream ! 
 Oh ! 't is not in the poet's art 
 To paint the earthquake of his heart, 
 The storm of feeling's ghastly strife, 
 When she, who form'd his life of life, 
 Had vanish'd like a twilight ray 
 Too delicate on earth to stay : — 
 For love had heated blood and brain, 
 A fire in each electric vein, — 
 A passion whose exceeding power 
 Was heaven or hell to each wild hour ! 
 
 But, from the wreck of ruin'd day* 
 What gorgeous vision did he raise ! 
 
 i; ">
 
 6G WOMAN. 
 
 Since ne'er was beauty so divine 
 Embodied in a breathing shrine 
 As throned Beatrice on hkrh, 
 In the dark blaze of Deity ! — 
 Her forehead wreath'd with starry light, 
 And she herself, — oh ! what a si"ht 
 On Dante glitter 'd, when afar 
 He listen'd to her mystic car ; 
 As, wafted in a cloud of flowers, 
 And guarded by angelic Powers, 
 In veil of fire, her spirit came, 
 And warbled his remember'd name! 
 He bow'd beneath her awful look, 
 Then gazed, until his being shook 
 Like water, when the winds convulse 
 And stir it, like a quivering pulse! — 
 But when the wiug'd Enchantress soar'd 
 To where the Godhead was adored, 
 Without a shadow, speck, or bound, 
 Eternity lav imaged round !
 
 WOMAN. 67 
 
 There, on a beatific throne 
 Again he saw her, bright and lone. — 
 Ineffably one look she cast, 
 Angelic features ne'er surpass'd, 
 On him, who knelt entranced awhile 
 Within the glory of her smile ; 
 Till, lo ! in deep excess of light 
 She faded from his yearning sight ! — 
 
 Like one who leaves a savage dell 
 Where day hath bid the sun farewell, 
 Comes forth, to view autumnal beams 
 On bank, and wood, and roaming stream-. — 
 Is he who turns from Dante's gloom 
 To see poetic flow'rets bloom, 
 As dreams of beauty dawn and glow 
 Along the page of Petrarch's woe. — 
 How touching are those mental tears, 
 Delighted throbs, and dazzled fears, — 
 The penance by his genius paid, 
 Whenever recreant fancy stray 'd
 
 68 WOMAN. 
 
 Beyond the tone of pure desire ! — 
 'T was Laura tuned his pensive lvre : 
 Madonna-like, and sweetly mild, 
 And pure as an untempted child, 
 Amid her white-robed virgin throng 
 He saw her beauty glide along, 
 When lilies deck'd her sun-bright hair 
 Amid the walls of lone St. Claire. — 
 That hour became his second birth ! 
 Her glory overveil'd the earth ; 
 And never did a Ghebir kneel 
 Before his orb with truer zeal 
 Than Petrarch at that living shrine, 
 Where dwelt the soul he knew divine !- 
 To him she was a spotless thing, 
 Too bright for earthly bard to sing ; 
 A miracle of life and love, 
 A dream embodied from above, 
 A seraph, whose unclouded eyes 
 "Reflected back their native skies !
 
 WOMAN. 69 
 
 From her his inspiration came ; 
 Each song enshrined her hidden name ; 
 And not a shadow, tint, or sound, 
 Creation could invent around, 
 But he beguiled with beauteous art 
 To typify her taintless heart ! 
 How fervently his homage glows ! 
 Pure from the mind it springs and flows, 
 Exhausting, as his numbers roll, 
 The life-blood of a feeling soul ! 
 For Laura seem'd his spirit's breath, 
 And ruled it when she sunk in death ; 
 Then, day and darkness, scene and hour, 
 Were haunted with her holy power ; 
 And, when her smile illumed it not, 
 The faded world was soon forgot : 
 Since only to embalm her name 
 He panted for eternal fame. — 
 
 Adorner of the human race ! 
 Great Nature's rival, who could trace
 
 70 WOMAN. 
 
 Her features with such perfect skill 
 That time can but remould them still, — 
 So matchless is that mighty one 
 Whom Fancy now would gaze upon ! — - 
 Go, lend the skies a lovelier blue, 
 Or sunbeams o'er the sunshine strew ; 
 Bid Horror to the tempest bring 
 A louder shriek and blacker wing ; 
 Or dare to teach a deeper tone 
 To Thunder on his midnight throne, — 
 So powerless seems a poet's line 
 To render Shakspeare more divine ! 
 All tears and smiles to him belong ; 
 All clouds that round the spirit throng ; 
 All passion?, principles, and powers, 
 Which wring the heart, or rule its hours, 
 In language Nature's lip had taught, — 
 By him were into being wrought ! 
 So sternly witli creative art 
 He drew the drama of the heart,
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 That, long as tears haunt human eyes, 
 Or Pleasure laughs, or Sorrow sighs, 
 Whatever path his genius trod, 
 We hail him earth's poetic god. 
 
 And round him is a dimness thrown ? 
 The colour of his life unknown ? 
 While meaner names are chronicled, 
 And baseness in false light beheld. 
 That master-piece of mortal clay, — 
 Unhonour'd did he die away ? 
 Yes, like an orb, whose affluent rays 
 Demand of earth no greeting praise, 
 He scatter'd intellectual light, 
 Immortal in unconscious might ! 
 Sublimely careless of renown, 
 Then lay his awful spirit down, 
 Nor dreamt that Glory's arm would wave 
 Her brightest banner o'er his grave ! 
 
 But yet there be faint shadows cast 
 From pining years which he had past,
 
 72 WOMAN. 
 
 That tell us how the soul could brook 
 
 The pangs that once his bosom shook ; 
 
 When dark-eyed beauty rack'd and wrung 
 
 A heart round which the world had clun»- ! — '- 
 
 Her hair was like the sheen of night, 
 
 When blackness seems to make it bright ; 
 
 And melody her touch obey'd 
 
 When o'er the chords her fingers stray'd : 
 
 But sorrow dash'd her april years 
 
 With cold and melancholy tears ; 
 
 And thus there grew a wild unrest 
 
 Within the gloom of Shakspeare's breast, 
 
 Till he who sung what Romeo felt 
 
 Beneath like pangs was doora'd to melt, 
 
 And hide within his dreaming brain 
 
 The visions of a lover's pain. 
 
 And wt'l! may woman proudly think 
 That he whose spirit thus could drink 
 Absorbing rays from beauty's eyes 
 Hath sphered her sex amid the skies ! —
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 73 
 
 And none like him love's essence knew, 
 
 From hidden soul the lightning drew, 
 
 That suhtle, secret, silent flame, 
 
 For which the heart hath found no name : 
 
 There 's not a throb that woman feels, 
 
 There 's not a ray her mind reveals, 
 
 And scarce a blush on brow and cheek, 
 
 When blood would rise, and almost speak ! — 
 
 But Shakspeare hath the whole divined, 
 
 And held a mirror to the mind, 
 
 That Nature o'er his magic glass 
 
 Might view each play of feature pass. — 
 
 And what a life-breath' d air there seems 
 
 To freshen those embodied dreams, 
 
 Where character and grace arise, 
 
 To feast our unforgetting eyes 
 
 With all Affection can display, 
 
 When most we bow beneath her sway ! — 
 
 Bright, beautiful, and young, and warm, 
 
 With tears that melt, and tongues that charm, —
 
 74 WOMAN. 
 
 The creatures whom he call'd to birth 
 We pine to meet on mortal earth ; 
 And trace by his revealing- art 
 The windings of a woman's heart. — 
 
 As moonlight weaves a varied spell 
 O'er rock and mountain, grove and dell, 
 So Love with his transforming beam 
 Hath colour'd each romantic dream, 
 As, stern or mild, the spirit lay 
 Beneath the spell-work of his ray. — 
 A sense of beauty, — it was thine, 
 As deep, as burning, and divine, 
 As ever fed with living fire 
 The passion of a poet's lyre, 
 Thou martyr ! whom Alphonso's hate 
 Imprison'd for a madman's fate, 
 Because ere yet the lips could speak 
 Emotion had betray' d thy cheek. 
 To tell him how a bard could dare 
 To love a princess — and despair ! —
 
 WOMAN. 75 
 
 That love was like a blasting sun, 
 It sear'd the heart it shined upon ! 
 But, oh ! how much of Tasso's strain 
 Was born of his devoted pain ; 
 When feelings in their hopeless strife 
 Contended with those clouds of life 
 That 'tween him and his idol grew, — 
 Till death alone could break them through. 
 
 His youth was lonesome ; and the light 
 Of half that won or wooed the sight, 
 Th' enchantment of his spirit shed, 
 Till earth was heaven beneath his tread ! 
 And Nature, like a mother, smiled 
 On him, her musing foster-child ; 
 To whom her voice from wave or wind 
 Came with a magic more refined 
 Than echoes from the human soul ; 
 And, where a quiet stream did roll, 
 While shade and sunshine blent their power, 
 H,e charm'd his own creative hour ! —
 
 76 WOMAN. 
 
 Till voiceless aspirations rose, 
 His bosom lost its young repose, 
 And round his heart a syren came 
 And murmur' d his immortal name ! 
 Thus fancy set the soul on fire, 
 Till life itself he found aspire 
 To beauty, like that spirit bright, — 
 When, tender as the touch of light, 
 Fair Leonora's vision stood 
 Before him, fresh in womanhood ! 
 And all the heart's creation drew 
 At length his living eyes could view. — 
 What heavenliness array'd her form, 
 How exquisite the blushing storm 
 Of love's betray'd emotion rose ! 
 When Tasso read his lyric woes, 
 Morn after morn, in youth's ripe age, 
 From out his own melodious page, 
 While Leonora's lips of love 
 The garland of his glory wove,
 
 WOMAN. 77 
 
 In words whose magic seem'd to be 
 The tones of immortality ! — 
 
 And could they side by side remain 
 Nor feel the heart's delicious pain ? 
 The might of that magnetic gaze 
 That each to each would softly raise ? 
 Could Tasso in that perill'd hour 
 Be dead to passion's dawning power ? 
 Alas for him ! — Alphonso came 
 And bade a dungeon hide his flame ! — 
 They tore him to a hideous cell, 
 (Ferrara hath revered it well) 
 And left him, for a maniac's doom, 
 To rot in suffocating gloom ! — 
 Yet, mis'ry could not then decay 
 The dream that wore his mind away, 
 Though frenzy might its faith destroy, 
 Till life became a wretched toy, — 
 Yet passion round his wreck would smile, 
 Like evening o'er a faded pile :
 
 78 
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 But, when his Leonora died, 
 And ev'ry bard a wreath supplied.. 
 To grace the glory of her bier, — 
 Could Tasso's Muse deny a tear ? 
 Yes ! silence was the tomb of pain, 
 And grief was voiceless, when 'twas vain. 
 Let fancied woe prepare a sigh 
 To deck the fate of those who die ; 
 And hypocrites their cheeks array 
 With gloom to serve a venal day, — 
 The pangs that load a loftier breast 
 Lie deep, and dark, and unexprest ; 
 Yet, sternness m that blank despair 
 Hath buried more than anguish there !— 
 
 Another of the wond'rous see ! 
 Whose spirit talk'd with Deity, 
 And, blind on earth, beheld in heaven • 
 The glory to archangels giv'n, 
 When, robed in light, their garments blaze 
 And whiten in eternal ravs ! —
 
 WOMAN. 79 
 
 No cavern' d prophet, while he felt 
 
 A trance almighty round him melt ; 
 
 Or, by some Babylonian stream 
 
 From darkness shaped his awful dream, 
 
 Wherein there glided, vast and dim, 
 
 The cloud-apparell'd cherubim, — 
 
 Hath scarce outsoar'd his epic flight 
 
 Who sang of Chaos, Death, and Night ! — 
 
 Had none, methinks, but Milton's song 
 
 Pour'd its grand tide the world along, 
 
 Had never page but his reveal'd 
 
 The miracles in mind conceal'd, — 
 
 The hope immortal still would rest 
 
 Unblighted in the human breast ; 
 
 For, never could a narrow grave 
 
 Th' immeasurable soul enslave, 
 
 That compass'd air, and heaven, and hell, — 
 
 The lord of his creative spell ! 
 
 With what a melody divine 
 The river of each noble line
 
 80 WOMAN. 
 
 Flows onward! — faint, or loud, or deep, 
 Accordant to the numbers' sweep. 
 Go, enter some majestic fane, 
 And listen to the organ-strain, 
 When melting clouds of music float 
 Down the dim aisles with blending note, 
 Now, with wild melodious thunder 
 The vaulted pavement echoes under, 
 Then, aloft in flights of sound, 
 The winged harmonies abound, — 
 Evanishing like birds that stray 
 And skyward sing their boundless way ! — 
 For thus can Milton's numbers roll 
 Their cadence o'er the tranced soul. 
 
 And can we deem that he who drew 
 In lines of love so brightly true 
 The mother of our mortal race, 
 And made the glory of her face 
 To dazzle back a demon's guile, 
 When Eden laugh' d beneath her smile, —
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 Can nature dream poetic art 
 Reflected not his own pure heart ? - 
 The lady-pilgrim of the wood 
 In starlike heauty, lone and good, 
 Was copied from a shape, perchance, 
 That kindled youth's adoring glance. — 
 There is a tale — and let it live 
 Such life as fond romance can give, 
 That once, as slumb'ring Milton lay 
 In umbrage from the noon- warm day, 
 Beneath the twilight of a tree, 
 That arch'd its waving canopy, — 
 A maiden saw his sleeping face, 
 And, spell-bound with its beauteous grace, 
 Her wonder in sweet song express'd, 
 And placed it on the poet's breast ; — 
 " If eyes when shut the heart can take, 
 How bright their vict'ry when awake !" — 
 Oh ! who can tell what beauty flow'd 
 From feelings by such words bestow'd ; — 
 
 E
 
 82 WOMAN. 
 
 The Eve of his enchanted thought 
 From hues of nature's heaven was wrought, 
 And she of paradise the queen 
 Embodied what his soul had seen. 
 
