FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS

"That holy spirit,

Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep,"

as the poet Wordsworth calls Mrs. Hemans, was the daughter of George Browne, a Liverpool merchant. Her writing of verse dated from her childhood, and her first volume of poems was published when she was fifteen years old, several of the pieces having been written in her eleventh year. In 1812 her hand and heart were won by Captain Hemans of the British army, and the event marked the beginning of her many sorrows. S. Austin Allibone, in his Dictionary of Authors, says: Alas, that one so lovely, so loving, and so formed to be loved, should have had occasion for seventeen years — from the sixth year of her marriage until her death, in 1835, she never saw her husband's face-bitterly to bewail that worship which had been the brightest dream of her young and confiding heart."

In 1818 Captain Hemans went to Italy, presumably on account of ill-health, leaving his faithful wife behind to support and educate five sons without his aid. He never returned to England; they never met again.

The decline in Mrs. Hemans's health began shortly after the separation, but she devoted whatever of strength she could gather to the education of her sons. Volume after volume of poems and prose came from her fertile pen and gifted mind. She spent some years in North Wales and in Lancashire, and in 1831 removed to Dublin, where, after a painful and protracted illness, she laid down the terrible burden of life at the early age of forty-two years,

Once, during a visit Mrs. Hemans made to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, he said to her: "I should say that you had too many gifts, Mrs. Hemans, were they not all made to give pleasure to those around you." And in parting with her he added, in an impressive tone: "There are some whom we meet and should like ever after

to claim as kith and kin, and you are one of these."

The following sweet and simple lyric is one of the most familiar of Mrs. Hemans's pieces which have found their way into church hymnals:

Calm on the bosom of thy God,

Fair spirit, rest thee now!
E'en 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,
No more may fear to die.

Lone are the paths, and sad the bowers,
Whence thy meek smile is gone;
But oh, a brighter home than ours,
In heaven is now thine own.

This is found in Mrs. Hemans's dramatic poem, "The Siege of Valencia," and was supposed to be sung over the bier of Ximena, daughter of Gonzalez, governor of the city during the siege. Very appropriately the first eight lines are inscribed

on the monument that marks the restingplace of Mrs. Hemans in St. Anne's churchyard, Dublin.

Possibly her most plaintive hymn, which is perfect in pathos and sentiment, is the closing portion of her poem on "The

Funeral Day of Sir Walter Scott."

The

text here given is the abbreviated form:

Lowly and solemn be

Thy children's cry to Thee,
Father divine!

A hymn of suppliant breath,
Owning that life and death
Alike are Thine.

O Father, in that hour,
When earth all helping power
Shall disavow;

When spear, and shield, and crown,
In faintness are cast down;

Sustain us, Thou!

By Him who bowed to take
The death-cup for our sake,
The thorn, the rod;
From whom the last dismay

Was not to pass away;

Aid us, O God!

Tremblers beside the grave,

We call on Thee to save,
Father divine!

Hear, hear our suppliant breath,
Keep us in life and death,
Thine, only Thine.

When Mrs. Hemans was sitting beside the deathbed of her mother in January, 1827, her heart found expression in this hymn-prayer, which is very tender and pathetic :

Father! that in the olive shade,

When the dark hour came on,
Didst, with a breath of heavenly aid,
Strengthen Thy Son:

Oh, by the anguish of that night,
Send us down blest relief;

Or to the chastened, let Thy might
Hallow this grief!

And Thou that, when the starry sky
Saw the dread strife begun,

Didst teach adoring faith to cry,
Thy will be done :