Felicia Hemans

“ Show me your home, your place,
O ye, my kindred race!
—My spirit on the dust its wealth hath flung,
Striving for words of power,
A boundless love to shower
O'er hearts that knew not e'en that feeling's tongue. ”

“ Fernab liegt die Welt, in eine tiefe Gruft versenkt; in den Saiten der Brust weht tiefe Wehmuth. Fernen der Erinnerung, der Kindheit Traume, der ganzen Lebens Freuden und Hoffnungen kommen in grauen Kleidern, wie Abendnebel nach der Sonne Untergang. ”

“ Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful, than that exquisite one of Kircher, Digby and others, who discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the power of heat. The ashes of roses say they, will again revive with roses, unsubstantial and unodoriferous; they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions, and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment. ”

“ Of awful harmonies, of whisper'd prayer:
Tread lightly!—for the sanctity of death
Broods with a voiceless influence on the air;
Stern, yet serene!—a reconciling spell
Each troubled billow of the soul to quell. ”

“ After I had performed such service as is usual on similar occasions, a most venerable-looking old man came forward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. ”

“ With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
Hath anguish cried to Heaven?
—Then the Sea's voice arose
Like an earthquake's under-tone:
"Mortal! the strife of human woes
"When hath not Nature known? ”