Memory



June

The high grass waves, with varied hues
     Of wild flowers glowing 'mid the green;
The woods have caught a deeper shade,
     And darkly skirt the distant scene.

The white-throat sings from every brake
    The blackbird breathes a sweet reply;
The lark's shrill fairy notes awake
    The echoes of his native sky:

The pale wild rose is blushing near;
     And clinging tendrils round it twine,
That throw their gay and graceful wreaths
     In many a varied waving line.

There tremble on the slender stem
     The barley's rich and bending heads;
And here the pea, in winged bloom,
     Along the air its fragrance sheds.

I cannot smile, though all the scene
   Is gay in Nature's brightest guise;
I think on hours that once have been,
   And clouds o'er all the landscape rise.

And can no charm that nature knows
   The fatal power of grief destroy?
Ah, no! in vain each beauty glows
    When mem'ry has no gleam of joy!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

49 sec read
89

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXA BCBC XDXD XEXE AFXF GHGH
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 911
Words 160
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Louisa Stuart Costello

Louisa Stuart Costello was a writer on travel and French history. Costello was born in Ireland or Sussex. She resided in Paris, France, near the Seine River. She had no true home, but wandered place to place staying with friends and acquaintances. With her brother Dudley Costello, also a well known for his travel writing, they promoted the copying of illuminated manuscript. She wrote over 100 texts, articles, poems, songs and knew such people as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore. She was a poet, historian, journalist, painter and novelist. Her father was Colonel James Francis Costello, who died in April 1814 while fighting Napoleon. Costello published Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen, which included her illustrations, and several other popular works of poetry and travel. Her collection Songs of a Stranger was dedicated to William Lisle Bowles. She did not return to France until after her mother sent for her in 1815/18 and then lived chiefly in Paris, where she was a miniature-painter. In 1815 she published The Maid of the Cyprus Isle, etc. She also wrote books of travel, which were very popular, as were her novels, chiefly founded on French history. Another work, published in 1835, is Specimens of the Early Poetry of France. She died in Boulogne sur Mer, France of mouth cancer. more…

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