Spiritual Converse: Hemans’s A Spirit’s Return in Dialogue with Byron and Shelley

Yearning in vain for the “full and deep communion of kindred natures,” the poet goes on to scorn the “common, every-day intercourse of human beings”: “how poor it is—how heartless!—how much more does it oppress the mind with a sense of loneliness, than the deepest solitude of majestic nature!” Byronic sentiments, to be sure. But the “ardent spirit” here panting, “as the captive for the free air of Heaven,” for the “mingling of thought with thought” is not Lord Byron, but Felicia Hemans. ¹ A reminder, if we still need one, that Hemans did not always write under cover of the domestic affections, but could on occasion, at least in manuscript, show a disdain for quotidian, household “intercourse” worthy of Childe Harold. Evidence, too, for the affinities that link Hemans to her male contemporaries— most prominently Byron and Percy Shelley—affinities that scholars and critics have only begun to explore. ²