Anna lf!,itia 'Barbauld

(1743-1825)

William Wordsworth is reported to have said of the ending of Anna Letitia Barbauld's poem "Life," a staple in anthologies throughout the nineteenth century, "I am not in the habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish I had written those lines." 1 And Frances Burney reputedly recited the last stanza nightly before bed. As poet, educator, essayist, and critic, she was widely acknowledged to be one of the literary giants of her time. Born on 20 June 1743 in Kibworth Harcourt, a village in Leicestershire, she was the eldest child and only daughter ofJane Jennings and John Aikin, a dissenting clergyman and teacher. Shortly after his marriage, John Aikin had given up his pulpit for health reasons. Instead he taught school and instructed Anna Letitia and her brother, John, four years her junior. She would learn French, Italian, and, despite her father's misgivings, Latin and Greek. Her mother was a cultivated, strict, neat, and punctual woman with polished manners; she and her daughter never had a congenial relationship, and Anna Letitia struggled against the tight rein her puritanical parents imposed. Because she was brought up isolated from playmates, her childhood was largely an un­ happy one, and even in adulthood she never seemed entirely at ease socially. Thin, with a healthy, fair, complexion, regular features, and dark blue eyes, she was considered beautiful and became known for her wit and imagination. In 1758, when she was fifteen, her father became a tutor at the newly founded Warrington Academy in Lancashire, a center for dissenting thought. The fifteen years she spent in Lancashire were the happiest of her life. The scientist and theologian Joseph Priestley was one of her father's colleagues and became Anna Letitia's close, lifelong friend. Josiah Wedgwood was a regular visitor. Her brother John, Priestley, and the intellectually stimulating environment of Warrington encouraged her to write. As a result, in 1773 she published with Joseph Johnson a slender book entitled simply Poems, in-

r. Henry Crabb Robinson, Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith J. Morley, 3 vols. (London, 1938), I :8, 2:65r.

51 52 Anna Letitia Barbauld

eluding "An Address to the Deity" and "The Mouse's Petition" (both printed below). It contained verse epistles, hymns, fables, odes, and songs on many subjects, and it went through four editions within the year. Critics were as enthusiastic as general readers. The February 1773 Monthly Review noted, "We very seldom have an opportunity of bestowing praise with so much justice, and so much pleasure." Mary Scott wrote in the Female Advocate the following year:

Fir'd with the Music, Aikin, of thy lays, To thee the Muse a joyful tribute pays; Transported dwells on that harmonious line, Where taste, and spirit, wit, and learning shine; Where Fancy's hand her richest colourings lends, And ev'ry shade in just proportion blends. How fair, how beauteous to our gazing eyes Thy vivid intellectual paintings rise! We feel thy feelings, glow with all thy fires, Adopt thy thoughts, and pant with thy desires. Proceed, bright maid! and may thy polish'd page Refine the manners of a trifling age. That same year, Barbauld collaborated with her brother to publish with Joseph Johnson Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, by]. and A. L. Aikin, containing "On Romances," the essay of which Samuel Johnson observed: "The imitators of my style have not hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best; for she has imitated the sentiment as well as the diction." 2 In May 1774 Anna Letitia Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a clergy­ man of French descent, formerly a pupil at Warrington and six years her junior. Shortly after their marriage the couple moved to Palgrave, in Suffolk, where he became minister of a dissenting congregation and opened a boys' boarding school. The poet kept all of the accounts and taught a class of little boys history, geography, drama, speech, English grammar, and composition. She was dismayed to find no suitable books for young children. As she put it, "A grave remark or a connected story, however simple, is above his capacity, and nonsense is always below, for folly is worse than ignorance. Another de­ fect is the want of good paper, a clear and large type, and large spaces. Those only who have actually taught young children can be sensible how necessary these assistances are." 3 To answer this need for her students, as well as for her brother's child, Charles Rochemont Aikin, whom she had adopted when

2. James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1887), 3 :lT2. 3. Barbauld, from her introduction to Lessons for Children in Four Parts (Philadelphia, 1818), iii. Anna Letitia Barbauld 53 he was not quite two, she wrote four volumes entitled Lessons for Children (1778-79) for those aged two to four years. In 1781 she published, with Joseph Johnson, Hymns in Prose for Children; it went through twenty-eight editions by 1836. It continued to be reprinted throughout the nineteenth century and was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian. Countless British children were brought up on the Hymns, and modern com­ mentators have noted their influence on William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). However, Samuel Johnson and Charles James Fox thought she wasted her talents writing books for children. Johnson reputedly told James Boswell: "Miss [Aikin] was an instance of early cultiva­ tion, but in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment now is 'To suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer.' " 4 Perhaps she had Johnson in mind when she wrote in the preface to Lessons, ''The task is humble, but not mean, for to lay the first stone of a noble building and to plant the first idea in a human mind can be no dishonor to any hand." She and her husband spent their vacations in London, where she met many literary people belonging to the Joseph Johnson and Elizabeth Montagu circles, including Frances Burney, Hester Chapone, and Hannah More. The Barbaulds gave up their school in 1785 and left that autumn for Switzerland and France. In June 1786 they returned to London, where they stayed until early 1787. Then they settled in Hampstead, where they took a few pupils and Rochemont Barbauld performed clerical duties at a small chapel. Dismayed at her diminished literary productivity, Anna Letitia's brother John urged her in a sonnet to "Seize, seize the lyre! resume the lofty strain!" She then began to publish political pamphlets opposing the war with France. Her verse Epistle to William Wilbeiforce (1791) attacked the slave trade. In Hampstead she became a close friend of her neighbors Agnes and Joanna Baillie and collaborated with her brother on Evenings at Home; or, The juvenile Budget Opened: Consisting of a Vciriety of Miscellaneous Pieces for the Instruction and Amusement of Young Persons, published in six volumes between 1792 and 1796. Fourteen of the ninety-nine pieces were hers.5 She also worked as an editor and literary critic, penning an introduction to Mark Akenside's Pleasures of

