Part 2 — SCENES AND HYMNS OF LIFE,

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ESQ.,

IN TOKEN OF DEEP RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER, AND FERVENT GRATITUDE FOR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL BENEFIT DERIVED FROM REVERENTIAL COMMUNION WITH THE SPIRIT OF HIS POETRY, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY FELICIA HEMANS.[420]

Preface.—I trust I shall not be accused of presumption for the endeavour which I have here made to enlarge, in some degree, the sphere of religious poetry, by associating with its themes more of the emotions, the affections, and even the purer imaginative enjoyments of daily life, than may have been hitherto admitted within the hallowed circle.

It has been my wish to portray the religious spirit, not alone in its meditative joys and solitary aspirations, (the poetic embodying of which seems to require from the reader a state of mind already separated and exalted,) but likewise in those active influences upon human life, so often called into victorious energy by trial and conflict, though too often also, like the upward-striving flame of a mountain watch-fire, borne down by tempest-showers, or swayed by the current of opposing winds.

I have sought to represent that spirit as penetrating the gloom of the prison and the deathbed, bearing “healing on its wings” to the agony of parting love—strengthening the heart of the wayfarer for “perils in the wilderness”—gladdening the domestic walk through field and woodland—and springing to life in the soul of childhood, along with its earliest rejoicing perceptions of natural beauty.

Circumstances not altogether under my own control have, for the present, interfered to prevent the fuller development of a plan which I yet hope more worthily to mature; and I lay this little volume before the public with that deep sense of deficiency which cannot be more impressively taught to human powers than by their reverential application to things divine.—Felicia Hemans.

1834.

THE ENGLISH MARTYRS;

A SCENE OF THE DAYS OF QUEEN MARY.