Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

ANNE C. BOTTA.

MRS. ANNE CHARLOTTE BOTTA is a native of Bennington, in Vermont. Her mother is descended from the Fays and Robinsons, conspicuous in the early history of that state, and is a daughter of Colonel Gray, of the Connecticut line in the Revolutionary army. Her father was one of the United Irishmen, and in that celebrated body there were few more heroic and constant. He was but sixteen when he joined in the rebellion of '98, and soon after his arrest, on account of his youth and chivalrous character, he was of fered liberty and a commission in the British army if he would take the oath of allegiance to the government. He refused, and after being four years a state prisoner, was, at the age of twenty, banished for life. With Emmet, McNeven, and others, he came to America, where he married; and while his daughter was a child, he died in Cuba, whither he had gone in search of health.

and the arts. I have sometimes attended these agreeable parties, and have met at them probably the larger number of the living poets whose works are reviewed in this volume, with many distinguished men of letters, painters, sculptors, singers, and amateurs, among whom our author is held in as much esteem for her amiable social qualities, as respect for her intellectual accomplishments.

The poems of Mrs. Botta are marked by depth of feeling and grace of expression. They are the natural and generally unpremeditated effusions of a nature extremely sensitive, but made strong by experience and knowledge, and elevated into a divine repose by the ever active sense of beauty. Though for the most part very complete, they are short, and in many cases may be regarded as improvisations upon the occasions by which they were suggested. We have nothing in them that may be regarded as a fair illustration of her powers.

The prose writings of Mrs. Botta are

Mrs. Botta was educated at a popular female seminary in Albany, where her class compositions attracted much attention by a strength and earnestness unusual in perform-graceful, elegant, and full of fine reflection. ances of this description. She was a loving reader of Childe Harold, and caught the tone of this immortal poem, which is echoed in several of her earlier pieces, that still have sufficient individuality to justify the expectations then formed of her maturer abilities. She soon outgrew imitation, and her occasional contributions to literary journals became more and more the voices of her own life and nature.

After leaving school, Mrs. Botta passed some time in Providence; and her knowledge and taste in literature are illustrated in a volume which she published in that city, in 1841, under the title of The Rhode-Island Book a selection of prose and verse from the writers of that state, including several fine poems of her own. For five or six years she has resided in New York, where her house is known for the wekly assemblies there of persons connected with literature

They evince a genial and hopeful but not joyous spirit—a waiting for the future rather than a satisfaction with the present. She has a large acquaintance with literature, and her criticisms, scattered through many desultory compositions, are discriminating, and illustrated, from a wide observation and a ready fancy, with uniform judgment and taste. The long chapter entitled Leaves from the Diary of a Recluse, in The Gift for MDCCCXLV, is characteristic of her manner, while for a brief period it admits us to the contemplation of her life.

A collection of the Poems of Mrs. Botta, with engravings after original designs by her friends Durand, Huntington,Cheney, Darley, Brown, Cushman, Rossiter, Rothermel, and Winner, appeared in 1848. It is a beautiful book of art, and so demonstrative of her po etical abilities that it will secure her a posi tion she has not before occupied as an author

THE IDEAL.

"La vie est un sommeil l'amour en est la reve."

A SAD, sweet dream! It fell upon my soul When song and thought first woke their echoes Swaying my spirit to its wild control, [there,

And with the shadow of a fond despair, Darkening the fountain of my young life's stream. It haunts me still, and yet I know 'tis but a dream. Whence art thou, shadowy presence, that canst hide From my charmed sight the glorious things of A mirage o'er life's desert dost thou glide? [earth? Or with those glimmerings of a former birth, A "trailing cloud of glory," hast thou come [home? From some bright world afar, our unremembered I know thou dwell'st not in this dull, cold Real, I know thy home is in some brighter sphere; I know I shall not meet thee, my Ideal,

In the dark wanderings that await me here: Why comes thy gentle image then, to me, Wasting my night of life in one long dream of thee? The city's peopled solitude, the glare

Of festal halls, moonlight, and music's tone, All breathe the sad refrain-thou are not there! And even with Nature I am still alone: With joy I see her summer bloom depart; I love drear winter's reign—'t is winter in my heart. And if I sigh upon my brow to see

