Felicia Hemans

“ The story of Tasso is fraught with yet deeper meaning, though it is not from the period of his most agonizing trials that the materials of Goethe's work are drawn. The poet is here introduced to us as a youth at the court of Ferrara; visionary, enthusiastic, keenly alive to the splendour of the gorgeous world around him, throwing himself passionately upon the current of every newly-excited feeling; a creature of sudden lights and shadows, of restless strivings after ideal perfection, of exultations and of agonies. ”

“ Some master-minds have, indeed, winged their way through the tumults of crowded life, like the sea-bird cleaving the storm from which its pinions come forth unstained; but there needs a celestial panoply, with which few indeed are gifted, to bear the heirs of genius not only unwounded, but unsoiled, through the battle; and too frequently the result of the poet's lingering afar from his better home has been mental degradation and untimely death. ”

“ Antonio reaches the Court of Ferrara at this crisis, in all the importance of a successful negociation with the Vatican. He strikes down the wing of the poet's delicate imagination with the arrows of a careless irony; and Tasso is for a time completely dazzled and overpowered by the worldly science of the skilful diplomatist. The deeper wisdom of his own simplicity is yet veiled from his eyes. Life seems to pass before him, as pourtrayed by the discourse of Antonio, like a mighty triumphal procession, in the exulting movements and clarion sounds of which he alone has no share ”

“ Let the poet bear into the recesses of woods and shadowy hills a heart full-fraught with the sympathies which will have been fostered by intercourse with his kind, a memory covered with the secret inscriptions which joy and sorrow fail not indelibly to write,—then will the voice of every stream respond to him in tones of gladness or melancholy, accordant with those of his own soul ”

“ We could have wished that some such thrilling moment had been here introduced by the mighty master of Germany; something to relieve the too continuous impression of inherent weakness in the cause of the vanquished; something of a transmuting power in the soul of Tasso, to glorify the clouds which accumulate around it,—to turn them into "contingencies of pomp" by the interpenetration of its own celestial light. Yet we approach with reverence the work of a noble hand ”

“ Yet who has not known victorious moments, in which the lightly-armed genii of ridicule have quailed— the conventional forms of life have shrunk as a shrivelled scroll before the Ithuriel touch of some generous feeling, some high and overshadowing passion suddenly aroused from the inmost recesses of the folded soul, and striking the electric chain which mysteriously connects all humanity? ”

“ Whose odours I must breathe no more,
Oh! love's vain sighs, and parting prayer,
And wild farewell, are lingering there.
Then bear me thence one branch, to shed
Life's last faint sweetness round my bed ”

“ Amongst the minor poems of Italy, the tone of which is in general plaintive and languishing, there are found occasional breathings of patriotic sorrow or indignation, which strike upon the spirit like the thrilling summons of a trumpet piercing through the melodies of flute and guitar. The celebrated "Italia, Italia!" of Filicaja will be remembered by every student; but there are other effusions of similar character, scarcely inferior in awakening energy, and penetrated with the deepest feelings of the "Servi ancor frementi." ”

“ There is something of a very touching beauty in the character of the Princess Leonora d'Este. She does not, indeed, resemble some of the lovely beings delineated by Shakspeare—the females "graceful without design, and unforeseeing," in whom, even under the pressure of heaviest calamity, it is easy to discern the existence of the sunny and gladsome nature which would spring up with fawn-like buoyancy, were but the crushing weight withdrawn. ”

“ And for all this heart's wealth wasted,
This woe, in secret borne,
This flower of young life blasted,
Should I win back aught but scorn?
By aught but daily dying
Would my love-truth be repaid? ”

“ She is worshipped by the poet as his tutelary angel, and her secret affection for him might almost become that character. It has all the deep devotedness of a woman's heart, with the still purity of a seraphic guardian, taking no part in the passionate dreams of earthly happiness. She feels his genius with a reverential appreciation ”

“ Smiles o'er the pine-hung steep;
Hear ye not there her vespers?—
Weep for the parted, weep!
Seek in the porch where vine-leaves
O'ershade her father's head;
Are his grey hairs left lonely?—
Weep! her bright soul is fled! ”

“ Ne'er by sorrow to be wet,
Calmly smiles thy pale cheek yet,
Ere by dust o'erspread.
Lilies, ne'er by tempest blown,—
White-rose, which no stain hath known,—
Be about thee shed!
So we give thee to the earth ”

“ My thoughts are like those gentle tones, dear love!
By day shut up in their own still recess,
They wait for dews on earth, for stars above,
Then to breathe out their voice of tenderness:
⁠—Leave me not yet! ”

“ Sleep, gentle Sleep!— but bring
No voice, love's yearnings to renew,
No visions on thy wing!
Come, as to folding flowers,
To birds, in forests deep;—
Long, dark, and dreamless be thine hours,
O gentle, gentle Sleep! ”

“ Of twilight fall, on one deep thought I dwell;
Day beams o'er other lands, if here she fades,
Nor bids the universe at once farewell.
But thou, I cry, my country!—what a night
Spreads o'er thy glories one dark sleeping pall! ”

