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

He then tells how the oppressor's envious eye "had been upon his heritage," and to-morrow eve might find him in chains. The blood leaves her cheek, and she leans back on the linden stem, but only for a moment; the free Alpine spirit wakes within her —

It is ever thus with all her women, – gentle, courageous, full of self-devotion, and, alas! of sorrow and suffering. This is her ideal of woman, from which she rarely departs – a heart, overflowing with tenderest affection – ill-requited – yet refusing to receive any earthly boon as a substitute for the returned affection it seeks. Fame is no compensation —

Genius when she sings to Love is made to say —

It is not often we find the superstitions of dark and ignorant ages dealt with in so gentle and agreeable a manner as by Mrs Hemans. She seizes, in common with others, the poetic aspect these present, but diffuses over them, at the same time, a refinement of sentiment gathered entirely from her own feelings. A subject which from another pencil would have been disagreeable and offensive to us, is made by her graceful touches to win upon our imagination. Witness the poem called The Wood Walk and Hymn ; we will quote the commencement of it.

An eminent critic in the Edinburgh Review has spoken of the neatness and perfect finish which characterise female writers in general, and Mrs Hemans in particular. Now, these qualities imply a certain terseness and concentration of style, which is no more a peculiarity of all authoresses than of all authors, and which we should not pronounce to be peculiarly characteristic of Mrs Hemans' poetry. To us it often appears wanting in this very conciseness; we occasionally wish that some lines and verses were excluded – not because they are faulty in themselves, but because they weaken the effect, and detract from the vigour of the whole: we wish the verses, in short, were more closely packed together, so that the commencement and the close, which are generally both good, could be brought a little nearer to each other. It is not so much a redundancy of expression, as of images and illustrations, that we have sometimes to complain of in Mrs Hemans. She uses two of these where one would not only suffice, but do the work much better. There is a very pleasing little poem, called The Wandering Wind : we will quote – first, because it is thus pleasing; and, secondly, because we think it would have been rendered still more so had there been somewhat more of concentration and terseness in the style. The lines which we have printed in italics, and which contain the pith and marrow of the whole, would then have struck upon the ear with more distinctness and prominence.

The verses beginning "I dream of all things free" might also be cited as an instance of this tendency to over-amplify – a tendency which seems the result of a great affluence of poetical imagery. This would be a more powerful poem merely by being made shorter. We wait too long, and the imagination roves too far, before we arrive at the concluding lines, which contain all the point and significance of the piece: —

Of the measures and the melody of a lyrical poet something is expected to be said. But what we feel we have chiefly to thank Mrs Hemans for here is, that, in the search after novelty and variety of metre, she has made so few experiments upon our ear, and that she has not disdained to write with correctness and regularity. She has not apparently laboured after novelties of this kind, but has adopted that verse into which her thoughts spontaneously ran. An author who does this is not very likely to select a rhythm, or measure, which is incongruous with the subject-matter of his poem; nor, do we think, could many instances of such a fault be detected in Mrs Hemans.