Felicia Hemans in The Garland 1839/Mrs. Hemans
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RHYLLON
MRS. HEMANS.
This eminent female poetic writer was born in Duke Street, Liverpool, 25th September, 1794. Her maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne. Her father was a native of Ireland; her mother was a German lady, a Miss Wagner, but descended from a Venetian family. To these circumstances Mrs. Hemans would often playfully allude as accounting for the strong tinge of romance and poetry which pervaded her character from her earliest years. Another circumstance which undoubtedly operated strongly in the development of these traits, was the removal of her family, when she was only five years of age, to Denbighshire, in North Wales. That land of wild mountain scenery and ancient minstrelsy was the fitting place to impart sublimity to her youthful fancies, and elevate her feelings with the glow of patriotism and devotion.
In the year 1812, at the early age of seventeen, she was married to Capt. Hemans, of the Fourth Regiment, and settled in the neighborhood of St. Asaphs—but her married life was not happy. This domestic infelicity was to her a most painful subject, one to which she could bear no allusion; and the tenderness and forbearance with which she, while living, treated the faults of her husband, render it the duty of those who love her memory to forbear, as far as possible, from adverting to scenes and sufferings that so tried and tortured her sensitive heart. Suffice it to say, that her husband left her and his five young sons to struggle as they might with sorrow and the cold, selfish world. Mrs. Hemans continued to reside at "Rhyllon, near St. Asaphs," with her mother. This was her most favorite residence, where she wrote many of her best poems.
A small woodland dingle near Rhyllon was her favorite retreat. Here she would spend long summer mornings to read and project and compose, while her children played about her. "Whenever one of us brought her a flower," writes one of them, "she was sure to introduce it into her next poem;"
After the death of her mother, Mrs. Hemans removed to Wavertree, near Liverpool, where she resided about three years, and then again removed to Dublin, where the expense of educating her sons would, she found, be more within her means. But sorrow, care, and the "wasting task and lone " of her minstrel vocation, had brought on a deep disease, which the sympathy of friends (and who that ever read the outpourings of her soul was not her friend?) could not alleviate or remove. She closed her life May 30th, 1835, "and died as stars go down," her genius bright and expanding to the last, and trust in her Redeemer calming every fear, and cheering the darkness of the tomb with the holy light of faith and love. She has gone from us, but the light of her genius will never be dimmed, nor the song of her harp for gotten. She has thrilled those chords of the human soul which, while the race of man continues, cannot but respond to her sentiments. Love, in all its purest, holiest, sweetest emotions of household affections, patriotism, and devotion, was the mighty spell by which she wrought, and till love shall cease from earth her name can never die.