Hemans Miscellaneous Poetry 4/The Forsaken Hearth

by Felicia Hemans

Original source: The Monthly Magazine, Volume 6, 1828 (not at present accessible);
Taken from The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science, 1828, Pages 674-675.

From the Monthly Magazine.

THE FORSAKEN HEARTH.

"And still the green is bright with flowers;
And dancing through the sunny hours,
Like blossoms from enchanted bowers
    On a sudden wafted by,
Obedient to the changeful air,
And proudly feeling they are fair,
    Glide bird and butterfly:
But where is the tiny hunter-rout,
That revelled on with dance and shout,
    Against their airy prey?"–Wilson.

The Hearth, the Hearth is desolate—the fire is quenched and gone,
That into happy children's eyes once brightly laughing shone;
The place where mirth and music met is hush'd through day and night:
Oh! for one kind, one sunny face, of all that here made light!

But scattered are those pleasant smiles afar by mount and shore,
Like gleaming waters from one spring dispersed to meet no more;
Those kindred eyes reflect not now each other's grief or mirth,
Unbound is that sweet wreath of home—alas! the lonely Hearth!

The voices that have mingled here now speak another tongue,
Or breathe, perchance, to alien ears the songs their mother sung;
Sad, strangely sad, in stranger lands, must sound each household tone—
The Hearth, the Hearth is desolate—the bright fire quenched and gone!

But are they speaking, singing yet, as in their days of glee?
Those voices, are they lovely still? still sweet on land or sea?
Oh! some are hushed, and some are changed—and never shall one strain
Blend their fraternal cadences triumphantly again!

And of the hearts that here were linked by long remembered years,
Alas! the brother knows not now where fall the sister's tears!
One haply revels at the feast, while one may droop alone;
For broken is the household chain—the bright fire quenched and gone!

Not so!—'tis not a broken chain—thy memory binds them still,
Thou holy Hearth of other days, though silent now and chill!
The smiles, the tears, the rites beheld by thine attesting stone,
Have yet a living power to mark thy children for thine own.

The father's voice—the mother's prayer—though called from earth away—
With music rising from the dead, their spirits yet shall sway;
And by the past, and by the grave, the parted yet are one,
Though the loved Hearth be desolate, the bright fire quenched and gone.
F. H.

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