5 The deer across their greensward bound Through shade and sunny gleam, And the swan glides past them with the sound Of some rejoicing stream.
The merry Homes of England! to Around their hearths by night, What gladsome looks of household love Meet in the ruddy light! There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told, 15 Or lips move tunefully along Some glorious page of old.
The blessed Homes of England! How softly on their bowers Is laid the holy quietness 20 That breathes from Sabbath-hours! Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime Floats through their woods at morn; All other sounds, in that still time, Of breeze and leaf are born.
25 The Cottage Homes of England! By thousands on her plains, They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet-fanes.? village churches
Through glowing orchards forth they peep, 30 Each from its nook of leaves, And fearless there the lowly sleep, As the bird beneath their eaves.
The free, fair Homes of England! Long, long, in hut and hall, 35 May hearts of native proof be rear'd To guard each hallow'd wall! And green for ever be the groves, And bright the flowery sod, Where first the child's glad spirit loves Its country and its God!
1. From Sir Walter Scott's long poem Marmion 1827, Hemans used as epigraph a passage from the (1808), 4.633?34, a tale of betrayal and bloody work of another Scottish author, Joanna Baillie's conflict between the English and the Scots. When Ethwald: A Tragedy, part 2 (1802), 1.2.76-82. she first published the poem, in Blackwood's, April
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CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL / 871
Daughter of th' Italian heaven! Thou, to whom its fires are given, Joyously thy car? hath roll'd chariot Where the conqueror's pass'd of old; 5 And the festal sun that shone, O'er three* hundred triumphs gone, Makes thy day of glory bright, With a shower of golden light. Now thou tread'st th'ascending road, 10 Freedom's foot so proudly trode; While, from tombs of heroes borne, From the dust of empire shorn, Flowers upon thy graceful head, Chaplets0 of all hues, are shed, wreaths 15 In a soft and rosy rain, Touch'd with many a gemlike stain. Thou hast gain'd the summit now! Music hails thee from below;? Music, whose rich notes might stir 20 Ashes of the sepulchre; Shaking with victorious notes All the bright air as it floats. Well may woman's heart beat high Unto that proud harmony! 25 Now afar it rolls?it dies? And thy voice is heard to rise With a low and lovely tone In its thrilling power alone; And thy lyre's deep silvery string,
1. Hemans's poem comments on one of the most famous and controversial novels of early-19thcentury Europe, Corinne, or Italy (1807), by the Swiss-French writer Germaine de Stael, and particularly on its second book, in which Stael's heroine, an improvisatrice (a poet who speaks from rhapsodic inspiration rather than texts) is crowned at the Capitol in Rome in recognition of her genius, as Petrarch had been crowned in the 14th century. Corinne's triumph is short-lived and, at the novel's close, abandoned by her English lover, she dies of a broken heart. In hook 2 of Aurora Leigh (1857), Elizabeth Barrett Browning would again restage the scene of Corinne's coronation, marking how Stael's simultaneously inspirational and cautionary story of the unhappy female genius had come to shape women writers' understanding of poetic fame.
2. 'Women must recognize that very little in this career equals in value the most obscure life of a beloved wife and happy mother.' From Stael's De I 'Influence des Passions sur le Bonhenr des Individus et des Nations (On the Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of Individuals and Nations; 1796). 3. The trebly hundred triumphs?BYRON [Hemans's note]. From a stinging account in Childe Harold (4.731) of the celebrations that greeted imperial Rome's victorious heroes.
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87 2 / FELICI A DOROTHE A HEMAN S 30 Touch'd as by a breeze's wing, Murmurs tremblingly at first, Ere the tide of rapture burst. 3540All the spirit of thy sky Now hath lit thy large dark eye, And thy cheek a flush hath caught From the joy of kindled thought; And the burning words of song From thy lip flow fast and strong, With a rushing stream's delight In the freedom of its might. Radiant daughter of the sun! Now thy living wreath is won. Crown'd of Rome!?Oh! art thou not 45Happy in that glorious lot?? Happier, happier far than thou, With the laurel4 on thy brow, She that makes the humblest hearth Lovely but to one on earth! 1827 1827
A Spirit's Return
'This is to be a mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality!' ?MANFRED1
Thy voice prevails?dear friend, my gentle friend! This long-shut heart for thee shall be unsealed, And though thy soft eye mournfully will bend Over the troubled stream, yet once revealed
5 Shall its freed waters flow; then rocks must close For evermore, above their dark repose.
Come while the gorgeous mysteries of the sky Fused in the crimson sea of sunset lie; Come to the woods, where all strange wandering sound
to Is mingled into harmony profound; Where the leaves thrill with spirit, while the wind Fills with a viewless' being, unconfined, invisible The trembling reeds and fountains?our own dell,
4. Wreaths of laurel were bestowed on honored be read as commentary on Byron's play, Percy poets in classical antiquity. Shelley's Alastor, and Keats's Endymion (see the 1. A spirit's verdict on Manfred's quest, spoken note to lines 216?17 below), all of which depict a just after Manfred is convulsed by the disappear-protagonist's problems in communicating with an ance of the Phantom of his beloved Astarte (Man-otherworldly lover. fred 2.4.158?59; see p. 658). Hemans's poem can
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A SPIRIT'S RETURN / 87 3
With its green dimness and Aeolian0 breath, wind-blown 15 Shall suit th' unveiling of dark records well? Hear me in tenderness and silent faith! Thou knew'st me not in life's fresh vernal morn? I would thou hadst!?for then my heart on thine Had poured a worthier love; now, all o'erworn 20 By its deep thirst for something too divine, It hath but fitful music to bestow, Echoes of harp-strings broken long ago. Yet even in youth companionless I stood, As a lone forest-bird 'midst ocean's foam; 25 For me the silver cords of brotherhood Were early loosed; the voices from my home Passed one by one, and melody and mirth Left me a dreamer by a silent hearth. But, with the fulness of a heart that burned 30 For the deep sympathies of mind, I turned From that unanswering spot, and fondly sought In all wild scenes with thrilling murmurs fraught, In every still small voice and sound of power, And flute-note of the
