(1847-1896)
athilde Blind was born at Mannheim, Germany, March 21st, 1847. She was educated principally in London, and subsequently in Zurich. Since her early school days, with the exception of this interval of study abroad, and numerous journeys to the south of Europe and the East, she has lived in London. Upon her return from Zurich she was thrown much into contact with Mazzini, in London, and her first essay in literature was a volume of poems (which she published in 1867 under the pseudonym Claude Lake) dedicated to him. She was also in close personal relationship with Madox Brown, W.M. Rossetti, and Swinburne. Her first literary work to appear under her own name was a critical essay on the poetical works of Shelley in the Westminster Review in 1870, based upon W.M. Rossetti's edition of the poet. In 1872 she wrote an account of the life and writings of Shelley, to serve as an introduction to a selection of his poems in the Tauchnitz edition. She afterwards edited a selection of the letters of Lord Byron with an introduction, and a selection of his poems with a memoir. A translation of Strauss's 'The Old Faith and the New' appeared in 1873, which contained in a subsequent edition a biography of the author. In 1883, Miss Blind wrote the initial volume, 'George Eliot,' for the 'Eminent Women Series,' which she followed in 1886 in the same series with 'Madame Roland.' Her first novel, 'Tarantella,' appeared in 1885. Besides these prose works, she has made frequent contributions of literary criticism to the Athenaeum and other reviews, and of papers and essays to the magazines; among them translations of Goethe's 'Maxims and Reflections' in Fraser's Magazine, and 'Personal Recollections of Mazzin' in the Fortnightly Review.
Mathilde Blind.
Her principal claim to literary fame is however based upon her verse. This is from all periods of her productivity. In addition to the book of poems already noticed, she has written 'The Prophecy of St. Oran, and other Poems,' 1882; 'The Heather on Fire,' a protest against the wrongs of the Highland crofters, 1886; 'The Ascent of Man,' her most ambitious work, 1889; 'Dramas in Miniature' 1892; 'Songs and Sonnets,' 1893; and 'Birds of Passage: Songs of the Orient and Occident,' 1895.
'The Ascent of Man' is a poetical treatment of the modern idea of evolution, and traces the progress of man from his primitive condition in a state of savagery to his present development. Miss Blind has been an ardent advocate of the betterment of the position of woman in society and the State. To this end she has worked and written for an improved education, and against a one-sided morality for the sexes. In her verse she shows characteristically a keen appreciation of nature. Her minor poems particularly, many of which are strong in feeling and admirable in form, entitle her to a distinguished place among the lyric poets of England.
She died in London near the end of November, 1896.
FROM 'LOVE IN EXILE'
I charge you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the
dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I
sicken for love.
I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my Love with the sound of one weeping
forlorn.
I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my
breast.
I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most
fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels, consumed by
despair.
O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.
Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of
love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its
desire.
I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with
its woe.
I go like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white
hawthorn of May.
The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its
core;
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.
The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed
into sleep.
The moon returns, and the spring; birds warble, trees burst into
leaf;
But Love, once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the
grief.
SEEKING
In many a shape and fleeting apparition,
Sublime in age or with clear morning eyes,
Ever I seek thee, tantalizing Vision,
Which beckoning flies.
Ever I seek Thee, O evasive Presence,
Which on the far horizon's utmost verge,
Like some wild star in luminous evanescence,
Shoots o'er the surge.
Ever I seek Thy features ever flying,
Which, ne'er beheld, I never can forget:
Lightning which flames through love, and mimics dying
In souls that set.
Ever I seek Thee through all clouds of error;
As when the moon behind earth's shadow slips,
She wears a momentary mask of terror
In brief eclipse.
Ever I seek Thee, passionately yearning;
Like altar fire on some forgotten fane,
My life flames up irrevocably burning,
And burnt in vain.
THE SONGS OF SUMMER
The songs of summer are over and past!
The swallow's forsaken the dripping eaves;
Ruined and black 'mid the sodden leaves
The nests are rudely swung in the blast:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.
The songs of summer are over and past!
Woe's me for a music sweeter than theirs--
The quick, light bound of a step on the stairs,
The greeting of lovers too sweet to last:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.
A PARABLE
Between the sandhills and the sea
A narrow strip of silver sand,
Whereon a little maid doth stand,
Who picks up shells continually,
Between the sandhills and the sea.
Far as her wondering eyes can reach,
A vastness heaving gray in gray
To the frayed edges of the day
Furls his red standard on the breach
Between the sky-line and the beach.
The waters of the flowing tide
Cast up the sea-pink shells and weed;
She toys with shells, and doth not heed
The ocean, which on every side
Is closing round her vast and wide.
It creeps her way as if in play,
Pink shells at her pink feet to cast;
But now the wild waves hold her fast,
And bear her off and melt away,
A vastness heaving gray in gray.
LOVE'S SOMNAMBULIST
Like some wild sleeper who alone, at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above,
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.
I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
Led on in safety by the starry gleam
Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
Startled to find how far I've gone astray,
I dash my life out in my fall.
THE MYSTIC'S VISION
Ah! I shall kill myself with dreams!
These dreams that softly lap me round
Through trance-like hours, in which meseems
That I am swallowed up and drowned;
Drowned in your love, which flows o'er me
As o'er the seaweed flows the sea.
In watches of the middle night,
'Twixt vesper and 'twixt matin bell,
With rigid arms and straining sight,
I wait within my narrow cell;
With muttered prayers, suspended will,
I wait your advent--statue-still.
Across the convent garden walls
The wind blows from the silver seas;
Black shadow of the cypress falls
Between the moon-meshed olive-trees;
Sleep-walking from their golden bowers,
Flit disembodied orange flowers.
And in God's consecrated house,
All motionless from head to feet,
My heart awaits her heavenly Spouse,
As white I lie on my white sheet;
With body lulled and soul awake,
I watch in anguish for your sake.
And suddenly, across the gloom,
The naked moonlight sharply swings;
A Presence stirs within the room,
A breath of flowers and hovering wings:
Your presence without form and void,
Beyond all earthly joys enjoyed.
My heart is hushed, my tongue is mute,
My life is centred in your will;
You play upon me like a lute
Which answers to its master's skill,
Till passionately vibrating,
Each nerve becomes a throbbing string.
Oh, incommunicably sweet!
No longer aching and apart,
As rain upon the tender wheat,
You pour upon my thirsty heart;
As scent is bound up in the rose,
Your love within my bosom glows.