482. EBB to Mary Hunter [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 87.
[Sidmouth]
To Mary Hunter on her birthday
Sept 11th 1833 From her affectionate E. B. B.
What time our footsteps tread
The hollow places of this mortal way
Where cold and Parian stones [2] do overlay
The dwellings of the dead
How many songs we sing, of joy and woe
Of hope, which changeth soon
To mem’ry’s mournful tune,
And love .... to[o] high a note for voices low.
Dear child, whose blessed eyne
Are bright with prayers! Whose ear hath ever hung
On Genius speaking Faith’s unearthly tongue
May every song of thine
Be like these Olney songs! [3] —that if they fall
In mirth or woe from thee
Still Jesus’ name may be
In each, to give a sweetness to them all!–
Publication: HUP, II, 143.
Source: Copy in an unidentified hand at Huntington Library.
1. The daughter of George Barrett Hunter. This was her seventh birthday. (For further details of her friendship with the Moulton-Barretts, see pp. 315-316.)
2. The island of Paros, in the Ægean Sea, was famous for its white marble.
3. Marginal note in unidentified hand (different from that in which the poem is copied) reads: “Written on the fly leaf of ‘Olney Hymns’, Duncan 1825.” (See Reconstruction, C629.)
Olney Hymns, published in 1779, contained compositions by William Cowper (1731–1800) and his friend John Newton (1725–1807).
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