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    Legends & Lyrics: "The hope that lost in some far distance seems, May be the truer life, and this the dream.”
    Legends & Lyrics: "The hope that lost in some far distance seems, May be the truer life, and this the dream.”
    Legends & Lyrics: "The hope that lost in some far distance seems, May be the truer life, and this the dream.”
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    Legends & Lyrics: "The hope that lost in some far distance seems, May be the truer life, and this the dream.”

    By Adelaide Anne Proctor

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    Adelaide Anne Procter was born at 25 Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, on October 30th, 1825. An early voracious reader she began her literary career as a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later published in book form. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1851 seems to have been a strong influence on her poetry and her desire to help the homeless and unemployed women as well as work with feminist groups and various journals. Adelaide was a favourite poet of Queen Victoria and fellow poet Coventry Patmore called her “the most popular poet of the day after Alfred Lord Tennyson”. Many of her poems were set to music and published in England, Germany and the United States. Adelaide never married and this has given rise to questions about her sexuality. Her poems do reveal how Victorian women expressed repressed feelings but for many years now her work has to been given the attention it really deserves. Here we publish volume 2 of her poems so her work can now be seen for the great talent that she is. Adelaide Anne Proctor died on February 2nd 1864 from tuberculosis at the age of only 38.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateJan 3, 2014
    ISBN9781783949014
    Legends & Lyrics: "The hope that lost in some far distance seems, May be the truer life, and this the dream.”

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      Book preview

      Legends & Lyrics - Adelaide Anne Proctor

      Legends and Lyrics: Second Series by Adelaide Anne Procter

      Adelaide Anne Procter was born at 25 Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, on October 30th, 1825. An early voracious reader she began her literary career as a teenager;  her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later published in book form.

      Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1851 seems to have been a strong influence on her poetry and her desire to help the homeless and unemployed women as well as work with feminist groups and various journals. Adelaide was a favourite poet of Queen Victoria and fellow poet Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day after Alfred Lord Tennyson.  Many of her poems were set to music and published in England, Germany and the United States. 

      Adelaide never married and this has given rise to questions about her sexuality.  Her poems do reveal how Victorian women expressed repressed feelings but for many years now her work has to been given the attention it really deserves.  Here we publish volume 2 of her poems so her work can now be seen for the great talent that she is. 

      Adelaide Anne Proctor died on February 2nd 1864 from tuberculosis at the age of only 38.

      Index Of Contents:

      A Legend of Provence

      Envy

      Over the Mountain

      Beyond

      A Warning

      Maximus

      Optimus

      A Lost Chord

      Too Late

      The Requital

      Returned - Missing

      In the Wood

      Two Worlds

      A New Mother

      Give Place

      My Will

      King and Slave

      A Chant

      Dream-Life

      Rest

      The Tyrant and the Captive

      The Carver's Lesson

      Three Roses

      My Picture Gallery

      Sent to Heaven

      Never Again

      Listening Angels

      Golden Days

      Philip and Mildred

      Borrowed Thoughts

      Light and Shade

      A Changeling

      Discouraged

      If Thou couldst know

      The Warrior to his Dead Bride

      A Letter

      A Comforter

      Unseen

      A Remembrance of Autumn

      Three Evenings in a Life

      The Wind

      Expectation

      An Ideal

      Our Dead

      A Woman's Answer

      The Story of the Faithful Soul

      A Contrast

      The Bride's Dream

      The Angel's Bidding

      Spring

      Evening Hymn

      The Inner Chamber

      Hearts

      Two Loves

      A Woman's Last Word

      Past and Present

      For the Future

      A LEGEND OF PROVENCE

      The lights extinguished, by the hearth I leant,

      Half weary with a listless discontent.

      The flickering giant-shadows, gathering near,

      Closed round me with a dim and silent fear.

      All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame,

      Glancing, lit up a Picture's ancient frame.

      Above the hearth it hung.  Perhaps the night,

      My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light,

      Lent power to that Portrait dark and quaint

      A Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint

      The likeness of a Nun.  I seemed to trace

      A world of sorrow in the patient face,

      In the thin hands folded across her breast

      Its own and the room's shadow hid the rest.