The deep'ning shadow of Time's restless wing, "Tis for the youth I might not give to thee, The vanished brightness of my first sweet spring; That I might give thee not the joyous form Unworn by tears and cares, unblighted by the storm. And when the hearts I should be proud to win, Breathe, in those tones that woman holds so dear, Words of impassioned homage unto mine,

Coldly and harsh they fall upon my ear; And as I listen to the fervent vow, My weary heart replies, "Alas! it is not thou." And when the thoughts within my spirit glow, That would outpour themselves in words of fire, If some kind influence bade the music flow, Like that which woke the notes of Memnon's lyre, Thou, sunlight of my life, wak'st not the lay, And song within my heart, unuttered, dies away. Depart, oh shadow! fatal dream, depart!

Go! I conjure thee leave me this poor life, And I will meet with firm, heroic heart,

Its threat'ning storms and its tumultuous strife, And with the poet-seer will see thee stand

My "house of life" henceforth is desolate :
But the dark aspect my firm heart surveys,
Nor faints nor falters even for thy sake: [break!
"Tis calm and nerved and strong: no, no, it shall not
For I am of that mood that will defy

That does not cower before the gathering storm; That face to face will meet its destiny,

And undismayed confront its darkest form.
Wild energies awaken in this strife,
This conflict of the soul with the grim phantom Lise.
But ah! if thou hadst loved me—had I been
All to thy dreams that to mine own thou art-
Had those dark eyes beamed eloquent on mine,
Pressed for one moment to that noble heart
In the full consciousness of faith unspoken,
Life could have given no more—then had my proud
heart broken!

The Alpine glacier from its height may mock
The clouds and lightnings of the winter sky,
And from the tempest and the thunder's shock
Gather new strength to lift its summit high;
But kissed by sunbeams of the summer day,
It bows its icy crest and weeps itself away.
Thou know'st the fable of the Grecian maid
Wooed by the veiled immortal from the skies,
How in his full perfections, once she prayed,

That he would stand before her longing eyes, And how that brightness, too intense to bless, [cess. Consumed her o'erwrought heart with its divine exTo me there is a meaning in the tale.

I have not prayed to meet thee: I can brock That thou shouldst wear to me that icy veil; I can give back thy cold and careless look: Yet shrined within my heart, still thou shalt seem What there thou ever wert, a beautiful, bright dream!

THE IMAGE BROKEN.

'Twas but a dream, a fond and foolish dream-
The calenture of a delirious brain,
Whose fever-thirst creates the rushing stream.
Now to the actual I awake again;
The vision, to my gaze one moment granted,
Fades in its light away and leaves me disenchanted

The image that my glowing fancy wrought,
Now to the dust with ruthless hand I cast,
Thus I renounce the worship that I sought,
Of my own idol the iconoclast.
The echo of "Eureka! I have found!"

To welcome my approach to thine own spirit-land. Falls back upon my heart a vain and empty sound

THE IDEAL FOUND.

I've met thec, whom I dared not hope to meet,
Save in th' enchanted land of my day dreams:
Yes, in this common world, this waking state,
Thy living presence on my vision beams-
Life's dream embodied in reality!
And in thine eyes I read indifference to me!
Yes, in those star-like eyes I read my fate,
My horoscope is written in their gaze:

Oh, disembodied being of my mind,

So wildly loved, so fervently adored! In whom all high and glorious gifts I shrined, And my heart's incense on the altar pouredNow do I know that, clad in mortal guise, Ne'er on this earth wilt thou upon my vision rise That only in the vague, cold realm of Thought Shall I meet thee whom here I seek in vain And like Egyptian Isis, when she sought The scattered fragments of Osiris slain.

Now do I know that henceforth I shall find
But fragments of thy soul within earth's clay en-
shrined.

Thou whom I have not seen and shall not see
Till the sad drama of this life be o'er!
Yet do I not renounce my faith in thee:
Thon still art mine-I thine for evermore;
And this belief shall be the funeral pyre
Of all less noble love, of all less high desire.
Here, like the Hindoo widow, I will bring

Hope, youth, and all that woman prizes most-
The glow of summer and the bloom of spring,
And on thine altar lay the holocaust:
And, in my faith exulting, I will see
The sacrifice consume I consecrate to thee.

