Still on thine offspring may thy spirit rest!
And many a name of that imperial line,
Father and patriot! blend, in England’s songs, with thine!
[193] The glittering meteor, like a star, which often appears about a ship during tempests; if seen upon the main-mast, is considered by the sailors as an omen of good weather.—See Dampier’s Voyages.
[“The last poem is to the memory of his late Majesty: unlike courtly themes in general, this is one of the deepest and most lasting interest. Buried as the King had long been in mental and visual darkness, and dead to the common joys of the world, his death, perhaps, did not occasion the shock, or the piercing sorrow which we have felt on some other public losses; but the heart must be cold indeed that could, on reflection, regard the whole fortune and fate of that venerable, gallant, tender-hearted, and pious man, without a more than common sympathy. There was something in his character so truly national—his very errors were of so amiable a kind, his excellences bore so high a stamp, his nature was so genuine and unsophisticated, he stood in his splendid court, amidst his large and fine family, so true a husband, so good a father, so safe an example—he so thoroughly understood the feelings, and so duly appreciated the virtues, even the uncourtly virtues of his subjects—and, with all this, the sorrows from heaven rained down upon his head in so ‘pitiless and pelting a storm:’ all these—his high qualities and unparalleled sufferings—form such a subject for poetry, as nothing, we should imagine, but its difficulty and the expectation attending it, would prevent from being seized upon by the greatest poets of the day. We will not say that Mrs Hemans has filled the whole canvass as it might have been filled, but unquestionably her poem is beyond all comparison with any which we have seen on the subject; it is full of fine and pathetic passages, and it leads us up through all the dismal colourings of the foreground to that bright and consoling prospect which should close every Christian’s reflections on such a matter. An analysis of so short a poem is wholly unnecessary, and we have already transgressed our limits; we will, therefore, give but one extract of that soothing nature alluded to, and release our readers:—
‘Yet was there mercy still! If joy no more,’ etc.
“It is time to close this article.[194] Our readers will have seen, and we do not deny, that we have been much interested by our subject. Who or what Mrs Hemans is, we know not: we have been told that, like a poet of antiquity—
——‘Tristia vitæ
Solatur cantu,’——
If it be so, (and the most sensible hearts are not uncommonly nor unnaturally the most bitterly wounded,) she seems, from the tenor of her writings, to bear about her a higher and a surer balsam than the praises of men, or even the ‘sacred muse’ herself can impart. Still there is a pleasure, an innocent and an honest pleasure, even to a wounded spirit, in fame fairly earned; and such fame as may wait upon our decision, we freely and conscientiously bestow. In our opinion, all her poems are elegant and pure in thought and language; her later poems are of higher promise, they are vigorous, picturesque, and pathetic.”—Quarterly Review, vol. xxiv.]