Poetical Fragments from Ethel Churchill Volume III/An Unseen Power
AN UNSEEN POWER
CHAPTER XVIII.
INTRODUCTION.
In the ancestral presence of the dead
Sits a lone power; a veil upon the head,
Stern with the terror of an unseen dread.
It sitteth cold, immutable, and still,
Girt with eternal consciousness of ill,
And strong and silent as its own dark will.
We are the victims of its iron rule,
The warm and beating human heart its tool,
And man immortal, god-like, but its fool.
From Three Extracts from the Diary of a Week – Necessity in The New Monthly Magazine, 1837 (Vol 49)
As this poem is already in Blanchard’s Life and Literary Remains, he omits this separate extract
In The new York Mirror as An Unseen Power, 10th March 1838