      I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred,

      Till an old legend that I once had heard

      Came back to me; linked to the mystic gloom

      Of that dark Picture in the ghostly room.

      In the far south, where clustering vines are hung;

      Where first the old chivalric lays were sung,

      Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France,

      Angel and knight and fairy, called Romance,

      I stood one day.  The warm blue June was spread

      Upon the earth; blue summer overhead,

      Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare,

      Without a breath to stir its sultry air.

      All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush

      Of rippling waves, that lapsed in silver hush

      Upon the beach; where, glittering towards the strand,

      The purple Mediterranean kissed the land.

      All still, all peaceful; when a convent chime

      Broke on the mid-day silence for a time,

      Then trembling into quiet, seemed to cease,

      In deeper silence and more utter peace.

      So as I turned to gaze, where gleaming white,

      Half hid by shadowy trees from passers' sight,

      The Convent lay, one who had dwelt for long

      In that fair home of ancient tale and song,

      Who knew the story of each cave and hill,

      And every haunting fancy lingering still

      Within the land, spake thus to me, and told

      The Convent's treasured Legend, quaint and old:

      Long years ago, a dense and flowering wood,

      Still more concealed where the white convent stood,

      Borne on its perfumed wings the title came:

      Our Lady of the Hawthorns is its name.

      Then did that bell, which still rings out to-day,

      Bid all the country rise, or eat, or pray.

      Before that convent shrine, the haughty knight

      Passed the lone vigil of his perilous fight;

      For humbler cottage strife or village brawl,

      The Abbess listened, prayed, and settled all.

      Young hearts that came, weighed down by love or wrong,

      Left her kind presence comforted and strong.

      Each passing pilgrim, and each beggar's right

      Was food, and rest, and shelter for the night.

      But, more than this, the Nuns could well impart

      The deepest mysteries of the healing art;

      Their store of herbs and simples was renowned,

      And held in wondering faith for miles around.

      Thus strife, love, sorrow, good and evil fate,

      Found help and blessing at the convent gate.

      Of all the nuns, no heart was half so light,

      No eyelids veiling glances half as bright,

      No step that glided with such noiseless feet,

      No face that looked so tender or so sweet,

      No voice that rose in choir so pure, so clear,

      No heart to all the others half so dear,

      So surely touched by others' pain or woe,

      (Guessing the grief her young life could not know,)

      No soul in childlike faith so undefiled,

      As Sister Angela's, the Convent Child.

      For thus they loved to call her.  She had known

      No home, no love, no kindred, save their own.

      An orphan, to their tender nursing given,

      Child, plaything, pupil, now the Bride of Heaven.

      And she it was who trimmed the lamp's red light

      That swung before the altar, day and night;

      Her hands it was whose patient skill could trace

      The finest broidery, weave the costliest lace;

      But most of all, her first and dearest care,

      The office she would never miss or share,

      Was every day to weave fresh garlands sweet,

      To place before the shrine at Mary's feet.

      Nature is bounteous in that region fair,

      For even winter has her blossoms there.

      Thus Angela loved to count each feast the best,

      By telling with what flowers the shrine was dressed.

      In pomp supreme the countless Roses passed,

      Battalion on battalion thronging fast,

      Each with a different banner, flaming bright,

      Damask, or striped, or crimson, pink, or white,

      Until they bowed before a newborn queen,

      And the pure virgin Lily rose serene.

      Though Angela always thought the Mother blest

      Must love the time of her own hawthorn best,

      Each evening through the year, with equal, care,

      She placed her flowers; then kneeling down in prayer,

      As their faint perfume rose before the shrine,

      So rose her thoughts, as pure and as divine.

      She knelt until the shades grew dim without,

      Till one by one the altar lights shone out,

      Till one by one the Nuns, like shadows dim,

      Gathered around to chant their vesper hymn;

      Her voice then led the music's winged flight,

      And

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