 And could that bard, whose mind was free 
 And boundless as eternity; 
 Who seem'd on earth to have the skies 
 Aye floating o'er his mental eyes ; 
 To the low dust of life descend, 
 And with the base its glory blend ? — 
 How nobly bath awarding time 
 For genius shaped the crown sublime, 
 And silenced in oblivion's shade 
 The war opinion's fury made ! — 
 Till all the wounds and stabs of strife 
 That agonized his bleeding life 
 Appear but like a mould'ring stain 
 That lingers OD some marble fane, 
 But, ere it rota one tint away, 
 Hath vanish' d in some heavenly ray !
 
 WOMAN. 83 
 
 Oh ! many are the pangs that wear 
 A spirit into proud despair ; 
 And many are the tears that flow, 
 To swell the tide of human woe : 
 But seldom doth the sicken' d heart 
 From dreams of false perfection start 
 With pangs of such convulsive power 
 As when the great have ceased to tower, 
 Desert the sky, and chain their wings, 
 To strive with earth's degraded things ; — 
 Like eagles, when their flight is o'er, 
 That wrangle on some weedy shore ! — 
 
 But one amid the bardic throng 
 To whom the wreaths of heaven belong, 
 From pride and coarser impulse free 
 Stands out, in solemn purity ! — 
 His heart, by woman's power array 'd, 
 The summons of high love obey'd, 
 And beautiful, beyond the light 
 Of language to reveal aright, 
 
 e 2
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 The passion of a deathless pair, 
 
 Who hreath'd on earth celestial air ! — 
 
 Before the dawn of being came 
 
 They dreamt their lot was doom'd the same, 
 
 That human love in heaven would be 
 
 A wedded immortalitv ! 
 
 J 
 
 And, when his dying Meta lay, 
 
 And felt her spirit faint away, — 
 
 Like music from a falt'ring wave, 
 
 When sinking to its ocean grave, — 
 
 Beside her Klopstock meekly stood, 
 
 And watch' d the pale and speaking blood 
 
 In awful changes come and go ! — 
 
 But never was such loving woe, 
 
 When Meta — to his fond request, 
 
 That round him her bright wings should rest 
 
 While o'er the world his fate must rove, — 
 
 Responded with a burst of love, 
 
 •' Who would not share that lot divine, 
 
 To be thine angel! — thou wert mine!" —
 
 WOMAN. 85 
 
 A gentle stream that glides along, 
 And frames the breeze a lovely song, 
 And that same stream, when torn at length, 
 And arm'd with desolating strength, 
 As down some rocky steep it pours 
 And like a rival ocean roars, — 
 May typify the tranquil soul, 
 When calm'd by virtue's wise control, 
 And one by passion's whirlwind force 
 Compell'd to each disastrous course : — 
 Tis thus, when sad-eyed mem'ry turns 
 From Klopstock to impassion'd Burns, 
 Two streams of life at once appear, 
 In mild repose and mad career. 
 
 The Shakspeare of the woods and fields, — 
 How wizard-like the sway he wields ! 
 The heart-blood owns his lyric might, 
 And ripples with confess'd delight, 
 When Scottish valour fires the song, — 
 Like clarion music, stern and strong !
 
 S6 WOMAN. 
 
 Excitement, — that immortal pain, 
 The demon of a poet's brain, — 
 On him it wreak'd its wildest rage ! 
 And all that poverty could wage 
 Against a high and haughty mind 
 His trampled heart was doom'd to find. 
 Yet, cradled in dark Mis'ry's bed, 
 How nobly was his genius led ! — 
 What man denied, great Nature gave : 
 His soul, no educated slave, 
 The elements and seasons taught ; 
 Creation magnified his thought ; 
 And when amid the foliage dim 
 The blackbird piped his vesper-hymn, 
 As tides th' attractive moon obey, 
 So throbb'd his pulse to Nature's play- 
 And woman by her smile could throw 
 A sunbeam o'er his blackest woe, — 
 A ray whose beauty reach' d the soul, 
 And bade his limning numbers roll !
 
 WOMAN. s 7 
 
 Yet who can read the bitter fate, 
 So darkly chill and desolate, 
 That wrapt in clouds the closing day 
 Of him who pour'd as proud a lay 
 As ever rose from Scottish lyre 
 On inspiration's breath of fire ! — 
 Nor weep to think that starless night 
 Should blacken round that soul of light ! 
 Oh ! who can mark his mind's undress, 1S 
 The agony of lone distress, 
 The curse of want that crush'd his brain 
 To frenzy — with a fiercer pain ! — 
 Can hear the groan of anguish'd hours, 
 When Misery rallied all her powers, 
 And thoughts like hidden scorpions tore 
 The mind that could no longer soar, 
 But prostrate in its ruin lay 
 A blasted wreck and bleeding prey ! — 
 Nor ask for Pity's brightest tear 
 To tremble on his early bier ! —
 
 8S WOMAN. 
 
 Yet, warmly while around him shone 
 
 The worship that his genius won, 
 
 Prophetic truth beheld afar 
 
 The clouds that would conceal his star, 
 
 And leave him, long ere life should close, 
 
 To wither in degrading woes ! 
 
 Yes ; he whose lines are mottoes now, 
 
 Whose genius veils his country's brow 
 
 With glory, when his stirring lays 
 
 Are greeted with exalting praise, — 
 
 Was fated, like an outcast thing, 
 
 To moulder in dark suffering 
 
 Down to the grave !— with scarce a bed 
 
 To pillow his immortal head ! 
 
 My God ! how little can the great 
 Feel the dread curse of blighted fate ; 
 Or think that they, whose spirits throw 
 Around the world a heav'nly "-low, 
 Whose bright imaginations seem 
 The fragments of a seraph's dream,
 
 WOMAN. 89 
 
 Whose words imparadise their hours, 
 
 And freshen earth with Eden-flowers, — 
 
 The martyrs of the mind have been, 
 
 Or suffer'd more than eye hath seen ! 
 
 And, while the theme of Glory's tongue. 
 
 Their homes were wreck'd, their heart* were wrung ; 
 
 And songs that flow'd so gaily free 
 
 Gush'd from a fount of misery ! 
 
 A noble mind in sad decay, 
 When baffled hope hath died away, 
 And life becomes one long distress, 
 In bleak and barren loneliness, — 
 Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore, 
 That once defied th' Atlantic roar, 
 And gallantly through gale and storm 
 Hath ventured her majestic form, 
 But now in stranded ruin laid, 
 By winds and dashing seas decay'd,— 
 Forgetful of her ocean reign, 
 Must crumble into earth again ! 
 
 e 5
 
 90 WOMAN. 
 
 To crown the poet-throng appears 
 Another, whose poetic tears, 
 While a hruised spirit toils helow, 
 Shall consecrate affection's woe ; 
 And ever by their passion tell 
 The power of love's unfading spell, 
 That beautified with lone despair 
 The visions that his lines declare. 
 
 The anguish of his clouded heart 
 Hath ceased on earth to play its part, 
 And o'er his laurel-shaded brow 
 The damp of death lies coldly now ! 
 The storm, the shadow, and the strife, 
 That made and magnified his life, 
 Have sunk like winds along the deep, 
 And left him to untroubled sleep ! 
 But few, when Harold died, forget 
 The fulness of our fond regret, 
 As England echoed back the knell 
 That tull'd from Greece his last farewell !
 
 WOMAN. 91 
 
 Oh ! nought hut some ignoble hrcast, 
 Where feelings iced in stony rest 
 Can haffle with a stern disdain 
 The lightnings of each lofty strain, — 
 That did not unto tears admire 
 The dirges of his gloomy lyre, 
 And speculate, if years had brought 
 A blessed store of brighter thought, 
 How much of all that mars his fame 
 Had vanish'd in a purer aim. — 
 The earthquake that so rock'd his soul 
 With dread and undefined control, 
 Beneath some intellectual balm 
 Had soften'd to melodious calm : 
 Those feelings that were prompt to stray 
 Where all the weeds of vileness lav, — 
 To linger with sarcastic stress 
 Round nature's erring littleness, 
 As though in man no trait was true 
 But that which wore the meanest hue.
 
 92 WOMAN. 
 
 And goodness were a dream that dies 
 
 When dazzled by a poet's eyes, — 
 
 Ay, feelings dark as these, perchance 
 
 Had glorified by pure advance 
 
 The regions of exalted mind, 
 
 And loved the links of human kind. — 
 
 The spots upon Creation seen, 
 
 For sorrow, not for scorn, had been ; 
 
 Till genius, from its darkness free, 
 
 Flash 'd out in full divinity ! — 
 
 But, 'twas not so ; and man must wait 
 
 The brightness of a better fate, 
 
 To tell him all that grief would learn, 
 
 When back to dust the great return, 
 
 E'en in that hour when most they seem 
 
 To realize our vastest dream, 
 
 And purify the hopes of Earth 
 
 With promise of a second birth ! — ■. 
 
 The sanctitv of Virtue stands 
 Above the soil of human hands,
 
 WOMAN. 93 
 
 And genius, though the world it awe, 
 
 Must bow to her corrective law : 
 
 Yet who, unless the mind can be 
 
 Transform'd to perfect deity, 
 
 Can judge how terrible the sway 
 
 When impulse leads the soul astray ? 
 
 The meanest tongue can brand a sin, 
 
 But who can probe the heart within, — 
 
 The gloom of agonizing strife, 
 
 When principle resigns its life, 
 
 Till passion in its fiery reign 
 
 Pours madness over blood and brain ! — 
 
 A soul that like iEolian lyre, 
 
 Which faintest tones of air inspire — 
 
 Was thrill'd by sound, and hue, and scene, 
 
 As though a slumber ne'er had been ; 
 
 A spirit pining for the good, 
 
 Till dreams became its daily food ; 
 
 Or, revelling in satiric gloom 
 
 That mock'd at all above the tomb, —
 
 94 WOMAN. 
 
 Oh ! these unite to arm a spell, 
 That few helow have wielded well ! 
 And, blended with a slakeless thirst 
 To find the spot by crime uncursed, 
 In Byron lived a haunting dread, 
 From moods of dark enquiry bred, — 
 Of that Unknown beyond the grave, 
 Where fancy's wings delight to wave : — 
 Hence, doubt and scorn, with mis'ry rife, 
 Threw blackness on the stream of life ; 
 Till o'er each maze of erring man 
 The reckless eye of satire ran, 
 And, finding nought but error free, 
 Call'd vice the sole reality. 
 
 But, whore the grave of Harold lies, 
 May Virtue bend forgiving eyes ! 
 The meek, whose time-worn spirits know 
 How much that heart must brave helow, 
 Which battles with the mystic gloom 
 That haunts it from the spectral tomb, —
 
 WOMAN. 95 
 
 No vengeance on his glory wreak, 
 
 But lightly of each error speak. 
 
 For who are they, if life had heen, 
 
 Like Byron's, one uncurtain'd scene 
 
 Where every eye could point a gaze, 
 
 And level all its envious rays, — 
 
 Whose splendour would reveal no hlot 
 
 That now lies faded and forgot ? — 
 
 While some regard with hitter eyes 
 
 The tomb where buried genius lies, 
 
 And bid the gates of Mercy close 
 
 On them whom earth denied repose, — 
 
 The hearts whom wisdom's humbling power 
 
 Hath taught to fear their firmest hour, 
 
 In tender awe will bend and weep 
 
 Where Byron's noble ashes sleep, 
 
 Nor love, o'er sorrow's wildering track, 
 
 To trace the foot of error back ; 
 
 But thank him with a proud excess 
 
 For all the poet's mightiness ! —
 
 96 WOMAN. 
 
 Oh ! there he lies ! becalm'd in death, 
 Whose being was a tortured breath ; 
 Whose years in whirlwind bore him on 
 To the dread gulph where time is gone ! 
 And, stirless as the travell'd lake 
 Whose waters down the mountain break, 
 O'er wood and wild, and ridge and rock, 
 Convulsed and crash' d with many a shock, 
 The turbulence of trial now ! — 
 Let God alone the rest avow. 
 
 And was it nought to melt away 
 The frost that bound the spirit's plav ? 
 To summon into startling view 
 The deep, the daring, and the true, — 
 Or light the chaos of the soul, 
 And see its cavcrn'd waters roll ! — 
 Instead of polish' d rhyme, to raise 
 The stormy breath of wilder lavs ; 
 Or make us, in his milder hour, 
 Dissolve in dreams of beauty's power —
 
 WOMAN. 97 
 
 Such beauty as our thoughts create, 
 But never clad a mortal state ! 
 
 There are who call the poet's bliss 
 Too airy for a world like this : — 
 Alas ! for wisdom, if her voice 
 Can teach the heart no glorious choice ; 
 If downward to the dust she try 
 For aye to fix our slavish eye, 
 And seldom bid one glance be given 
 Aloft to mind's unclouded heaven ! — 
 The freshness of poetic thought, 
 From out the groves of fancy brought, 
 And wafted o'er the soid's domain, — 
 What is it but a breezy strain 
 From winds of vanish'd Eden lent 
 To purify earth's element, 
 And summon forth those dream-born flowers 
 That grew in Milton's epic bowers ! — 
 'Mid all the waste of worldly arts, 
 Oh ! leave him yet some few fine hearts,
 
 98 WOMAN. 
 
 That still the poet's wand may raise 
 A vision of unfallen days, 
 And rescue from the fangs of time 
 Some feelings that are yet sublime ! 
 
 On Harrow, when the heaven of June 
 Was garmented with glowing noon, 
 And not a cloud's minutest braid 
 Along its liquid sapphire stray'd, 
 I stood beneath that haunted tree, 
 And heard the leaf-toned melody 
 Which oft in boyhood's dreaming years 
 Had warbled on the pensive ears 
 Of Byron, — when he loved to muse 
 Beneath the quiet churchyard yews. 
 O ! who in such an hour could stand, 
 And look adown the sloping land, 
 Where meadow, vale, and roving stream, 
 So often charm' d his chequcr'd dream; 
 And round him feci the fresh-wing'd air 
 That lifted oft his waving hair;
 
 WOMAN. 99 
 
 And press the same sepulchral stone 
 His pressure loved to make its own, — 
 Nor feel a sense of fame and might, 
 That shook the heart with strange delight ! 
 
 'Twas here he feasted fancy's power, 
 And in the mind's prophetic hour 
 Would try with telescopic gaze 
 To read the brow of unborn days, " 
 Hail the bright orb of future fame, 
 And glory in a minstrel's name ! 
 Or dared with dreadless eye to see 
 A map of vision'd misery, 
 In lines of awful length outspread, — 
 Till darkness veil'd him with the dead ! 
 
 And who with backward gaze can scan 
 The burning course his genius ran, 
 Nor feel how woman's reigning star 
 With fervid eye he view'd afar,
 
 100 
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 And felt her beam of beauty cast 
 
 A light that heaven alone surpass'd ! — 
 
 His primal love — it never died, 
 
 But still within the soul supplied 
 
 The waters of affection pure, 
 
 From fate and freezing time secure ; 
 
 'Twas thence ideal sorrow drew 
 
 The pangs that pierce our nature through, 
 
 Till love became the life of sons - : — 
 
 And glories to its gloom belong ! 
 
 But had his heart with hers entwined, 
 
 Whose beauty struck his boyhood blind, 
 
 The starlight of whose cloudless eyes 
 
 Attracted his immortal sighs, — 
 
 If happiness can reach the great, 
 
 How bright had been his alter' d fate ! 
 
 Instead of darkness, light would be 
 
 Around the soul's divinity! — 
 
 Medora, Kaled, and Gulnare, 
 
 Each ruin'd maid and reckless fair, —
 
 WOMAN. 101 
 
 Were moulded from the shades of mind 
 Despair and passion leave behind. 
 But once in home's attractive fane, 
 Oh ! had he worshipp'd woman's reign, 
 And seen her — not in mock romance — 
 Through daily paths of life advance 
 As angel of domestic hours, 
 How nobly might those lofty powers 
 He lavish'd on a Corsair's bride 
 Have been to purer love supplied ! 
 While, feeling all that fancy drew, 
 His genius would have brighten' d too, 
 And woman in his picture hail'd 
 A model that had never fail'd, 
 While love, by genius made divine, 
 Could sanctify a poet's line ! — 
 
 And such hath been fond woman's sway 
 Since angels hymn'd her natal day, — 
 The passion of profoundest love 
 Whose archetype is God above ! —
 
 102 WOMAN. 
 
 And while yon heaven is o'er us hung, 
 For ever shall the brave and young, 
 The free — the fervid — fond and true, 
 Declare what female hearts can do ! 
 
 And many a name as yet unknown, 
 Embalm'd in some immortal tone 
 Of genius by a thrilling bard, — 
 Shall time exult to read and guard : 
 And beauty, in domestic bowers 
 Now fameless as secluded flowers, 
 When buried queens forgotten lie, 
 And royal tombs can raise no sigh, — 
 In melody of deathless might 
 Shall live to be the world's delight, 
 
 i 
 
 While love and poetry can claim 
 
 To twine a wreath round Woman's name !
 
 CANTO THIRD. 
 
 The mild majesty of private life. 
 
 Akknsidk. 
 
 Show us how divine a thing 
 
 A Woman may be made. 
 
 Wordsworth.
 
 WOMAN, 
 
 THE ANGEL OF LIFE. 
 
 CANTO THIRD. 
 
 Angel of life ! whose love hath been 
 The master charm of time and scene, 
 Romance, in her elysian mood 
 Creating forms of fair and good, 
 Hath not outsoar'd thy virtue's height ; 
 Nor imaged forth more purely bright 
 The lineaments of perfect grace 
 Than yet adorn thy breathing race : 
 And Fiction, when her mould was cast, 
 Might gaze on life, and feel surpass'd !
 
 10H WOMAN. 
 
 But where is woman most array'd 
 With all that mind would see display'd ?- 
 O, England ! round thy chainless isle 
 How fondly doth the Godhead smile, 
 And crowd within thy little spot 
 A universe of glorious lot ! 
 But never till the wind-rock'd sea 
 Have home us far from home and thee, 
 The patriotic fervours rise, 
 To hallow thy forsaken skies ! 
 Though Nature, with suhlimer stress, 
 Hath stamp'd her seal of loveliness 
 On climes of more colossal mould, — 
 How much that travell'd eyes hehold 
 Would sated wonder throw away, 
 To take one look where England lay ! — 
 To wander down some hawthorn lane, 
 And drink the lark's delightful strain ; 
 Or, floating from a pastured dell 
 To hear the sheep's romantic bell,
 
 WOMAN. 107 
 
 While valeward as the hills retire 
 
 Peeps greyly forth the hamlet spire ! 
 
 And all around it hreathes a sense 
 
 Of weal, and worth, and competence. 
 
 But, far beyond all other dowers, 
 
 Thy daughters seem Earth's human flowers ! — 
 
 The charm of young Castilian eyes, 
 
 When lovingly their lashes rise, 
 
 And, blended into one rich glance, 
 
 The lightnings of the soul advance ! — 
 
 Wild hearts may into wonder melt, 
 
 And make expression's magic felt ; 
 
 Or, girded by the dreams of old, 
 
 In Sappho's Lesbian isle, behold 
 
 A shadow of primeval grace 
 
 Yet floating o'er some classic face : 
 
 But where, in what imperial land, 
 
 Hath nature with more faultless hand 
 
 Embodied all that beauty shows — 
 
 Than round us daily lives and glows ?
 
 108 WOMAN. 
 
 Here, mingled with the outward might 
 Of charms that coldest gaze invite, 
 Th' enamel of the mind appears, 
 Undimm'd hy woe, unsoil'd hy years !-*■ 
 To wedded hearts, devoid of strife, 
 Here home becomes the heaven of life ; 
 And household virtues spring to birth 
 Beside the love-frequented hearth, 
 While feelings, soft as angels know, 
 Around them freshly twine and grow ! 
 
 A landscape of domestic love, 
 Which God's paternal eyes approve, 
 Reflected from a homely dream, 
 Shall form my lay's concluding theme ; 
 If there one heart its home can see, — 
 'Twill render more than fame to me! 
 
 A vale of beauty ! — lo ! the morn, 
 In clouds of crimson radiance born,
 
 WOMAN. 109 
 
 Hath risen from the couch of night, 
 And fills the air with fresh delight ; 
 While hues, like harmonies that range 
 The world of sound with lovely change, — 
 In varied lustre o'er the sky 
 Awaken, mingle, melt, and die ; 
 Till full-orb'd on his flaming throne 
 The Sun-king is beheld alone ! 
 And, blue as Baltic waves asleep, 
 Before him lies a dazzling sweep 
 Of azure, in its deep excess 
 Of morn-created loveliness ! — 
 
 How exquisite this breathing hour ! — 
 As though awhile some choral bower, 
 Where cherubim partake repose, 
 Its crystal gates did half unclose, 
 Till fragments of delicious sound 
 Came wafted on the winds around, 
 And bloom and balm to nature giv'n 
 Made earth a momentary heaven ! —
 
 110 WOMAN. 
 
 Hark ! to the choir of yonder wood, 
 
 Where life exults in solitude : 
 
 On each unrified bough is heard 
 
 The lay of some melodious bird, 
 
 And young-wing'd breezes as they float 
 
 From brook and meadow learn a note ; 
 
 And streams like tides of gladness flow, 
 
 And in the air there dwells a glow 
 
 Of elemental youth and joy, 
 
 Unchill'd by one corrupt alloy. — 
 
 How dazzlingly with rosy dies 
 
 The fairies of the field arise ! 
 
 And flutter on their insect wings, 
 
 As each a song of matin sings ; 
 
 And where around the glitt'ring blade 
 
 A liquid web of dew is laid, 
 
 As early peasants' footsteps pass, — 
 
 How greenly shines the shaken grass ! 
 
 While many a lark from out the ground 
 
 Is startled, like a magic sound
 
 WOMAN. Ill 
 
 That ere the sense be half aware 
 Is kindled by the harp of air ! 
 
 And list ! from out yon village dell, 
 Upon the breeze, in broken swell, 
 The goings-on of life begin 
 To charm the ear with social din. 
 The creak of hill-ascending wain, 
 The shout of some exulting swain, 
 The watch-dog baying far behind, 
 The mill-sounds hoarse upon the wind, 
 With voices from the child or crone, — 
 Are all in gay confusion thrown ! 
 And travel on the morning breeze 
 With notes whose human echoes please. 
 From the thatch'd chimney now have broke 
 The tinted wreaths of cottage smoke, — 
 Ascending delicately bright, 
 And braided by a golden light, 
 Like air-wing'd hopes they glide away, 
 Commingling with the boundless day !
 
 112 
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 And see, amid the straw-roof d throng 
 
 Of homes that to yen dale belong, — 
 
 As dwelt the patriarch on the plain, 
 
 Surrounded by his pastoral train, — 
 
 A mansion smiles ; whose neater state, 
 
 Though unallied to proud or great, 
 
 A central grace around it throws, 
 
 And o'er each cot a charm bestows. 
 
 Embower'd in laurels, green and calm, — 
 
 To view it yields the eye a balm ! 
 
 But, when at eve its garden hath 
 
 A lustre on each lilietl path ; 
 
 When bough, and branch, and grape-hung vine, 
 
 In rays of pensive beauty shine, 
 
 While gladsome bee, and quiring bird, 
 
 And leafy song, are faintly heard, — 
 
 More lovely than a dream-built dome 
 
 Appears that hush'd and heavenly home ! 
 
 There often hath the worldling cast 
 
 A longing eye, ere on he past,
 
 WOMAN. . 113 
 
 And while it wander'd o'er the scene, 
 Mused — Oil ! that such my own had been ! — 
 
 But is it like gay hearts that hide, 
 With sunny brow, a bitter tide 
 Of anguish in their gloom below. 
 Which they who suffer only know ? — 
 Have venom'd passions, fiercely wild, 
 The pureness of its peace defiled, 
 While outwardly its walls declare 
 That all within is tranquil there ? — 
 No ! war and famine, blood and crime, 
 Have stain'd the ghastly scroll of time, 
 And tears, the rain of torture, flow'd, 
 And conscience borne its burning load, — 
 While twenty years o'er earth have roll'd, 
 The aged died, and youth grown old, — 
 Yet still, in unalloy'd content 
 Remains that blissful tenement ! 
 And, save the shadows that o'ersteal 
 The brightest fate the good can feel, 
 
 f o
 
 114 WOMAN. 
 
 Around its heaven-protected scene 
 One summer of the soul hath heen ! 
 And like a fount whose waters fling 
 A freshness with faint murmuring, 
 Perceived alone by desert flowers 
 That bud beneath its nursing powers, — 
 From thence hath Charity's sweet store 
 Been scatter'd for the sick and poor. 
 So noiseless were the feet that trod 
 Those lovely paths which lead to God, 
 That angels only heard their tread, 
 And track'd them to some dying bed ! — 
 
 But where yon ivy gate expands, 
 Within it what a vision stands ! — 
 More exquisite in brow and limb 
 Than those aerial cherubim, 
 Which Painting in some starry dress 
 Reveals on clouds of loveliness ! 
 Around her, like a viewless zone, 
 A fascinating might is thrown :
 
 WOMAN. 115 
 
 Her brow is pure as thought can be, 
 
 And whiter than the foam-clad sea, 
 
 Expanded with an arch of grace, 
 
 Like heaven's, above a heavenly face ; 
 
 And on that polish' d cheek, behold! 
 
 Her ringlets, by the breeze unroll'd, — 
 
 In gleaming motion dance and shake, 
 
 Like ripples on a restless lake ! 
 
 Her years are on the verge of heaven, — 
 
 That period when to life is given 
 
 The freshness of elastic youth, 
 
 Yet touch'd with woman's deeper truth : — 
 
 Again, behold that virgin face ! 
 
 'Tis beauty in the mould of grace ; 
 
 Incarnate soul lies sculptured there ! — 
 
 A feeling so divinely fair 
 
 Is dwelling in those dark-fringed eyes, 
 
 That when they front the dazzling skies 
 
 Pure spirits well might deem that earth 
 
 Had copied some celestial birth,
 
 116 WOMAN. 
 
 Or beauty in the world had grown 
 All spirit-like, to match their own ! 
 
 Yet innocence with homely seal 
 Hath stamp'd the power her looks reveal j 
 And should her form the rustic meet 
 Amid the pent and crowded street, 
 So artlessly each lovely hue 
 Would dawn on his delighted view, 
 At once his mental eye would roam 
 To scenery round a village home, 
 Till breeze and brook were heard again 
 Exulting o'er his native plain. 
 
 Companion of the morning hours, 
 To tend her own infantine flowers, 
 That grow beneath her guardian eyes, 
 And let their lids of bloom arise, — 
 The garden haunt she loves to pace : 
 And oft is seen, with bending grace,
 
 WOMAN. 117 
 
 And hand that scarcely wounds the air, 
 To nurse each bud unfolding there ; 
 Till fancy, where her touch presides, 
 Might dream the soul of flowers abides, 
 That waft abroad their sweetest sigh 
 To greet her, as she glideth by ! — 
 Before her nought is forced to flee : 
 All undisturb'd the rifling bee, 
 When hived in bloom, may hum and sip 
 A banquet off the rose's lip : 
 The butterflies, bright gems of air ! 
 Can twinkle round her silken hair ; 
 And not a bird that quells its song, 
 Or flutters when she moves along, 
 But sings as though a sunbeam came 
 Athwart the boughs with brighter aim ! 
 
 'T was here amid this haunt of dreams 
 Her childhood roved, and still it seems 
 Alive with voices heard of vore, 
 And breathes of them who breathe no more !
 
 118 WOMAN. 
 
 From out her casement's vine-clad height 
 
 She views it, when the veil of night 
 
 Lies dimly woven over all, 
 
 Or glitters, like a dewy pall ; 
 
 And here, when starry magic reigns 
 
 Amid the sky's untravell'd plains, 
 
 And moonlight with mysterious power 
 
 Hath mantled yonder grey church-tower ; 
 
 The pensive maiden loves to stand, 
 
 And let her night-born dreams expand. — 
 
 Nor is the scene bereft of charm : 
 
 The dusky roof of distant farm, 
 
 The meadows in their dim array, 
 
 The frowning coppice far away, 
 
 And cot that shows its twinkling pane 
 
 Adown the lone and green-bough' d lane, 
 
 While yonder, where the cloven hill 
 
 Seems parted by a tempest's will, 
 
 The billows wreath'd with moonshine play 
 
 And chant their merry ocean lav,
 
 WOMAN. 119 
 
 To hearts that feel the hush of night 
 Enchanting is their mingled sight ! 
 