“ The wildness of his ecstacy at last terrifies his gentle protectress from him; he is forsaken by all as a being lost in hopeless delusion, and being left alone to the insulting pity of Antonio, his strength of heart is utterly subdued; he passionately bewails his weakness, and even casts down his spirit almost in wondering admiration before the calm self-collectedness of his enemy, who himself seems at last almost melted by the extremity of the poet's desolation, as thus poured forth ”

“ Where the mountain heath waves o'er him;—
⁠Woods alone
⁠There make moan,
Rushing streams deplore him.
Yet from festal hall and lay
Our sad thoughts oft are flying
To those dark hills far away,
Where in death we found him lying ”

“ Dark and silent in their anguish,—
Aid those captives—set them free!
Touch them, every fount unsealing,
Where the frozen tears lie deep;
Thou, the Mother of all sorrows,
Aid, oh! aid to pray and weep! ”

“ Let us not be understood as requiring for his well-being an absolute seclusion from the world and its interests. His nature, if the abiding place of the true light be indeed within him, is endowed above all others with the tenderest and most widely-embracing sympathies. ”

“ Leaves to cool his burning brow,—
Willow, sighing willow!
Many a swan-like song to thee
Hath been sung, thou gentle tree!
Many a lute its last lament
Down thy moonlit stream hath sent,—
Willow, sighing willow! ”

“ Teach me the spell of thy melody.
Bird! is it wrong'd affection's pain,
Whence the sad sweetness flows through thy strain?
And is the wound of that arrow still'd,
When thy lone music the boughs hath fill'd? ”

“ Pour down thy dark sons to the vintage of fight.
Wake! wake! the old soil where our warriors repose
Rings hollow and deep to the trampling of foes.
The voices are mighty that swell from the past,
With Aragon's cry on the shrill mountain-blast ”

“ Things glorious, unearthly, pass'd floating before me,
And my heart almost fainted with rapture and awe!
I viewed the dread Beings around us that hover,
Tho' veiled by the mists of Mortality's breath ”

“ So have those who make us "heirs of truth and freedom by immortal lays," ever preserved the calm intellectual ether in which they live and move, from the taint of worldly infection; and it appears the object of Goethe, in the work before us, to make the gifted spirit sadder and wiser by the contemplation of one, which, having sold its birthright, and stooped from its "privacy of glorious light," is forced into perpetual contact with things essentially of the earth earthy. ”

“ Ye are not miss'd, fair flowers, that late were spreading
The summer's glow by fount and dreary grot;
There falls the dew, its fairy favours shedding,—
The leaves dance on, the young birds miss you not. ”

“ Why is it that the being thus exhibited as endowed with all these trembling capacities for joy and pain, with noble aspirations and fervid eloquence, fails to excite a more reverential interest, a more tender admiration? ”

“ They that were once thy slaves now rudely twine
Their hostile hands in thy dishevelled hair.
Alas! nor want there of thy children's band
Those that call in the stranger to the land,
And with unfilial sword thy charms deface! ”

“ Bound by the hair—pale, humbled, and o'ercome!
I see her now, dismantled of her state,—
Spoiled of her sceptre,—crouching to the ground,
Beneath a hostile car; and lo! the weight
Of fetters her imperial neck around! ”

“ Where'er I turn, majestic traces meet,
In thy past perils, of thy constancy!
Doth not brave suffering more than triumph shine?
Yes! and bright vengeance on the foe is thine,
While thy strong spirit thus unbound remains! ”

“ in thy breezy moan
I can hear a deeper tone;
Thro' thy leaves come whispering low
Faint sweet sounds of long ago,—
Willow, sighing willow! ”

“ The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 40, Page 292
VI.
The Rock beside the Sea.
Oh! tell me not the woods are fair,
Now Spring is on her way;—
Well, well I know how lightly there,
In joy, the young leaves play ”

“ A brighter day-spring then for us may dawn
Then may we solemnize our golden age.'
A character thus meditative, affectionate, and self-secluding, would naturally be peculiarly sensitive to the secret intimations of coming sorrow: forebodings of evil arise in her mind from the antipathy so apparent between Tasso and Antonio; and after learning that the cold, keen irony of the latter has irritated the poet almost to frenzy, she thus, to her friend Leonora de Sanvitale, reproaches herself for not having listened to the monitory whispers of her soul:—
"Alas! ”

“ That from bitter words doth swerve,"
has the power to shake his whole soul from its pride of place. He is thus borne down by the cold triumphant worldliness of the courtier Antonio, from the collision with whom, and the mistaken endeavour of Tasso's friends to reconcile natures dissimilar as the Sylph and Gnome of fanciful creations, the conflicting elements of the piece are chiefly derived. ”

“ I can hear a deeper tone; ”

“ Love, Death, and Sorrow
Know the green shore.
Thou should'st have Echoes
For Grief's deepest tone.—
Flow, Rio Verde!
Softly flow on!
↑ * The name of the Rio Verde (the "Gentle River" of Percy's ballad) will be familiar to every Spanish reader, as associated in song and story with the old romantic wars of the Peninsula. ”

“ But he will not seek them through the gaudy and hurrying masque of artificial life; he will not be the fettered Sampson to make sport for the sons and daughters of fashion. Whilst he shuns no brotherly communion with his kind, he will ever reserve to his nature the power of self-communion, silent hours for ”