Enigma by,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.
Enigma by Anna Laetitia Barbauld
TO THE LADIES
Hard is my stem and dry, no root is found
To draw nutritious juices from the ground;
Yet of your ivory fingers’ magic touch
The quickening power and strange effect is such,
My shrivelled trunk a sudden shade extends,
And from rude storms your tender frame defends:
A hundred times a day my head is seen
Crowned with a floating canopy of green;
A hundred times, as struck with sudden blight,
The spreading verdure withers to the sight.
Not Jonah’s gourd by power unseen was made
So soon to flourish, and so soon to fade.
Unlike the Spring’s gay race, I flourish most
When groves and gardens all their bloom have lost;
Lift my green head against the rattling hail,
And brave the driving snows and freezing gale;
And faithful lovers oft, when storms impend,
Beneath my friendly shade together bend,
There join their heads within the green recess,
And in the close-wove covert nearer press.
But lately am I known to Britain’s isle,
Enough—You ‘ve guessed—I see it by your smile.
