Revolution and Romanticism

FELICIA HEMANS

The Domestic Affections 1812

Published in the year of Felicia Browne’s marriage to Captain Alfred Hemans, The Domestic Affections was her first appearance in print since the two precocious volumes published when she was fourteen. Hemans was to become the most successful woman poet of her period , outselling all her male contemporaries save Byron, and maintaining her popularity in both England and America until the 1914-18 war. The Domestic Affections establishes the basis of her future successes; already her poetry has characteristic integrity and sense of purpose.

£27.50 $48

Sweets of the wild! that breathe and bloom,
On this lone tow’r, this ivy’d wall
Lend to the gale a rich perfume,
And grace the ruin in its fall;
Tho’ doom’d, remote from careless eye,
To smile, to flourish, and to die,
In solitude sublime,
Oh! ever may the spring renew,
Your balmy scent and glowing hue,
To deck the robe of time.

(from ‘The Ruin and its Flowers’)

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Poetry of the 1890s