4. Boswell, Boswell's Life ofJohnson, 2:408. She said ofJohnson that he was "far from a great character, he was continually sinning against his conscience, and then afraid of going to Hell for it. A Christian, and a man of the town; a philosopher, and a bigot; acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more .miserable through fear of death" (Anna Letitia Le Breton, Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, Including Letters and Notices of her Family and Friends [London, 1874), 56). 5. Though the pieces were not signed, Lucy Aikin identifies those written by Barbauld in The Works of Anna l.a?titia Barbauld, with a Memoir, ed. Lucy Aikin, 2 vols. (London, 1825), I :xxxvi-xxxvii. 54 Anna Letitia Barbauld the Imagination (1794) and writing a preface to a volume of William Collins's Poetical Works (1797). After 1796, when her brother became literary editor, she also contributed poetry to the Monthly Magazine, where "Washing-Day" (printed below) was first published in December 1797. Her literary associ­ ates came to include Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Samuel Rogers, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who recorded her famous objection to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as improbable and lacking a moral. Though Bar­ bauld and Coleridge admired each other's work, the relationship grew cool around 1804, when he took offense at reviews of his work that he sometimes incorrectly attributed to her. John Aikin moved from London to Stoke Newington because of his health in 1798. The two siblings had always been close and found the separation dif­ ficult; in 1802 Barbauld convinced her husband to leave Hampstead for Stoke Newington, where she lived for the rest of her life. In 1804 Maria Edgeworth invited her to visit Ireland to help her start a periodical featuring literature by women. Barbauld cordially agreed to contribute and even offered to re­ cruit other authors but declined to help found the magazine, observing that "there is no bond of union among literary women, any more than among literary men; different sentiments and different connections separate them much more than the joint interest of their sex would unite them." 6 During her early years in Stoke Newington she edited Samuel Richardson's letters in six volumes (1804), prefacing them with a critical biography of the author. She also edited selected essays from the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Freeholder in three volumes (1804); some regard the preliminary essay she contributed to these volumes as her most successful piece of literary criticism. Rochemont Barbauld suffered from mental illness, which gradually be­ came more serious; he was subject to depression, irritability, and rages. After the couple's move to Stoke Newington, his rages became increasingly violent, but despite the danger, the poet would not allow him to be institutionalized or restrained. When Rochemont angrily pursued her with a knife, forcing her to flee for her life to her brother's home, she finally agreed to have her husband sent to London to live with an attendant next-door to their adopted son, Charles. On 11 November 1808, however, Rochemont bribed his way out of the house and drowned himself in the New River. Barbauld wrote a touching memoir of her husband, published in the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature. Lucy Aikin wrote that Barbauld's "spirits were deeply wounded, both by the severe trials through which she had passed, and by the mournful void" brought on by her husband's death.7

6. Le Breton, Memoir ef Mrs. Barbauld, 86-87. 7. Aikin, Works ef Anna Latitia Barbauld, r :xliv. Anna Letitia Barbauld 55

Barbauld threw herself into editorial work, publishing in l8IO The British Novelists in fifty volumes, which included a long prefatory essay entitled "Ori­ gin and Progress of Novel Writing;' as well as a critical introduction to each novel. The next year she published The Female Speaker; or, Misceilaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse, Selected from the Best Writers, and Adapted to the Use of Young Women. Her poetic tour de force, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem, came out in 1812. A prophetic work, it anticipates Eliot's The Wasteland by more than a century. But it provoked rage and indignation from most of Bar­ bauld's contemporary critics, who accused her of being, among other things, a traitor to her country. According to Henry Crabb Robinson, even William Godwin "was full of ... censure of Mrs. Barbauld's new poem ... which he called. cowardly, time-serving, Presbyterian, besides a string of epithets which meant only that he found the work wretched." 8 John Wilson Croker's critique in the June 1812 Quarterly Review was particularly harsh. "We had hoped, indeed," he said, "that the empire might have been saved without the intervention of a lady-author," and he warned her "to desist from satire, which indeed is satire on herself alone," entreating her not to "put herself to the trouble of writing any more party pamphlets in verse." 9 Maria Edgeworth wrote to her friend, "I cannot describe to you the indignation, or rather the disgust, that we felt at the manner in which you are treated in the Quarterly Review, so ungentlemanlike, so unjust, so insolent a review I never read .... But it is not their criticism on your poem which incenses me, it is the odious tone in which they dare to speak of the most respectable and elegant female writer that England can boast. The public, the public will do you justice!" 10 Despite the support of friends, Barbauld took Croker's advice to heart and put aside plans to issue a complete edition of her poetry. Though she con­ tinued to write criticism for the Monthly Review until at least 1815, she never published another volume of poetry. Thus it was that at the height of her powers Barbauld was effectively silenced as a poet. At the age of eighty Barbauld wrote to Edgeworth, "I only find that many things I knew I have forgotten, many things I thought I knew, I find I knew nothing about; some things, I know, I have found not worth knowing, and some things I would give-Oh! what would one not give to know, are be­ yond the reach of human ken." 11 Her conversation and her mind were sharp to the last. She died on 9 March 1825, at the age of eighty-one. Her niece and literary companion, Lucy Aikin, brought out in the same year a two-volume

8. Crabb Robinson, On Books and Their Writers, l :63. 9. 7 : 309, 313. IO. Le Breton, Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, 157· II. Ibid., 185. Anna Letitia Barbauld edition of Barbauld's collected Works, containing shorter prose pieces and poetry, including some previously unpublished, with copies of correspon­ dence and a memoir. A large collection of Barbauld's papers and manuscripts was destroyed in the bombing of London in World War II. What remains is now scattered.12

MAJOR WORKS: Poems (London, 1773); Hymns in Prosefor Children (London, 1781); Lessons for Children, 4 vols. (London, 1787-88); An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (London, 1790); Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (London, 1791); [with John Aikin], Eve­ nings at Home; or, The juvenile Budget Opened: Consisting of a Vllriety of Miscellaneous Pieces for the Instruction and Amusement of Young Persons, 6 vols. (London, 1792-96); Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem (London, 1812); The Works of Anna La:titia Barbau/d, with a Memoir, ed. Lucy Aikin, 2 vols. (London, 1825); The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft (Athens, Ga., 1994).

TEXTS USED: Texts of "The Mouse's Petition" and ''A Summer Evening's Medita­ tion" from the second edition of Poems. Texts of ''An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study," "Tomorrow;' "Inscription for an Ice-House," "To the Poor," "Washing-Day," "Life," "The Baby-House," and "Riddle" from The Works of Anna La:titia Barbauld. Text of "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven" from Eighteen-Hundred and Eleven, a Poem. I am indebted to William McCarthy for his advice about several of Barbauld's poems. Notes on Barbauld's poetry are mostly drawn from McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld.

