Poems on Madness in the Eighteenth Century
Ann Yearsley, Clifton Hill, 206-96 (Blackwell 448)
206 Beneath this stack Louisa's dwelling rose,
207 Here the fair Maniac bore three Winters snows.
208 Here long she shiver'd, stiffening in the blast,
209 The lightnings round their livid horrors cast;
210 The thunders roar, while rushing torrents pour,
211 And add new woes to bleak affliction's hour;
212 The heavens lour dismal while the storm descends,
213 No Mother's bosom the soft maid befriends;
214 But, frighten'd, o'er the wilds she swiftly flies,
215 And drench'd with rains, the roofless hay-stack tries.
216 The morn was fair, and gentle---sought
217 These lonely woodlands, friends to sober Thought;
218 With Solitude, the slow-pac'd maid is seen
219 Tread the dark grove, and unfrequented green,
220 Well---knew their lurkings; Phoebus shone,
221 While, musing, she pursued the track alone.
222 O, thou kind friend! whom here I dare not name,
223 Who to Louisa's shed of misery came,
224 Lur'd by the tale, sigh'd o'er her beauteous form,
225 And gently drew her from the beating storm,
226 Stand forth---defend, for well thou canst, the cause
227 Of Heaven, and justify its rigid laws;
228 Yet own that human laws are harshly given,
229 When they extend beyond the will of Heaven.
230 Say, can thy pen for that hard duty plead,
231 By which the meek and helpless maid's decreed
232 To dire seclusion? Snatch'd from guiltless joys,
233 To where corroding grief the frame destroys;
234 Monastic glooms, which active virtue cramp,
235 Where horrid silence chills the vital lamp;
236 Slowly and faint the languid pulses beat,
237 And the chill'd heart forgets its genial heat;
238 The dim sunk eye, with hopeless glance, explores
239 The solemn aisles, and death-denouncing doors,
240 Ne'er to be past again.---Now heaves the sigh,
241 Now unavailing sorrows fill the eye:
242 Fancy once more brings back the long-lost youth
243 To the fond soul, in all the charms of Truth;
244 She welcomes the lov'd image; busy Thought
245 Pourtrays the past, with guiltless pleasures fraught;
246 'Tis momentary bliss, 'tis rapture high,
247 The heart o'erflows, and all is extacy.
248 Memory! I charge thee yet preserve the shade,
249 Ah! let not yet the glittering colours fade!
250 Forbear the cruel future yet to view,
251 When the sad soul must bid a long adieu,
252 E'en to its fancied bliss---Ah! turn not yet
253 Thou wretched bankrupt, that must soon forget
254 This farewel draught of joy: lo! Fancy dies,
255 E'en the thin phantom of past pleasure flies.
256 Thought sinks in real woe; too poor to give
257 Her present bliss, she bids the future live;
258 The spirit soon quits that fond clasp, for see,
259 The future offers finish'd misery.
260 Hope quite extinct, lo! frantic thro' the aisles
261 She raves, while Superstition grimly smiles.
262 Th'exhausted mourner mopes, then wildly stalks
263 Round the drear dome, and seeks the darkest walks.
264 The glance distracted each sad sister meets,
265 The sorrow-speaking eye in silence greets
266 Each death-devoted maid; Louisa here
267 Runs thro' each various shape of sad despair;
268 Now swells with gusts of hope, now sick'ning dies;
269 Alternate thoughts of death and life arise
270 Within her panting soul; the firm resolve,
271 The new desire, in stronger fears dissolve.
272 She starts---then seiz'd the moment of her fate,
273 Quits the lone cloyster and the horrid grate,
274 Whilst wilder horrors to receive her wait;
275 Muffled, on Freedom's happy plains they stand,
276 And eager seize her not reluctant hand;
277 Too late to these mild shores the mourner came,
278 For now the guilt of flight o'erwhelms her frame:
279 Her broken vows in wild disorder roll,
280 And stick like serpents in her trembling soul;
281 Thought, what art thou? of thee she boasts no more,
282 O'erwhelm'd, thou dy'st amid the wilder roar
283 Of lawless anarchy, which sweeps the soul,
284 Whilst her drown'd faculties like pebbles roll,
285 Unloos'd, uptorn, by whirlwinds of despair,
286 Each well-taught moral now dissolves in air;
287 Dishevel'd, lo! her beauteous tresses fly,
288 And the wild glance now fills the staring eye;
289 The balls, fierce glaring in their orbits move,
290 Bright spheres, where beam'd the sparkling fires of Love,
291 Now roam for objects which once fill'd her mind,
292 Ah! long-lost objects the must never find.
293 Ill starr'd Louisa! Memory, 'tis a strain,
294 Which fills my soul with sympathetic pain.
295 Remembrance, hence, give thy vain struggles o'er,
296 Nor swell the line with forms that live no more.
William Cowper, The Task, 1:534-56 (Blackwell 500)
