Page:Poems Davidson.djvu/36

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
xxiv
INTRODUCTORY.

scattered sheets of 'Maritorne,' and expressed much sorrow when she found that some were missing. She told me, with tears, that she feared she could never supply the loss, and said, Do, mamma, take care of what remains: it is thus far the best thing I ever wrote.'

"After her death, in her portfolio, which her nurse told me she used every day, sitting in bed, supported by pillows, I found the 'Last Farewell to my Harp', and the 'Fear of Madness,' both written in a feeble, irregular hand, and evidently under a state of strong mental excitement. By their side lay the unfinished head of a Madonna, copied from a painting executed several centuries ago, and with the drawing lay also the unfinished poem suggested by the painting:—

'Roll back, thou tide of time, and tell.'

"In the 'Last Farewell to my Harp,' the presentiment of her death, if I may so term it, is strongly portrayed, mingled with the feeling of presumption which she often manifested in having 'dared to gaze

'Upon the lamp which never can expire,
The undying, wild, poetic fire."

"There is something extremely touching in the last stanzas:—

'And here, my harp, we part forever;
Tl waken thee again—O! never;
Silence shall chain thee cold and drear,
And thou shalt calmly slumber here!'

"'The Fear of Madness.'—The reader will find his sympathies all awakened upon perusing this unfinished