LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.
PIONEER FEMALE POET OF AMERICA.
RS. SIGOURNEY, was among the first, and is the most voluminous of all the early female poets of America. In fact she has been, up to this date, one of the most prolific of all the women writers of our country, having published fifty-six volumes of poetry and prose, the first appearing in 1815, and the last in 1863, [♦]forty-eight years later. Her most successful efforts are her occasional poems, which abound in passages of earnest, well expressed thought, and exhibit in their graver moods characteristics of a mind trained by exercise in self-knowledge and self-control. Her writings possess energy and variety, while her wide and earnest sympathy with all topics of friendship and philanthropy was always at the service of those interests. Mr. Edward H. Everett in a review of Mrs. Sigourney’s works declared: “They express with great purity and evident sincerity the tender affections which are so natural to the female heart and the lofty aspirations after a higher and better state of being which constitute the truly ennobling and elevating principles in art as well as in nature. Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song. If her power of expression were equal to the purity and elevation of her habits of thought and feeling, she would be a female Milton or a Christian Pindar.” Continuing he says: “Though she does not inherit
‘The force and ample pinion that the Theban eagles bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion through the liquid vaults of air,’
she nevertheless manages language with an ease and elegance and that refined felicity of expression, which is the principal charm in poetry. In blank verse she is very successful. The poems that she has written in this measure have much of the manner of Wordsworth, and may be nearly or quite as highly relished by his admirers.”
[♦] ‘fifty-eight’ replaced with ‘forty-eight’
To the above eminent critical estimate of Mrs. Sigourney’s writings it is unnecessary to add further comment. The justice of the praise bestowed upon her is evinced by the fact that she has acquired a wider and more pervading reputation than many of her more modern sisters in the realm of poesy, but it is evident that, of late years, her poetry has not enjoyed the popular favor which it had prior to 1860.
Lydia Huntley was the only child of her parents, and was born at Norwich, Connecticut, September 1st, 1791. Her father was a man of worth and benevolence and had served in the revolutionary struggle which brought about the independence of America. Of the precocity of the child Duyckinck says: “She could read fluently at the age of three and composed simple verses at seven, smooth in rhythm and of an invariable religious sentiment.” Her girlhood life was quiet and uneventful. She received the best educational advantages which her neighborhood and the society of Madam Lathrop, the widow of Dr. Daniel Lathrop, of Hartford, could bestow. In 1814, when twenty-three years of age, Miss Huntley was induced to take a select school at Hartford, and removed to that city, where the next year, in 1815, her first book, “Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse,” was published. The prose essays are introduced by the remark: “They are addressed to a number of young ladies under my care,” and the writer throughout the volume seems to have had her vocation as a teacher in view. In the summer of 1819 Miss Huntley became the wife of Mr. Charles Sigourney, an educated gentleman and a merchant of Hartford. In 1822 a historical poem in five cantos, entitled “Traits of the Aborigines,” was published, and about the same time a London publisher made a miscellaneous collection of her verses and published them under the title of “Lays from the West,” a compliment of no small moment to an American poetess. Subsequent volumes came in rapid succession, among them being “Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since,” “Letters to Young Ladies” and “Letters to Mothers,” “Poetry for Children,” “Zinzendorf and Other Poems,” the last named appearing in 1836. It introduces us to the beautiful valley of Wyoming, paying an eloquent tribute to its scenery and historic fame, and especially to the missionary Zinzendorf, a noble self-sacrificing missionary among the Indians of the Wyoming Valley. The picture is a very vivid one. The poem closes with the departure of Zinzendorf from the then infant city of Philadelphia, extols him for his missionary labor, and utters a stirring exhortation to Christian union. In 1841 “Pocahontas and Other Poems” was issued by a New York publisher. Pocahontas is one of her longest and most successful productions, containing fifty-six stanzas of nine lines each, opening with a picture of the vague and shadowy repose of nature as her imagination conceived it in the condition of the new world prior to its discovery. The landing at Jamestown and the subsequent events that go to make up the thrilling story of Pocahontas follow in detail. This is said to be the best of the many poetical compositions of which the famous daughter of Powhatan has been the subject.
