And let me summon all the voices dwelling Where eagles build, and cavern'd rills are welling, And where the cataract's organ-peal is swelling, In that one spirit gather'd to adore!

Forgive, O Father! if presumptuous thought
Too daringly in aspiration rise!

Let not thy child all vainly have been taught
By weakness, and by wanderings, and by sighs
Of sad confession! Lowly be my heart,

And on its penitential altar spread
The offerings worthless, till thy grace impart

The fire from heaven, whose touch alone can shed
Life, radiance, virtue!-let that vital spark
Pierce my whole being, wilder'd else and dark!

Thine are all holy things-oh, make me thine!
So shall I, too, be pure-a living shrine
Unto that Spirit which goes forth from thee,
Strong and divinely free,

Bearing thy gifts of wisdom on its flight,
And brooding o'er them with a dove-like wing,
Till thought, word, song, to thee in worship spring,
Immortally endow'd for liberty and light.

[This exquisite poem was composed during the Author's last illness; and the following account of her situation at the time, from the pen of her sister, cannot fail to be read with a deep and painful interest. It is another forcible, visible illustration of "the ruling passion strong in death." Happy, as in her case, when the direction of the mind is towards all that is high, pure, and excellent!

"A shuddering thrill pervaded her whole frame, and she felt, as she often afterwards declared, a presentiment that from that moment her hours were numbered. The same evening she was attacked by a fit of ague; and this insidious and harassing complaint continued its visitations for several weeks, reducing her poor, wasted form to the most lamentable state of debility, and at length retiring only to make way for a train of symptoms still more fatal and distressing. Yet, while the work of decay was going on thus surely and progressively upon the earthly tabernacle, the bright flame within continued to burn with a pure and holy light, and, at times, even to flash forth with more than wonted brightness. The lyric of Despondency and Aspiration,' which may be considered as her noblest and highest effort, and in which, from a feeling that it might be her last work, she felt anxious to concentrate all her powers, was written during the few intervals accorded her from acute suffering or powerless languor. And in the same circumstances she wrote, or rather dictated, the series of sonnets called Thoughts during Sickness, which present so interesting a picture of the calm, submissive tone of her mind, whether engaged in tender remembrances of the past, or in solemn and reverential speculations on the future. The one entitled Sickness like Night' discloses a view, no less affecting than consolatory, of the sweet and blessed peace which hovered round the couch where

'Mutely and hopelessly she lay reposing.

"The last sonnet of the series, entitled 'Recovery,' was written under temporary appearances of convalescence, which proved as fugitive as they were fallacious"]

THE HUGUENOT'S FAREWELL.

I STAND upon the threshold stone
Of mine ancestral hall;

I hear my native river moan;

I see the night o'er my old forests fall.

I look round on the darkening vale
That saw my childhood's plays;
The low wind in its rising wail
Hath a strange tone, a sound of other days.

But I must rule my swelling breast:

A sign is in the sky!

Bright o'er yon gray rock's eagle-nest
Shines forth a warning star-it bids me fly.

My father's sword is in my hand,

His deep voice haunts mine ear; He tells me of the noble band

Whose lives have left a brooding glory here.

He bids their offspring guard from stain
Their pure and lofty faith;

And yield up all things, to maintain

The cause for which they girt themselves to death.

And I obey. I leave their towers

Unto the stranger's tread,
Unto the creeping grass and flowers,

Unto the fading pictures of the dead.

I leave their shields to slow decay,
Their banners to the dust:

I go, and only bear away

Their old majestic name-a solemn trust!

I go up to the ancient hills,

Where chains may never be,

Where leap in joy the torrent-rills,

Where man may worship God, alone and free.

There shall an altar and a camp

Impregnably arise;

There shall be lit a quenchless lamp, To shine, unwavering, through the open skies.

And song shall midst the rocks be heard,
And fearless prayer ascend;
While, thrilling to God's holy word,

The mountain-pines in adoration bend.

And there the burning heart no more
Its deep thought shall suppress,
But the long-buried truth shall pour
Free currents thence, amidst the wilderness.

Then fare thee well, my mother's bower!
Farewell, my father's hearth!—
Perish my home! where lawless power

Hath rent the tie of love to native earth.

Perish! let deathlike silence fall

Upon the lone abode;

Spread fast, dark ivy! spread thy pall;
I go up to the mountains with my God.

ANTIQUE GREEK LAMENT.1

By the blue waters-the restless ocean-waters, Restless as they with their many-flashing surges, Lonely I wander, weeping for my lost one!

