In the gardens of the Dublin Society, Mrs. Hemans took that cold, which, seizing on an already enfeebled frame, terminated fatally. She had one day taken a book with her, and was so much absorbed by it, that she was thoroughly chilled by the autumnal fog, and feeling a shudder pass through her frame, she hastened home, already filled with a strong presentiment that her hours were numbered.
In her illness, by which she was gradually wasted to a skeleton, she enjoyed all the consolations which affection can bestow. Her sister attended her assiduously till she was called away by the serious illness of her husband. Her place was then tenderly supplied by her sister-in-law, the lady of Colonel Browne; and her son Charles was with her the whole time; George, now a prosperous engineer, for some days; and Henry, then a school-boy at Shrewsbury, likewise, during the Christmas holydays. For a time, she was removed to Redesdale, a seat of the Archbishop of Dublin, about seven miles from the city; but she returned, and died in Dawson-street, on the 16th of May, 1835. During her last illness, she wrote some of the finest poetry that she ever produced, especially that most soul-full effusion, Despondency and Aspiration; and the Sabbath Sonnet; which she dedicated to her brother, less than three weeks before her death, the last of her lays.
Her remains were interred in a vault beneath St. Ann's Church, but a short distance from her house, on the same side of the street; where, on the wall, under the gallery, on the right hand, as you enter, you observe a tablet, bearing this inscription—"In the vault beneath are deposited the Mortal Remains of Felicia Hemans, who died, May 16, 1835.
"Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Fair spirit, rest thee now;
Even while with us thy footsteps trod,
His seal was on thy brow.
Dust to its narrow house beneath,
Soul to its place on high!
They that have seen thy look in death