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Helen Maria Williams
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Helen Maria Williams Poems
- Ode To Peace I. She comes, benign enchantress, heav'n ...
- Peruvian Tales: Alzira, Tale I Description of Peru, and of ...
- An Address To Poetry I. While envious crowds the summit ...
- An American Tale "Ah! pity all the pangs I feel, If pity ...
- Sonnet On Reading Burns' Mount... While soon the ...
- Song I. Slow spreads the gloom my soul desires-- The sun ...
- Part Of An Irregular Fragment I. Rise, winds of night! ...
Helen Maria Williams 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 favorably 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.
Life
She was born to a Scottish mother, Helen Hay, and a Welsh army officer ... more »
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Comments about Helen Maria Williams
Ode To Peace
I.
She comes, benign enchantress, heav'n born PEACE!
With mercy beaming in her radiant eye;
She bids the horrid din of battle cease,
And at her glance the savage passions die.
'Tis Nature's festival, let earth rejoice,
And pour to Liberty exulting songs,
In distant regions, with according voice,
Let Man the vict'ry bless, its prize to Man belongs.
II.
Resistless Freedom! when she nerves the arm,
No vulgar triumph crowns the hero's might;
She, she alone can spread a moral charm
O'er war's fell deeds, and sanctify the fight.
O, GALLIA !...
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