I pine for thee through all the joyless day-
Through the long night I pine: the golden sun
Looks dim since thou hast left me, and the spring
Seems but to weep. Where art thou, my beloved?
Night after night, in fond hope vigilant,
By the old temple on the breezy cliff, [stream'd
These hands have heap'd the watch-fire, till it
Red o'er the shining columns-darkly red
Along the crested billows!--but in vain :
Thy white sail comes not from the distant isles-
Yet thou wert faithful ever. Oh! the deep
Hath shut above thy head-that graceful head;
The sea-weed mingles with thy clustering locks;
The white sail never will bring back the loved!

By the blue waters-the restless ocean-waters, Restless as they with their many-flashing surges, Lonely I wander, weeping for my lost one!

In slumber beautiful! I would have heap'd
Sweet boughs and precious odours on thy pyre,
And with mine own shorn tresses hung thine urn,
And many a garland of the pallid rose:
But thou liest far away! No funeral chant,
Save the wild moaning of the wave, is thine:
No pyre-save, haply, some long-buried wreck;
Thou that wert fairest-thou that wert most loved!

By the blue waters-the restless ocean-waters, Restless as they with their many-flashing surges, Lonely I wander, weeping for my lost one!

Come, in the dreamy shadow of the night,
And speak to me! E'en though thy voice be
changed,

My heart would know it still. Oh, speak to me!
And say if yet, in some dim, far-off world,
Which knows not how the festal sunshine burns,
If yet, in some pale mead of asphodel,
We two shall meet again! Oh, I would quit
The day rejoicingly-the rosy light-
All the rich flowers and fountains musical,
And sweet, familiar melodies of earth,

To dwell with thee below! Thou answerest not!
The powers whom I have call'd upon are mute:
The voices buried in old whispery caves,
And by lone river-sources, and amidst
The gloom and mystery of dark prophet-oaks,
The wood-gods' haunt-they give me no reply!
All silent-heaven and earth! For evermore
From the deserted mountains thou art gone-
For ever from the melancholy groves,
Whose laurels wail thee with a shivering sound!
And I-I pine through all the joyous day,
Through the long night I pine-as fondly pines
The night's own bird, dissolving her lorn life
To song in moonlight woods. Thou hear'st me not!
The heavens are pitiless of human tears:
The deep sea-darkness is about thy head;
The white sail never will bring back the loved!

Restless as they with their many-flashing surges, Lonely I wander, weeping for my lost one!

THOUGHTS DURING SICKNESS.

INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

O THOUGHT! O Memory! gems for ever heaping High in the illumined chambers of the mind-

And thou, divine Imagination! keeping
Thy lamp's lone star mid shadowy hosts enshrined;
How in one moment rent and disentwined,
At Fever's fiery touch, apart they fall,
Your glorious combinations! broken all,
As the sand-pillars by the desert's wind
Scatter'd to whirling dust! Oh, soon uncrown'd!
Well may your parting swift, your strange return,
Subdue the soul to lowliness profound,
Guiding its chasten'd vision to discern
How by meek Faith heaven's portals must be pass'd,
Ere it can hold your gifts inalienably fast.

SICKNESS LIKE NIGHT.

THOU art like Night, O Sickness! deeply stilling
Within my heart the world's disturbing sound,
And the dim quiet of my chamber filling
With low, sweet voices by Life's tumult drown'd.
Thou art like awful Night! thou gatherest round
The things that are unseen-though close they lie;
And with a truth, clear, startling, and profound,
Giv'st their dread presence to our mental eye.
Thou art like starry, spiritual Night!
High and immortal thoughts attend thy way,
And revelations, which the common light
Brings not, though wakening with its rosy ray
All outward life:-Be welcome, then, thy rod,
Before whose touch my soul unfolds itself to God.

ON RETZSCH'S DESIGN OF THE ANGEL OF DEATH.1

WELL might thine awful image thus arise
With that high calm upon thy regal brow,
And the deep, solemn sweetness in those eyes,
Unto the glorious artist! Who but thou
The fleeting forms of beauty can endow
For him with permanence? who make those gleams
Of brighter life, that colour his lone dreams,
Immortal things? Let others trembling bow,
Angel of Death! before thee;-not to those
Whose spirits with Eternal Truth repose,

1 This sonnet was suggested by the following passage out of Mrs Jameson's Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, in a description she gives of a visit paid to the artist Retzsch, near Dresden :-"Afterwards he placed upon his easel a wondrous face which made me shrink back-not with terror, for it was perfectly beautiful,-but with awe, for it was unspeakably fearful: the hair streamed back from the pale brow

Art thou a fearful shape! And oh! for me,
How full of welcome would thine aspect shine,
Did not the cords of strong affection twine
So fast around my soul, it cannot spring to thee!

