Mary Tighe, the daughter of the Rev. William Blachford, by Theodosia, the daughter of William Tighe, of Rosanna, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, was married to Henry Tighe, M.P., of Woodstock, Co. Wicklow, and died March 24, 1810, after an illness of six years. Perhaps she is better known to many as the subject of Moore’s touching lyric, “I saw Thy Form in Youthful Prime,” and Mrs. Hemans’s “Grave of a Poetess,” than by her own exquisite verses. Her poem of “Psyche, or the Legend of Love” (founded on the story of Cupid and Psyche as related in the Golden Ass of Apuleius), was privately printed (100 copies) by C. Whittingham, London, 1805, 12mo. After her death appeared: “Psyche, with other Poems, by the Late Mrs. Henry Tighe” (with portrait), 1811.
| Thou hast left sorrow in thy song, | |
| A voice not loud but deep! | |
| The glorious bowers of earth among, | |
| How often didst thou weep? | |
| Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground | |
| Thy tender thoughts and high?— | |
| Now peace the woman’s heart hath found, | |
| And joy the poet’s eye. |
Perhaps no writer of merit has been more neglected by her own friends than Mrs. Tighe. With every means of giving to the public a good memoir of her, I believe no such is in existence…. The very servants who had lived years in the family had never heard the name of Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, mentioned! These present Tighes had been marrying the daughters of lords—this a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and Dan Tighe, a daughter of Lord Crofton. They were ashamed, probably, that any of their name should have degraded herself by writing poetry, which a man or woman without an acre may do. When I reached the church at Innerstiogue, the matter received a most striking confirmation. There, sure enough, was the monument, in a small mausoleum in the church-yard. It is a recumbent figure, laid on a granite altar-shaped basement. The figure is of a freestone resembling Portland stone, and is lying on its side, as on a sofa, being said, by the person who showed it, to be the position in which she died, on coming in from a walk. The execution of the whole is very ordinary, and if really by Flaxman, displays none of his genius. I have seen much better things by a common-stone-mason. There is a little angel sitting at the head, but this has never been fastened down by cement. The monument was, no doubt, erected by the widower of the poetess, who was a man of classical taste, and, I believe, much attached to her. There is no inscription yet put upon the tomb, though one, said to be written by her husband, has long been cut in stone for the purpose. In the wall at the back of the monument, aloft, there is an oblong-square hole left for this inscription, which I understood was lying about at the house, but no single effort had been made to put it up, though it would not require an hour’s work, and though Mrs. Tighe has been dead six-and-thirty years! This was decisive! If these two gentlemen, nephews of the poetess, who are enjoying the two splendid estates of the family, Woodstock and Rosanna, show thus little respect to the only one of their name that ever lifted it above the mob, it is not to be expected that they will show much courtesy to strangers. Well is it that Mrs. Tighe raised her own monument, that of immortal verse, and wrote her own epitaph in the hearts of all the pure and loving, not on a stone which sordid relatives, still fonder of earth than stone, may consign to the oblivion of a lumber room.
Psyche
| Tell me the witching tale again, | |
| For never has my heart or ear | |
| Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain, | |
| So pure to feel, so sweet to hear. | |
* * * * * | |
| Still be the song to Psyche dear, | |
| The song, whose gentle voice was given | |
| To be, on earth, to mortal ear, | |
| An echo of her own, in heaven. |
Sorrow seems to be the muse of song, and from Philomela to Mrs. Tighe the most plaintive notes are the most melodious. I have read “Psyche;” I am sorry that Mrs. Tighe chose such a story: it is both too mystical and too much exhausted. For the first three cantos I felt a sort of languid elegance and luscious sweetness, which had something of the same effect as if I had been overpowered by perfumes; but the three last are of such exquisite beauty that they quite silence me. They are beyond all doubt the most faultless series of verses ever produced by a woman.
The greater part of the poem itself is little worth, except as a strain of elegance; but now and then we meet with a fancy not unworthy a pupil of Spenser.
She is chiefly known by her splendid poem of “Psyche,” which for gorgeousness of colouring and refinement of imagination, is scarcely behind the best verse of Moore, while it is certainly more chaste and spiritual in its sentiment.
Her imagination is warm, and her descriptions often voluptuous, though always refined. Perhaps she has been somewhat diffuse; but, taking her altogether she is not equalled in classical elegance by any English female, and not excelled (in that particular) by any male English poet. She has that rare quality for a poetess of not sparing the pumice-stone, her verses being sedulously polished to the highest degree. She shows also her great taste in omitting obsolete words, the affectation of which so frequently disfigures imitations of the great master of English allegory.
An adventurous and elaborate effort, full of power and beauty, which wanted only a little more artistic skill and concentration to have entitled it to a place among first-class productions.
Displays everywhere an imagination, immature, indeed, and wanting in vigor, but yet both rich and delicate, such as might have shown forth in Spenser himself if he had been a woman, or, as compared to that which we have in the “Fairy Queen,” something like what moonlight is to sunshine.
A very fair and gentle representative of poetry, Mary Tighe, the daughter of a clergyman, the wife of an Irish M.P., is another of the rare instances of literary production in Ireland. She was the author of a poem called “Psyche,” an extremely sweet and melodious rendering of the classical legend, the external form of which, in a slim and sumptuous quarto, with creamy pages as thick as velvet enshrining in big margins a limpid stream of elaborate verse, gives a very just idea of its merit. It is one of those essays in art which at any time it would be cruel to judge rigorously, all the more as it is the composition of a gentle creature who died young and knew nothing of the world—which, with a humane sense of the claims of weakness, generally does receive such gentle efforts tenderly.
The poem is written in the Spenserian stanza, and has decided merit. The verse is melodious, and the tale is told with pleasing directness and simplicity. It has suffered equally from excessive praise and undue disparagement. Mackintosh considered the last three cantos to be of exquisite beauty, and “beyond all doubt the most faultless series of verses ever produced by a woman.”
General
Many of the pictures in this [“Psyche”], the chief production of her muse, are conceived in the true spirit of poetry, while over the whole composition is spread the richest glow of purified passion. It is a poem, however, to be read as a whole, and cannot well be appreciated by any detached passages. A luxurious, dreamy sweetness pervades the descriptions, and gives them a peculiar charm, while the elegance of the easy-flowing language attests the complete power of the poet over her theme. Some of her minor pieces, also, are exceedingly beautiful; and the lines “On Receiving a Branch of Mezereon,” are scarcely exceeded, for beauty and pathos, by anything of the kind in the language.
Mrs. Tighe ought not to be omitted in an enumeration of the writers who were read by Keats, and from whom consequently his poetry may be supposed to have taken some of its colour.