To Love's sweet tones my heart shall never thrill;
Nor, as the tardy years their circles roll,
Shall they the ardor of its pulses chi'l.
Thus will I live in widowhood of soul,
Until, at last, my lingering exile o'er,

Upon some lovelier star, too biest, we meet once more.
Oh, tell me not that now indeed dream;

That these aspirings mocked at last will be! G'eams of a higher life to me they seemA sacred pledge of immortality. Tell not the yearning heart it shall not find: [kind! O Love, thou art too strong! O God, thou art too

THE BATTLE OF LIFE.

THERE are countless fields the green earth o'er
Where the verdant turf has been dyed with gore;
Where hostile ranks, in their grim array,
With the battle's smoke have obscured the day;
Where hate was stamped on each rigid face,
As foe met foe in the death embrace;
Where the groans of the wounded and dying rose,
Till the heart of the listener with horror froze,
And the wide expanse of the crimsoned plain
Was piled with its heaps of uncounted slain:
But a fiercer combat, a deadlier strife,
Is that which is waged in the battle of life.
The hero that wars on the tented field,
With his shining sword and his burnished shield,
Goes not alone with his faithful brand;
Friends and comrades around him stand,
The trumpets sound and the war-steeds neigh
To join in the shock of the coming fray-
And he flies to the onset, he charges the foe,
Where the bayonets gleam and the red tides flow;
And he bears his part in the conflict dire
With an arm all nerve and a heart a'l fire.
What though he fall at the battle's close,
In the flush of the victory won he goes,
With martial music and waving plume,
From a field of fame to a laurelled tomb.
But the hero who wars in the battle of life,
Must stand alone in the fearful strife;
Alone in his weakness or strength must go,
Hero or craven, to meet the foe:
He may not fly on that fated field-

He must win or lose, he must conquer or yield.
Warrior, who comest to this battle now

With a careless step and a thoughtless brow,
As if the field were already won-
Pause and gird all thine armor on;
Myriads have come to this battle ground
With a valiant arm and a name renowned,
And have fallen vanquished to rise no more,
Ere the sun was set or the day half o'er.
Dost thou bring with thee hither a dauntless will
An ardent soul that no blast can chill?
Thy shield of Faith hast thou tried and proved-
Canst thou say to the mountain, "Be thou moved?"
In thy hand does the sword of Truth flame bright?
Is thy banner emblazoned, "For God and the right?"
In the might of prayer dost thou strive and plead! ·
Never had warrior greater need!
Unseen foes in thy pathway hide;
Thou art encompassed on every side.
There Pleasure waits with her siren train,
Her poison flowers and her hidden chain;
Hope with her Dead-sea fruits is there;
Sin is spreading her gilded snare ;
Flattery counts with her hollow smiles,
Passion with silvery tone beguiles;

Love and Friendship their charmed spells weave:
Trust not too deeply-they may deceive!
Disease with her ruthless hand would smite,
And Care spread o'er thee a wiring blight;
Hate and Envy with visage black,
And the serpent Slander, are on thy track.
Guilt and Falsehood, Remorse and Pride,
Doubt and Despair, in thy pathway glide;
Haggard Want in her demon joy
Waits to degrade thee and then destroy;
Palsied Age in the distance lies,

And watches his victim with rayless eyes;
And Death the insatiate is hovering near,
To snatch from thy grasp all thou holdest dear.
No skill may avail and no ambush hide:
In the open field must the champion bide,
And face to face and hand to hand
Alone in his valor confront that band.

In war with these phantoms that gird him round,
No limbs dissevered may strew the ground;
No blood may flow, and no mortal ear
The groans of the wounded heart may hear,
As it struggles and writhes in their dread control,
As the iron enters the riven soul:
But the youthful form grows wasted and weak,
And sunken and wan is the rounded cheek;
The brow is furrowed, but not with years;
The eye is dimmed with its secret tears,
And streaked with white is the raven hair-
These are the tokens of conflict there.

