Instead of the murmur of the sea, And the swallow's song in the eaves. He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll, father was a merchant; but, experiencing some reverses, he removed with his family to Wales, and there the young poetess imbibed that love of nature which is displayed in all her works. In her fifteenth year she ventured on publication. Her first volume was far from successful; but she persevered, and in 1812 published another, entitled The Domestic Affections, and other Poems. The same year she was married to Captain Hemans; but the union does not seem to have been a happy one. She continued her studies, Rhyllon-the residence of Mrs Hemans in Wales. 1819 she obtained a prize of £50 offered by some patriotic Scotsman for the best poem on the subject of Sir William Wallace. Next year she published The Sceptic. In June 1821 she obtained the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor. Her next effort was a tragedy, the Vespers of Palermo, which was produced at Covent Garden, December 12, 1823; but though supported by the admirable acting of Kemble and Young, it was not successful. In 1826 appeared her best poem, the Forest Sanctuary, and in 1828, Records of Woman. She afterwards produced Lays of Leisure Hours, National Lyrics, &c. In 1829 she paid a visit to Scotland, and was received with great kindness by Sir Walter Scott, Jeffrey, and others of the Scottish literati. In 1830 appeared her Songs of the Affections. The same year she visited Wordsworth, and appears to have been much struck with the secluded beauty of Rydal Lake and Grasmere O vale and lake, within your mountain urn Wordsworth said to her one day, 'I would not give up the mists that spiritualise our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy'-an original and poetical expression. On her return from the lakes, Mrs Hemans went to reside in Dublin, where her brother, Major Browne, was settled. The education of her family (five boys) occupied much of her time and attention. Ill health, however, pressed heavily on her, and she soon experienced a premature decay of the springs of life. In 1834 appeared her little volume of Hymns for Childhood, and a collection of Scenes and Hymns of Life. She also published some sonnets, under the title of Thoughts during Sickness. Her last strain, produced only about three weeks before her death, was the following fine sonnet dictated to her brother on Sunday the 26th of April:How many blessed groups this hour are bending, Through England's primrose meadow-paths, their way Toward spire and tower, 'midst shadowy elms ascending, Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallowed day! Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low, This admirable woman and sweet poetess died on the 16th May 1835, aged forty-one. She was interred in St Anne's church, Dublin, and over her grave was inscribed some lines from one of her own dirges Calm on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit rest thee now ! Dust to its narrow house beneath! A complete collection of the works of Mrs Hemans, with a memoir by her sister, has been published in six volumes. Though highly popular, and in many respects excellent, we do not think that much of the poetry of Mrs Hemans will descend to posterity. There is, as Scott hinted, too many flowers for the fruit;' more for the ear and fancy, than for the heart and intellect. Some of her shorter pieces and her lyrical productions are touching and beautiful both in sentiment and expression. Her versification is always melodious; but there is an oppressive sameness in her longer poems which fatigues the reader; and when the volume is closed, the effect is only that of a mass of glittering images and polished words, a graceful melancholy and feminine tenderness, but no strong or permanent impression. The passions are seldom stirred, however the fancy may be soothed or gratified. In description, Mrs Hemans had considerable power; she was both copious and exact; and often, as Jeffrey has observed, a lovely picture serves as a foreground to some deep or lofty emotion.' Her imagination was chivalrous and romantic, and delighted in picturing the woods and halls of England, and the ancient martial glory of the land. The purity of her mind is seen in all her works; and her love of nature, like Wordsworth's, was a delicate blending of our deep inward emotions with their splendid symbols and emblems without. The Voice of Spring. I come, I come! ye have called me long, I come o'er the mountains with light and song; I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut- I have passed o'er the hills of the stormy North, well! The Homes of England. The stately Homes of England, The deer across their greensward bound The merry Homes of England! Around their hearths by night, There woman's voice flows forth in song, That breathes from Sabbath-hours! Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime The cottage Homes of England! The Graves of a Household. They grew in beauty, side by side, The same fond mother bent at night One, 'midst the forests of the west, The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one, One sleeps where southern vines are dressed He wrapt his colours round his breast, And one-o'er her the myrtle showers And parted thus they rest, who played They that with smiles lit up the hall, And nought beyond, on earth! The Treasures of the Deep. Yet more, the depths have more! Thy waves have rolled Above the cities of a world gone by! Sand hath filled up the palaces of old, Sea-weed o'ergrown the halls of revelry! Dash o'er them, Ocean! in thy scornful play, Man yields them to decay! Yet more the billows and the depths have more! High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast! They hear not now the booming waters roar The battle-thunders will not break their rest. Give back the lost and lovely! Those for whom And the vain yearning woke 'midst festal song! Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrownBut all is not thine own! To thee the love of woman hath gone down; Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head, O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown! Yet must thou hear a voice-Restore the Dead! Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee !— Restore the Dead, thou Sea! BERNARD BARTON. BERNARD BARTON, one of the Society of Friends, published in 1820 a volume of miscellaneous poems, which attracted notice both for their elegant simplicity, and purity of style and feeling, and because they were written by a Quaker. The staple of the whole poems,' says a critic in the Edinburgh Review, is description and meditation-description of quiet home scenery, sweetly and feelingly wrought out-and meditation, overshaded with tenderness, and exalted by devotion-but all terminating in soothing and even cheerful views of the condition and prospects of mortality.' Mr Barton was employed in a banking establishment at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, and he seems to have contemplated abandoning his profession for a literary life. On this point Charles Lamb wrote to him as follows: Throw yourself on the world, without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ of booksellers would afford you! Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If you have but five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars when they have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at arm's length from them-come not within their grasp. I have known many authors want for breadsome repining, others enjoying the blessed security of a counting-house-all agreeing they had rather have been tailors, weavers-what not?-rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. Oh, you know not-may you never know the miseries of subsisting by authorship!' There is some exaggeration here. We have known authors by profession who lived cheerfully and un-comfortably, labouring at the stated sum per sheet as regularly as the weaver at his loom, or the tailor on his board; but dignified with the consciousness of following a high and ennobling occupation, with all the mighty minds of past ages as their daily friends and companions. The bane of such a life, when actual genius is involved, is What hidest thou in thy treasure-caves and cells, Yet more, We ask not such from thee. the depths have more! What wealth told, Far down, and shining through their stillness, lies! Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold, Won from ten thousand royal Argosies. Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main! Earth claims not these again! And thus, while I wandered on ocean's bleak shore, Power and Gentleness, or the Cataract and the its uncertainty and its temptations, and the almost To the Evening Primrose. Fair flower, that shunn'st the glare of day, To evening's hues of sober gray, Be thine the offering owing long To thee, and to this pensive hour, I love to watch, at silent eve, I love at such an hour to mark For such, 'tis sweet to think the while, Is friendship's animating smile In sorrow's dark'ning shade. Thus it bursts forth, like thy pale cup, But still more animating far, If meek Religion's eye may trace, The hope, that as thy beauteous bloom Stanzas on the Sca. Oh! I shall not forget, until memory depart, Noble the mountain stream, Mimics the bow of day Arching in majesty the vaulted skies; Thence, in a summer-shower, Steeping the rocks around-O! tell me where Be clothed in forms more beautifully fair! The streamlet flowing silently serene; And livelier growth it gives-itself unseen! It flows through flowery meads, Gladdening the herds which on its margin browse; The alders that o'ershade it with their boughs. Gently it murmurs by The village churchyard: its low, plaintive tone, For worth and beauty modest as its own. More gaily now it sweeps By the small school-house in the sunshine bright; Like happy hearts by holiday made light. May not its course express, In characters which they who run may read, Were but its still small voice allowed to plead ? What are the trophies gained By power, alone, with all its noise and strife, Niagara's streams might fail, And human happiness be undisturbed: Were her still Nile's o'erflowing bounty curbed! The Solitary Tomb. Not a leaf of the tree which stood near me was stirred, The sky was cloudless and calm, except In the west, where the sun was descending; As his beams with their beauty were blending. And the evening star, with its ray so clear, And I stood all alone on that gentle hill, Far off was the Deben, whose briny flood With what differing forms, unto friendship dear, He was one who in youth on the stormy seas Who, borne on the billow, and blown by the breeze, Yet in this rude school had his heart still kept And here, when the bustle of youth was past, Oh! why was affection, which death could outlast, BRYAN WALTER PROCTER. BRYAN WALTER PROCTER, better known by his assumed name of Barry Cornwall, published, in 1815, a small volume of dramatic scenes of a domestic character, in order,' he says, 'to try the effect of a more natural style than that which had for a long time prevailed in our dramatic literature.' The experiment was successful; chiefly on account of the pathetic and tender scenes in Mr Procter's sketches. He has since published Marcian Colonna, The Flood of Thessaly, and other poems: also a tragedy, Mirandola, which was brought out with success at Covent Garden theatre. Mr Procter's later productions have not realised the promise of his early efforts. His professional avocations (for the poet is a barrister) may have withdrawn him from poetry, or at least prevented his studying it with that earnestness and devotion which can alone insure success. Still, Mr Procter is a graceful and accomplished writer. His poetical style seems formed on that of the Elizabethan dramatists, and some of his lyrical pieces are exquisite in sentiment and diction. Address to the Ocean. O thou vast Ocean! ever sounding sea! Thou speakest in the east and in the west Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, Marcelia. It was a dreary place. The shallow brook And in the place a silent eddy told That there the stream grew deeper. There dark trees Funereal (cypress, yew, and shadowy pine, And spicy cedar) clustered, and at night Shook from their melancholy branches sounds They stood quite motionless, and looked, methought, |