 A daughter, heautiful and good, 
 On the fair brink of womanhood, 
 When all the debt of love-watch'd years, 
 Of buried pangs and hosom'd fears, 
 By filial worth can be repaid, — 
 Is more than words have yet portray'd. 
 What links, which time nor death can part, 
 Have bound her to a parent's heart ! — 
 Oh ! deep beyond description lies, 
 Pure as the ray of seraph eyes, 
 The love within parental souls ! 
 Whatever tide of anguish rolls, 
 Whatever wreck the world can make, — 
 Till God himself the good forsake, 
 Affection is the life of life, 
 A power with more than feeling rife, 
 Above all base dominion free, 
 A passion for eternity !
 
 1*20 WOMAN. 
 
 O blest ! unutterably blest ! 
 The visions to their fancy prest 
 When sire and mother blend a pray'r 
 For thee, thou spirit ! fond as fair. 
 Thy being sways their mortal breath, 
 And should* c thoudie, — 'twere more than death ; 
 For in thy tomb their thoughts would dwell, 
 And darkness be their brightest spell ! — 
 To think on all thine artless ways 
 Since childhood reap'd its golden days ; 
 From year to year delighted trace 
 The magic dawn of mind and face ; 
 To watch thee in life's daily round 
 With ev'ry trait of heaven abound ; 
 And when some friend, whom time endears, 
 Hath warbled in their tranced ears 
 Of noble acts in secret done, 
 And wreaths by silent virtue won, — 
 Oh! then around their hearts to feel 
 A glow of admiration steal ! —
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 121 
 
 Or haply, with prophetic truth, 
 
 To picture for thy wedded youth 
 
 A soul that shall be worthy thine, 
 
 With feelings from as pure a mine; 
 
 And when the churchyard yews shall wave 
 
 And darken o'er their cherish'd grave, 
 
 To feel, whatever time decree, 
 
 One Heaven their final home will he ! — 
 
 A bliss so pure no words unfold, 
 
 A joy so deep no eyes behold ; 
 
 That language must be born above 
 
 Whose power reveals a parent's love ! 
 
 And thou art worthy, on whose brow 
 The stainless mind lies mirror'd now, 
 Around their guardian hearts to twine 
 Those feelings that are so divine ! 
 No wish, or want, or hope, or joy, 
 No dreams of time thy youth employ, — 
 But blended with their meaning lies 
 Approval shed from parent eyes.
 
 122 WOMAN. 
 
 And, as a ray from out the sun 
 Reveals its birth where'er it run, 
 Thy virgin thoughts, howe'er they stroll, 
 Retain the brightness of the soul ! 
 And often in thy sleep is heard 
 The fragment of some duteous word, 
 When lips of imaged parents seem 
 To bless thee in thy girlish dream ! — 
 How winning are those myriad ways 
 By which a child fond homage pays, — 
 Those ministries of heart and hand 
 Which none but parents understand ! — 
 When morning reigns in dewy power, 
 To hie and cull the choicest flower ; 
 Or pluck the fruit whose bloom appears 
 Bedeck'd with night's refreshing tears ; 
 Or else with magic pencil take 
 The likeness of some hill or lake, — 
 Some haunted spot, whose beauty hung 
 Rich praises on her feeling tongue, —
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 And these to place in proud surprise 
 Before a mother's greeting eyes ! — 
 Affection, let thy voice declare 
 How tender sweet such trifles are ! 
 For what is kindness, but the heart 
 In action, without guile or art, 
 Imparting by some nameless power 
 A bloom to each attractive hour ? 
 
 But, when bleak winter bares the earth, 
 And Comfort hails the wonted hearth, 
 Then, child of beauty ! thou art found 
 The central star of bliss around. 
 Some book divine, or antique tale, 
 Or shipwreck, where the savage gale 
 Cries havoc ! o'er a howling sea, — 
 Perchance, the chosen page may be : 
 Or bard eterne, with visions bright 
 Shall charm the soul of taste to-night ; 
 Or, haply, Music's heaven-born spell, 
 Whose spirit thou canst wake so well ! 
 
 123
 
 124 WOMA.N. 
 
 Shall kindle for paternal ears 
 The faded tones of former years ; 
 Oh ! then adown the tides of song 
 While thou enrapt art borne along, 
 Till the bright chamber seems to glow 
 With Melody's fine overflow ! 
 And, full before his bickering fire, 
 Delighted sits a dreaming sire, — 
 Forgive the mother, if her gaze 
 Be fill'd with more than fondest praise, 
 And Nature whisper through the heart, - 
 "My child ! how exquisite thou art !" 
 
 But, 'tis not in the noon of joy, 
 When life endures no stern alloy, 
 A daughter from her mind can pour 
 Divine affection's deepest store : — 
 Oh ! let but once a pang prevail, 
 A limb be rack'd, or check grow pale ; 
 Let the wild torture of disease 
 Deny to heart and head their ease ;
 
 WOMAN. 125 
 
 Let Sorrow once her frown impress 
 On life's uncertain happiness, — 
 Then, scorner of the sex ! advance, 
 And learn the power of Pity's glance, 
 The tender might of woman's gaze, 
 Unweaken'd hy tormented days ! — 
 Through hours of blackness, when the mind 
 Seems prostrate, wreck'd, and unresign'd, 
 How potent is her pleading eye, 
 How suasive her devoted sigh ! — 
 One look does more than man could say, 
 And each word wafts a pang away ! 
 
 And there are ties whose thrilling truth 
 Pervade her un corrupted youth 
 With energies that breathe and move 
 In daily acts of duteous love, — 
 Behold yon sister ! — fairy thing, 
 Whose forehead, like the brow of Spring, 
 Is ever bright and ever young, 
 And with the glow of gladness hung ; —
 
 126 WOMAN. 
 
 So light in form, a breeze of life 
 Secure from earth's contagious strife, 
 Round her own orb of home and glee 
 On wing'd delight she seems to flee ! 
 Each pulse within the fine-wrought frame 
 Is tuned to joy's unsleeping claim ; — 
 Whether a cloud-isle richly drest 
 Her wonder-beaming eye arrest, 
 Or mainc from some household word 
 
 O 
 
 Young laughter into life hath stirr'd. — 
 And dear as Nature's dearest tie 
 She grows beneath a sister's eye, 
 Who watches with a starlike gaze 
 Around her pure but perill'd days ! 
 And rather than the air might press 
 Too bleakly on her loveliness, 
 Or pain one fleeting pang awake, — 
 Would let the blood her heart forsake, 
 And drop by drop dissolve away, 
 To win her life one pangless day !
 
 WOMAN. 127 
 
 And what, though years now intervene 
 To veil her own from childhood's scene, — 
 To rohe an infant's face with smiles, 
 And summon forth its mimic wiles, 
 As playmate, she can stoop to be 
 Transformed to frolic infancy ! — 
 Will echo back the bird-like sound 
 Of tiny laughs in merry round, 
 Nor coldly shun the meanest toy 
 That wings a moment's flight with joy. 
 And well those cherub features play 
 In answer to her sister's sway, — 
 Delighted, calm, or grief-array'd, 
 According as her words display'd 
 The tones that govern smiles and tears ! 
 And often when some cloud appears, 
 By pain, or temper's gloom begot, 
 To shadow her infantine lot, — 
 That sister can alone restore 
 The sunshine as it play'd before !
 
 128 WOMAN. 
 
 And, duly as the car of night 
 Returns, she bends with soft delight 
 Enamour'd o'er the precious sleep 
 Of lids too beautiful to weep ! 
 No ! never is the pillow prest 
 Before a parting gaze hath blest 
 That winning face ! — so brightly warm, 
 So tinted with the rosy charm 
 Of slumber, that its beauty seems 
 The bloom of amaranthine dreams ! 
 
 But, ah ! there is a dearer task, 
 Whose toils a patient wisdom ask ; 
 And who beyond a sister knows 
 Where best the germ of knowledge grows, 
 When Infancy begins to look 
 Abroad o'er earth's unwritten book, 
 To read the world with curious eye, 
 And question truths beyond the sky ! — 
 Fondly to aid the budding mind, 
 When 'thought springs faint and undefined ;
 
 WOMAN. 129 
 
 To teach her lips a word to frame, 
 
 And prattle with some homely name ; 
 
 Then, day hy day, as reason wakes, 
 
 And mental twilight dimly breaks, 
 
 A delicate enchantment throw 
 
 Round each young truth the heart would know, 
 
 Thus nursing with a sweet controul 
 
 The childhood of a cherish'd soul, — 
 
 Oh ! none but she can paint the joy 
 
 Of such divine and dear employ ! 
 
 On angel wings thus years will speed, 
 
 And still in language, look, and deed, 
 
 Will sisterly affection be 
 
 A shadow of divinity ! — 
 
 So purely will its magic wind 
 
 Around an infant's guarded mind. — 
 
 A brother, — oh ! that thrilling name, 
 It vibrates through thy very frame, 
 Thou queen of boyhood's cloudless day ! 
 In studious bower though far away, — 
 
 G
 
 130 WOMAN. 
 
 Thy heart is haunted with a sense 
 Of all a brother's charms dispense : 
 His picture on thy bed-room wall, 
 How frequently its lines recall 
 Th' imperial face, the manly brow, 
 The eyes that dared the soul avow, 
 The smile that knew no mean eclipse, 
 Rut ever round those graceful lips 
 In brightest welcome play'd for thee, 
 In moods of unaffected glee ! — 
 What tales of prowess, feats of mind, 
 Around thy memory intertwined, 
 'Tis pure delight oft to unroll 
 In tones that touch a parent's soul ! 
 Beside her, like a felt unseen, 
 The shadow of his shape hath been, 
 Whene'er along some favour'd walk 
 Her spirit dreams him smile and talk ; 
 His voice is woven in the breeze 
 That carols round the garden trees ;
 
 WOMAN. 131 
 
 And fancy, when the moon gleams bright, 
 
 Can often on its mirror write 
 
 Emotions 'twas divine to share, 
 
 When both had fix'd their glances there ! — 
 
 Through weal and woe, through cloud and change, 
 
 Whatever clime or shore he range, 
 
 Till nature can her God denv, 
 
 Undimm'd will shine affection's eye, 
 
 And stainless those deep waters prove 
 
 That well from out a sister's love ! 
 
 And think'st thou, though thy smile afar 
 Hath vanish'd like a fairy star, 
 Companion of her girlish lot ! 
 That thou art in thy home forgot, 
 Where memories, like pulses, play 
 Within the heart of each new day : — 
 So long our early feelings last, 
 Affection owns no faded past ! 
 For aye the glow, of what was dear 
 Surrounds it like an atmosphere; 
 
 g2
 
 132 WOMAN. 
 
 Eternal is the youth of thought, 
 Whatever outward change hath wrought, 
 And distance, though like death it seems,- 
 1$ conquer'd hy creative dreams 
 Of fondness, acting o'er again 
 The brother in his spirit's reign ! — 
 For all he fancied, felt, or did, 
 Her mem'ry in fond silence hid, 
 And nought is trivial, wreck'd, or gone, 
 He cherish'd, loved, or gazed upon ! — 
 like gems of earth his flowers abide, 
 With dew and tender rain supplied ; 
 His birds are fed with fost'ring care, 
 His dog beneath the wonted chair 
 In unalarm'd repose may lie, 
 And fawn to win her playful eye ; 
 The glossy steed, whose bounding limb 
 O'er hill and mead hath toil'd for him, — 
 Beside him she will often stand 
 With greeting voice and gentle hand :
 
 WOMAN. 133 
 
 The page he read grows doubly sweet, 
 For there communing thoughts can meet ! 
 Those melodies, whose dewy sway 
 Could best dissolve his soul away, — 
 Delightful 'tis again to pour 
 Around the room their richest store 
 Of melting sounds, that, ere they die, 
 Seem blended with a brother's sigh ! — 
 But holier far is mem'ry made, 
 And deeper is its might display'd, 
 Whene'er the poor he loved to feed, 
 The hearts he caused no more to bleed, — 
 She welcomes in some rustic cot, 
 
 And finds his goodness unforgot ! 
 
 And ye ! whose locks with hoary truth 
 
 Betray the flight of faded youth ; 
 
 Whose hands have rock'd the cradled boy, 
 
 Or ere he lisp'd his little joy, — 
 
 Full proudly may your tongues prevail ! 
 
 For dear is each domestic tale
 
 134 WOMAN. 
 
 The homely past untreasures now 
 To brighten on a sister's brow ! 
 But when arrives his well-known seal, 
 What ecstasy young eyes reveal ! 
 Warm on the page her lips impress 
 A kiss of perfect happiness ! 
 And well in that entrancing hour 
 When feelings claim prophetic power, 
 As all unworn his heart appears, — 
 A sister may outwing the years, 
 And vision round her brother's head 
 The rays of future glory spread ! 
 
 And wouldst thou trace her secret tide 
 Of goodness to the poor supplied, 
 Winding unknown its village course 
 From charity's divinest source ? — 
 Angelic woman ! if to be 
 On earth a child of Deity, 
 Surpass sth all we deem renown, — 
 How peerless thine immortal crown!
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 For shipwreck'd hearts, sole haven, thou ! 
 
 With pity on thy pensive brow, 
 
 And mercy in thy healing hand, 
 
 And voice beyond all music bland, — 
 
 From cot to cell, oh ! thou hast been 
 
 Life's angel in its blackest scene ; 
 
 And often with the dying good 
 
 On the bright verge of heaven hast stood ! 
 
