Helen Maria Williams
We currently have one poem by Helen Maria Williams. You can listen to the poem and also read it below.
Read and listen to A Song
No riches from his scanty store
My lover could impart;
He gave a boon I valued more —
He gave me all his heart!
His soul sincere, his generous worth,
Might well this bosom move;
And when I asked for bliss on earth,
I only meant his love.
But now for me, in search of gain
From shore to shore he flies;
Why wander riches to obtain,
When love is all I prize?
The frugal meal, the lowly cot
If blest my love with thee!
That simple fare, that humble lot,
Were more than wealth to me.
While he the dangerous ocean braves,
My tears but vainly flow:
Is pity in the faithless waves
To which I pour my woe?
The night is dark, the waters deep,
Yet soft the billows roll;
Alas! at every breeze I weep —
The storm is in my soul.
Helen Maria Williams - 1759 - 1827
Was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. A religious dissenter, she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France.
A controversial figure in her own time, the young Williams was favourably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth, but (especially at the height of the French Revolution) she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton.
More on Wikipedia