SONG. DEDICATED TO FANNY. Oh! say not that my heart forgets, Though silent years have fled, Since thou, my first and early love, Wert numbered with the dead. My soul has kept its vigils long, One yearning thought of other days, To night the stars are looking down Upon the summer sea, And I am thinking of the time I wandered, love, with thee. Oh! sacred past of buried hopes, Your mournful memories sweep, In tender echoes through my soul, And lone and sad I weep. MISS ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR. ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR, the daughter of Barry Cornwall, of whom as yet the world knows so little, sends us a memorial of her life in a volume of poems, so exquisitely tender, so filled with beautiful thoughts, that it is a difficult task to select one having a pre-eminence over another. Like her father, she possessed an easy flow of verse. But under the apparent unconsciousness of critical barriers and rules of diction, there is a flowery grace and a captivating ease that charms and fascinates the reader; her periods are so musical, her imagery so fine. But transcending all this, her sublimity of faith, her dependence on the Great Father is so apparent that we seat ourselves reverently at her young feet, and yield to the inspiration which falls from her lips. A few extracts from "The Parting" tells her story (of a deceived but not broken heart) so truthfully that it seems like a key unlocking the innermost recesses of her soul: "Without one bitter feeling let us part; And for the years in which your love has shed A radiance like a glory round my head, I thank you, yes, I thank you from my heart. "I thank you, and no grief is in these tears; I thank you not in bitterness but truth, For the fair vision that adorned my youth And glorified so many happy years. "I thank you that your hand dashed down the shrine Wherein my idol worship I had paid, Else had I never known a soul was made To serve and worship only the Divine. "I thank you for a terrible awaking, And if reproach seemed hidden in my pain, And sorrow seemed to cry on your disdain, Know that my blessing lay in your forsaking, "Farewell forever! now in peace we part, And should an idle vision of my tears, Arise before your soul in after years, Remember that I thank you from my heart." As sentiment is the characteristic of Proctor, so it is remarkably developed in his daughter, with this great difference his portraiture seems almost a deification of a human passion; hers are always held in relationship to the Great Father. which was her greatest joy becomes her That |