 And such thou art ; and many a dame 
 Delights to hear thy darling name ; 
 And many a tatter'd widow glows 
 To bless the hand that heal'd her woes : 
 While orphan babes in lane and street 
 With bright'ning face thy welcome meet : 
 And many a tale of mercy lives 
 The life that grateful memory gives, 
 When Feeling round a cottage fire 
 Can pay the debt thy deeds inspire ! — 
 And they are such as cannot die, 
 Though honour'd by no human eye, 
 
 135
 
 136 WOMAN. 
 
 Unchronicled in rolls of worth, 
 Ungreeted by applauding- earth, — 
 Silent and secret though they be, 
 Their tablet is eternity ! 
 Where, graven by the Hand Divine, 
 The glories of the good will shine. 
 
 And thus in virgin solitude, 
 Unbroken by those waters rude 
 Of the rough world, whose waves afar 
 Scarce echo one tempestuous jar, — 
 Queen of the hamlet ! years have flown 
 And still thou art unwooed and lone : 
 Yet time, with magic unconfess'd, 
 Has moulded feelings in thy breast, 
 That now like buried music float 
 With soft and secret under-note ; — 
 So delicate, they scarce appear 
 To haunt thy spirit's maiden sphere, 
 But, wakcn'd once, — and they shall be 
 A soul within a soul to thee ! —
 
 WOMAN. 137 
 
 Emotions of themselves afraid 
 
 A temple in thy heart have made, 
 
 Wherein they flutter, like a bird 
 
 That trembles when a voice is heard ! — 
 
 And fancy loves a Being now 
 
 Whom shaping words cannot avow, — 
 
 A Form of fine imaginings 
 
 To which attracted nature clings. — 
 
 At length he comes ! that nameless one, 
 
 The eye of dreams had gazed upon ! 
 
 The magic and the mystery 
 
 Of life have now begun for thee, 
 
 And thou the type of heaven wilt prove 
 
 In primal, deep, and deathless love ! 
 
 Emotion that is most sublime 
 Of all that hallows earth and time ; 
 That principle from whence we draw 
 The light of each celestial law ; 
 Pervading sense, preserving power, 
 Whom death nor darkness can devour ; 
 
 g 5
 
 138 WOMAN. 
 
 An omnipresent might and spell 
 
 Wherein all mind and matter dwell, — 
 
 Is Love !— by that bright word alone 
 
 We vision forth The Vast Unknown !-*- 
 
 The Ruler of the seraphim, 
 
 Whose glory makes the glorious dim ! 
 
 And not an element that glows 
 
 But breathes the life which love bestows. — 
 
 So magical its wide command, — 
 
 The sternest rock, the bleakest strand, 
 
 Around an exiled wretch hath thrown 
 
 A charm that paradise might own ! 
 
 And who, — when form and face depart 
 
 That seldom touch'd his deeper heart, 
 
 Or, e'en in hours of marring strife 
 
 Profaned the pure serene of life, — 
 
 That feels not, while he says — " Farewell !" 
 
 A love-born sense within him dwell ? — 
 
 A touch of heart, whose tenderness 
 
 Provokes him with a thrilling stress?
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 And hence the captive, when the light 
 
 Of freedom daunts his reeling sight, 
 
 With something of a mute regret, 
 
 His gaze on dungeon walls hath set, 
 
 Though misery's hand had graven there 
 
 The words and weakness of despair ! — 
 
 There is hut one who cannot love, 
 
 The anarch of the Thrones above ; 
 
 Apostate, in whose sleepless eyes 
 
 A hell of burning hatred lies ! 
 
 Whose torture is th' undying sense 
 
 Of unadored omnipotence ; 
 
 A wither'd, dark, defeated Mind, 
 
 That curses Heaven, and scorns mankind ! 
 
 And will the loveless, stern, or grave, 
 Think human fancies wildly rave, 
 When young affection's meteors play 
 In dazzling falsehood round their way ? — 
 Oh ! take him to some towering mind, 
 Whose Orphic words entrance mankind. 
 
 139
 
 140 WOMAN. 
 
 And, when the mask is laid aside, 
 
 And backward rolls the blood-warm tide 
 
 Of feelings, rich with early truth, 
 
 And vital with the flush of youth, — 
 
 How wither'd, wan, and leafless, grows 
 
 The laurel that renown bestows, 
 
 To that bright wreath affection wove 
 
 Round the fair brow of youthful love ! — 
 
 That love, whose faintest impulse wrings 
 
 The bosom's agonized strings, 
 
 And even in its mildest reign 
 
 O'erpowers him with a yearning pain, — 
 
 A feeling that is unforgot, 
 
 That seems the core of life to rot, 
 
 And deaden it with slow decay, 
 
 As water frets the rock away ! — 
 
 Thus passion forms the bane or bliss 
 
 Of being, in a world like this ; 
 
 The day or night of inward joy, 
 
 Which years may dim, but not destroy. —
 
 WOMAN. 141 
 
 Love reigns but once, — yet that will be 
 
 Affection's true eternity ! 
 
 All future love mere echo seems 
 
 Of vanish'd hope's melodious dreams ; 
 
 A dying tone of lost delight, — 
 
 A fragment of those feelings bright 
 
 That once, when youth and heart were whole, 
 
 Created, form'd, and fill'd the soul ! — 
 
 But, maiden ! in thy vernal bloom, 
 On thee attends a calmer doom , 
 No clouds along thy placid heaven, 
 Like prophets, dark with hate, are driven ; 
 No ! all is open, bright, and blest : 
 And hopes may wander unreprest, 
 Like birds of beauty when they fly, 
 And wanton in their genial sky. 
 Oh ! not for thee are voiceless fears, 
 The rack of unrelieving tears, 
 The agonies that coil and wind 
 In secret round a wasted mind.
 
 142 WOMAN. 
 
 Like vipers with envenom'd tooth, 
 To canker all the spirit's youth ; — 
 Nor Circumstance, with eye averse 
 For thee hath framed a fearful curse ! — 
 That long as life's dull waters roll, 
 With broken heart and blighted soul, 
 Thy feelings, on the rack of fate, 
 Shall live to mourn thy wedded state ! — 
 Serene as thy soft brow appears 
 The countenance of coming Years : 
 Consenting parents' blended voice 
 Hath sanction'd love's ingenuous choice ;- 
 And nought descends from dreams above 
 So exquisite as woman's love, 
 When passion in its virgin morn 
 Within a soul like thine is born ! — 
 Her love by self is undcfiled, 
 And foster'd like the spirit's child, 
 Adored and watch'd with heart and eve? ! 
 To whom each thought would sacrifice,
 
 WOMAN. 143 
 
 Each hour devote its deepest care, 
 Each feeling give its fondest share ; 
 And earth, and time, and joy, and youth, 
 From hence derive their only truth. — 
 Let one be lost — and dead would lie 
 The living world before her eye ! 
 And thus, when savage years depart, 
 They leave no wreck, like woman's heart ! 
 The ruin of her mind remains 
 Haunted by dim and dreary pains ; 
 And pining thoughts each chamber throng 
 Where once arose the breath of song, 
 Till Sadness, link'd with cold despair, 
 Unites to fix its dwelling there ! 
 
 With man's compare her feelings fine, 
 How delicate, how half divine ! — 
 Torn by the slightest breeze of life, 
 And shatter'd by each varied strife, 
 When wrong, or woe, or accident, 
 Perturbs the spirit's element, —
 
 144 WOMAN. 
 
 In fragile bloom they seem to be 
 Like leaves on some majestic tree, 
 That often, when the boughs are still, 
 Regardless of the breeze's will, 
 Are shaken by a touch or tone, 
 And perish ere the blast hath blown ! 
 
 But thou art loved — and unbetray'd ; 
 And who can paint, enamour'd maid ! 
 The paradise where dream and rove 
 Those moments dedicate to love ? 
 For one there is, whose eye repays 
 The fervour of thy fondest gaze, 
 Whose language, with its melting tone 
 Of tenderness, can match thy own ; 
 Whose visions of the beautiful, 
 When most his mellow'd heart they rule, — 
 Are woven out of thoughts of thee, 
 l.ike rainbows from a lovely sea ! — 
 
 I las the world changed, more heavenly grown, 
 And cv'rv taint of darkness flown ? —
 
 WOMAN. 145 
 
 That brightness is the sudden birth 
 Of feelings which ennoble earth, 
 Of passion in its stainless prime 
 Just risen on the brink of time ! 
 By these transform'd, — creation glows 
 With each warm tint the mind bestows ; 
 A deeper verdure decks the grass, 
 The clouds with richer glory pass, 
 The winds a sweeter welcome chant, 
 And, wheresoe'er her footsteps plant 
 Their printless beauty, — smile and sound 
 Of new enchantment hover round ! 
 To her 'tis myst'ry ; — but the mind, 
 Grown exquisite and o'er-refined, 
 Can veil the universe with light, 
 Till all is heaven that meets the sight, 
 And outward nature wears the dress 
 Of mind's internal loveliness. 
 
 Commingled souls ! — 't were vain to tell, 
 Around them as rich evening fell,
 
 146 WOMAN. 
 
 And clouds of calmest beauty lay 
 Like dreams of air along the way, 
 Where wan and far th' horizon wound, 
 While nought but ocean breathed a sound, 
 How often on the placid shore 
 They rambled, till the light was o'er ; — 
 What rapture on each radiant cheek, 
 While, softer than the billows speak 
 Responsive to the pleading wind, — 
 The murmur of each happy mind ! 
 The waves beneath — the skies above — 
 All sights and sounds were born of love ! 
 So all unstain'd by earth's alloy 
 Their very blood grew liquid joy ; 
 So full their hearts, they fain would reel, 
 And make delight too deep to feel ! — 
 Th' aroma of all mortal bliss 
 Enrich' d an hour divine as this; 
 Till soul-enrapt they seem'd to be 
 Attracted nearer deitv ;
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 While each to each immortal grew, 
 And saw the spirit beaming through 
 That glowing face, where love had given 
 The features that were form'd for heav'n ! — 
 
 All hours are sweet, when love is there 
 A heavenliness to make and share ; 
 All scenes delight, when eyes adored 
 The magic of their gaze afford ; 
 No rock is bleak, no desert rude, 
 When Beauty walks the solitude ; — 
 But moonlight charms the outward eye, 
 Like music heard by memory ; 
 And temptingly the moonbeams play 
 Around young lovers' lonely way, 
 As though fond Nature glow'd to meet 
 The pressure of their timing feet ! — 
 Belated, like a starry train 
 When loth to quit the azure plain, 
 Yon vision'd pair, — behold them now ; 
 While Dian bares her crested brow, 
 
 147
 
 148 WOMAN. 
 
 And clouds of alabaster white 
 
 Float in the soundless breath of night. — 
 
 How beautiful Creation's sleep ! 
 
 So innocent, so calm, and deep : 
 
 The air is rock'd to voiceless rest, 
 
 The bird within his woven nest, 
 
 The dew upon unshaken leaves 
 
 A web of filmy lustre weaves, 
 
 And onward as the lovers steal, 
 
 You 'd deem the fairy ground could feel 
 
 Their shadows o'er its silence fall, — 
 
 So rapt a stillness veileth all ! 
 
 But they have reach'd a woodland shore, 
 Where billows, now the breeze is o'er, 
 Are blended into one broad mass 
 Of heaving glory ! — like a glass 
 Reflecting forth with twinkling change 
 The heaven-lights, in their lofty range. — 
 Magnificent, and mute, and bright, 
 To feel it, — is to worship night!
 
 WOMAN. 149 
 
 And there they stand, absorb'd and blest, 
 
 In adoration unexprest ; 
 
 Yet, drinking in with eye and soul 
 
 Earth's beautiful and boundless whole ! — 
 
 And when that tranced delight is o'er, 
 
 They glide along the glitt'ring shore ; 
 
 Where tones of whisper'd feeling take 
 
 The heart from each ! — as lips awake 
 
 In words which Love design'd to be 
 
 The heart's revealing masonry ! — 
 
 A past, in its undying truth 
 
 Still vocal with the vows of youth ; 
 
 A future, with each promise rife 
 
 Of tranquil home and wedded life, — 
 
 Of these they talk ; and plan, and scheme, 
 
 Indulging hope's orac'lar dream : 
 
 So soft the hour, the future rolls 
 
 Obedient to prophetic souls, 
 
 By banks of bliss, and meads of flowers, 
 
 As though from wishes came the hours
 
 150 WOMAN. 
 
 But night hath deepen'd : — now they roam 
 
 Enchanted to expecting home : 
 
 And, see ! where downward hills retire, 
 
 In dim repose, the village spire ! 
 
 Around it smiles the yellow moon, 
 
 Gilding the leafy flush of June ; — 
 
 That home is reach'd, the room is gain'd, 
 
 With many a blush the walk explain'd, 
 
 Whose length 't was not for time to meet, 
 
 For what can weary lovers' feet ! 
 
 And smiles on each parental face 
 
 Have risen with forgiving grace ; 
 
 And on the mother's brow is read 
 
 A tale that truth might thus have said — 
 
 " How often, when my age was thine, 
 
 Were walks as long and lonely mine !" 
 
 And say, can aught but death unbind 
 Affections round her soul entwined ? — 
 Though distance may bereave the eye, 
 And o'er him hang a stranger sky,
 
 WOMAN. 151 
 
 The sun that brings her spirit's day 
 
 Is born of his illuming sway ! 
 
 The ground he trod a glory wears ; 
 
 The twilight walk his step declares ; 
 
 No melody so sweetly heard 
 
 As fancy's love-repeated word ! 
 
 His picture on her heart portray'd, — 
 
 Soft mem'ry asks no other aid ; 
 
 Bright o'er her face she oft can feel 
 
 His vision'd gaze of fondness steal ! 
 