The battle is over: the hero goes, Scarred and worn, to his last repose, He has won the day, he has conquered Doom, He has sunk unknown to his nameless tomb; For the victor's glory no voices plead; Fame has no echo and earth no meed; But the guardian angels are hovering near: They have watched unseen o'er the conflict here, And they bear him now on their wings away To a realm of peace, to a cloudless day. Ended now is the earthly strife,

And his brow is crowned with the crown of life!

THOUGHTS IN A LIBRARY.

SPEAK low-tread softly through these halls;
Here Genius lives enshrined;
Here reign, in silent majesty,
The monarchs of the mind.
A mighty spirit-host they come,
From every age and clime;
Above the buried wrecks of years,
They breast the tide of Time.
And in their presence-chamber here
They hold their regal state,
And round them throng a noble train,

The gifted and the great.

Oh, child of Earth! when round thy path
The storms of life arise,

And when thy brothers pass thee by
With stern, unloving eyes-
Here shall the poets chant for thee
Their sweetest, loftiest lays;
And prophets wait to guide thy steps
In wisdom's pleasant ways.

Come, with these God-anointed kings
Be thou companion here;

And in the mighty realin of mind
Thou shalt go forth a peer!

HAGAR.

UNTRODDEN, drear, and lone,
Stretched many a league away,
Beneath a burning, noonday sun,
The Syrian desert lay.

The scorching rays that beat

Upon that herbless plain,

The dazzling sands, with fiercer heat, Reflected back again.

O'er that dry ocean strayed

No wandering breath of air,

No palm-trees cast their cooling shade, No water murmured there.

And thither, bowed with shame,

Spurned from her master's side, The dark-browed child of Egypt came Her wo and shame to hide. Drooping and travel-worn,

The boy upon her hung,

Who from his father's tent that morn
Like a gazelle had sprung.
His ebbing breath failed fast,

Glazed was his flashing eye;
And in that fearful, desert waste,
She laid him down to die.

But when, in wild despair,

She left him to his lot,

A voice that filled that breathless air
Said, "Hagar, fear thou not."
Then o'er the hot sands flowed
A cooling, crystal stream,
And angels left their high abode
And ministered to them.

Oft, when drear wastes surround

My faltering footsteps here,

I've thought I, too, heard that blest sound Of "Wanderer, do not fear."

And then, to light my path

On through the evil land,

Have the twin angels, Hope and Faith, Walked with me, hand to hand.

TO THE MEMORY OF CHANNING.

"The prophets, do they live for ever?"- Zech. i. 5. THOSE spirits God ordained,

To stand the watchmen on the outer wall, Upon whose souls the beams of truth first fall, They who reveal the ideal, the unattained, And to their age, in stirring tones and high, Speak out for God, truth, man, and liberty— Such prophets, do they die?

When dust to dust returns,

And the freed spirit seeks again its God-
To those with whom the blessed ones have trod,

Are they then lost? No! still their spirit burns
And quickens in the race; the life they give,
Humanity receives, and they survive
While hope and virtue live.

The landmarks of their age,

High-priests, kings of the realm of mind, are they A realm unbounded as posterity;

The hopeful future is their heritage; Their words of truth, of love, and faith sublime, To a dark world of doubt, despair, and crime, Reecho through all time.

Such kindling words are thine,

Thou, o'er whose tomb the requiem soundeth still,
Thou from whose lips the silvery tones yet thrill
In many a bosom, waking life divine;
And since thy Master to the world gave token
That for Love's faith the creed of Fear was broken,
None higher have been spoken.

Thy reverent eye could see,

Though sinful, weak, and wedded to the clod,
The angel-soul still as the child of God,

Heir of his love, born to high destiny:
Not for thy country, creed, or sect, speakest thou,
But him who bears God's image on his brow,
Thy brother, high or low.

Great teachers formed thy youth,
As thou didst stand upon thy native shore,
In the calm sunshine, in the ocean's roar;

Nature and God spoke with thee, and the truth
That o'er thy spirit then in radiance streamed,
And in thy life so calmly, brightly beamed,
Shall still shine on undimmed.

