What Do The Futures Speak Of, 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.
What Do The Futures Speak Of by Anna Laetitia Barbauld
They speak of never-withering shades,
And bowers of opening joy;
They promise mines of fairy gold,
And bliss without alloy.
They whisper strange enchanting things
Within Hope’s greedy ears;
And sure this tuneful voice exceeds
The music of the spheres.
They speak of pleasure to the gay,
And wisdom to the wise;
And soothe the poet’s beating heart
With fame that never dies.
To virgins languishing in love
They speak the minute nigh;
And warm consenting hearts they join,
And paint the rapture high.
In every language, every tongue,
The same kind things they say;
In gentle slumbers speak by night,
In waking dreams by day.
Cassandra’s fate reversed is theirs;
She true, no faith could gain,—
They every passing hour deceive,
Yet are believed again.
