LINES TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. I AM happy in being able to offer this imperfect tribute to the memory of a woman, whose undeserved sufferings have excited my indignation. and pity; and whose virtues, both of heart and my warmest esteem. mind, This will not be deemed a parasitical profession, when I avow a complete dissent from Mrs. Godwin with regard to almost all her moral speculations. Her posthumous works, so far from convincing me that "the misery and oppression peculiar to women arise out of the partial laws and institutions of society,"* appear little less throughout than an indirect panegyric on the institutions she wishes to abolish. She (with all other great See Posthumous Works, vol. ii. p. 166. minds) owed her degree of intellectualization to the very restraints on the passions which she was aiming to annihilate; and the source of the miseries she complained of must rather be sought for in the brute turbulencies of human nature, than in the operation of any laws, conventional or positive. However, the heart and upright dignity of this excellent woman have much interested me. I never quarrel with opinions; and I fervently wish that the expression of my admiration were more worthy of its object. "On examining my heart, I find that it is so constituted, I cannot live without some particular affection. I am afraid, not without a passion; and I feel the want of it more in society than in solitude." Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's Letters, vol. i. p. 178. 1798. MARY, I've trod the turf beneath whose damp And dark green coverture thou liest! 'Twas strange! And somewhat most like madness shot athwart The incredulous mind, when I bethought myself That there so many earnest hopes and fears, So many warm desires, and lofty thoughts, And boundless aim, heaven's universal love, In th' unintelligent and vacant space. MARY, thou sleep'st not there!-Twas but a trance, An idle trance, that led my wayward thought With thy pure spirit on the senseless sod, Amid the trials of this difficult world, Surely none press so sorely on the heart As disappointed loves, and impulses The twofold ministry of flesh and spirit Hath done its troubled business. thou, Therefore Though here tormented, shalt in better worlds Be greatly comforted! I laugh at those Who blame that upright singleness of soul, A borrow'd character, and all agree To seem a something, which in his secret thought hearts To love; and they alone embrute or soil The holiness of reason, and that pure, And high imagination, which would lose I revere That simpleness which gave to her pure lips Which hung upon its object, e'en till all * My earthly by his heavenly overpowered.-MILTON. |