Hemans Miscellaneous Poetry 1/To Mr Edwards, The Harper of Conway
TO MR EDWARDS, THE HARPER OF CONWAY.
[Some of the happiest days the young poetess ever passed were during occasional visits to some friends at Conway, where the charms of the scenery, combining all that is most beautiful in wood, water, and ruin, are sufficient to inspire the most prosaic temperament with a certain degree of enthusiasm; and it may therefore well be supposed how fervently a soul constituted like hers would worship Nature at so fitting a shrine. With that happy versatility which was at all times a leading characteristic of her mind, she would now enter with child-like playfulness into the enjoyments of a mountain scramble, or a pic-nic water party, the gayest of the merry band, of whom some are now, like herself, laid low, some far away in foreign lands, some changed by sorrow, and all by time; and then, in graver mood, dream away hours of pensive contemplation amidst the gray ruins of that noblest of Welsh castles, standing, as it then did, in solitary grandeur, unapproached by bridge or causeway, flinging its broad shadow across the tributary waves which washed its regal walls. These lovely scenes never ceased to retain their hold over the imagination of her whose youthful muse had so often celebrated their praises. Her peculiar admiration of Mrs Joanna Baillie's play of Ethwald was always pleasingly associated with the recollection of her having first read it amidst the ruins of Conway Castle. At Conway, too, she first made acquaintance with the lively and graphic Chronicles of the chivalrous Froissart, whose inspiring pages never lost their place in her favour. Her own little poem, "The Ruin and its Flowers," which will be found amongst the earlier pieces in the present collection, was written on an excursion to the old fortress of Dyganwy, the remains of which are situated on a bold promontory near the entrance of the river Conway; and whose ivied walls, now fast mouldering into oblivion, once bore their part bravely in the defence of Wales; and are further endeared to the lovers of song and tradition as having echoed the complaints of the captive Elphin, and resounded to the harp of Taliesin. A scarcely degenerate representative of that gifted bard1[1] had, at the time now alluded to, his appropriate dwelling-place at Conway; but his strains have long been silenced, and there now remain few, indeed, on whom the Druidical mantle has fallen so worthily. In the days when his playing was heard by one so fitted to enjoy its originality and beauty,
"The minstrel was infirm and old;"
but his inspiration had not yet forsaken him; and the following lines (written in 1811) will give an idea of the magic power he still knew how to exercise over the feelings of his auditors.]
Minstrel! whose gifted hand can bring
Life, rapture, soul, from every string;
And wake, like bards of former time,
The spirit of the harp sublime;—
Oh! still prolong the varying strain!
Oh! touch th' enchanted chords again!
Thine is the charm, suspending care,
The heavenly swell, the dying close,
The cadence melting into air,
That lulls each passion to repose;
While transport, lost in silence near,
Breathes all her language in a tear.
Exult, O Cambria!—now no more
With sighs thy slaughter'd bards deplore:
What though Plinlimmon's misty brow
And Mona's woods be silent now,
Yet can thy Conway boast a strain
Unrivall'd in thy proudest reign.
For Genius, with divine control,
Wakes the bold chord neglected long,
And pours Expression's glowing soul
O'er the wild Harp, renown'd in song;
And Inspiration, hovering round,
Swells the full energies of sound.
Now Grandeur, pealing in the tone,
Could rouse the warrior's kindling fire,
And now, 'tis like the breeze's moan,
That murmurs o'er th' Eolion lyre:
As if some sylph, with viewless wing,
Were sighing o'er the magic string.
Long, long, fair Conway! boast the skill
That soothes, inspires, commands, at will!
And oh! while rapture hails the lay,
Far distant be the closing day,
When Genius, Taste, again shall weep,
And Cambria's Harp lie hush'd in sleep!
- ↑ 1 Mr Edwards, the Harper of Conway, as he was generally called, had been blind from his birth, and was endowed with that extraordinary musical genius by which persons suffering under such a visitation are not unfrequently indemnified. From the respectability of his circumstances, he was not called upon to exercise his talents with any view to remuneration. He played to delight himself and others; and the innocent complacency with which he enjoyed the ecstasies called forth by his skill, and the degree of appreciation with which he regarded himself, as in a manner consecrated, by being made the depositary of a direct gift from Heaven, were as far as possible removed from any of the common modifications of vanity and self-conceit.