In 1840 Mrs. Sigourney made a tour of Europe, and on her return in 1842 published a volume of recollections in prose and poetry of famous and picturesque scenes and hospitalities received. The title of the book was “Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.” During her stay in Europe there were also published two volumes of her works in London, and tokens of kindness and esteem greeted the author from various distinguished sources. Among others was a splendid diamond bracelet from the Queen of France. Other volumes of her works appeared in 1846 and 1848. Prominent among the last works of her life was “The Faded Hope,” a touching and beautiful memento of her severe [♦]bereavement in the death of her only son, which occurred in 1850. “Past Meridian” is also a graceful volume of prose sketches.
[♦] ‘bereavment’ replaced with ‘bereavement’
Mrs. Sigourney died at Hartford, Connecticut, June 10, 1865, when seventy-three years of age.
COLUMBUS.
T. STEPHEN’S cloistered hall was proud
In learning’s pomp that day,
For there a robed and stately crowd
Pressed on in long array.
A mariner with simple chart
Confronts that conclave high,
While strong ambition stirs his heart,
And burning thoughts of wonder part
From lips and sparkling eye.
What hath he said? With frowning face,
In whispered tones they speak,
And lines upon their tablets trace,
Which flush each ashen cheek;
The Inquisition’s mystic doom
Sits on their brows severe,
And bursting forth in visioned gloom,
Sad heresy from burning tomb
Groans on the startled ear.
Courage, thou Genoese! Old Time
Thy splendid dream shall crown,
Yon Western Hemisphere sublime,
Where unshorn forests frown,
The awful Andes’ cloud-wrapt brow,
The Indian hunter’s bow,
Bold streams untamed by helm or prow,
And rocks of gold and diamonds, thou
To thankless Spain shalt show.
Courage, World-finder! Thou hast need!
In Fates’ unfolding scroll,
Dark woes, and ingrate wrongs I read,
That rack the noble soul.
On! on! Creation’s secrets probe,
Then drink thy cup of scorn,
And wrapped in Cæsar’s robe,
Sleep like that master of the globe,
All glorious,—yet forlorn.
THE ALPINE FLOWERS.
eek dwellers mid yon terror stricken cliffs!
With brows so pure, and incense breathing lips,
Whence are ye? Did some white winged messenger
On Mercy’s missions trust your timid germ
To the cold cradle of eternal snows?
Or, breathing on the callous icicles,
Did them with tear drops nurse ye?—
—Tree nor shrub
Dare that drear atmosphere; no polar pine
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand,
Leaning your cheeks against the thick ribbed ice,
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him
Who bids you bloom unblanched amid the waste
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge
Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge
Is to eternity, looks shuddering up,
And marks ye in your placid loveliness—
Fearless, yet frail—and, clasping his chill hands,
Blesses your pencilled beauty. Mid the pomp
Of mountain summits rushing on the sky,
And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe,
He bows to bind you drooping to his breast,
Inhales your spirit from the frost winged gale
And freer dreams of heaven.
NIAGARA.
LOW on, for ever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him
Eternally—bidding the lip of man
Keep silence—and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe struck praise. Ah! who can dare
To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrink
Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,
Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
When first they sang o’er young Creation’s birth,
Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires,
That wait the archangel’s signal to dissolve
This solid earth, shall find Jehovah’s name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
Of thine unending volume. Every leaf,
That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon birds
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing
Amid thy mist and foam. ’Tis meet for them
To touch thy garment’s hem, and lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapor wreath,
For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof. But as for us, it seems
Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil’s point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,
Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul
A wondering witness of thy majesty,
But as it presses with delirious joy
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And tame its rapture, with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.
DEATH OF AN INFANT.
EATH found strange beauty on that polished brow
And dashed it out. There was a tint of rose
On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice
And the rose faded. Forth from those blue eyes
There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence
Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of those curtaining lids
Forever. There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,
Charming her even to tears. The Spoiler set
His seal of silence. But there beamed a smile
So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow,
Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal
The signet ring of heaven.
A BUTTERFLY ON A CHILD’S GRAVE.
BUTTERFLY basked on a baby’s grave,
Where a lily had chanced to grow;
“Why art thou here, with thy gaudy dye,
When she of the blue and sparkling eye
Must sleep in the churchyard low?”
Then it lightly soared through the sunny air,
And spoke from its shining track:
“I was a worm till I won my wings,
And she whom thou mourn’st like a seraph sings,
Wouldst thou call the blest one back?”