 The breathings of his soul begin 
 
 To thrill her echoing soul within ; 
 
 And then, ere truth is half aware, 
 
 Her lips address the tongueless air 
 
 In words of unregarded tone, — 
 
 As sunlight on a rock is thrown 
 
 Where flower nor herbage, fruit nor stream, 
 
 Exult to drink the offer'd beam ! — 
 
 Against him raise a sland'rous breath, — 
 
 And blooming looks the cheek of death,
 
 152 WOMAN. 
 
 Compared with that appall'd distress 
 That blights her features' loveliness ! 
 Applaud him, — and the heart will rise, 
 Dissolved within her dewv eyes ! 
 Lustrous, and fill'd with tearful light, 
 Like rain-beads when the moon is bright. 
 Voiceless her tongue, but what a glow 
 Of spirit's grateful overflow, 
 In eloquent excess appears 
 To glitter through those dawning tears ! — 
 And, ah ! forgive, — if fondly weak, 
 Too oft of one her soul will speak ; 
 And faintly interweave his name 
 With hours when love should hide its claim 
 For thus chance words will oft betrav 
 How secret thoughts roam far awav ; 
 And hence, by soft and sudden tone, 
 The drcamings of the mind are shown, — 
 Like rays of beauty, when they dart 
 From out a cloud's divided heart,
 
 WOMAN. 153 
 
 And dazzle into gay surprise 
 The lids of unexpecting eyes. 
 
 Too much of pomp and aim is seen 
 Where'er the pen of man hath been ; 
 But, lovely one ! — how sweet for thee 
 Within thy haunted room to be, 
 And there to language yield thy mind, 
 As bends a flower before the wind ! 
 And, aimless, save the soul to show, — 
 What magic will thy words bestow, 
 As bright they rush, with fondest speed, 
 To visit eyes which yearn to read 
 Each syllable that love can frame, 
 When hallow'd by so dear a name ! — 
 Between its banks as roams the stream 
 And murmurs, like a liquid dream, 
 Surrender'd to the guiding force 
 Of nature in its beauteous course, — 
 So artlessly is woman's mind 
 To tones of untaught grace resign 'd ; 
 
 H
 
 154 WOMAN. 
 
 And wanders down the fairy tide 
 Of word?, whose sweetness love supplied ! 
 ****** 
 Bells on the wind ! — hark ! peal on peal 
 Comes wafted with melodious zeal, 
 Making the morn, so bright and clear, 
 To thrill like joy's own atmosphere ! — 
 A hird-song from each holly flows, 
 The hee hums loudly in the rose, 
 And like a soaring dew-drop seems 
 The butterfly to shed its gleams 
 Of hue and lustre, in wild play 
 Of rapture round its winged way. — 
 Creation, like a human soul, 
 Feels gladness through each fibre roll ! 
 
 And, mark ye, where yon churchyard shows 
 The tombs' and turfs' sepulchral rows, 
 And sunbeams o'er the graves advance, 
 To touch them with as bright a glance
 
 WOMAN. 155 
 
 As once around each living head 
 The beauty of their joyance spread ! — 
 A crowd of village forms attends ; 
 There lip with lip loud welcome blends ; 
 And homeward by a rose-strewn track 
 The gay-eyed young are wending back, 
 To drink around a festive board 
 Such healths as loving hearts afford. 
 
 But whence the joy ? — behold yon room, 
 And there, in hymeneal bloom, 
 In robes like clouds of fleecy mould, 
 When round the moon their grace is roli'd, 
 Divine in youth's divinest hour, 
 With beauty for her matchless dower, — 
 The bride, the daughter, and the queen, 
 Whose virtues crowd our vision'd scene ! 
 
 Poet and painter, — each may bring, 
 Fresh from the spirit's fountain-spring, . 
 
 h 2
 
 156 WOMAN. 
 
 Full many a truth and many a tone 
 That Nature shall confess her own : — 
 But there, in that bright room, are met 
 Feelings which ne'er were mirror'd yet, 
 Save by the features, when they start 
 To life from out the living heart ! — 
 The old, the tried, whose years retain 
 The light of early friendship's reign, 
 From childhood holding firm and deep 
 The faith unworldly bosoms keep ; 
 A sire, upon whose honour'd head 
 A silv'ry grace of time is spread, 
 Beholding, like a priest of jov, 
 The smiles which every face employ, 
 Though mellow'd is the meeker smile 
 That slumbers in his own the while, — 
 Again unite : — and she is there, 
 Whose heart becomes one voiceless praver, 
 That life may round a daughter pour 
 K\haustless mercy's heavenly store!
 
 WOMAN. 157 
 
 And thou ! 'mid all, the bridal star, 
 Thy bosom is one tender war, 
 'Tween fond regret for faded hours, 
 And love, whose fullness overpowers! — 
 Deep tears within thy heart arise, 
 Though scarcely yet they dim thine eyes, 
 Lest shades of grief should haply fall 
 Upon thy wedding carnival, 
 And eyes parental catch from thee 
 A tear thy soul would shake to sec ! — 
 But, when the sad adieus are sigh'd, 
 Thv spirit to its core is tried, 
 As garden, ground, and village mead, 
 From the wing'd chariot fast recede : — 
 One look ! — so long it seems to cling 
 Around the spot of life's dead spring ! 
 One rapid glance at paths of yore, 
 Where roam'd the Days which breathe no more!- 
 And nature, wrung beyond control, 
 In tears will then unchain thy soul !
 
 158 WOMAN. 
 
 And let them fall ! for tears like thine 
 Might hang on eyelids when divine ; 
 And Love in their excess can see 
 How soft a woman's soul can he ! 
 
 And she is gone ! — the wedded maid, 
 Whose loveliness a home array'd 
 With lustre caught from every gaze ! 
 Her look, her laugh, her winning ways, 
 How are they felt as unforgot 
 In each young scene and household spot ! 
 Dismal the once glad room appears ; 
 And eyes are charged with coming tears, 
 When haply to their pensive sight 
 Some little gift is brought to light, 
 Some token of departed hours, 
 For mem'ry left, like waning flowers ! — 
 The fairy harp her fingers loved, 
 In tomh-like calm stands unremoved ; 
 And o'er her pictured face is sigh'd 
 A deeper thought than words supplied,
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 L59 
 
 When silent., sad, unwatch'd, and lone, 
 
 A mother lets her grief be shown ! 
 
 Yon garden too, now reft and lorn, 
 
 Methinks its alter'd features mourn, 
 
 So droopingly the flowerets bend, 
 
 So dyingly their leaves depend ! — 
 
 To what they were, when dew-bright dawn 
 
 Beheld her on the breathing lawn, 
 
 The goddess of the matin hour ! 
 
 Arraying each expectant flower 
 
 With life and beauty ; while the bird 
 
 Sang in the laurel-boughs unstirr'd, 
 
 And each mild breeze that caught her hair 
 
 Enamour' d hung, and nestled there ! 
 
 Her sister, — she whose tiny feet 
 
 Were wing'd when one was there to meet ':- 
 
 Now prattles in her dream and walk, 
 
 As though the lisping mind could talk 
 
 Of nothing, save that dearest one 
 
 Her bosom yearns to rest upon !
 
 160 WOMAN. 
 
 And many a home her hand relieved 
 For one so pure hath pined and grieved ; 
 Whose presence to the cottage grew 
 Like heaven before a martvr's view ! 
 So bright the change her blessing made 
 When sorrow had the soul betray'd. — 
 
 But what remains for minstrel's art ? 
 Aught further can his page impart 
 Of feelings whose domestic swav 
 Conducts the hours of life away r 
 Then picture for thy pensive mood 
 A tranquil home in solitude ; 
 And there, behold ! the maid we drew 
 In Nature's- soft but sterling hue ! — 
 Those budding traits, when girlhood smiled. 
 Of heart and mind, which all beguiled, — 
 Expanded now to fall-blown grace, 
 Have alter'd nut witli time and place : 
 Each added year has hail'd the birth 
 Of some new charm and noble worth ;
 
 WOM\N. 
 
 And, — save that on her hrow appears 
 A mellow tinge of 'matron years, 
 And in her eye serenely glows 
 The magic of the mind's repose, — 
 A girl in spirit still is left 
 Without one ray of youth hereft ! 
 
 She is a mother ! — what a hliss 
 Unbounded loads a name like this 
 With meaning, whose concenter'd might 
 Is mock'd by that mean word, — delight! 
 For sooner may cold earth deserihe 
 The glories of th' angelic tribe, 
 Than any, save a mother, tell 
 What mysteries in her heing dwell. — 
 How spirit-fill'd her loving face ! 
 How beautiful ! thereon to trace 
 The imagery of rising thought, 
 By feeling's hidden sculpture wrought ! — 
 When infant voices round her roll, 
 Like echoes of maternal soul, 
 
 h 5 
 
 161
 
 
 162 WOMAN. 
 
 And words like shatter'd music rise 
 
 Faint on her ear, in fond replies, 
 
 From lips that quiver, lisp, and play, 
 
 Like hlossoms on a breezy day ! — 
 
 But, ah ! should malady destroy 
 
 Each fairy bud of infant jov, 
 
 And broken cries but half reveal 
 
 The buried pangs dark moments feel, — 
 
 What wrung despair in tragic stone, 
 
 What misery in marble shown, 
 
 In eloquence of grief can vie 
 
 With all that loads her living eye ! — 
 
 When bending o'er a tortured child, 
 
 By fits 'tis fervent, sad, or wild, 
 
 And prompt, if pain might thus be quell'd,- 
 
 To drink the anguish she beheld 
 
 Into her soul, with one deep gaze ! — 
 
 And bear it with immortal praise ! 
 
 af. 5p j|C TfC SjC )fC 
 
 Home of my fancy ! fare thee well ! 
 Unbroken be thy guardian spell ;
 
 WOMAN. 
 
 Though not unmarr'd may be thy fate, — 
 Since darkness girds our brightest state, 
 And Life along her path of houis 
 With thorns hath intertwined the flowers ; 
 Yet hearts where home and love unite 
 Share more than bleakest years can blight ! 
 The sky may frown, the tempest fall, — 
 But woman can o'ercome them all ! 
 While calm within affection's eyes 
 Endures that beaming paradise, 
 Where sorrow seeks a bright repose, 
 And basks beyond the reach of woes ! 
 
 Land of my soul ! maternal isle, 
 Array 'd by Freedom's holy smile ; 
 Whose throne is founded in the cause 
 Of native worth and noble laws ; 
 Oh ! long may Private Life be found 
 The glory of our English ground, 
 And woman on her stainless brow 
 Wear the bright soul we honour now ! — 
 
 1U3
 
 /&4- 
 
 **fr WOMAN. 
 
 For though thy fleets o'erawed the main, 
 Till every billow felt thy reign, 
 And captive Empires drew the car 
 Of vict'ry from triumphant war, — 
 Thy strength is canker'd, if the core 
 Of private life be sound no more. — 
 Consumption on the cheek can bloom, 
 When beauty but declares a tomb, 
 And eyes their brightest meaning shed, 
 While every ray foretells the dead ! 
 And thus may fatal glory be 
 An empire's garb of infamy, 
 If once that spring of manly pride, — 
 True gallantry, — be stain'd or dried ; 
 Or, woman from her high domain 
 Must dwindle into meaner reign. 
 
 The grace, the lustre, and the glow, 
 Of what our softer moods bestow ; 
 The hopes that keep the heart awake, 
 And self from out the selfish take ;
 
 WOMAN. 165 
 
 The glory and the might of all 
 Domestic hours elysium call, — 
 Born of her magi c, hlend their sway 
 To charm the clouds of time away ! 
 And if there be a home on earth, 
 Where nature most reveals its worth, 
 And Love his godhead can disclose 
 To feelings in their fond repose, 
 Till human hearts become divine, 
 Angel of Life ! — that home is thine !
 
 NOTES.

 
 NOTES. 
 
 Note 1, Pare 12. 
 
 Yon mountain's dim and dusky form, 
 Which, like a dying thunder-storm, 
 Glooms on the air with awful swell. 
 
 A rocky elevation, that seems to rise from the bosom of 
 the sea (well-known to the mariners of the North) is here 
 alluded to; it is termed the Koll, whose aspect perpetually 
 changes with the changing atmosphere. 
 
 Note 2, Page 13. 
 
 Grey Cronburgh lifts her storied pile, 
 And darkens o'er the Danish Isle. 
 
 The Castle of Cronenburgh, in the vicinity of Elsinore, 
 was built by Frederick II. in the boldest style of Gothic 
 architecture. Mr. Boeson, an honest old historian of the 
 place, while describing the position, solidity, and magnificence.
 
 170 NOTES. 
 
 of the castle, affirms that it may rank with the noblest castles, 
 not only in the North but in all Europe. 
 
 This venerable edifice is connected with subjects of tradi- 
 tional, dramatic, and historical, interest. On descending into 
 the casemates, the story of Holger Danske, (or Ogier the Dane, 
 as he is called in the French romances), will amuse the mind 
 in these damp and dismal vaults. It is thus related by Mr. 
 Thiele: — " For many ages, the din of arms was now and then 
 heard in the vaults beneath the Castle of Cronenburgh. No 
 man knew the cause, and there was not in all the land a man 
 bold enough to descend into the vaults. At last a slave, who 
 had forfeited his life, was told that his crime should be for- 
 given if he could bring intelligence of what he found in the 
 vaults. He went down, and came to a large iron door, which 
 opened of itself when he knocked. He found himself in a 
 deep vault. In the centre of the ceiling hung a lamp, which 
 was nearly burnt out; and below stood a huge stone table, 
 round which some steel-clad warriors sat resting their heads 
 on their arms, which they had laid crossways. He who >.it at 
 the head of the table then rose up. It was Holger the Dane. 
 But when he raised his head from the arms, the stone table 
 burst right in twain, for his beard had grown through it. 
 • Give me thy hand,' said he to the slave. The slave durst 
 not give him the hand, but put forth an iron bar, which Hol- 
 ger indented with his fingers. At last he let go his bold. 
 muttering, ' It is well; I am glad that there are yet men in 
 Denmark."" 
 
 Leaving the casemates, and ascending the ramparts, En- 
 glishmen will find themselves on classic ground. Here they
 
 NOTES. 171 
 
 may indulge the fancy of Mr. Matthison, the celebrated Swiss 
 
 poet, who made the venerable ghost of Hamlet's father appear 
 
 on the platform when he exclaimed : 
 
 " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 
 
 But a still deeper tragedy will awaken the sympathies of an 
 Englishman on his visit to Cronenburgh Castle. For, (to use 
 the words of a distinguished author, already quoted), " here 
 Matilda was confined, the victim of a foul and murderous 
 court intrigue. Here, amid heart-breaking griefs, she found 
 consolation in nursing her infant, when, by the interference of 
 England, her own deliverance was obtained ; and as the ship 
 bore her away from a country where the venial indiscretions of 
 youth and unsuspicious gaiety had been so cruelly punished, 
 upon these towers she fixed her eyes, and stood upon the deck, 
 obstinately gazing towards them till the last speck had dis- 
 appeared." 
 