Ages agone, like thee

The famed Greek with kindling aspect stood,
And blent his eloquence with wind and flood,
By the blue waters of the gean sea;
But he heard not their everlasting hymn:
His lofty soul with Error's cloud was dim,

And thy great teachers spake not unto him.

A THOUGHT BY THE SEASHORE.

BURY me by the sea.

When on my heart the hand of Death is prest,
If the soul lingereth ere she join the blest,
And haunts awhile her clay,

Then mid the forest shades I would not lie,

For the green leaves like me would droop and die.

Nor mid the homes of men,

The haunts of busy life, would I be laid:
There ever was I lone, and my vexed shade
Would sleep unquiet then;

The surging tide of life might overwhelm
The shadowy boundaries of the silent realm.

No sculptured marble pile

To bear my name be reared upon my breast-
Beneath its weight my free soul would not rest;
But let the blue sky smile,

The changeless stars look lovingly on me,
And let me sleep beside this sounding sea:
This ever-beating heart

Of the great Universe! here would the soul
Plume her soiled pinions for the final goal,
Ere she should thence depart

Here would she fit her for the high abode-
Here by the sea, she would be nearer God.
I feel his presence now:

Thou mightiest of his vassals, as I stand
And watch beside thee on the sparkling sand,
Thy crested billows bow;

And as thy solemn chant swells through the air,
My spirit, awed, joins in thy ceaseless prayer.
Life's fitful fever o'er,

Here then would I repose, majestic sea;
E'en now faint glimpses of eternity

Come o'er me on thy shore:

My thoughts from thee to highest themes are given, As thy deep distant blue is lost in Heaven.

THE DUMB CREATION.

DEAL kindly with those speechless ones,
That throng our gladsome earth;
Say not the bounteous gift of life

Alone is nothing worth.

What though with mournful memories
They sigh not for the past?
What though their ever joyous Now
No future overcast ?
No aspirations fill their breast

With longings undefined;

They live, they love, and they are blest,
For what they seek they find.
They see no mystery in the stars,
No wonder in the plain,
And Life's enigma wakes in them
No questions dark and vain.
To them earth is a final home,
A bright and blest abode;
Their lives unconsciously flow on
In harmony with God.

To this fair world our human hearts
Their hopes and longings bring,

And o'er its beauty and its bloom
Their own dark shadows fling.
Between the future and the past
In wild unrest we stand,
And ever as our feet advance,

Retreats the promised land.

And though Love, Fame, and Wealth and Power,
Bind in their gilded band,
We pine to grasp the unattained—

The something still beyond.
And, beating on their prison bars,

Our spirits ask more room,
And with unanswered questionings,
They pierce beyond the tomb.
Then say thou not, oh, doubtful heart!
There is no life to come:

That in some tearless, cloudless land,
Thou shalt not find thy home.

THE WOUNDED VULTURE.

A KINGLY vulture sat alone,
Lord of the ruin round,
Where Egypt's ancient monuments
Upon the desert frowned.
A hunter's eager eye had marked
The form of that proud bird,
And through the voiceless solitude
His ringing shot was heard.
It rent that vulture's plumed breast,
Aimed with unerring hand,

And his life-blood gushed warm and red
Upon the yellow sand.

No struggle marked the deadly wound,
He gave no piercing cry,

But calmly spread his giant wings,
And sought the upper sky.
In vain with swift pursuing shot
The hunter seeks his prey,
Circling and circling upward still
On his majestic way.
Up to the blue empyrean

He wings his steady flight,
Till his receding form is lost
In the full flood of light.

Oh, wounded heart! oh, suffering soul!
Sit not with folded wing,
Where broken dreams and ruined hopes
Their mournful shadows fling.
Outspread thy pinions like that bird,

Take thou the path sublime,
Beyong the flying shafts of Fate,

Beyond the wounds of Time.

Mount upward! brave the clouds and storms Above life's desert plain

There is a calmer, purer air,

A heaven thou, too, may'st gain.
And as that dim, ascending form
Was lost in day's broad light,
So shall thine earthly sorrrows fade,
Lost in the Infinite.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »