The following verses, written by Anna to Honora, from the seaside, are pleasing in the picture they present and in the sentiment they enshrine. The prophecy they make has also been fulfilled:
I write Honora on the sparkling sand! The envious waves forbid the trace to stay: Honora's name again adorns the strand, Again the waters bear their prize away!
So Nature wrote her charms upon thy face, The cheek's bright bloom, the lip's envermeilled dye, And every gay and every witching grace That youth's warm hours and beauty's stores supply.
But Time's stern tide, with cold Oblivion's wave, Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm; E'en Nature's self, so powerful, cannot save Her own rich gifts from this o'erwhelming harm.
Love and the Muse can boast superior power; Indelible the letters they shall frame: They yield to no inevitable hour, But on enduring tablets write thy name.
Romney, in his fancy-picture of Serena reading by candle-light, accidentally produced an accurate likeness of this lost friend of Miss Seward's heart. "Drawing his abstract idea of perfect loveliness, the form and the face of Honora Sneyd rose beneath his pencil." This beauteous resemblance Anna hung in her room, and made her constant companion. "It contributes to endear, as the bright reality endeared, in times long past, this pleasant mansion to my affections. Thus are those dear lineaments ever present to my sight, retouching the traits of memory, over which indistinctness is apt to steal." Again she says, "The luxury of mournful delight with which I continually gaze upon that form, is one of the most precious comforts of my life." Years after, in giving to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby an account of a recent journey she had made, Miss Seward writes, "The stars glimmered in the lake of Weston, as we travelled by its side: but their light did not enable me to distinguish the church, beneath the floor of whose porch rests the mouldered form of my heart, dear Honora. Yet of our approach to that consecrated spot my spirit felt all the mournful consciousness." In her poem on the death of her intimate friend. Andre, Miss Seward had written,
O Washington! I thought thee great and good, Nor knew thy Nero-thirst for guiltless blood, Severe to use the power that Fortune gave, Thou cool, determined Murderer of the Brave!