From Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans by L.E.L:

And yet thy song is sorrowful
Its beauty is not bloom;
The hopes of which it breathes are hopes
That look beyond the tomb.
Thy song is sorrowful as winds
That wander o'er the plain,
And ask for summer's vanished flowers,
And ask for them in vain. (41-47)

The hopes of a bloom-less plant are gloomy at best. What hope lies beyond the tomb when ones recourse for reproduction is so stunted? Like many by Hemans herself, this poem, though rife with natural imagery, renders nature impotent. A far cry from the attention placed by many first and even second-generation romantics (I think of her as of the third) on the fertility and mystery of the natural world, summer's flowers are here vanished.

Hemans' song is called by L.E.L.: 'sorrowful as the winds that wander o'er the plain, and ask for summer's vanished flowers, and ask for them in vain' (44-47). Indeed, the romantic arsenal of natural imagery seems exhausted; the plants that bore the creative blooms exhibited by the earlier generations of romantics have stopped bearing fruit. L.E.L. and the peer whose death she mourns speak of the natural world through a montage of clichés, and with no effort exhibited toward the creation or discovery of new things. The wind wanders, and in wandering, does not find the flowers it presumes vanished. Of course, it is only wandering. There is none of the 'hauntinglike a passion' nor 'the joy of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused.' In fact, none of Wordsworth's searching after truth, however inept it may have been at times, is apparent here. The focus instead is on the losses accrued since the last flowered season. Moreover, the vanished flowers are asked for, requested. There seems no willingness to work with what's given: None of Shelley's acceptance of the cold winter which spring will inevitably replace, none of Wordsworth's realization of the wholeness to which the 'still, sad music of humanity' is an essential part.

The poem is sad, and thereby carries some emotional weight and power. The reader cannot help but be drawn into this, but we do so with the hope and expectation that some of the weight will be lifted by the end. For a poem that begins with speaking of bringing flowers to honor the dead poetess, we expect some consolation from this sort of natural beauty by the time we are taken through the painful ruminations on Hemans' life. Maybe we're too spoiled by Wordsworth's attempts to make sense of his troubling feelings. Instead, the poem is choked off, the poetess unable to finish for the tears in her eyes. We are given no resolution, left with an open wound.

To L.E.L.'s credit, this is effective for communicating the sentiments exhibited by Hemans. Nonetheless, as the reader I find this capitulation, this refusal to come to terms with life's grief, frustrating. The still, sad music of humanity has been exchanged for the sorrowful song.

Matt Smaus