REMEMBRANCE OF NATURE.

O NATURE! thou didst rear me for thine own,
With thy free singing-birds and mountain-brooks;
Feeding my thoughts in primrose-haunted nooks,
With fairy fantasies and wood-dreams lone;
And thou didst teach me every wandering tone
Drawn from thy many-whispering trees and waves,
And guide my steps to founts and sparry caves,
And where bright mosses wove thee a rich throne
Midst the green hills: and now that, far estranged
From all sweet sounds and odours of thy breath,
Fading I lie, within my heart unchanged,
So glows the love of thee, that not for death
Seems that pure passion's fervour-but ordain'd
To meet on brighter shores thy majesty unstain'd.

FLIGHT OF THE SPIRIT.

WHITHER, Oh! whither wilt thou wing thy way?
What solemn region first upon thy sight
Shall break, unveil'd for terror or delight?
What hosts, magnificent in dread array,
My spirit when thy prison-house of clay,
After long strife is rent? Fond, fruitless quest!
The unfledged bird, within his narrow nest,
Sees but a few green branches o'er him play,
And through their parting leaves, by fits reveal'd,
A glimpse of summer sky; nor knows the field
Wherein his dormant powers must yet be tried.
Thou art that bird !—of what beyond thee lies
Far in the untrack'd, immeasurable skies,
Knowing but this-that thou shalt find thy Guide!

FLOWERS.

WELCOME, O pure and lovely forms! again
Unto the shadowy stillness of my room!

-the orbs of sight appeared at first two dark, hollow, uzfathomable spaces, like those in a skull; but when I drew nearer and looked attentively, two lovely living eyes looked at me again out of the depth of the shadow, as if from the bottom of an abyss. The month was divinely sweet, but sad, and the softest repose rested on every feature. This, he told me, was the ANGEL OF DEATH."

For not alone ye bring a joyous train

Of summer-thoughts attendant on your bloom--
Visions of freshness, of rich bowery gloom,
Of the low murmurs filling mossy dells,
Of stars that look down on your folded bells
Through dewy leaves, of many a wild perfume
Greeting the wanderer of the hill and grove
Like sudden music: more than this ye bring-
Far more; ye whisper of the all-fostering love
Which thus hath clothed you, and whose dove-like
wing

Broods o'er the sufferer drawing fever'd breath,
Whether the couch be that of life or death.

RECOVERY.'

BACK, then, once more to breast the waves of life,

To battle on against the unceasing spray,
To sink o'erwearied in the stormy strife,
And rise to strive again; yet on my way,
Oh! linger still, thou light of better day!
Born in the hours of loneliness: and you,
Ye childlike thoughts! the holy and the true-
Ye that came bearing, while subdued I lay,
The faith, the insight of life's vernal morn
Back on my soul, a clear, bright sense, new-born,
Now leave me not! but as, profoundly pure,

1 Written under the false impression occasioned by a temporary improvement in strength.

[2 After the exhausting vicissitudes of days when it seemed that the night of death was indeed at hand-of nights when it was thought that she could never see the light of morningwonderful even to those who had witnessed, throughout her illness, the clearness and brightness of the never-dying principle, amidst the desolation and decay of its earthly companion, was the consecrated power and facility with which, on Sunday, the 26th of April, she dictated to her brother the "Sabbath Sonnet," the last strain of the "sweet singer," whose harp was henceforth to be hung upon the willows.

Amongst the many tributes of interest and admiration

A blue stream rushes through a darker lake Unchanged, e'en thus with me your journey take, Wafting sweet airs of heaven thro' this low world obscure.

SABBATH SONNET.2

COMPOSED BY MRS HEMANS A FEW DAYS BEFORE HER DEATH, AND DICTATED TO HER BROTHER.

How many blessed groups this hour are bending, Thro' England's primrose meadow-paths, their way Towards spire and tower, midst shadowy elms ascending,

Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallow'd day!

The halls from old heroic ages gray

Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low,
With whose thick orchard-blooms the soft winds
Send out their inmates in a happy flow, [play,
Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread
With them those pathways-to the feverish bed
Of sickness bound; yet, O my God! I bless
Thy mercy, that with Sabbath-peace hath fill'd
My chasten'd heart, and all its throbbings still'd
To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness!