The Mouse's Petition* Found in the Trap where he had been confin'd all Night

Parcere subjectis, & debellare superbos. -Virgilt

Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs; And never let thine heart be shut Against the prisoner's cries.

r2. A full inventory of manuscripts appears in The Poems ofAnna Letitia Barbauld, ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft (Athens, Ga., 1994), 365-68. Anna Letitia Barbauld 57

For here forlorn and sad I sit, Within the wiry grate; And tremble at th' approaching morn, Which brings impending fate.

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd, And spurn'd a tyrant's chain, IO Let not thy strong oppressive force A free-born mouse detain.

Oh! do not stain with guiltless blood Thy hospitable hearth; Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd A prize so little worth.

The scatter'd gleanings of a feast My scanty meals supply; But if thine unrelenting heart That slender boon deny, 20

The chearful light, the vital air, Are blessings widely given; Let nature's commoners enjoy The common gifts of heaven.

The well taught philosophic mind To all compassion gives; Casts round the world an equal eye, And feels for all that lives.

If mind, as ancient sages taught, A never dying flame, 30 Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms, In every form the same,

Beware, lest in the worm you crush A brother's soul you find; And tremble lest thy luckless hand Dislodge a kindred mind.

21 The cheerful light, the vital air,] See line 17 of Helen Maria Williams's "Elegy on a Young Thrush." 58 Anna Letitia Barbauld

Or, if this transient gleam of day Be all of life we share, Let pity plead within thy breast That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board With health and peace be crown'd; And every charm of heartfelt ease Beneath thy roof be found.

So when unseen destruction lurks, Which men like mice may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare. (wr. 1771; pub. 1773)

•To Doctor Priestley. Barbauld. [Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a theologian and scientist, best remembered as the discoverer of oxygen, was, at the time of this poem's composition, studying the nature of gases; Barbauld was visiting him at Leeds. Ac­ cording to a contemporary, William Turner, "In the course of these investigations, the suffocating nature of various gases required to be determined, and no more easy or unexceptionable way of making such experiments could be devised, than the reserv­ ing of these little victims of domestic economy, which were thus at least as easily and as speedily put out of existence, as by any of the more usual modes. It happened that a captive was brought in after supper, too late for any experiment to be made with it that night, and the servant was desired to set it by till next morning. Next morning it was brought in after breakfast, with its petition twisted among the wires of its cage. It scarcely need be added, that the petition was successful" ("Mrs. Barbauld," Newcastle Magazine, n.s., 4 [1825]: 184). Ed.] t"To spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud!" (Aeneid, 6.853). Anna Letitia Barbauld 59

An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study

A map of every country known, With not a foot of land his own. A list of folks that kicked a dust On this poor globe, from Ptol. the First; He hopes, - indeed it is but fair, - Some day to get a corner there. A group of all the British kings, Fair emblem! on a packthread swings. The Fathers, ranged in goodly row, A decent, venerable show, IO Writ a great while ago, they tell us, And many an inch o'ertop their fellows. A Juvenal to hunt for mottos; And Ovid's tales of nymphs and grottos. The meek-robed lawyers, all in white; Pure as the lamb,-at least, to sight. A shelf of bottles, jar and phial, By which the rogues he can defy all, - All filled with lightning keen and genuine, And many a little imp he'll pen you in; 20 Which, like Le Sage's sprite, let out, Among the neighbours makes a rout; Brings down the lightning on their houses, And kills their geese, and frights their spouses. A rare thermometer, by which He settles, to the nicest pitch, The just degrees of heat, to raise Sermons, or politics, or plays. Papers and books, a strange mixed olio,

9 The Fathers J The works of the church fathers. 13 Juvenal) The Roman poet's works would have supplied quotations for Priestley's writings. 15 The meek-robed lawyers, all in white) Law books would have been bound in vellum. 17-19 A shelf of bottles ... All filled with lightning] Leyden jars, in which electricity was stored. When the electricity was discharged, the spark resembled lightning. 21 LeSage's] Alain Rene Lesage (1668-1747), author of Le Diable Boiteux (1707), in which a student releases from a laboratory vial a spirit who wreaks havoc on the neighborhood. 60 Anna Letitia Barbauld

30 From shilling touch to pompous folio; Answer, remark, reply, rejoinder, Fresh from the mint, all stamped and coined here; Like new-made glass, set by to cool, Before it bears the workman's tool. A blotted proof-sheet, wet from Bowling. - "How can a man his anger hold in?" - Forgotten rimes, and college themes, Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes;­ A mass of heterogeneous matter, 40 A chaos dark, nor land nor water;- New books, like new-born infants, stand, Waiting the printer's clothing hand;­ Others, a motley ragged brood, Their limbs unfashioned all, and rude, Like Cadmus' half-formed men appear; One rears a helm, one lifts a spear, And feet were lopped and fingers torn Before their fellow limbs were born; A leg began to kick and sprawl 50 Before the head was seen at all, Which quiet as a mushroom lay Till crumbling hillocks gave it way; And all, like controversial writing, Were born with teeth, and sprung up fighting.

"But what is this," I hear you cry, "Which saucily provokes my eye?" - A thing unknown, without a name, Born of the air and doomed to flame. (wr. 1771; pub. 1825)

45 Cadmus'] An allusion to Ovid's Metamorphoses, 3.88-123, in which Cadmus plants the teeth of a dragon. Armed men spring up, feet first, and kill one another. Anna Letitia Barbauld

A Summer Evening's Meditation

One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine. -Young*

'Tis past! The sultry tyrant of the south Has spent his short-liv'd rage; more grateful hours Move silent on; the skies no more repel The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams Of temper'd light, invite the cherish'd eye To wander o'er their sphere; where hung aloft DIAN'S bright crescent, like a silver bow New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns Impatient for the night, and seems to push Her brother down the sky. Fair VENUS shines IO Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of soften'd radiance from her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace; while meeken'd Eve, Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires Thro' the Hesperian gardens of the west, And shuts the gates of day. 'Tis now the hour When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts, The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth Of unpierc' d woods, where wrapt in solid shade 20 She mused away the gaudy hours of noon, And fed on thoughts unripen'd by the sun, Moves forward; and with radiant finger points To yon blue concave swell'd by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where th' unsteady eye Restless, and dazzled wanders unconfin'd O'er all this field of glories: spacious field! And worthy of the master: he, whose hand With hieroglyphics older than the Nile, Inscrib'd the mystic tablet; hung on high To public gaze, and said, adore, 0 man! Anna Letitia Barbauld

