Mrs. Phillips was for a long period one of the honorary secretaries of the Ripon Home for Girls, and did much useful work for this excellent institution. Says one who knew her well, “She was extremely generous in disposition, and her warm-hearted liberality and her kindly interest in those in distress endeared her to all classes.” On May 25th, 1897, she died at Sea Lawn, Torquay, having reached the age of sixty-six years.
Instead of giving brief quotations from several pieces, it will be perhaps the better plan to reproduce at length two or three of the author’s poems, and enable our readers to form their own conclusions. We may not quote the best of the writer’s work, but indicate her style. No one, we think, can read lines like the following without being moved, and his sympathy extended to the sorrowing fisher-folk:—
Lost with all Hands.
“‘Lost, with all hands, at sea.’
The Christmas sun shines down
On the headlands that frown o’er the harbour wide,
On the cottages, thick on the long quay side,
On the roofs of the busy town.
‘Lost, with all hands, at sea.’
The dread words sound like a wail,
The song of the waits, and the clash of the bells,
Ring like death-bed dirges or funeral knells,
In the pauses of the gale.
Never a home so poor
But it brightens for good Yule Tide,
Never a heart too sad or too lone,
But the holy Christmas mirth ’twill own,
And his welcome will provide.
Where the sea-coal fire leaps
On the fisherman’s quiet hearth,
The Yule Log lies for his hand to heave,
While he hastes to his bride on Christmas Eve,
In the flush of his strength and mirth.
High on the little shelf
The tall Yule candle stands,
For the ship is due ere the Christmas night,
And it waits to be duly set alight,
By the coming father’s hands.
Long has the widow spared
Her pittance for warmth and bread,
That her sailor boy, when he home returns,
May joy, that her fire brightly burns,
Her board is so amply spread.
The sharp reef moans and moans,
The foam on the sand lies hoar;
The ‘sea-dog’ flickers across the sky,
The north wind whistles shrill and high
’Mid the breakers’ ominous roar.
But on the great pier head,
The grey-haired sailors stand,
While the black clouds pile away in the west,
And the spray flies free from the billow’s crest
Ere they dash on the hollow sand.
Never a sail to be seen
On the long grim tossing swell;
Only drifting wreckage of canvas and spar,
That sweep with the waves o’er the harbour bar,
Their terrible tale to tell.
Did a vision of Christmas pass
Before their drowning eyes?
When ’mid rent of rigging and crash of mast,
The brave ship, smote by the mighty blast,
Went down ’neath the pitiless skies.
No Christmas joy I ween
On the rock-bound coast may be.
Put token and custom of Yule away,
While widows and orphans weep and pray
For the ‘hands lost out at sea.’”
Still in the pathetic strain we will give another poem. In quoting this we feel we are not doing full justice to Mrs. Phillips, but it at all events shows her deep devotion to the race she greatly helped in their many trials.
The Fisherman’s Funeral.
“Up on the breezy headland the fisherman’s grave they made,
Where, over the daisies and clover-bells, the birchen branches swayed;
Above us the lark was singing in the cloudless skies of June,
And under the cliffs the billows were chanting their ceaseless tune;
For the creamy line was curving along the hollow shore,
Where the dear old tides were flowing that he would ride no more.
The dirge of the wave, the note of the bird, and the priest’s low tone were blent
In the breeze that blew from the moorland, all laden with country scent;
But never a thought of the new-mown hay tossing on sunny plains,
Or of lilies deep in the wild wood, or roses gemming the lanes,
Woke in the hearts of the stern bronzed men who gathered about the grave,
Where lay the mate who had fought with them the battle of wind and wave.
How boldly he steered the coble across the foaming bar,
When the sky was black to the eastward and the breakers white on the scar!
How his keen eye caught the squall ahead, how his strong hand furled the sail,
As we drove through the angry waters before the raging gale!
How cheery he kept the long dark night; and never a parson spoke
Good words like those he said to us when at last the morning broke!
So thought the dead man’s comrades, as silent and sad they stood,
While the prayer was prayed, the blessing said, and the dull earth struck the wood;
And the widow’s sob, and the orphan’s wail, jarred through the joyous air;
How could the light wind o’er the sea blow on so fresh and fair?
How could the gay waves laugh and leap, landward o’er sand and stone,
While he, who knew and loved them all, lay lapped in clay alone?
But for long, when to the beetling heights the snow-tipped billows roll,
When the cod, and the skate, and dogfish dart around the herring shoal;
When gear is sorted and sail is set, and the merry breezes blow,
And away to the deep-sea harvest the stalwart reapers go,
A kindly sigh and a hearty word, they will give to him who lies
Where the clover springs, and the heather blooms beneath the northern skies.”
We regard the following lines on a well-known division of East Yorkshire, as a successful effort on the part of Mrs. Phillips. An August day spent in rambling amongst the leafy lanes of Holderness cannot easily be forgotten. There is a lack of romantic and rugged scenery, but the old farmsteads nestling amongst the trees and the fields of golden grain have a beauty not surpassed in many parts of old England:—
In Holderness.
“The wind blew over the barley, the wind blew over the wheat,
Where the scarlet poppy toss’d her head, with the bindweed at her feet;
The wind blew over the great blue sea, in the golden August weather,
Till the tossing corn and the tossing waves showed shadow and gleam together.
The wind blew over the barley, the wind blew over the oats,
The lark sprung up in the sunny sky, and shook his ringing notes;
Over the wealth of the smiling land, the sweep of the glittering sea,
‘Which is the fairest?’ he sang, as he soared o’er the beautiful rivalry.
And with a fuller voice than the wind, a deeper tone than the bird,
Came the answer from the solemn sea, that Nature, pausing, heard,—
‘The corn will be garnered, the lark will be hushed at the frown of the wintry weather,
The sun will fly from the snow-piled sky, but I go on for ever!’”