Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o’erthrown—
But all is not thine own.
To thee the love of woman hath gone down,
Dark flow thy tides o’er manhood’s noble head,
O’er youth’s bright locks, and beauty’s flowery crown:
Yet must thou hear a voice—Restore the dead!
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee!—
Restore the dead, thou sea!
[325] Originally introduced in the “Forest Sanctuary.”
[“The only public mention that I have made of Mrs Hemans,” says Mr Montgomery of Sheffield, in a letter regarding her, with which we have been favoured by that excellent man and distinguished poet, “was in a series of lectures on the principal British Poets, delivered at the Royal Institution from ten to twelve years ago. In one of these, having to notice very briefly the ‘Female Poets,’ I said, ‘Mrs Hemans, in many of her lyrics, has struck out a new and attractive style of mingling the picturesque and the sentimental with such grace and beauty that, in her best pieces, she is better than almost any poet of either sex in that sprightly, yet pathetic vein, which she has exercised.’ I gave ‘The Treasures of the Deep’ as an example; and, indeed, I know nothing in our language—of the kind and the character I mean—comparable with it, either in conception or execution, for wealth of thought, felicity of diction, and commanding address:—The Ocean summoned to give an account of all that it has been doing through six thousand years, and the answers dictated by the questioner, till all the secrets of the abyss are revealed in the light by which poetry alone, of the purest order, can discover them. The last stanza is a crown of glory to the perfect whole.”