The finger of thy Goo. From what pure wells Of milky light, what soft o'erfl.owing urn, Are all these lamps so fill'd? these friendly lamps, For ever streaming o'er the azure deep To point our path, and light us to our home. How soft they slide along their lucid spheres! And silent as the foot of time, fulfil Their destin'd courses: Nature's self is hush'd, And, but a scatter' d leaf, which rustles thro' The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard To break the midnight air; tho' the rais' d ear, Intensely listening, drinks in every breath. How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise! But are they silent all? or is there not A tongue in every star that talks with man, 50 And wooes him to be wise; nor wooes in vain: This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Of high descent, and more than mortal rank; An embryo Goo; a spark of fire divine, Which must burn on for ages, when the sun, (Fair transitory creature of a day!) Has clos'd his golden eye, and wrapt in shades 60 Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east.

Ye citadels of light, and seats of Goos! Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul Revolving periods past, may oft look back With recollected tenderness, on all The various busy scenes she left below, Its deep laid projects and its strange events, As on some fond and doating tale that sooth'd Her infant hours; 0 be it lawful now To tread the hallow'd circle of your courts, 70 And with mute wonder and delighted awe Approach your burning confines. Seiz'd in thought On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail, From the green borders of the peopled earth, Anna Letitia Barbauld

And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant; From solitary Mars; from the vast orb OfJupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk Dances in ether like the lightest leaf; To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system, Where chearless Saturn 'midst her watry moons Girt with a lucid zone, majestic sits 80 In gloomy grandeur; like an exil'd queen Amongst her weeping handmaids: fearless thence I launch into the trackless deeps of space, Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear, Of elder beam; which ask no leave to shine Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light From the proud regent of our scanty day; Sons of the morning, first born of creation, And only less than him who marks their track, And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop, 90 Or is there aught beyond? What hand unseen Impels me onward thro' the glowing orbs Of habitable nature; far remote, To the dread confines of eternal night, To solitudes of vast unpeopled space, The desarts of creation, wide and wild; Where embryo systems and unkindled suns Sleep in the womb of chaos; fancy droops, And thought astonish'd stops her bold career. But oh thou mighty mind! whose powerful word IOO Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were, Where shall I seek thy presence? how unblam'd Invoke thy dread perfection? Have the broad eye-lids of the morn beheld thee? Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion Support thy throne? 0 look with pity down On erring guilty man; not in thy names Of terror clad; not with those thunders arm'd That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appall'd The scatter'd tribes; thou hast a gentler voice, !IO

ro8-9 those thunders arm'd/That conscious Sinai felt] In Exodus 19, God delivers the Ten Commandments in a cloud of "thunders and lightnings." Anna Letitia Barbauld

That whispers comfort to the swelling heart, Abash'd, yet longing to behold her Maker.

But now my soul unus'd to stretch her powers In flight so daring, drops her weary wing, And seeks again the known accustom'd spot, Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams, A mansion fair and spacious for its guest, And full replete with wonders. Let me here Content and grateful, wait th' appointed time !20 And ripen for the skies: the hour will come When all these splendours bursting on my sight Shall stand unveil'd, and to my ravish'd sense Unlock the glories of the world unknown. (1773)

•Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 7.746.

Tomorrow

See where the falling day In silence steals away Behind the western hills withdrawn: Her fires are quenched, her beauty fled, \Vhile blushes all her face o'erspread, As conscious she had ill fulfilled The promise of the dawn.

Another morning soon shall rise, Another day salute our eyes, IO As smiling and as fair as she, And make as many promises: But do not thou The tale believe, They're sisters all, And all deceive. (wr. 1780; pub. 1802) Anna Letitia Barbauld

Inscription for an Ice-House

Stranger, approach! within this iron door Thrice locked and bolted, this rude arch beneath That vaults with ponderous stone the cell; confined By man, the great magician, who controuls Fire, earth and air, and genii of the storm, And bends the most remote and opposite things To do him service and perform his will, - A giant sits; stern Winter; here he piles, While summer glows around, and southern gales Dissolve the fainting world, his treasured snows IO Within the rugged cave. - Stranger, approach! He will not cramp thy limbs with sudden age, Not wither with his touch the coyest flower That decks thy scented hair. Indignant here, Like fettered Sampson when his might was spent In puny feats to glad the festive halls Of Gaza's wealthy sons; or he who sat Midst laughing girls submiss, and patient twirled The slender spindle in his sinewy grasp; The rugged power, fair Pleasure's minister, 20 Exerts his art to deck the genial board; Congeals the melting peach, the nectarine smooth, Burnished and glowing from the sunny wall: Darts sudden frost into the crimson veins Of the moist berry; moulds the sugared hail: Cools with his icy breath our flowing cups; Or gives to the fresh dairy's nectared bowls A quicker zest. Sullen he plies his task, And on his shaking fingers counts the weeks Of lingering Summer, mindful of his hour 30 To rush in whirlwinds forth, and rule the year. (wr. c. 1793; pub. 1825)

15 fettered Sampson) In judges 16 , Sampson is bound and his hair, the source of his strength, is cut. Barbauld may have been thinking of Milton's treatment of the story in Samson Agonistes. 18-19 Midst laughing girls .. . twirled the slender spindle) An allusion to "Deianira to Hercules," related by Ovid in Heroides: ''Ah, how often, while with dour finger you twisted the thread, have your too strong hands crushed the spindle!" (lines II], II5) (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 293-94). 66 Anna Letitia Barbauld