 During her imprisonment in the Castle of Cronenburgh, it 
 was Queen Caroline Matilda's chief enjoyment to ascend the 
 square tower, which commands one of the finest prospects in 
 the world. No spot could better sooth the anguish of her 
 mind. The animated appearance of the Sound, in which the 
 English flag is so frequently displayed, would fill her mind 
 with cheering images of the greatness and prosperity of her 
 native land. And, in gazing on the beauties which nature has 
 scattered with so lavish a hand over Denmark, her con- 
 templations on the great First Cause of all good would create 
 in her the best disposition to forgive her " enemies, persecu- 
 tors, and slanderers."
 
 172. NOTES. 
 
 Note 3, Page 15. 
 
 The victim of a royal hate. 
 
 " Sacrificed in the bloom of life, being born the 22nd of July, 
 1751, and married the first of October, 1766, she was first 
 sent an inexperienced victim to a court, in which, surrounded 
 with spies and emissaries, who interpreted the most trifling 
 levities of youth into enormous crimes, the young and unsus- 
 pecting queen could not long remain without giving her 
 enemies too favourable an opportunity to effect her fall. They 
 succeeded ; and induced the wretched king to become the 
 engine of their malevolence, by signing the order for her im- 
 prisonment. The interposition of the British court saved her 
 from farther violence, and conducted her to an asylum in the 
 electoral dominions of Hanover. Here she appeared in her 
 true and native character. Divested of the retinue and pomp 
 which, on the throne of Denmark, veiled her in a great degree 
 from the inspection of nice observers, the qualities of her 
 heart displayed themselves in her little court at Zell, and 
 gained her universal love. Her person was dignified and 
 graceful: she excelled in all the exercises befitting her sex, 
 birth, and station. She danced the finest minuet in the 
 Danish court, and managed the horse with uncommon address 
 and spirit. She had a taste in music, and devoted much of 
 her time, while at Zell, to the harpsichord. The characteristic 
 style of her dress was simplicity, not magnificence ; that of 
 her deportment, an affability which, in a personage of such 
 high rank, might be termed extreme condescension. Her 
 talents were liberal and diffusive, and, cultivated by reading, 
 

 
 NOTES. 173 
 
 displayed themselves on all occasions. She conversed with 
 the most perfect facility in French, English, German, and 
 Danish; and to those extraordinary attainments she added a 
 thorough knowledge of the Italian, which she studied and 
 admired for its beauty and delicacy. Her manners were the 
 most polished, soft, and ingratiating ; and even the contracted 
 state of her finances could not restrain that princely munifi- 
 cence of temper, which made her purse ever open to distress 
 or misery. Naturally cheerful and happy in her disposition, 
 adored and beloved to the highest degree by the circle of her 
 court, even the dark cloud of adversity could not alter the 
 sweetness and serenity of her temper. Banished, with every 
 circumstance of indignity, from the throne of Denmark, she 
 yet retained no sentiment of revenge or resentment against the 
 authors of her fall, or against the Danish people. Her heart 
 was not tinctured with ambition; and she looked back to the 
 diadem which had been torn from her brow with a calmness and 
 superiority of soul which might have madeadiarles theFifth or 
 a Victor Amadeus blush. It was not the crown she regretted ; 
 her children only employed her care ; the feelings of the sove- 
 reign were absorbed in those of the mother ; and, if she wept 
 the day when she quitted the island of Zealand, it was because 
 she was then bereft of those dear objects of her maternal fond- 
 ness. Two or three months before her death, she shewed, 
 
 with transports of joy, to Madame D'O , her first lady of 
 
 the bed-chamber, a little portrait of the prince-royal her son, 
 which she had just received. It happened that this lady, some 
 few days after, entered the queen's apartment at an unusual 
 hour. She was surprised at hearing her majesty talk, though
 
 174 NOTES. 
 
 quite alone. While she stood in this attitude of astonish- 
 ment, unable to retire, the queen turned suddenly round, 
 and addressing herself to her, with that charming smile 
 which she alone could preserve at a moment when her heart 
 was torn with the most acute and agonizing sensation, — 
 ' What must you think, (said she), of a circumstance so ex 
 traordinary as that of hearing me talk, though you find -me 
 perfectly alone? But it was to this dear and cherished image I 
 addressed my conversation; and what do you imagine I said 
 to it ? nearly the same verses which you sent not long ago to 
 a child, sensible to the happiness of having found her father.' 
 
 ^Madame d'O could not speak; she burst into tears, and, 
 
 overcome with her own emotion, retired hastily from the royal 
 presence." 
 
 Note 4, Page 1G. 
 
 As., gazing from a rampart's height. 
 Her eye might gather free delight. 
 
 The note on Cronburgh Castle will explain the above allu- 
 sion. 
 
 Note 5, Page 17. 
 
 Or musing saw in verdant rest 
 The garden once bj Hamlet prest. 
 
 This is the spot which Danish tradition resigns for the 
 scene where Hamlet was poisoned. Of the character of 
 Hamlet, whii-h ha occasioned so much critical theory, Goethe 
 (Mfistcr's Apprenticeship, P.4, C. 13) says:—
 
 NOTES. 175 
 
 "It is clear to me that Shakspeare's intention was to ex- 
 hibit the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty on a 
 mind too feeble for its accomplishment. In this sense I find 
 the character consistent throughout. Here is an oak-tree 
 planted in a China vase, proper only to receive the most deli- 
 cate flowers. The roots strike out, and the vessel Hies to 
 pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral, disposition, but without 
 that energy of soul which constitutes the hero, sinks under a 
 load which it can neither support nor resolve to abandon alto- 
 gether." 
 
 Dr. Farmer, in his argumentative essay on the learning of 
 Shakspeare, refers the origin of the plot in Hamlet, not to 
 Saxo Grammaticus, but to the " Hystorie of Hamlet," from 
 which he quotes the following applicable fragment: — 
 
 " It was not without cause and juste occasion that my 
 gesture, countenance, and words, seeme to proceed from a 
 madman, and that I desire to have all men esteeme me wholly 
 deprived of sence and reasonable understanding; bycause I 
 am well assured that he that hath made no conscience to kill 
 bis owne brother will not spare to saue himselfe, with the like 
 crueltie, in the blood and flesh of the loyns of his brother : 
 and therefore it is better for me to feigne madnesse then to 
 use my right senses as Nature hath bestowed them upon me. 
 The bright shining clearnes thereof I am forced to hide vnder 
 this shadow of dissimulation, as the sun doth his beams vnder 
 some great cloud when the wether in summer time ouer- 
 casteth; the face of a madman serveth to couer my gallant 
 countenance, and the gestures of a fool are fit for me, to the 
 end that, guiding myself wisely therein, I may preserue my
 
 176 NOTES. 
 
 life for the Dane's * * * * . Neuerthelesse, I must stay the 
 time, meanes, and occasion, lest, by making ouer great haste, 
 I be now the cause of mine own sodaine ruine and overthrow ; 
 for, seeing by force that I cannot effect ray desire, reason 
 alloweth me, by dissimulation, subtiltie, and secret praises, to 
 proceed therein." 
 
 Note 6, Page 46. 
 
 And, while they scorn'd a hero's crown, 
 To woman gave the heart's renown. 
 
 II est une sorte de superiorite, que les femmes doivent con- 
 server sur nous, et qui tient raeme a leur foiblesse, au respect 
 qu' elles inspirent. Elle est plus facile a. sentir qu' a ex- 
 primer. II en est une autre qui tient a la dignite de rhomme, 
 que non seuleiuent sa compagne reconnoit, mais qu' elle ne lui 
 pardonne meme pas de lui sacrifier." — Les Femmes, by Segur. 
 
 The same author remarks elsewhere that — " if we review 
 the conduct of women in every country, we shall be convinced 
 that, without exercising any particular office, they have ren- 
 dered as great a service as men." — As examples of great 
 intrepidity, we may adduce the characters of Marguerite of 
 Anjou, Marguerite of Bethune, (wife of the Duke of Rohan) 
 Theresa, Com. toss of Mont ford, &c. 
 
 Note 1, Page 50. 
 
 Refinement's moral dawn awoke. 
 
 Dr. Miller (History Philosophically Illustrated, vol. 1, 
 p. 17, 18) after alluding to the character of "the tribes of 
 ancient Germany who acted a part so important in the modern
 
 NOTES. 177 
 
 system," says that Tacitus, "disgusted with the vices of a 
 decaying government, seems to have sought a refuge for his 
 feelings in the contemplation of the uncorrupted simplicity of 
 its barbarous neighbours, and to have described their man- 
 ners with the same enthusiasm which is experienced by the 
 inhabitant of a crowded city when he beholds freedom and 
 nature in some rural retreat." Another distinguishing quality 
 of the Germans was " the reverence which they appear to have 
 entertained for the female character, neither degrading their 
 women into slaves, like other barbarians, nor into objects of 
 merely sensual gratification, like those who called themselves 
 civilized. The German woman was the companion of her 
 husband, participating his cares without servile drudgery, and 
 influencing his actions with the gentle sway of respect and 
 affection. The continence belonging to this character formed 
 the most obvious contrast with the corrupted manners of the 
 empire." 
 
 Note 8, Page 53. 
 
 Devotion in its grandest shape. 
 
 Vide Kenelm Digby's delightful work entitled The Broad 
 Stone of Honour, whose pages breathe the fine air of Chivalry, 
 and whose examples of heroism conjoined with piety are ex- 
 quisitely described. 
 
 Note 9, Page 55. 
 
 E'en there apostles might have known 
 A faith whose firmness match'd their own. 
 
 Even women amongst us have sustained the most cruel and 
 
 I
 
 178 NOTES. 
 
 unrighteous suffering, and finished in patient faith their cause, 
 and received, notwithstanding the weakness of their sex, the 
 prize of Christian heroines. — (St. Clement's Epist. to Corinth. ) 
 For a truly sublime instance of female magnanimity, read 
 the account of the martyrdom of Blandina, as recorded by 
 Eusebius. 
 
 Note 10, Page 55. 
 
 How much to female hands they owe 
 Their power to lessen human woe. 
 
 If it were only to please the imagination, the character of 
 a devout lady is essential to complete the personages of the 
 drama of the world. If the knights in the field were brave 
 and faithful, the ladies in the castle gave alms to the poor, 
 and prayed to God in their chapel. To go back still further, 
 it was Placidia, daughter of Theodosius the great, whose in- 
 fluence upon Adolphus secured his favour to the Romans. It 
 was Prisca and Valeria, empress and daughter of Diocletian, 
 who protected the Christians of that era. It was Clotilda 
 who converted Clovis, the king of France, to the Christian 
 faith ; it was the princess of Olga who introduced Christianity 
 into Russia. The history of the middle ages, romances, 
 family portraits, records of public foundations, every thing 
 that is venerable in antiquity, are associated with the piety of 
 our English ancestors. Eleonora commanded that there 
 should be no other inscription on her tomb than this : 
 Eleonora, pauvre pecheresse. 
 
 The great Maria Theresa was in the habit of attending 
 service daily in the church of the Capuchins, and of visiting
 
 NOTES. 179 
 
 the vault which contains the coffins of her family. There is 
 also at Vienna an institution, to which none but ladies of the 
 highest nobility belong, for the purpose of superintending 
 and promoting public charities. In our United Kingdom, 
 there is not one useful religious or charitable institution which 
 does not derive support from the influence and munificence and 
 even personal exertion of the female nubility. Let us hope, 
 then, that the successor of Mr. Gibbon may repeat his re- 
 mark, that " Christianity must acknowledge important obli- 
 gations to female devotion." 
 
 Note 11, Page 64. 
 The gloom of his remorseless fate. ' 
 
 The memory of his injuries pursued him into the immensity 
 of eternal light ; and in the company of saints and angels his 
 unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence. — (Hal- 
 lam). 
 
 Note 12, Page 72. 
 
 When dark-eyed beauty rack'd and wrung 
 A heart round which the world had clung. 
 
 Shakspeare alludes to this unfortunate attachment in 
 several of his sonnets. 
 
 Note 13, Page 87. 
 
 Oh ! who can mark his mind's undress, 
 The agony of lone distress. 
 
 The dark bursts of pathos continually occurring in Burns's 
 letters must be well known to all who have read his corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 i 2
 
 180 NOTES. 
 
 Note 14, Page 99. 
 
 And in the mind's prophetic hour 
 Would try with telescopic gaze 
 To read the brow of unborn days. 
 
 It has been said by the greatest of metaphysicians (Aris- 
 totle) that we all possess by nature a — " ^MuTtv^a, ti" — a 
 kind of mental divination. In his letters, Lord Byron con- 
 tinually alludes to " a fear of what is to come, a doubt of what 
 is, a retrospect of the past, leading to a prognostication of the 
 future." In one of his darkest moods he writes: — "My 
 friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before 
 I am nipped. Other men can always take repose in their 
 families. I have no resource but my own reflections, and they 
 present, no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satis- 
 faction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched. 
 My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very 
 seldom any society, and when I have I run out of it. I don't 
 know that I sha'n't end it with insanity." 
 
 How often must his bruised heart have translated that 
 saddest of all sentences ! — 
 
 " M>i Quvai — rot a-ravra vixx >.oyo* ! " 
 
 That not to be. alone is bliss!
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR.
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR.* 
 
 In silent night the vision of the dead passed by — 
 
 I saw our friends all pass, — 
 
 And oh ! in silent night I saw the open graves — 
 
 I saw th' immortal host ! 
 
 Klopstock's Odes. 
 
