Where the world’s voice can reach no more! Oh, calm thee!—Fare thee well!”
[“Mrs Hemans played very pleasingly, and was passionately fond of music. She has described in—perhaps the finest of her lyrics—the ‘Requiem of Mozart’ the manner in which she herself felt its thrilling influences.
“It was after having listened with great delight one evening to some sweet and loved voices (that are now but very seldom heard within these walls) singing those words of hers, composed from Sir Walter Scott’s dictation, for one of the old Rhine songs, that she brought with her, on the next, her lines on ‘Triumphant Music;’ and triumphant they really were, in the splendour of their effect, as she repeated them. She wrote, for these same voices, the little drama, or rather scena, ‘The Sisters,’ which formed, as it was represented[413] with extraordinary research and elegance, and with the advantage of Mr Lodge’s music, one of the most perfect private exhibitions of the kind that can be imagined. One could not help reverting to the times of Ludlow Castle, and the Bridgewater family, when the youthful performers in Milton’s exquisite masque were as pure, and as noble, and as beautiful, as the ideal personages they represented.”—Recollections of Mrs Hemans, by Mrs Lawrence of Wavertree Hall, p. 339-340.]
[413] At a beautiful residence in Needwood Forest.
THE LAST SONG OF SAPPHO.
[Suggested by a beautiful sketch, the design of the younger Westmacott. It represents Sappho sitting on a rock above the sea, with her lyre cast at her feet. There is a desolate grace about the whole figure, which seems penetrated with the feeling of utter abandonment.]
Sound on, thou dark, unslumbering sea!
My dirge is in thy moan;
My spirit finds response in thee
To its own ceaseless cry—“Alone, alone!”