Poems of Felicia Hemans in The Edinburgh Literary Journal 1829/To a Remembered Picture
The Edinburgh Literary Journal, 29th August 1829, page 183
TO A REMEMBERED PICTURE.*[1]
By Mrs Hemans.
They haunt me still—those calm, pure, holy eyes—
Their tender thoughtfulness is on my dreams;
The soul of music that within them lies,
Comes o'er my soul in soft and sudden gleams:
Life, spirit-life immortal and divine
Is there, and yet how dark a death was thine!
Could it—oh! could it be, meek child of song!
The might of gentleness on thy fair brow—
Was the celestial gift no shield from wrong?
Bore it no talisman to ward the blow?—
Ask if a flower, upon the billows cast,
Might loll their strife, a flute-note hush the blast?
Are there not deep, sad oracles to read,
In the clear stillness of that radiant face?
Yes! ev'n like thee must gifted spirits bleed,
Thrown on a world for heavenly things no place:
Bright exiled birds, that visit alien skies,
Pouring on storms their suppliant melodies!
And seeking ever some true, gentle breast,
Whereon their trembling plumage might repose;
And their free song-notes, from that happy nest,
Gush as a fount that forth to sunlight flows!
Woe for the sweetness lavish'd still in vain,
As on the rock the soft spring-morning's rain!
Yet my heart shall not sink! Another doom—
Victim! hath set its promise in thine eye;
A light is there, too quenchless for the tomb,
Bright earnest of a nobler Destiny!
Telling of answers, in some far-off sphere,
To the deep souls that find no Echo here.
- ↑ * That of Rizzio, in Holyrood House.