To the Poor

Child of distress, who meet'st the bitter scorn Of fellow-men to happier prospects born, Doomed Art and Nature's various stores to see Flow in full cups of joy-and not for thee; Who seest the rich, to heaven and fate resigned, Bear thy affiictions with a patient mind; Whose bursting heart disdains unjust controul, Who feel'st oppression's iron in thy soul, Who dragg'st the load of faint and feeble years, IO Whose bread is anguish, and whose water tears; Bear, bear thy wrongs-fulfill thy destined hour, Bend thy meek neck beneath the foot of Power; But when thou feel'st the great deliverer nigh, And thy freed spirit mounting seeks the sky, Let no vain fears thy parting hour molest, No whispered terrors shake thy quiet breast: Think not their threats can work thy future woe, Nor deem the Lord above like lords below;­ Safe in the bosom of that love repose 20 By whom the sun gives light, the ocean flows; Prepare to meet a Father undismayed, Nor fear the God whom priests and kings have made.* (wr. 1795; pub. 1825)

*These lines, written in 1795, were described by Mrs. B., on sending them to a friend, as "inspired by indignation on hearing sermons in which the poor are ad­ dressed in a manner which evidently shows the design of making religion an engine of government." Lucy Aikin. Anna Letitia Barbauld

Washing-Day

... and their voice, Turning again towards childish treble, pipes And whistles in its sound.---•

The Muses are turned gossips; they have lost The buskined step, and clear high-sounding phrase, Language of gods. Come then, domestic Muse, In slipshod measure loosely prattling on Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream, Or drowning flies, or shoe lost in the mire By little whimpering boy, with rueful face; Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded Washing-Day. Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend, With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day IO Which week, smooth sliding after week, brings on Too soon;-for to that day nor peace belongs Nor comfort;-ere the first gray streak of dawn, The red-armed washers come and chase repose. Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth, E'er visited that day: the very cat, From the wet kitchen scared and reeking hearth, Visits the parlour, - an unwonted guest. The silent breakfast-meal is soon dispatched; Uninterrupted, save by anxious looks 20 Cast at the lowering sky, if sky should lower. From that last evil, 0 preserve us, heavens! For should the skies pour down, adieu to all Remains of quiet: then expect to hear Of sad disasters, - dirt and gravel stains Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once Snapped short,-and linen-horse by dog thrown down, And all the petty miseries of life. Saints have been calm while stretched upon the rack, And Guatimozin smiled on burning coals; 30

2 buskined] Tragic. 30 Guatimozin] Or Guauhtemoc (1497-1522), nephew and son-in-law of Montezuma and successor to Quetlavaca as emperor of Mexico from 1520 to r52r. William Robertson's History 68 Anna Letitia BarbaulJ

But never yet did housewife notable Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day. - But grant the welkin fair, require not thou Who call'st thyself perchance the master there, Or study swept, or nicely dusted coat, Or usual 'tendance;-ask not, indiscreet, Thy stockings mended, though the yawning rents Gape wide as Erebus; nor hope to find Some snug recess impervious: shouldst thou try 40 The 'customed garden walks, thine eye shall rue The budding fragrance of thy tender shrubs, Myrtle or rose, all crushed beneath the weight Of coarse checked apron,-with impatient hand Twitched off when showers impend: or crossing lines Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet Flaps in thy face abrupt. Woe to the friend Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim On such a day the hospitable rites! Looks, blank at best, and stinted courtesy, 50 Shall he receive. Vainly he feeds his hopes With dinner of roast chicken, savoury pie, Or tart or pudding:-pudding he nor tart That day shall eat; nor, though the husband try, Mending what can't be helped, to kindle mirth From cheer deficient, shall his consort's brow Clear up propitious:-the unlucky guest In silence dines, and early slinks away. I well remember, when a child, the awe This day struck into me; for then the maids, 60 I scarce knew why, looked cross, and drove me from them: Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope Usual indulgencies; jelly or creams, Relic of costly suppers, and set by For me their petted one; or buttered toast, When butter was forbid; or thrilling tale Of ghost or witch, or murder-so I went And sheltered me beside the parlour fire:

of America, 3 vols. (Dublin, 1777) describes how Guatimozin defended his country against the Spaniards and how Cortes tortured him. Anna Letitia Barbauld 69

There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms, Tended the little ones, and watched from harm, Anxiously fond, though oft her spectacles 70 With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins Drawn from her ravelled stocking, might have soured One less indulgent. - At intervals my mother's voice was heard, Urging dispatch: briskly the work went on, All hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring, To fold, and starch, and clap, and iron, and plait. Then would I sit me down, and ponder much Why washings were. Sometimes through hollow bowl Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft 80 The floating bubbles; little dreaming then To see, Mongolfier, thy silken ball Ride buoyant through the clouds - so near approach The sports of children and the toils of men. Earth, air, and sky, and ocean, hath its bubbles, And verse is one of them - this most of all. (1797)

•Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7.161-63.

77 clap] "To slap or strike with a flat surface, so as to smooth or flatten" (OED). 77 plait] "To fold . .. flat, to double" (OED). 82 Mongolfier] John Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810) and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier (1745-1799) launched the first hot-air balloon in Annonay, France, in the summer of 1783. Joseph Priestley's experiments with oxygen in 1774 helped make this event possible. 85 Earth ... hath its bubbles) See Macbeth r.3.79: "The earth hath bubbles, as the water has." 70 Anna Letitia Barbauld

Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem*

Still the loud death drum, thundering from afar, O'er the vext nations pours the storm of war: To the stern call still Britain bends her ear, Feeds the fierce strife, the alternate hope and fear; Bravely, though vainly, dares to strive with Fate, And seeks by turns to prop each sinking state. Colossal power with overwhelming force Bears down each fort of Freedom in its course;· Prostrate she lies beneath the Despot's sway, IO While the hushed nations curse him - and obey.

Bounteous in vain, with frantic man at strife, Glad Nature pours the means-the joys oflife; In vain with orange blossoms scents the gale, The hills with olives clothes, with corn the vale; Man calls to Famine, nor invokes in vain, Disease and Rapine follow in her train; The tramp of marching hosts disturbs the plough, The sword, not sickle, reaps the harvest now, And where the Soldier gleans the scant supply, 20 The helpless Peasant but retires to die; No laws his hut from licensed outrage shield, And war's least horror is the ensanguined field.

Fruitful in vain, the matron counts with pride The blooming youths that grace her honoured side; No son returns to press her widow'd hand, Her fallen blossoms strew a foreign strand. - Fruitful in vain, she boasts her virgin race, Whom cultured arts adorn and gentlest grace; Defrauded of its homage, Beauty mourns, 30 And the rose withers on its virgin thorns. Frequent, some stream obscure, some uncouth name By deeds of blood is lifted into fame; Oft o'er the daily page some soft one bends To learn the fate of husband, brothers, friends, Anna Letitia Barbauld 71

Or the spread map with anxious eye explores, Its dotted boundaries and penciled shores, Asks where the spot that wrecked her bliss is found, And learns its name but to detest the sound.

