"Play on, mine Orpheus! Lo! while these are gazing,
Charm'd into statues by the god-taught strain,
I, I alone—to thy dear face upraising
My tearful glance—the life of life regain!
For every tone that steals into my heart
Doth to its worn weak pulse a mighty power impart.
"Play on, mine Orpheus! while thy music floats
Through the dread realm, divine with truth and grace,
See, dear one! how the chain of linked notes
Has fetter'd every spirit in its place!
Even Death, beside me, still and helpless lies,
And strives in vain to chill my frame with his cold eyes.
"Still, my own Orpheus, sweep the golden lyre!
Ah! dost thou mark how gentle Proserpine,
With clasped hands and eyes whose azure fire
Gleams thro' quick tears, thrilled by thy lay, doth lean
Her graceful head upon her stern lord's breast,
Like an o'erwearied child, whom music lulls to rest!
"Play, my proud minstrel! strike the chords again!
Lo, Victory crowns at last thy heavenly skill!
For Pluto turns relenting to the strain—
He waves his hand—he speaks his awful will!
My glorious Greek, lead on! but ah, still lend
Thy soul to thy sweet lyre, lest yet thou lose thy friend!
"Think not of me! Think rather of the time,
When, moved by thy resistless melody
To the strange magic of a song sublime,
Thy argo grandly glided to the sea;
And in the majesty Minerva gave,
The graceful galley swept, with joy, the sounding wave.
"Or see, in Fancy's dream, thy Thracian trees,
Their proud heads bent submissive to the sound,
Sway'd by a tuneful and enchanted breeze,
March to slow music o'er the astonished ground;
Grove after grove descending from the hills,
While round thee weave their dance, the glad harmonious rills.
"Think not of me! Ha! by thy mighty sire,
My lord, my king, recall the dread behest!
Turn not, ah! turn not back those eyes of fire!
Oh! lost, forever lost! undone! unblest!
I faint, I die!—the serpent's fang once more
Is here!—nay, grieve not thus! Life, but not Love, is o'er!"
This is a noble poem, with too many interjections, and occasional redundancies of imagery and epithet, betraying the author's customary haste: but with unquestionable signs of that genuineness which is the best attraction of the literature of sentiment. The longest and more sustained of Mrs. Osgood's compositions is one entitled "Fragments of an Unfinished Story" in which she has exhibited such a skill in blank verse—frequently regarded as the easiest, but really the most difficult of any—as induces regret that she so seldom made use of it. We have here a masterly contrast of character in the equally natural expressions of feeling by the two principal persons, both of whom are women: the haughty Ida, and the impulsive child of passion, Imogen. It displays in eminent perfection, that dramatic faculty which Sheridan Knowles and the late William Cooke Taylor recognised as the most striking in the composition of her genius. She had long meditated, and in her mind had perfectly arranged, a more extended poem than she has left to us, upon Music. It was to be in this measure, except some lyrical interludes, and she was so confident of succeeding in it, that she deemed all she had written of comparatively little worth. "These," she said to me one day, pointing to the proof-leaves of the new edition of her poems, "these are my 'Miscellaneous Verses:' let us get them out of the way, and never think of them again, as the public never will when they have my poem!" And her friends who heard the splendid scheme of her imagination, did not doubt that when it should be clothed with the rich tissues of her fancy, it would be all she dreamed of, and vindicate all that they themselves were fond of saying of her powers. It was while her life was fading; and no one else can grasp the shining threads, or weave them into song, such as she heard lips, touched with divinest fire, far along in the ages, repeating with her name. This was not vanity, or a low ambition. She lingered, with subdued and tearful joy, when all the living and the present seemed to fail her, upon the pages of the elect of genius, and was happiest when she thought some words of hers might lift a sad soul from a sea of sorrow.
It was perhaps the key-note of that unwritten poem, which she sounded in these verses upon its subject, composed while the design most occupied her attention:
The Father spake! In grand reverberations
Through space roll'd on the mighty music-tide,
While to its low, majestic modulations,
The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside.