The Works of Mrs. Hemans, with a Memoir by Her Sister, and an Essay on Her Genius by Mrs. Sigourney ...

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Lea and Blanchard, 1840
 

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Page 183 - Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To Be, contents his natural desire, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Page 93 - His steps are not upon thy paths— thy fields Are not a spoil for him— thou dost arise And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth — there let him lay.
Page xxv - SHE was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn: A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
Page 274 - DEAR GODCHILD, I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of his spiritual body, the Church. Years must pass before you will be able to read, with an understanding heart, what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, who, by his...
Page 300 - With whose thick orchard blooms the soft winds play, Send out their inmates in a happy flow, Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread With them those pathways — to the feverish bed Of sickness bound ; yet, O my God ! I bless Thy mercy, that with Sabbath peace hath filled My chastened heart, and all its throbbings stilled To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness.
Page xix - Fall on my waken'd spirit, there to be A seed not lost ; — for which, in darker years, O book of Heaven ! I pour, with grateful tears, Heart blessings on the holy dead and thee ! III.— REPOSE OF A HOLY FAMILY.
Page 186 - Never let me hear that brave blood has been shed in vain! It sends a roaring voice down through all time ! " In the evening we had music. Not being able to sing, I read to him the words of a Bearnaise song, on the captivity of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in the Temple ; though simple even to homeliness, they affected him to tears, and he begged me not to finish them.* I think the • This song will now, perhaps, he read with interest. It is called"'
Page 28 - He was unhappy at the sound of music, which dilates the heart of man into its whole capacity for the infinite, and he cried aloud — " Away, away ! Thou speakest of things which throughout my endless life I have found not, and shall not find...
Page 29 - So, then, I am parted from you to all eternity by an impassable abyss ! the great universe of suns is above, below, and round about me, but I am chained to a little ball -of dust and ashes...
Page 91 - The earth is every day overspread with the veil of night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened — viz. that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought in the hush and quiet of darkness. Thoughts, which day turns into smoke and mist, stand about us in the night as lights and flames : even as the column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the daytime appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire.

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