 A vision, by eternity unveil'd, 
 When midnight in her trance of darkness lay, 
 My soul beheld. — Metliought that time and earth 
 Had vanish'd, while the unforgotten dead 
 In glory bright and bodiless appear'd : — 
 How deep their gaze ! oh, how divine their smile! 
 A pensive mildness, an immortal grace, 
 Each semblance wore : the father had not lost 
 That light paternal which his living eyes, 
 
 * These lines were, originally intended as a preparatory 
 introduction to the Poem: — in the First Edition they were 
 prefixed as such.
 
 184 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 To greet his children, loved to have express'd ; 
 Still on the mother's placid brow was throned 
 A tenderness, that triumph'd o'er decay; 
 And perish'd babes, whose beauty dazzled time, 
 In the young bloom of resurrection rose, 
 Serenely glad, and innocently bright. 
 
 And thus, by dreams of never-dying soul, 
 The dead around us, with a voiceless power, 
 Are present, mentally distinct and known : 
 As though some charm, whose links are unbeheld, 
 The living and the dead conjoin'd ; that love. 
 E'en in the grave, no gloomy trance might bear, 
 But throb immortal in the spirit's core ! 
 
 Thought flies the banquet, to embrace the tomb ; 
 And, oh! if joy-wing'd hours awhile seduce 
 A faithful mourner from his fond regret ; 
 If the dull prose of daily life contract 
 And dry his feelings into worldly dust,
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 185 
 
 Or selfish duty, — how divinely pure 
 
 The calm of intellectual grief again ! 
 
 There can creative fondness from the world 
 
 Of parted spirits all it loved evoke : 
 
 And he whose years are chronicles of woe, 
 
 From the strange earth, where few companions dwell, 
 
 Can wander where the hopes of youth repose, 
 
 And make eternity his mighty home ! — 
 
 ******** 
 
 A knell comes booming on the dismal air, 
 And my dark song in solemn echo rolls 
 To that dread music; — from this orb of time, 
 Another in the noon of manhood call'd 
 To lie and fester with unfeeling clay ! — 
 Oh God ! the terror of Thy rising frown 
 Mantles the universe with more than night ! 
 Each Kingdom, like a childless Rachel, mourns ; 
 A power of Darkness, on the wings of death, 
 Hath travell'd earth with pestilential speed, 
 And left but havoc to declare his flight ! — 
 
 i 5
 
 1S6 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 How many tombs this year hath dug ! what homes 
 
 Are fill'd with desolation's fearful calm ! 
 
 The chairs are vacant where the forms we loved 
 
 So oft reposed, — where still their semblance cbains 
 
 Our fix'd and fond delusion ! — in the streets, 
 
 Like silent mourners in a talking crowd, 
 
 Cold mansions tenantless and still remain, 
 
 From whose glad chambers rush'd the household tones 
 
 That made sweet music to a social mind ; 
 
 And many a garden, whose luxuriant green 
 
 And laurell'd bowers the sunbeams loved to grace, 
 
 In weedy ruin is decaying now : — 
 
 The hands it welcomed with rewarding bloom 
 
 Are iced by death, and ne'er can tend it more ! 
 
 'T was exquisite for him, whose town-worn life 
 
 Was fever'd by the hot and fretful day, 
 
 When evening, like an angel wing, could waft 
 
 His spirit home, — to greet the tranquil cot 
 
 Again, and bid the vexing world depart. — 
 
 How dear the beauty of each dawning flower,
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 187 
 
 How rich the melody of choral leaves, 
 
 To him, whose wisdom was a feeling mind ! 
 
 And thou, lone sharer of a widowed lot ! 
 Where is the language, though a seraph hymn'd 
 The poetry of heaven, — to picture thee, 
 Doom'd to remain on desolation's rock, 
 And look for ever where the past lies dead ! 
 What is the world to thy benighted soul ? 
 A dungeon ! — save that there thy children's tones 
 Can ring with gladness its sepulchral gloom. 
 Placid, and cold, and spiritually pale, 
 Art thou ; the lustre of thy youth is dimm'd, 
 The verdure of thy spirit o'er ! — in vain 
 The beaming eloquence of day attracts 
 Thy heart's communion with creation's joy ; 
 Like twilight imaged on a bank of snow, 
 The smile that waneth o'er thy marble cheek ! 
 
 Oh ! when shall trial, tears, and torture, cease ? — 
 Despair, and frenzy, and remorseless gloom,
 
 188 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 Defiance, and the thoughts that crouch before 
 
 The bright severity of Virtue's eye, — 
 
 When shall their myst'ry lie unweaved and bare ? 
 
 When shall the lips of Agony be dumb, 
 
 And the dark wail of wounded Nature hush'd ? — 
 
 A tragedy of twice three thousand years 
 
 Hath almost ended : soon, perchance, may fall 
 
 A curtain whose unfoldiner darkness brings 
 
 Oblivion o'er a universe decay'd ! 
 
 Already looks earth's final scene begun : 
 
 The elements, like human limbs unnerved, 
 
 Forego their function ; seasons out of tune 
 
 Creation's harmony of change destrov ; 
 
 And in their wildness of unwonted act 
 
 Reflective eyes an awful omen read, 
 
 By Nature given to prophetic man, 
 
 Of time's conclusion. — Sea and air confess 
 
 A weird excitement; through the trackless heaven's 
 
 Immensity the unheard Comet rolls ! — 
 
 No vision'd eye his path may comprehend, 
 
 Nor dread imagination dream what orbs
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 189 
 
 May crumble, or what blighted planets shrink, 
 As on the burning Desolator sweeps, 
 And blazes o'er annihilated worlds ! 
 
 Spoiler of hearts and empires, vanish' d Year ! 
 Ere for eternity thy wings were spread, 
 Alone I listen'd to thy dark farewell. — 
 The moon was center'd in the cloudless heaven, 
 All pale as beauty on the brow of death ; 
 And round about her, with attracted beam, 
 Grouped the mild stars : — the anarchy of day- 
 Was hush'd, the turbulence of life becalm'd. 
 From where I stood, a vast and voiceless plain, — 
 A city, garmented with mellow light, 
 Lay visible ; and, like romance in stone, 
 Shone gloriously serene ! — all sounds were dead : 
 The dew-drop, stirless as a frozen tear, 
 Gleam'd on the verdure ; not an air-tone rang ; 
 The leaves hung tranced as the lids of sleep ; 
 Around me Nature in devotion seem'd,
 
 190 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 The Elements in adoration knelt, 
 
 Till all grew worship — from the heart of things 
 
 Material to the conscious soul of man ! — 
 
 'T was then, sepulchral, hollow, deep, and loud, 
 
 The hell of midnight on the stillness burst, 
 
 And made the air one atmosphere of awe ! — 
 
 Sublime of hours ! — I thought on all the grave 
 Had buried since the infant year began : 
 What dreams, what agonies, untold, 
 Dead as the hearts whose depth they once turmoil'd, 
 Lay motionless and mute ! — of pomp in dust, 
 Of wither'd pride, of wealth from glory hurl'd, 
 Of lull'd ambition and appeased despair, — 
 Of each I dreamt ; and then, in sad array, 
 Pale visions of the Kings of thought arose ! 
 The wise, the wondrous, the adored, whose deaths 
 Enrich' d eternity with added mind, 
 Sleep with the patriarchs now ! — and onk how great ! 
 For whom the cosily tears of genius fell, — 
 The wand is broken, and the wizard gone!
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 191 
 
 Manv and mighty are the stars of fame, 
 But his deep splendour has outdazzled all 
 Since Shakspeare, that unrivalled planet ! rose, 
 Whose radiance clad the intellectual heaven. 
 Yes, he hath vanish'd ! — hut his country wears 
 A veil of glory, that shall garh her clime 
 For ever ! — How we hung upon his parting hour ! 
 And when it summon'd the transcendant Mind 
 From earth to heaven — the souls of myriads felt 
 O'ershadowed ; Europe bow'd in dim eclipse, 
 And Kingdoms mourn'd round his imagined tomb ! 
 
 Monarchs of time, and ministers of thought ! 
 Felt in the frame of intellectual life, 
 As rolls the blood-tide through our breathing form, — 
 Where is the palace of your spirits now ? 
 In what immensity are ye array'd 
 Imperishably pure ? Was sabbath earth 
 In beauty but an archetype of heaven ? 
 Your dreams, your towering aspirations high,
 
 192 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 The far-off shadows of each truth divine, 
 
 Are all absorb'd in beatific light, 
 
 And this world, like a rain-drop in the deep 
 
 Of time, — for ever from the soul dissolved ? — 
 
 Our craving passion for the unreveal'd, 
 
 Fain would it know to what vast height removed, 
 
 To what perfection of sublimest powers 
 
 Ye are ascended : — but the dazzled wish 
 
 Is driven earthward, and cold Nature cries, 
 
 In tones as thrilling as the touch of death, — 
 
 " Back to thy clay, Mortality ! and bend, 
 
 Like faith, before the infinite Unknown !" 
 
 ******** 
 
 As water copies a portentous cloud 
 By stern reflection, so the spirit's gloom 
 Lies darkly mirror'd on the mimic page. 
 And if some features of a faded past 
 Be thus recall'd, — they bring no aimless grief 
 To deaden song, by female worth inspired. 
 For seldom, since the groan of earth began,
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 193 
 
 Hath woman shone more visibly divine 
 
 Than in the gloom of this remember'd year ! 
 
 When forms all spirit, moulded by the touch 
 
 Of nature's most etherial shaping power, 
 
 Whose beauty, delicate as painted air, 
 
 At the light breeze seem'd ready to dissolve, — 
 
 Transform'd by feeling, have at once become 
 
 Heroical, for superhuman aid ! — 
 
 Behold ! that chamber where a feeble lamp 
 
 Doth quiver, pulse-like, with a dying flame ; 
 
 There by yon couch a soft-ey'd mourner fades, 
 
 Night after night, with uncomplaining brow ! 
 
 While a soul flutters in that form revered 
 
 From whence her being, though her brain should parch, 
 
 Till the flush'd eyelids hang like drooping flowers 
 
 About to wither, still her watch endures ! — 
 
 The bough may blossom from the tree removed, 
 
 Ere young affection, from its parent torn, 
 
 Can live and flourish, while one ebbing pulse 
 
 Articulates within those precious veins !
 
 194 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 And thus calamity with glory comes : 
 From out her gloom, as streams from caverns pour, 
 The tides of human tenderness proceed. 
 And virtues, which the noon-hright hour of joy 
 May dazzle when a cloud of anguish hreaks, 
 Dawn into birth, and decorate the soul 
 With heaven-born lustre ; — like the pale-eyed stars 
 That shut their lids when gaudy daylight rules, 
 But ope them on the sun-forsaken night ! 
 
 Then let the scorner, whom the vernal glee, 
 Or laughing wildness of delighted youth, 
 Hath taught, that pleasure would to pain deny 
 The sacrifice of one exalted tear, — 
 His creed forego : the fount of woman's heart 
 Lies deeper than his clouded gaze detects ! 
 For beauty, that a soulless idol seem'd, 
 Rear'd in the breath of some adoring night, — 
 Oh ! let one pang a cherish'd mind convulse, 
 The mist is scatter' d ! and th' unblcmish'd heart,
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 195 
 
 Free from the world, like day from darkness comes, 
 And acts at once the ministry of heaven ! 
 
 Then look at woman when, by love sublimed, 
 Misfortune moulds her by a graceful power 
 To fit the cast of fate ; and in her woe, 
 Each mental attribute can bloom as bright 
 As when the home was costly, and her smile 
 Fell like a glory on attracted eyes ! — 
 As stoops an eagle from his lordly height, 
 Where once he soar'd, companion of the cloud 
 And storm, — so sinks with a triumphant fall 
 Her spirit down to some domestic vale ; 
 There looks more beauteous in each act and thought, 
 Through the meek round that cottage virtues run, 
 Than when it reign'd amid the hall of kings. 
 
 A mortal weakness by the world admired, 
 Let others paint her ; and in woman find 
 Th' uncertain heart by light- wing'd impulse led,
 
 196 
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 
 
 The mind that fruitless admiration feeds, 
 The tottering purpose, and the tameless will,— 
 There is a passion, that with fine eclipse 
 O'ershadows all which failing hours present, 
 When the mind falters,— 't is maternal love ! — 
 Almighty feeling | Space, and Scene, and Time, 
 Succumb before thee ; infinite in power, 
 As fathomless in depth j — no rack afiri^hts, 
 No dungeon quells, no agony impedes 
 Thy wond'rous action ; — in the horrid grave 
 Thou dar'st to cherish the unconscious dead, 
 And heaven admits thee when thou soarest there ! 
 
 Lo ! how that feeling with transforming might 
 Can shape a spirit to its tender will. 
 Wild as the breeze, and dainty as the flower, 
 To-night behold her, on whose jewell'd head 
 Fashion hath set an ever-fading crown : 
 Again regard her ! — and the trace of God 
 Is character'd on that etherial change,
 
 THE DEPARTED YEAR. 197 
 
 Mien, mind, and manner — all have undergone ! 
 As broods a poet o'er some wordless thought, 
 Affection gazes on her unborn child : 
 And, ere its being into life expands, 
 Love, — like a seraph when the soul departs 
 For glory, waiting to receive its charge, — 
 Stands on the threshold of commencing life, 
 Bright with the welcome of a mother's bliss ! 
 
 Angel of earth ! whose light makes human love, 
 If I apparel with too rich a robe 
 The fascinations that around thee float, 
 And on thy beauty let no dimness fall 
 To mar its radiance, — 'tis an error blest, 
 Though blind : for thou, in thy transcendant worth, 
 Art lifted to the highest sphere of song, 
 When, like a human pi-ovidence below, 
 Thy days are consecrate to deeds of Heaven. 
 
 Lincoln College, 
 Oxon, 1833. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TREDERICK SHOBERL, JUN„ 4, LEICESTER STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE.
 
 POEMS 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE MESSIAH. Third Edition, post 8vo., 
 85. Qd. boards. 
 
 SATAN. Third Edition. 
 
 UNIVERSAL PRAYER, DEATH, &c. 
 
 Fourth Edition. 
 
 THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY. 
 
 Twelfth Edition. 
 
 Also will be published, in October next, a Third Edition 
 of OXFORD, revised and corrected, with additional 
 notes, &c. 7s. 6d. boards.
 
 l\
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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