Bessie Rayner Parkes

Bessie Rayner Parkes Poems

1.

THE steadfast coursing of the stars,
The waves that ripple to the shore,
The vigorous trees which year by year
Spread upwards more and more;
...

GOOD bye, Old Year!
And with thee take
Thanks for the gifts to every land
Thou broughtest in thy bounteous hand,
...

WHAT is it? a speck in the distance,
A rumour that flies in the air,
Too faint to be met by resistance,
Too strong to be braved by despair.
...

4.

SWEET melody amidst the moving spheres
Breaks forth, a solemn and entrancing sound,
A harmony whereof the earth's green hills
...

OH, dear to me the simple flowers
Which bloom in gardens such as these,
Let jasmine shine in ladies' bowers,
...

WHAT do the scales of Justice hold,
Poised even in that steady hand?--
What is that measure closely scanned?
...

LITTLE yellow darling,
Delicate and pale,
Can thy gentle loveliness
Brook such a wintry gale,
...

NO word of pity, if the storm should beat,
Need any voice bestow which calls you dear;
You will not quail beneath the foolish heat,
...

9.

DEEP heart and earnest eyes
Seeking for rest,
Finding a weight that lies
Cold on thy breast,
...

ALAS! they have stolen my Fairy Princess,
And where they have hidden her I cannot guess.
...

PART I.

'THE night is dark as pitch, Harry,
But there's not a drop of rain,
...

TIMID strangers, I can fancy
How amidst the hedge ye grew,
While the gusty winds of Autumn
Coloured leaves upon ye blew,
...

CHRISTMAS is over, and Christmas cheer;--
What shall we wish you, O reader dear?
What do you want for your Happy New Year?
...

14.

WAVES which discourse, in a melodious whisper,
Mutual knowledge with the marshall'd clouds,--
Murmur of June, which riseth up with Hesper,
...

IN a fair wood like this, where the beeches are growing,
Brave Robin Hood hunted in days of old;
...

WHEN trembling angels stand aloof,
Watching the fight with folded wings,
Forbid or succour or reproof,
...

WHEN sitting softly, hand in hand,
Twilight unbars the gates of speech,
And whispered words sink deeplier down
...

ACROSS the broad Campagna fell
The softly dropping rain,
Obscured the hills I love so well,
And blotted out the plain.
...

SHE twisted up her royal lengths
Of fallen hair with a silver pin,
Her eyes were frowning, molten depths
Which stirred to flame when I looked within;
...

TIS April! 'Tis a holyday! and they shut close yester-even
The golden gates of Sydenham with the clang of iron bars;
...

Bessie Rayner Parkes Biography

Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (16 June 1829 - 23 March 1925) was one of the most prominent English feminists and campaigners for women’s rights in Victorian times and also a poet, essayist and journalist. Early life A great-grandchild of the eminent scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Bessie Rayner Parkes was born to loving, well-off parents, in a household interested in people and ideas. Her father was Joseph Parkes (1796-1865), a prosperous solicitor and a liberal with Radical sympathies. His support for his daughter’s aspirations was moderate. Bessie's mother, Elizabeth Rayner Priestley (1797-1877), usually called Eliza, was a wife and mother, who always considered herself an American, having been born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. She remembered her grandfather with admiration and love. Although not in great sympathy with her daughter over her strong wish to make changes in the status of women, she nevertheless loved her dearly and did not actively oppose her. Unusually for girls of her background, Bessie was well educated at a progressive Unitarian boarding school, a period of her life which she enjoyed. Activism Parkes became gradually aware of the unjust, contradictory, and even absurd situation of women in Great Britain, though there were many differences according to the social class they belonged to. The first endeavour that Parkes and her friend Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon took on was to try and change the restrictive property laws that applied to married women. Parkes was also indignant about the distinction made between "ladies" and "women". "Ladies", that is to say middle-class women, lost social status if they earned money, the only acceptable exceptions being writing, painting, or teaching, which for the most part meant governessing. Due in part to her efforts, by the close of the century, it became acceptable for a middle-class woman to acquire a proper education and train to do paid work. Working-class women had always belonged to the work force, whether they wanted to or not. Parkes and her activist friends interacted with women in other countries of Europe and in the United States, adding a very considerable international dimension to their efforts. In the 1860s Parkes belonged to the first women’s group which set out to obtain voting rights. Friendships Bessie Rayner Parkes’ wide circle of literary and political friends included George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lord Shaftesbury, Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Thackeray, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, John Ruskin, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her most fruitful friendship was with Barbara Bodichon, for out of their joint efforts grew the first organized women’s movement in Britain. English Woman's Journal Parkes became the principal editor of the first feminist British periodical – the English Woman’s Journal - published monthly in London between 1858 and 1864. Its closure was due both to financial reasons and to the conflicts that arose among its sponsors and chief contributors. The offshoots that sprang from it were many and varied, such as the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, the Victoria Printing Press (entirely staffed by women), the Law-Copying Office, and the Langham Place Group, where women gathered informally to discuss their lives or simply have a rest. Conversion to Roman Catholicism Another important part of Parkes' life story was her slow but determined path to the Roman Catholic Church, to which she converted in 1864. She took in all the debate around the Oxford Movement, but what really impressed her was the immense amount of social work carried out by Catholic nuns. She knew the three famous English Cardinals personally and recalled them in her writings. Marriage and children Aged 38, Bessie Rayner Parkes fell in love with a Frenchman of delicate health, named Louis Belloc, himself the son of a notable woman, Louise Swanton-Belloc. Their five-year long marriage, spent in France, was described by Parkes as Arcadia. The family lived through the Franco-Prussian War and was deeply affected by it on a material level. Parkes never got over her husband’s sudden death in 1872. Their children, Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868-1947) and Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), went on to become renowned writers in their different ways. Later life Parkes continued to write until late in life and remained a keen observer of politics and society. However, following her marriage and the death of her husband, her active involvement in the organized women’s movements abated. Anguish over the stupidity of war and pride in her country coloured her feelings during the First World War. Almost at its close, her eldest grandchild, a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, went missing. He was shot down and killed near Cambrai, in France.)

The Best Poem Of Bessie Rayner Parkes

Peace

THE steadfast coursing of the stars,
The waves that ripple to the shore,
The vigorous trees which year by year
Spread upwards more and more;

The jewel forming in the mine,
The snow that falls so soft and light,
The rising and the setting sun,
The growing glooms of night;

All natural things both live and move
In natural peace that is their own;
Only in our disordered life
Almost is she unknown.

She is not rest, nor sleep, nor death;
Order and motion ever stand
To carry out her firm behests
As guards at her right hand.

And something of her living force
Fashions the lips when Christians say
To Him Whose strength sustains the world,
'Give us Thy Peace, we pray!'

Bessie Rayner Parkes Comments

Jimmy 11 April 2018

The photo is not of Bessie Rayner Parkes but of Mary Howitt, nee Botham

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