And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease, An island Queen amidst thy subject seas, 40 While the vext billows, in their distant roar, But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore? To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof, Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof? So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know, Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe. Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread, And whispered fears, creating what they dread; Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here, There, the heart-witherings of unuttered fear, 50 And that sad death, whence most affection bleeds, Which sickness, only of the soul, precedes. Thy baseless wealth dissolves in air away, Like mists that melt before the morning ray: No more on crowded mart or busy street Friends, meeting friends, with cheerful hurry greet; Sad, on the ground thy princely merchants bend Their altered looks, and evil days portend, And fold their arms, and watch with anxious breast The tempest blackening in the distant West. 60

Yes, thou must droop; thy Midas dream is o'er; The golden tide of Commerce leaves thy shore, Leaves thee to prove the alternate ills that haunt Enfeebling Luxury and ghastly Want; Leaves thee, perhaps, to visit distant lands, And deal the gifts of Heaven with equal hands.

Yet, 0 my Country, name beloved, revered, By every tie that binds the soul endeared, Whose image to my infant senses came Mixt with Religion's light and Freedom's holy flame! 70 Anna Letitia Barbauld

If prayers may not avert, if 'tis thy fate To rank amongst the names that once were great, Not like the dim cold Crescent shalt thou fade, Thy debt to Science and the Muse unpaid; Thine are the laws surrounding states revere, Thine the full harvest of the mental year, Thine the bright stars in Glory's sky that shine, And arts that make it life to live are thine. If westward streams the light that leaves the shores, 80 Still from thy lamp the streaming radiance pours. Wide spreads thy race from Ganges to the pole, O'er half the western world thy accents roll: Nations beyond the Apalachian hills Thy hand has planted and thy spirit fills: Soon as their gradual progress shall impart The finer sense of morals and of art, Thy stores of knowledge the new states shall know, And think thy thoughts, and with thy fancy glow; Thy Lockes, thy Paleys shall instruct their youth, 90 Thy leading star direct their search for truth; Beneath the spreading Platan's tent-like shade, Or by Missouri's rushing waters laid, "Old father Thames" shall be the Poet's theme, Of Hagley's woods the enamoured virgin dream, And Milton's tones the raptured ear enthrall, Mixt with the roaring of Niagara's fall; In Thomson's glass the ingenuous youth shall learn A fairer face of Nature to discern; Nor of the Bards that swept the British lyre IOO Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire. Then, loved Joanna, to admiring eyes Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise;

73 Crescent) The Ottoman Empire. 89 Thy Lockes, thy Paleys] John Locke (1632-1704), author of Essay concerning Human Under­ standing (r690), and William Paley (1743-1805), author of ·The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (r785). 94 Hagley's woods) The estate of Lord Lyttelton in Worcestershire (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 3r3). 97 Thomson's glass] James Thomson's poem The Seasons (r730) (ibid., 313). IOI Joanna] Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), playwright and poet. Anna Letitia Barbauld 73

Their high soul'd strains and Shakespear's noble rage Shall with alternate passion shake the stage. Some youthful Basil from thy moral lay With stricter hand his fond desires shall sway; Some Ethwald, as the fleeting shadows pass, Start at his likeness in the mystic glass; The tragic Muse resume her just controul, With pity and with terror purge the soul, IIO While wide o'er transatlantic realms thy name Shall live in light, and gather all its fame.

Where wanders Fancy down the lapse of years Shedding o'er imaged woes untimely tears? Fond moody Power! as hopes-as fears prevail, She longs, or dreads, to lift the awful veil, On visions of delight now loves to dwell, Now hears the shriek of woe or Freedom's knell: Perhaps, she says, long ages past away, And set in western waves our closing day, 120 Night, Gothic night, again may shade the plains Where Power is seated, and where Science reigns; England, the seat of arts, be only known By the grey ruin and the mouldering stone; That Time may tear the garland from her brow, And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now.

Yet then the ingenuous youth whom Fancy fires With pictured glories of illustrious sires, With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take From the blue mountains, or Ontario's lake, 130 With fond adoring steps to press the sod By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod; On Isis' banks to draw inspiring air, From Runnymede to send the patriot's prayer; In pensive thought, where Cam's slow waters wind, To meet those shades that ruled the realms of mind;

133 On Isis' banks] The Thames River is called the Isis in Oxford. 134 Runnymede] The site where King John signed the Magna Carta. 135 where Cam's slow waters wind] The river Cam flows past Cambridge University. 74 Anna Letitia Barbauld

In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow, And hang fresh wreaths round Newton's awful brow. Oft shall they seek some peasant's homely shed, 140 Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead, To ask where Avon's winding waters stray, And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away; Anxious inquire where Clarkson, friend of man, Or all-accomplished Jones his race began; If of the modest mansion aught remains Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper's strains; Where Roscoe, to whose patriot breast belong The Roman virtue and the Tuscan song, Led Ceres to the black and barren moor 150 Where Ceres never gained a wreath before: With curious search their pilgrim steps shall rove By many a ruined tower and proud alcove, Shall listen for those strains that soothed of yore Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, Lodore; Feast with Dun Edin's classic brow their sight, And visit "Melross by the pale moonlight."

But who their mingled feelings shall pursue When London's faded glories rise to view?

138 Newton's] Isaac Newton (1642-1727), founder of the modern science of optics, who first demonstrated the principle of universal gravitation. 141 Avon's winding waters] The Avon River flows through Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare. 143 Clarkson] Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), the abolitionist. 144 Jones] Sir William Jones (1746-94), linguist; husband of poet Anna Maria Jones. 146 Cowper's] William Cowper (1731-1800), one of the most admired poets of the late eighteenth century. 147- 50 Where Roscoe ... a wreath before:] The Historian of the age of Leo has brought into cultivation the extensive tract of Chatmoss. Barbauld. [William Roscoe (1753-1831), poet, agriculturalist, and friend of Barbauld who, like her, opposed the war, demonstrated at Chat Moss, in Lancashire, that high-quality crops could be cultivated on moorland (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 314). Ed.] 154 Thy rock, stern Skiddaw, and thy fall, LodoreJ A mountain and a waterfall, respectively, in the Lake District. 155 Dun Edin's classic brow] Perched above the city of Dun Edin, or Edinburgh, is Arthur's Seat, an ancient volcanic peak. 156 "Melross by the pale moonlight"] See Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), 2.i. Anna Letitia Barbauld 75

The mighty city, which by every road, In floods of people poured itself abroad; 160 Ungirt by walls, irregularly great, No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate; Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings) Sent forth their mandates to dependent kings; Streets, where the turban'd Moslem, bearded Jew, And wooly Afric, met the brown Hindu; Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed, Where Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed. Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street; Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way.

