Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848

Not long after this first publication of her poems, the next great event of her life took place – her introduction to Captain Hemans. "The young poetess was then only fifteen, in the full glow of that radiant beauty which was destined to fade so early. The mantling bloom of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets, of a rich golden brown; and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes gave a changeful play to her countenance, which would have made it impossible for any painter to do justice to it." No wonder that so fair a being should excite the admiration of a gallant captain. And the love on both sides was ardent and sincere: it supported the absence of three years; for Captain Hemans, soon after their introduction, was called upon to embark with his regiment for Spain. On his return, in 1812, they were married. Of their domestic happiness, or unhappiness, nothing is said; but six years after, in 1818, we are simply told that the Captain went to Rome – and never returned. The separated pair never met again.

"To dwell on this subject," says her biographer, "would be unnecessarily painful; yet it must be stated, that nothing like a permanent separation was contemplated at the time, nor did it ever amount to more than a tacit conventional arrangement, which offered no obstacle to the frequent interchange of correspondence, nor to a constant reference to their father in all things relating to the disposal of her boys. But years rolled on – seventeen years of absence, and consequently alienation; and from this time to the hour of her death, Mrs Hemans and her husband never met again."

We are not in general anxious to pry into the domestic afflictions of any pair whom wedlock has mismatched. If we feel a little curiosity to know more than the sister has told us, in this instance, it is merely from a wish to learn how far the poetic temperament of Mrs Hemans could be assigned as the real cause of her matrimonial unhappiness. Did the Captain grow weary of the society of one whose feelings were pitched in too high a key for him to sympathise with? – was there too much of poetry mingled with the daily food of life?

Did he yearn for something more homely, as she, on her side, yearned for something more elevated? Had he been made to feel that he did not approach the ideal of her imagination, and that the admiration she once had given was withdrawn? Or should we say of her, in lines of her own: —

Of this perhaps some future biographer may tell us. There are many passages in her poetry which show an intense longing for the sympathy of other minds; which show that, while her feelings were of a rare order for their refinement and elevation, she yet sought – what for such a one it was difficult to obtain – for the kindred sympathy of others. She could not worship her goddesses alone. This tendency of mind many of her verses indicate; and there is one sweet little poem where, if our fancy does not mislead us, she secretly reproves herself for having exacted too much in this respect from others: we do not say from any one in particular, for the verses bear reference to a brother, not a husband. Yet some personal reminiscence, or regret of this kind, might lead to the strain of thought so beautifully expressed in the following lines: —

We follow no further the events of her biography. We have here all that reflects a light upon the poems themselves. That Welsh life among the mountains – the little girl with her Shakspeare in the apple-tree – that beauty of fifteen, full of poetry and enthusiasm and love – marriage – disappointment – and the living afterwards, with her children round her, in a condition worse than widowhood; – here is all the comment that her biography affords on her sweet and melancholy verse.

And how vividly the verse reflects the life! How redolent of nature is her poetry! how true her pictures of mountain, and forest, and river, and sky! It requires that the reader should have been himself a long and accurate observer of rural scenes, to follow her imagination, and feel the truth of her rapid and unpretending descriptions. It is singular how, without the least apparent effort, all the persons she brings before us are immediately localised on the green earth – trees wave around them, flowers spring at their feet, as if this were quite natural and unavoidable. How sweet a part does the quiet charm of nature take in the piece called

There is something very touching in the simplicity of these pleasures, contrasted with what imagination immediately suggests of the career and the tastes of the prodigal.

One great spectacle in nature alone, seems strangely to have lost its fascination upon our poetess – she never kindled to the sea. She seemed to view it as the image only of desolation and of ruin; to have associated it only with tempests and wreck, and have seen in it only the harmless waste of troubled waters. More than once she adopts a scriptural phrase – "And there shall be no more sea," as an expression of singular joy and congratulation. We question whether a single reader of her poems has ever felt the force of the expression as she did. The sea, next to the sky, is the grandest and most beautiful thing given to the eyes of man. But, by some perverse association, she never saw it in its natural beauty and sublimity, but looked at it always as the emblem of ruthless and destroying power. In The Last Song of Sappho , it is singular how much more the dread sea, into which Sappho is about to fling herself, possesses her imagination than the moral tempest within of that hapless poetess: —