There is a homely look about friend Hannah's photographic frontispiece which bids us look beyond the title page. Anything that appeals to home sympathies must ever find a welcome from the soldier and sailor, too often thought to be the light and airy citizen of the world, but ever in his inmost heart yearning, amidst duty and glory, for home. Our poetess shadows out a great and grand home sentiment in the lines—
"O vast, mysterious, solemn sea,
Great reflex of the Deity;
Safe in the hollow of His hand
Doth all thy waste of waters stand."
Indian Indra and Teutonic Thurmor alike bow in acknowledgment of the truth of this conception.
Extract from the Tunbridge Wells Gazette, 7th July, 1876.
Under this title has been published a volume of original poems. We can testify to the depth of feeling and mature thought, together with the telling language brought to bear in working out many of those homely scenes upon which the heart delights to dwell, as well as others of a miscellaneous character.
Extract from Pioneer, Allahabad, 9th June, 1877.
HOME LYRICS.—London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, Warwick House, Paternoster Row.—
It is not surprising that this handsomely got-up book of poetry, gilt edged, and printed on toned paper, should have passed into a second edition. It would be difficult to find a work more adapted for a "present" than Mrs. Battersby's HOME LYRICS; for, while far removed from those hateful goody-goody collections of "poetry," which perplex and distress the unfortunate reader, her verses are tinged with a deep, religious earnestness which may find an echo in any well balanced mind. This very earnestness, in fact, is the most noticeable point in the whole of the detached pieces which go to make up the volume. Apart from the mechanism of the verses, which might readily be made to work more smoothly, there is found a rare amount of originality in the pieces and an enthusiastic admiration for Nature and Nature's wonders which finds expression in various outbursts, more or less poetical. Whether singing of the "proud hills of Malvern" or inditing blank verse in face of the Horse Shoe Falls at Niagara, the author is equally at home, inasmuch as she is always under the influence of a keen appreciation of the sublimity and beauty of natural objects. The following "Hymn to Nature" will give an exact idea of the merits and defects of her style:—