The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 478, February 26, 1831

FLOWERS IN A ROOM OF SICKNESS

"I desire, as I look on these, the ornaments and children of Earth, to know whether, indeed, such things I shall see no more!—whether they have no likeness, no archetype in the world in which my future home is to be cast? or whether they have their images above, only wrought in a more wondrous and delightful mould."—Conversations with an Ambitious Student in Ill Health.

Bear them not from grassy dells,
Where wild bees have honey-cells;
Not from where sweet water-sounds
Thrill the green wood to its bounds;
Not to waste their scented breath
On the silent room of Death!

Kindred to the breeze they are,
And the glow-worm's emerald star,
And the bird, whose song is free,
And the many-whispering tree;
Oh! too deep a love, and vain,
They would win to Earth again!

Spread them not before the eyes,
Closing fast on summer skies!
Woo then not the spirit back,
From its lone and viewless track,
With the bright things which have birth
Wide o'er all the coloured Earth!

With the violet's breath would rise
Thoughts too sad for her who dies;
From the lily's pearl-cup shed,
Dreams too sweet would haunt her bed;
Dreams of youth—of spring-time eves—
Music—beauty—all she leaves!

Hush! 'tis thou that dreaming art,
Calmer is her gentle heart.
Yes! o'er fountain, vale, and grove,
Leaf and flower, hath gush'd her love;
But that passion, deep and true,
Knows not of a last adieu.

Types of lovelier forms than these,
In her fragile mould she sees;
Shadows of yet richer things,
Borne beside immortal springs,
Into fuller glory wrought,
Kindled by surpassing thought!

Therefore, in the lily's leaf,
She can read no word of grief;
O'er the woodbine she can dwell,
Murmuring not—Farewell! farewell!
And her dim, yet speaking eye,
Greets the violet solemnly.

Therefore, once, and yet again,
Strew them o'er her bed of pain;
From her chamber take the gloom,
With a light and flush of bloom:
So should one depart, who goes
Where no Death can touch the Rose!

    New Monthly Magazine.

STANZAS

Oh! ask me not to sing to-night,

Oh! ask me not to sing to-night
Dejection chills my feeble powers,
I own thy halls of glittering light
Are festive as in former hours.
But when I last amid them moved,
I sung for friends beloved and dear,
Their smiles inspired, their lips approved,
Now all is changed—they are not here.

I gaze around—I view a throng,
The radiant slaves of pride and art.
Oh! can they prize my simple song,
The soft low breathings of the, heart?
Take back the lute, its tuneful string
Is moisten'd by a sorrowing tear,
To-night, I may not, cannot sing
The friends that love me are not here!

    Ibid.

THE LATE MADAME DE GENLIS

The following smart account of the late Madame de Genlis, is translated from that very piquant French paper the Figaro of the 4th January:—

She nearly died the day she came into the world; a mere chance saved her; and the noble lady lived eighty-five years. What a misfortune, not only for the Ducrest and the Genlis, if the clumsy Bailiff who sat down in the arm-chair where the infant prodigy had been left by the careless nurse, had crushed under the ample and heavy developement of his various femoral muscles, the hope of French literature! The concussion would have despoiled us of a hundred volumes, and Heaven can witness what volumes! History in romances; morality in proverbs; and religion in comedies. This is what the world of letters would have lost,—society would have lost a very different thing.

Such a nose as never was possessed before; a nose modelled by Love himself, and celebrated by ten court poets, and which the censer of praise was as unable to improve as a certain tumble which its owner had in infancy. Hands the most beautiful that could be, and which Madame de Genlis put up for exhibition during twenty years, upon the strings of a harp, now passed into a proverb. A form without fault, and which made the delight of the Palais Royal parties in the open air. A foot, alike triumphant at the Court and at the Porcherons. Eyes capable of making an impression upon the running footman of M. de Brancas, and of an innumerable crowd of dukes, lawyers, officers, and men of letters. A genius!—oh! for her genius, if she had not been encumbered with so much modesty, Madame de Genlis would have shone by it alone in the first rank; through feminine modesty she remained in the second.

Philosophy may breathe again. The author of "The Evenings at the Castle" was the Attila of philosophers;—she crushed Voltaire, considering him as a mauvais sujet; pursued Diderot and d'Alembert; breasted Rousseau; refuted the Encyclopaedia; and was always of the party in favour of the Altar and the Throne, excepting only the clay when the revolution of 1789 commenced.

Foul-mouthed people allege Madame de Genlis to have been a great coquette, which, is a calumny. She was virtue itself. No doubt she was the object of rude assaults; public declarations, scenes of despair, disguises, eulogies in verse, madrigals in prose—all were employed to seduce her affections; but she resisted always. To revenge her cruelty, they attacked her morals, and epigrams rained on her. She replied by her Memoirs—rather diffuse confessions, which Lavocat (the publisher) contrived to dilute further—but edifying, and which have demonstrated that if Mad. de Genlis was not canonized in her life-time, it was because there is no longer any religion to speak of, or that she neglected to cultivate interest with the Pope.

One poet had the audacity to put up Madame de Genlis' honour at the Exchange for a dollar; the ladies of the Directory exclaimed against this; the Countess herself said nothing: she despised the exaggeration which nobody could credit. In truth, Madame de Genlis was quite as good as the particular Queen, whose modesty was only to fall before the millions of a Cardinal-Duke.