With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread The hallowed mansions of the silent dead, Shall enter the long isle and vaulted dome Where Genius and where Valour find a home; 180 Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe, Where all above is still, as all beneath; Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn, The ponderous mass ofJohnson's form to greet, Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet.

Perhaps some Briton, in whose musing mind Those ages live which Time has cast behind, To every spot shall lead his wondering guests On whose known site the beam of glory rests: 190

185-86 Johnson's form ... Howard's sainted feet.] Marble statues of Samuel Johnson (1708- 84), poet, essayist, and author of the pioneering work A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and John Howard (1726-90), prison reformer, whom Barbauld elsewhere describes as "the martyr of humanity," stand in the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 208, 315). Anna Letitia Barbauld

Here Chatham's eloquence in thunder broke, Here Fox persuaded, or here Garrick spoke; Shall boast how Nelson, fame and death in view, To wonted victory led his ardent crew, In England's name enforced, with loftiest tone, Their duty,-and too well fulfilled his own: How gallant Moore, as ebbing life dissolved, But hoped his country had his fame absolved. Or call up sages whose capacious mind 200 Left in its course a track of light behind; Point where mute crowds on Davy's lips reposed, And Nature's coyest secrets were disclosed; Join with their Franklin, Priestley's injured name, Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim.

Oft shall the strangers turn their eager feet The rich remains of ancient art to greet, The pictured walls with critic eye explore, And Reynolds be what Raphael was before. On spoils from every clime their eyes shall gaze, 210 Egyptian granites and the Etruscan vase; And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson just By Time's slow finger written in the dust.

191 Chatham's] William Pitt, first earl of Chatham (1708-78), prime minister during the Seven Years' War. 192 Fox persuaded . . . Garrick spoke] Charles James Fox (1749-1806), who advocated parliamentary reform, and David Garrick (1717-79), the famed actor, producer, and playwright. 197 Moore] General Sir John Moore (1761-1809) led a heroic 125-mile retreat from Napo­ leon's forces at Madrid and was fatally wounded after evacuating his troops. 201 Davy's] Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829), English chemist. 203 Franklin, Priestley's] Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American writer, inventor, diplo­ mat, and philosopher, was a friend ofJoseph Priestley's. 208 Reynolds] Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), the most admired British portrait painter of the eighteenth century. 210 Egyptian granites and the Etruscan vase] An allusion to the contents of the British Museum. 212 The stone where Alexander's ashes lay] A granite sarcophagus at the British Museum was thought to be that of Alexander the Great (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 315). Anna Letitia Barbauld 77

There walks a Spirit o'er the peopled earth, Secret his progress is, unknown his birth; Moody and viewless as the changing wind, No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind; Where'er he turns, the human brute awakes, And, roused to better life, his sordid hut forsakes: 220 He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires, Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires: Obedient Nature follows where he leads; The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads; The beasts retire from man's asserted reign, And prove his kingdom was not given in vain. Then from its bed is drawn the ponderous ore, Then Commerce pours her gifts on every shore, Then Babel's towers and terraced gardens rise, And pointed obelisks invade the skies; 230 The prince commands, in Tyrian purple drest, And Egypt's virgins weave the linen vest. Then spans the graceful arch the roaring tide, And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide. Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart, Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art; Saints, heroes, sages, who the land adorn, Seem rather to descend than to be born; Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame, With pen of adamant inscribes their name.

The Genius now forsakes the favoured shore, And hates, capricious, what he loved before; Then empires fall to dust, then arts decay, And wasted realms enfeebled despots sway; Even Nature's changed; without his fostering smile Ophir no gold, no plenty yields the Nile; The thirsty sand absorbs the useless rill, And spotted plagues from putrid fens distill. In desert solitudes then Tadmor sleeps, Stern Marius then o'er fallen Carthage weeps;

249 Tadmor] Biblical name for Palmyra (ibid., 316). 250 Stern Marius then o'er fallen Carthage weeps) Plutarch (Lives 9.577) tells of the stern Anna Letitia Barbauld

Then with enthusiast love the pilgrim roves To seek his footsteps in forsaken groves, Explores the fractured arch, the ruined tower, Those limbs disjointed of gigantic power; Still at each step he dreads the adder's sting, The Arab's javelin, or the tiger's spring; With doubtful caution treads the echoing ground, And asks where Troy or Babylon is found.

And now the vagrant Power no more detains 260 The vale of Tempe, or Ausonian plains; Northward he throws the animating ray, O'er Celtic nations bursts the mental day: And, as some playful child the mirror turns, Now here now there the moving lustre burns; Now o'er his changeful fancy more prevail Batavia's dykes than Arno's purple vale, And stinted suns, and rivers bound with frost, Than Enna's plains or Baia's viny coast; Venice the Adriatic weds in vain, 270 And Death sits brooding o'er Campania's plain; O'er Baltic shores and through Hercynian groves, Stirring the soul, the mighty impulse moves; Art plies his tools, and Commerce spreads her sail, And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale. The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms, And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes; Loud minstrel Bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse

Caius Marius (born c. 157 B.c.), who told an official barring him from returning to Africa to tell the governor "that thou hast seen Marius a fugitive, seated amid the ruins of Carthage" (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 316). 260 The vale of Tempe, or Ausonian plains] Classical Greece and Rome; the vale of Tempe is in Thessaly, and Ausonian is Virgilian for "Italian" (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 316). 266 Batavia's dykes than Arno's purple vale] Holland was called the Batavian Republic during Napoleon's occupation. The Arno River is in Italy. 268 Than Enna's plains or Baia's viny coast] Baia was a resort town on the Bay of Naples. Enna was a valley in Sicily, according to classical mythology (ibid., 316, 244). 271 Hercynian groves] Germany's Black Forest (ibid., 316). 275 Odin] Norse god of war, poetry, knowledge, and wisdom. Anna Letitia Barbauld 79

