A Map of The Land of Matrimony ,At a time in history when female published writers were very rare, Anna Laetitia Barbauld stood out with her English Romantic style of writing poetry. She also produced a number of essays, including works on political subjects, and was a noted children’s author.
She was certainly outspoken, even into her late sixties, and she fell foul of literary society when she published a poem called Eighteen Hundred and Eleven which, at the time of the Napoleonic wars, was derided as unpatriotic. She basically saw England as a post-war ruin and she protested vehemently about the British involvement in the war. The reviews of this poem were so vicious that she decided to lay down her pen for the rest of her life.
To Mr Barbauld With A Map of The Land of Matrimony by Anna Laetitia Barbauld
The sailor worn by toil and wet with storms,
As in the wished-for port secure he rides,
With transport numbers o’er the dangers past
From threatening quicksands and from adverse tides.
Joyous he tells among his jocund mates
Of loud alarms that chased his broken sleep,
And blesses every kinder star that led
His favoured vessel though the raging deep.Thus canst thou, Rochemont, view this pictured chart,
And trace thy voyage to the promised shore;
Thus does thy faithful bosom beat with joy,
To think the tempest past, the wanderings o’er?
Canst thou recall the days when jealous Doubt,
When boding Fears thy anxious heart oppresst,
When Hope, our star, shone faintly through the gloom,
And the pale cheek betrayed the tortured breast?
And say;—the land through Fancy’s glass descried,
The bright Elysian fields her pencil drew,—
Has time the dear ideas realized?
Or are her optics false, her tints untrue?
O say they are not!—Though life’s ceaseless cares,
Life’s ceaseless toils demand thy golden hours,
Tell her glad heart whose hand these lines confess,
That Peace resides in Hymen’s happy bowers.But soon the restless seaman longs to change
His bounded view and tempt the deeps again;
Careless he breaks from weeping Susan’s arms,
To fight with billows and to plough the main.
So shalt not thou, for no returning prow
E’er cut the ocean which thy bark has past;
Too strong relentless Fate has fixed her bars,
And I my destined captive hold too fast.
