Page:The Garland 1839.pdf/7

326 Fourth Regiment, and settled in the neighborhood of St. Asaphs—but her married life was not happy. This domestic infelicity was to her a most painful subject, one to which she could bear no allusion; and the tenderness and forbearance with which she, while living, treated the faults of her husband, render it the duty of those who love her memory to forbear, as far as possible, from adverting to scenes and sufferings that so tried and tortured her sensitive heart. Suffice it to say, that her husband left her and his five young sons to struggle as they might with sorrow and the cold, selfish world. Mrs. Hemans continued to reside at "Rhyllon, near St. Asaphs," with her mother. This was her most favorite residence, where she wrote many of her best poems.

A small woodland dingle near Rhyllon was her favorite retreat. Here she would spend long summer mornings to read and project and compose, while her children played about her. "Whenever one of us brought her a flower," writes one of them, "she was sure to introduce it into her next poem;"

After the death of her mother, Mrs. Hemans