The Runic rhyme, and "build the lofty verse": The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell To the soft breathings of the '!Eolian shell, 280 Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone, And scarce believes the altered voice her own. And now, where Caesar saw with proud disdain The wattled hut and skin of azure stain, Corinthian columns rear their graceful forms, And light varandas brave the wintry storms, While British tongues the fading fame prolong Of Tully's eloquence and Maro's song. Where once Bonduca whirled the scythed car, And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war, 290 Light forms beneath transparent muslins float, And tutored voices swell the artful note. Light-leaved acacias and the -shady plane And spreading cedar grace the woodland reign; While crystal walls the tenderer plants confine, The fragrant orange and the nectared pine; The Syrian grape there hangs her rich festoons, Nor asks for purer air, or brighter noons: Science and Art urge on the useful toil, New mould a climate and create the soil, 300 Subdue the rigour of the northern Bear, O'er polar climes shed aromatic air, On yielding Nature urge their new demands, And ask not gifts but tribute at her hands.

London exults:-on London Art bestows Her summer ices and her winter rose; Gems of the East her mural crown adorn, And Plenty at her feet pours forth her horn; While even the exiles her just laws disclaim,

278 "build the lofty verse"] See Milton, Lycidas line u: "build the lofty rhyme." 288 Tully's eloquence and Maro's song] Cicero Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.c.), Roman states­ man, orator, and prolific author, and Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 B.c.), Roman poet. 289 Bonduca] Boadicea, legendary queen of the Britons (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 316). 301 the northern Bear] The North Star, part of the constellation Ursa Minor. 80 Anna Letitia Barbauld

310 People a continent, and build a name: August she sits, and with extended hands Holds forth the book of life to distant lands.

But fairest flowers expand but to decay; The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away; Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they bring; Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring. Crime walks thy streets, Fraud earns her unblest bread, O'er want and woe thy gorgeous robe is spread, And angel charities in vain oppose: 320 With grandeur's growth the mass of misery grows. For see, -to other climes the Genius soars, He turns from Europe's desolated shores; And lo, even now, midst mountains wrapt in storm, On Andes' heights he shrouds his awful form; On Chimborazo's summits treads sublime, Measuring in lofty thought the march of Time; Sudden he calls:-" 'Tis now the hour!" he cries, Spreads his broad hand, and bids the nations rise. La Plata hears amidst her torrents' roar; 330 Potosi hears it, as she digs the ore: Ardent, the Genius fans the noble strife, And pours through feeble souls a higher life, Shouts to the mingled tribes from sea to sea, And swears-Thy world, Columbus, shall be free. (1812)

• Barbauld completed work on the poem in early December l8II, and it was pub­ lished by 5 February 1812. Anne Grant's Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen (1814) was writ­ ten as a counterstatement (McCarthy and Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, 309, 3n).

325 Chimborazo's] Mountain in Ecuador. 329 La Plata] City in Argentina, about thirty-five miles southeast of Buenos Aires. 330 Potosi] City in south-central Bolivia. Anna Letitia Barbauld 81

Life

Animula, vagula, blandula.*

Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet. But this I know, when thou art fled, Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be, As all that then remains of me. 0 whither, whither dost thou fly, Where bend unseen thy trackless course, IO And in this strange divorce, Ah tell where I must seek this compound I?

To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, From whence thy essence came, Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed From matter's base encumbering weed? Or dost thou, hid from sight, Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivious years the' appointed hour, To break thy trance and reassume thy power? 20 Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? 0 say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee?

Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning. 30 (wr. 1812; pub. 1825)

*Alexander Pope translated this line from a Latin poem attributed to the emperor Hadrian (A.D. 76-138) as follows: "Ah fleeting Spirit! wand'ring Fire." 82 Anna Letitia Barbauld

The Baby-House

Dear Agatha, I give you joy, And much admire your pretty toy, A mansion in itself complete And fitted to give guests a treat; With couch and table, chest and chair, The bed or supper to prepare; We almost wish to change ourselves To fairy forms of tripping elves, To press the velvet couch and eat IO From tiny cups the sugared meat.

I much suspect that many a sprite Inhabits it at dead of night; That, as they dance, the listening ear The pat of fairy feet might hear; That, just as you have said your prayers, They hurry-scurry down the stairs: And you'll do well to try to find Tester or ring they've left behind.

But think not, Agatha, you own 20 That toy, a Baby-house, alone; For many a sumptuous one is found To press an ampler space of ground. The broad-based Pyramid that stands Casting its shade in distant lands, Which asked some mighty nation's toil With mountain-weight to press the soil, And there has raised its head sublime Through :eras of uncounted time, - Its use if asked, 'tis only said, 30 A Baby-house to lodge the dead. Nor less beneath more genial skies The domes of pomp and folly rise, Whose sun through diamond windows streams, While gems and gold reflect his beams; Where tapestry clothes the storied wall, And fountains spout and waters fall; Anna Letitia Barbauld

The peasant faints beneath his load, Nor tastes the grain his hands have sowed, While scarce a nation's wealth avails To raise thy Baby-house, Versailles. And Baby-houses oft appear On British ground, of prince or peer; Awhile their stately heads they raise, The' admiring traveller stops to gaze; He looks again-where are they now? Gone to the hammer or the plough: Then trees, the pride of ages, fall, And naked stands the pictured wall; And treasured coins from distant lands Must feel the touch of sordid hands; 50 And gems, of classic stores the boast, Fall to the cry of-Who bids most? Then do not, Agatha, repine That cheaper Baby-house is thine. (wr. c. 1818; pub. 1825)

Riddle

From rosy bowers we issue forth, From east to west, from south to north, Unseen, unfelt, by night, by day, Abroad we take our airy way: We foster love and kindle strife, The bitter and the sweet of life: Piercing and sharp, we wound like steel; Now, smooth as oil, those wounds we heal: Not strings of pearl are valued more, Or gems enchased in golden ore; IO Yet thousands of us every day, Worthless and vile, are thrown away. Ye wise, secure with bars of brass The double doors through which we pass; For, once escaped, back to our cell No human art can us compel. (1825)