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Within the silent shade

Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough

That drops its blossoms o’er me now. ­

‘Twas here at eve we used to rove;

‘Twas here I breathed my whispered vows,

And sealed them on thy lips, my love,

Beneath the apple-boughs.

Our hearts had melted into one,

But Death undid what Love had done.

Alas! too deep a weight of thought

Had fill’d thy heart in youth’s sweet hour;

It seem ‘d with love and bliss o’erfraught;

As fleeting passion-flower

Unfolding ‘neath a southern sky,

To blossom soon and soon to die.

Yet in these calm and blooming bowers,

I seem to see thee still,

Thy breath seems floating o’er the flowers,

Thy whisper on the hill;

The clear faint star-light and the sea

Are whispering to my heart of thee.

No more thy smiles my heart rejoice —

Yet still I start to meet thine eye,

And call upon the low sweet voice

That gives me no reply —

And list within my silent door

For the light feet that come no more.

In a critical mood I would speak of these stanzas thus: — The subject has nothing of originality: — A widower muses by the grave of his wife. Here then is a great demerit; for originality of theme, if not absolutely first sought, should be sought among the first. Nothing is more clear than this proposition — although denied by the chlorine critics (the grass-green). The desire of the new is an element of the soul. The most exquisite pleasures grow dull in repetition. A strain of music enchants. Heard a second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, it does not displease. We hear it a twentieth, and ask ourselves why we admired. At the fiftieth it induces ennui — at the hundredth, disgust.

Mrs. Welby’s theme is, therefore, radically faulty so far as originality is concerned; — but of common themes, it is one of the very best among the class passionate. True passion is prosaic — homely. Any strong mental emotion stimulates all the mental faculties; thus grief the imagination: — but in proportion as the effect is strengthened, the cause surceases. The excited fancy triumphs — the grief is subdued — chastened — is no longer grief. In this mood we are poetic, and it is clear that a poem now written will be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion. A passionate poem ­is a contradiction in terms. When I say, then, that Mrs. Welby’s stanzas are good among the class passionate (using the term commonly and falsely applied), I mean that her tone is properly subdued, and is not so much the tone of passion, as of a gentle and melancholy regret, interwoven with a pleasant sense of the natural loveliness surrounding the lost in the tomb, and a memory of her human beauty while alive. — Elegiac poems should either assume this character, or dwell purely on the beauty (moral or physical) of the departed — or, better still, utter the notes of triumph. I have endeavored to carry out this latter idea in some verses which I have called “Lenore.”

Those who object to the proposition — that poetry and passion are discordant — would cite Mrs. Welby’s poem as an instance of a passionate one. It is precisely similar to the hundred others which have been cited for like purpose. But it is not passionate; and for this reason (with others having regard to her fine genius) it is poetical. The critics upon this topic display an amusing ignoratio elenchi.

Dismissing originality and tone, I pass to the general handling, than which nothing could be more pure, more natural, or more judicious. The perfect keeping of the various points is admirable — and the result is entire unity of impression, or effect. The time, a moonlight night; the locality of the grave; the passing thither from the cottage, and the conclusion of the theme with the return to “the silent door;” the babe left, meanwhile, “to its dreams;” the “white rose and forget-me-not” upon the breast of the entombed; the “birds and streams, with liquid lull, that make the stillness beautiful;” the birds whose songs “thrill the light leaves with melody;” — all these are appropriate and lovely conceptions: — only quite unoriginal; —