Revolution and Romanticism

MARY TIGHE

Psyche, with other poems 1811

Written in 1801-3, Psyche was printed for the author’s friends in 1805, but did not become generally known until after her death from consumption in 1810, at the age of thirty-seven. Keats delighted in her work and her presence is evident at the centre of Ode on a Grecian Urn: without Tighe there would have been no ‘bold lover’, no unwearied piper ‘For ever piping songs for ever new.’ Freed from Keats’s shadow however she is a poet of true distinction, her work throwing light on the role of woman-poet in her day.

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I stood beside thy lowly grave;
Spring odours breath’d around,
And music, in the river-wave,
Pass’d with a lulling sound. ...

Thou hast left sorrow in thy song,
A voice not loud, but deep.
The glorious bowers of earth among,
How often didst thou weep.

Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground
Thy tender thoughts and high?
Now peace the woman’s heart hath found,
And joy the poet’s eye.

(from Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman, lines written beside Mary Tighe’s grave at Woodstock, Kilkenny)

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Poetry of the 1890s