THOUGHTS DURING SICKNESS.

All knowledge flows-a sea for evermore
Breaking its crested waves on that sole shore--
O consecrate my life! that I may sing
Of Thee with joy that hath a living spring,
In a full heart of music!-Let my lays

Through the resounding mountains waft thy praise,
And with that theme the wood's green cloisters fill,
And make their quivering leafy dimness thrill
To the rich breeze of song! Oh! let me wake

The deep religion, which hath dwelt from yore,
Silently brooding by lone cliff and lake,

And wildest river shore!

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-O 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 dovelike wing,
Till thought, word, song, to Thee in worship spring,
Immortally endow'd for liberty and light.

THOUGHTS DURING SICKNESS.

I.-INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

O THOUGH! 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
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599

Scatter'd to whirling dust!—Oh, soon uncrown'd!
Well may your parting swift, your strange return,
Subdue the soul to 'owliness 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.

II. 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 gather'st round
The things that are unseen-though close they lie,-
And with a truth, clear, startling, and profound,
Givest 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.

III.-ON RETZSCH'S DESIGN OF THE ANGEL OF DEATH.* 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 permanency?-who make those gleams
Of brighter life, that color his lone dreams,
Immortal things?-Let others trembling bow,
Angel of Death! before thee.-Not to those,
Whose spirits with Eternal Truth repose,
Art thou a fearful shape !-and oh! for me,
How full of welcome would thine aspect shine,
Did not the chords of strong affection twine

So fast around my soul, it cannot spring to thee!

*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 :-"After wards he placed upon his easel a wonderous 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-the orbs of sight appeared at first two dark, hollow, unfathomable 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 mouth was divinely sweet, but sad, and the softest repose rested on every feature. This, he told me, was the ANGEL OF DEATH."

THOUGHTS DURING SICKNESS.

IV. 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 odors 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 fervor-but ordain'd
To meet on brighter shores thy Majesty unstain'd.

V.--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 guest!
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!

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VI.-FLOWERS.

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

VII.-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 strife 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-boru,
Now leave me not! but as, profoundly pure,
A blue stream rushes through a darker lake
Unchang'd, e'en thus with me your journey take, [scure
Wafting sweet airs of heaven through this low world ob

SABBATH SONNET.

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

How many blessed groups this hour are bending,

Through 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 grey

Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low,
With those thick orchard-blooms the soft winds play,
Send out their inmates in a happy flow,
Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread
With them those pathways,-to the feverish bed
Of sickness bound; yet, oh, 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.

CRITICAL ANNOTATIONS.

"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 over 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

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

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

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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 vigor 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 fa cility;-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 sentimens 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 seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life on which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely femi nine-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 baffied 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 embel'Ish domestic life-the gentle overflowings of love and friendshiphomebred delights and heartfelt happiness'-the associations of ocal attachment-and the influences of religious feelings over the