Author: Opie, Amelia (1769-1853)
Title: Poems.
Date: 1802
Descriptive and Critical Essay
Amelia Opie is a woman and writer who refuses to be fit within a box, as her topics range widely among war, death, family, nature and the specificities of social injustice. However, “seasons of life” seems to be a fitting description of her collection, Poems, which not only reflects metaphorical resemblance among the various poems, but also portrays individual journeys that are constantly subject to change.
The volume begins with “Sonnet to Winter.” It is a tribute to the beauty of a wintry landscape, or a commonly unappreciated season: “It o’er the scene can beauties cast / Superior far aught to that Summer’s gale” (3). In relation how winter is treated by other poets of the early 19th century, one cannot help but wonder why Opie chooses to begin her volume with an ode to the beauty of winter. Her description of winter, with a novelist’s vocabulary that is appropriate too for a poet, paints winter not as the season of the ending of blooming fields and redeemed nature, but rather as one of “richly beams” and a “snowy throne” in which the speaker alone takes her place. Perhaps it is a sort of anticipatory ode, or a reminder to see the beauty within each season, rather than dwell in the past. This sonnet reflects Opie’s reputation as a woman who lived fully, contributing to the image of young Opie observing the sky, not only seeing what is before her, but bonding herself to the very scene.
However, the following poem, “The Dying Daughter to Her Mother,” is one of continuous reflection: “But soon the dear illusion flies; the sad reality returns” that a mother has nothing left but a mist of memory to live with, since the reality is that her daughter is being stolen as a physical presence (33). The poem is written in quatrains, keeping the imagery and emotion strong within each stanza.
Thy love alone I call to mind,
And all thy past disdain forget,…
Each keen reproach, each frown unkind,
That crushed my hopes when last we met.But when I saw that angry brow,
Both health and youth were still my own:
O mother! Coudlst thou see me now,
Thou wouldst not have the heart to frown.But see! My orphan’s cheek displays
Both youth, and health’s carnation dies,
Such as on mine in happier days
So fondly charmed thy partial eyes.Grief o’er her bloom a veil now draws,
Grief her loved parent’s pangs to see;
And when thou think’st upon the cause,
That paleness will have charms for thee:And thou wilt fondly press that cheek,
Big happiness its bloom restore,
And thus in tenderest accents speak,
“Sweet orphan, thou shalt mourn no more.”But wilt though thus indulgent be?
O! am I not by hope beguiled?
The long long anger shown to me,
Say, will it not pursue my child?
The characters within Opie’s poems often urge the reader to change the nature and direction of the conversation, especially during a period in which slavery was prominent, poverty and war rampant and the consequences of short life-spans challenged beyond the subject of despair. I believe that Amelia Opie the novelist is reflected also through her poetic characters, as they are developed in relation to their scenery, rather than the scenes of the poems introducing characters in abstract fashion. “A Felon to His Child on the Morning of His Execution,” for example, introduces a new voice to the scene, and offers a moving and powerful statement about the unpopular consequences of capital punishment.
Poor babe, that through this darksome grate
Survey’st yon crowd with curious eye,
If thou wouldst learn why thus they wait,
Know, ’t is to see thy father die:To see how I that death shall bear
They deem for crimes like mine most fit;
Crimes urged by want, which many there
Were never tempted to commit:…A death, sweet innocent! For which
Thou’lt be, alas! One day reviled:
For with my guilt the rude of speech
Too often will reproach my child.Poor outcast! Whither canst thou turn?
Thy future fate adds pangs to mine:
I’m my offences doomed to mourn,
And dear, devoted babe, for thine.
In similar quatrain style, Opie establishes individual thought and cumulative meaning while creating a thread of emotional bonds from the reader to the writer. This style invites the reader to establish a developing train of thought after each stanza, requiring contemplation after each break to reflect on the depth of the language. Older, archaic language is rarely used within Opie’s poetry, which contributes to the reader’s ease of comprehension of the poems. Her audience may be the socially powerful and influential, which would presumably require of her an authorial air of sophistication, but Opie’s poetry is still “legible” enough to be understood by the masses and to create a believable story rather than mere a translation of abstract language.
Opie does not shy from the topics of political weight, whether writing as a woman or not, for with her gender largely takes a back seat and she writes on the basis of negative consequences for a family or lover of social injustice, death or poverty. Subjects as weighty as these are not a mere word or abstraction, but rather stories of often unseen but continuing effects beyond being poor or just dying, tales of those who lose a beloved person or suffer the emotional strains of an event.
In “The Negro’s Boy Tale,” Opie uses language that invites a certain image of the young boy pleading to a young woman for his life and freedom. Although the accent and language differs between the young woman and the slave, the bond closes the racial, gender and socio-economic gap, as both characters prove to be yearning for their homes. Employing the same structure as she does in many of her poems, Opie uses the opportunity to insert political stances. Anna, the woman the boy speaks to, realizes “The expecting boy she could not tell / He’d ne’er his mother see again” (71). Whether her audience agreed with slavery or not, Opie changes the perspective and urges the reader to view the main character as a boy who needs his mother, just as every white person she writes about – and for -- does as well. The emotional weight of this poem only reinforces the political points as the young boy raises the question “But, if dey preach and practice too. A negro slave me should not be” (68). Opie draws her reader in to connect with the boy and the woman, both of whom are helpless in their causes, and brings Christianity to the forefront of the conversation. Opie boldly and knowledgably uses language of Christianity, a religion which preaches love for our neighbors. Hence the power of “the negro boy” telling a Christian (assumed) woman that his state of life goes against the very teachings of England’s religion, is itself something of a rhetorical power move. Furthermore, by ending the stanza on the previously quoted line, Opie adds a sense of mental echo for the reader, who is forced to process the depth of the previously read stanza.
Although “The Negro Boy’s Tale,” “A Felon to His Child on the Morning of His Execution,” “The Dying Daughter to Her Mother,” and “Sonnet to Winter” cover topics of seasons of life, it seems that Opie commonly caught in the imagery of physical surroundings a type of rhythmic procession moving forward in life. In other words, a progression, or rather a mindset that does not have the time or patience to be stuck in the ways of the past. I believe that Opie would agree, as slavery (for instance) is presented as a thing of the past that has no place in the future: a child should not go on through life without parents, and if he or she is forced to do so, then he or she should find his place, nor can a mother live life in perpetual despair over her dying daughter, but rather must realize her happiness in what is assumed to be heaven.
Amelia Opie doesn’t write only for herself, but rather for the people of her country and most importantly, for the sake of the people her country doesn’t consider fully human. Rather than take a conventional stance and becoming like her audience, she uses the emotional force of her characters and their experiences to force her readers to relate, and she is relentless in her language and imagery when it comes to portraying a scene or making a point.
Prepared by Emily Metzger, University of Nebraska, Spring 2018
© Emily Metzger, 2018