110
PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.
| The actioned turmoil of a bosom rending, |
| Where pity, love, and honor, are contending; |
| ****** |
| Thy varied accents, rapid, fitful, slow, |
| Loud rage, and fear’s snatch’d whisper, quick and low, |
| The burst of stifled love, the wail of grief, |
| And tones of high command, full, solemn, brief; |
| The change of voice and emphasis that threw |
| Light on obscurity, and brought to view |
| Distinctions nice, when grave or comic mood, |
| Or mingled humors, terse and new, elude |
| Common perception, as earth’s smallest things |
| To size and form the vesting hoar-frost brings. |
| ******* |
| ***Thy light**** |
| *from the mental world can never fade, |
| Till all, who’ve seen thee, in the grave are laid. |
| Thy graceful form still moves in nightly dreams |
| And what thou wert to the rapt sleeper seems, |
| While feverish fancy oft doth fondly trace |
| Within her curtained couch thy wondrous face; |
| Yea, and to many a wight, bereft and lone, |
| In musing hours, though all to thee unknown, |
| Soothing his early course of good and ill, |
| With all thy potent charm thou actest still. |
Perhaps the effect produced by Mrs. Siddons is still more vividly shown in the character of Jane de Montfort, which seems modelled from her. We have no such lotus cup to drink. Mademoiselle Rachel indeed seems to possess as much electric force as Mrs. Siddons, but not the same imposing individuality. The Kembles and Talma were cast in the royal mint to commemorate the victories of genius. That Mrs. Siddons even added somewhat of congenial glory to Shakspeare’s own conceptions, those who compare the engravings of her in Lady Macbeth and Catherine of Arragon, with the picture drawn in their own minds from acquaintance with these beings in the original, cannot doubt; the sun is reflected with new glory in the majestic river.
