Anna Seward

Anna Seward Poems

Anna Seward Biography

an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield. Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward (1708-1790), prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author. Born at Eyam in Derbyshire, she passed nearly all her life in Lichfield, beginning at an early age to write poetry partly at the instigation of Erasmus Darwin. Author of Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), her verses include elegies and sonnets, and she also wrote a poetical novel, Louisa, of which five editions were published. Seward's writings, which include a large number of letters, have been called "commonplace". Horace Walpole said she had "no imagination, no novelty." She was praised, however, by Mary Scott. Between 1775 and 1781, Seward was a guest and participant at the much-mocked salon held by Anna Miller at Batheaston. However, it was here that Seward's talent was recognised and her work published in the annual volume of poems from the gatherings, a debt that Seward acknowledged in her Poem to the Memory of Lady Miller (1782). Sir Walter Scott edited Seward's Poetical Works in three volumes (Edinburgh, 1810). To these he prefixed a memoir of the author, adding extracts from her literary correspondence. He declined, however, to edit the bulk of her letters, and these were published in six volumes by A. Constable as Letters of Anna Seward 1784-1807 (Edinburgh, 1811). Seward also wrote Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804 In an era when women had to tread carefully in society's orbit, Seward struck a middle ground. In her work, Seward could be alternately arch and teasing, as in her poem entitled Portrait of Miss Levett, on the subject of a Lichfield beauty later married to Rev. Richard Levett. A longtime friend of the Levett family of Lichfield, Seward noted in her Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin that three of the town's foremost citizens had been thrown from their carriages and had injured their knees in the same year. "No such misfortune," Seward wrote, "was previously remembered in that city, nor has it recurred through all the years which since elapsed." There is a plaque to Anna Seward (spelt "Anne", which is the spelling she used in her will) in Lichfield Cathedral.)

The Best Poem Of Anna Seward

Eyam

For one short week I leave, with anxious heart,
Source of my filial cares, the Full of Days,
Lur'd by the promise of Harmonic Art
To breathe her Handel's soul-exalting lays.
Pensive I trace the Derwent's amber wave,
Foaming through umbrag'd banks, or view it lave
The soft, romantic vallies, high o'er-peer'd
By hills and rocks, in savage grandeur rear'd.
Not two short miles from thee, can I refrain
Thy haunts, my native EYAM, long unseen?-
Thou and thy lov'd inhabitants, again
Shall meet my transient gaze.-Thy rocky screen,
Thy airy cliffs I mount; and seek thy shade,
Thy roofs, that brow the steep, romantic glade;
But, while on me the eyes of Friendship glow,
Swell my pain'd sighs, my tears spontaneous flow.

In scenes paternal, not beheld through years,
Nor view'd, till now, but by a Father's side,
Well might the tender, tributary tears,
From keen regrets of duteous fondness glide!
Its pastor, to this human-flock no more
Shall the long flight of future days restore!
Distant he droops,-and that once gladdening eye
Now languid gleams, e'en when his friends are nigh.


Through this known walk, where weedy gravel lies,
Rough, and unsightly;-by the long, coarse grass
Of the once smooth, and vivid green, with sighs
To the deserted Rectory I pass;-
Stray through the darken'd chambers' naked bound,
Where childhood's earliest, liveliest bliss I found;
How chang'd, since erst, the lightsome walls beneath,
The social joys did their warm comforts breathe!


Ere yet I go, who may return no more,
That sacred pile, 'mid yonder shadowy trees,
Let me revisit!-Ancient, massy door,
Thou gratest hoarse!-my vital spirits freeze,
Passing the vacant pulpit, to the space
Where humble rails the decent altar grace,
And where my infant sister's ashes sleep,
Whose loss I left the childish sport to weep.


Now the low beams, with paper garlands hung,
In memory of some village youth, or maid,
Draw the soft tear, from thrill'd remembrance sprung,
How oft my childhood mark'd that tribute paid.
The gloves, suspended by the garland's side,
White as its snowy flowers, with ribbons tied;-
Dear Village, long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of thy early dead!


But O! thou bland, and silent pulpit!-thou,
That with a Father's precepts, just, and bland,
Did'st win my ear, as reason's strength'ning glow
Show'd their full value, now thou seem'st to stand
Before my sad, suffus'd, and trembling gaze,
The dreariest relic of departed days.
Of eloquence paternal, nervous, clear,
Dim Apparition thou-and bitter is my tear!

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