534 There often wanders one, whom better days
535 Saw better clad, in cloak of sattin trimm'd
536 With lace, and hat with splendid ribband bound.
537 A serving-maid was she, and fell in love
538 With one who left her, went to sea and died.
539 Her fancy follow'd him through foaming waves
540 To distant shores, and she would sit and weep
541 At what a sailor suffers; fancy too,
542 Delusive most where warmest wishes are,
543 Would oft anticipate his glad return,
544 And dream of transports she was not to know.
545 She heard the doleful tidings of his death,
546 And never smiled again. And now she roams
547 The dreary waste; there spends the livelong day,
548 And there, unless when charity forbids,
549 The livelong night. A tatter'd apron hides,
550 Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides a gown
551 More tatter'd still; and both but ill conceal
552 A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs.
553 She begs an idle pin of all she meets,
554 And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food,
555 Though press'd with hunger oft, or comelier clothes,
556 Though pinch'd with cold, asks never.---Kate is crazed.
Charlotte Smith, On being cautioned against walking on a headland
overlooking the sea because it was frequented by a lunatic
[from Elegiac Sonnets, 1797-1800] (Blackwell 516)
1 Is there a solitary wretch who hies
2 To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow,
3 And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes
4 Its distance from the waves that chide below;
5 Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs
6 Chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf,
7 With hoarse, half-utter'd lamentation, lies
8 Murmuring responses to the dashing surf?
9 In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,
10 I see him more with envy than with fear;
11 He has no nice felicities that shrink
12 From giant horrors; wildly wandering here,
13 He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know
14 The depth or the duration of his woe.
Anne Finch, The Spleen (Blackwell 22)
*** also 'vapours', look up Pope's 'Cave of the Spleen'
Matthew Prior, On a Pretty Madwoman (Blackwell 70)
*** Jeremy Collier (1698) versus James Drake (1699)
1 While mad Ophelia we lament,
2 And Her distraction mourn,
3 Our grief's misplac'd, Our tears mispent,
4 Since what for Her condition's meant
5 More justly fits Our Own.
6 For if 'tis happiness to be,
7 From all the turns of Fate,
8 From dubious joy, and sorrow free;
9 Ophelia then is blest, and we
10 Misunderstand Her state.
11 The Fates may do whate'er they will,
12 They can't disturb her mind,
13 Insensible of good, or ill,
14 Ophelia is Ophelia still,
15 Be Fortune cross or kind.
16 Then make with reason no more noise,
17 Since what should give relief,
18 The quiet of Our mind destroys,
19 Or with a full spring-tide of joys,
20 Or a dead-ebb of grief.
James Thomson, Spring, 1004-112 (217)
...But absent, what fantastic Woes, arrous'd,
Rage in each Thought, by restless Musing fed,
Chill the warm Cheek, and blast the Bloom of Life?
Neglected Fortune flies; and sliding swift,
Prone into Ruin, fall his scorn'd Affairs.
'Tis nought but Gloom around. The darken's Sun
Loses his Light. The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright Arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky Vault.
All Nature fades extinct; and she alone
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every Thought,
Fills every Sense, and pants in every Vein.
Anna Seward, Sonnet: To the Poppy (527)
*** Henrietta O'Neill 'Ode to the Poppy' (1792) L293
1 While Summer roses all their glory yield
2 To crown the votary of love and joy,
3 Misfortune's victim hails, with many a sigh,
4 Thee, scarlet Poppy of the pathless field,
5 Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield
6 Thy flaccid vest, that as the gale blows high,
7 Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.---
8 So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd maid,
9 Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind
10 Her garish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain;
11 But brain-sick visions cheat her tortured mind,
12 And bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain,
13 Kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed,
14 Thou flimsy, shewy, melancholy Weed.
*Mary Alcock - A Receipt for Writing a Novel (1799), L 301
*Mary Barber -- To Alex Pope, Esq. - On Seeing an Officer's Widow
*Jane Barker - To My Unkind Friend, Little Tom King
*Aphra Behn - The Land of Love (1717) - A Pindarick Poem on the Coronation (1685)
*Jane Cave - Headache (1794) L248, 249
*Lady Chudleigh - On the Vanities of Life: a Pindarick Ode (1703)
*Sarah Fyge Egerton - The Fond Shepheress (1703)
*Ephelia - Neglect Returned (1682)
*Mary Masters - The Defense of My Self (1733)
*Mary W. Montagu - In answer to a lady who advised retirement (1763) - Epistle from Arthur Grey (1768)
*Maggie Newcastle - Complaint of water, earth and air (1664) - Dialogue between melacholy and mirth (1664)
*Mary Robinson - Ode to the Harp of Louisa (1793)
*Elizabeth Rowe - Soliloquy IX (1739) - On Canticles (1737)
*Charlotte Smith - To the winds (1793)
*Joanna Baillie, Aphra Behn, Hannah Brand, Frances Brooke, Dorothea Celesia, Susanna Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Griffith, Eliza Haywood, Anne Steele, Mercy Otis Warren, Lady Winchilsea