26th April 1835.

elicited by a poem, so remarkable to all readers-so precious to many hearts-the following expressions, contained in a letter from the late venerable Bishop of Salisbury to Mrs Joanna Baillie, and already published by the latter, are too pleasingly applicable not to be inserted here. "There is something

peculiarly touching in the time, the subject, and the occasion of this deathbed sonnet, and in the affecting contrast between the blessed groups' she describes, and her own (humanly speaking) helpless state of sickness; and that again contrasted with the hopeful state of mind with which the sonnet concludes, expressive both of the quiet comforts of a Christian Sabbath, and the blessed fruits of profitable application. Her 'Sweet Chimes' on Sabbath-peace,' appear to me very characteristic of the writer."-Memoir, p. 311-12.]

DELTA

"We cannot allow these verses to adorn, with a sad beauty, the pages of this Magazine-more especially as they are the last composed by their distinguished writer, and that only a few days before her death-without at least a passing tribute of regret for an event which has cast a shadow of gloom through the sunshiny fields of contemporary literature. But two months ago, the beautiful lyric entitled Despondency and Aspiration,' appeared in these pages, and now the sweet fountain of music from which that prophetic strain gushed has ceased to flow. The highly gifted and accomplished, the patient, the meek, and long-suffering FELICIA HEMANS, is no more. She died on the night of Saturday, the 16th of May 1835, at Dublin, and met her fate with all the calm resignation of a Christian, conscious that her spirit was winging its flight to another and a better world, where 'the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' "Without disparagement of the living, we scarcely hesitate to say, that in Mrs Hemans our female literature has lost perhaps its brightest ornament. To Joanna Baillie she might be inferior, not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphysically analysing those sentiments and feelings which constitute the basis of human actions,-to Mrs Jameson in the critical perception which, from detached fragments of spoken thought, can discriminate the links which bind all into a distinctive character,-to Miss Landon in eloquent facility, to Caroline Bowles in simple pathos,-and to Mary Mitford in power of thought; but as a female writer, influencing the female mind, she has undoubtedly stood, for some bypast years, the very first in the first rank; and this pre-eminence has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the eastern Ganges or the western Mississippi. Her path was her own; and shoals of imitators have arisen, alike at home and on the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating genius, have mimicked her themes, and parodied her sentiments and language, without being able to reach its height. In her poetry, religious truth and intellectual beauty meet together; and assuredly it is not the less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature alone. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from purity of morals, delicacy of perception and conception, sublimity of religious faith, and warmth of patriotism; and, turning from the dark and degraded, whether in subject or sentiment, she 1 "Sabbath Sonnet."

seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life co which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry

is intensely and entirely feminine-and, in our estimation, this is the highest praise which could be awarded it,-it could have been written by a woman only; for although, in the 'Records' of her sex, we have the female character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passion and of ill-requited affection; of heroical self-denial, and of withering hope deferred; of devotedness tried in the furnace of affliction, and of

'Gentle feelings long subdued, Subdued and cherish'd long;'

yet its energy resembles that of the dove, pecking the hand that hovers o'er its mate,' and its exaltation of thought is not of the daring kind, which doubts and derides, or even questions, but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forward with faith and reverential fear.

"Mrs Hemans has written much, and, as with all authors in like predicament, her strains are of various degrees of excellence. Independently of this, her different works will be differently estimated, as to their relative value, by different minds; but among the lyrics of the English language which can scarcely die, we hesitate not to assign places to The Hebrew Mother'- The Treasures of the Deep'-'The Spirit's Return 'The Homes of England'-'The Better Land'"The Hour of Death'- The Trumpet'-and The Graves of a Household. In these gems of purest ray serene,' the peculiar genius of Mrs Hemans breathes, and burns, and shines pre-eminent; for her forte lay in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic life-the gentle overflowings of love and friendship-homebred delights and heartfelt happiness-the associations of local attachment-and the influences of religious feelings over the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and situations of man, or from the aspects of external nature. We would only here add, by way of remark, that the writings of Mrs Hemans seem to divide themselves into two pretty distinct portions-the first comprehending her Modern Greece,' 'Wallace,'' Dartmoor,' 'Sceptic,' Historic Scenes,' and other productions, up to the publication of The Forest Sanctuary;' and the latter comprehending that volume, 'The Records of Woman,' The Scenes and Hymns of Life,' and all her subsequent productions. In her earlier works, she follows the classic model, as contradistinguished from the romantic, and they are inferior in that polish of style, and almost gorgeous richness of language, in which her maturer compositions are set. It is evident that new stores of thought were latterly opened up to her, în a