Some poetry by Mary Rolls

I was reading about Westmorland, the historic county. I had never been quite sure where the borders lay. Essentially it's Kirby Stephen, Appleby, Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside, and Grasmere: including some of the western Pennines, all the Howgills, and the SE portion of the Lakeland fells. Helvellyn marked the border with Cumberland. 

Westmorland was one of England's least populated counties, but I came across the name of a poet, Mary Rolls née Hillary (1775-1835), who was born in Westmorland to a Quaker family. Subsequently she married and moved south, eventually to Aldwincle Rectory, Northants. She published as Mrs Henry Rolls. I can't see that any of her poems have been published online as text, so here's a sample of what I could find. 

ADDRESS TO LORD BYRON  (Published as a pamphlet in 1816)

Is this the boon of partial Heaven!

Is misery still to Genius given!

Does vengeance still prepare the blow!

Must poverty still lay it low!

Must scorn and grief its steps pursue,

And cold contempt her taunts renew!

Or, when slow sinking to the grave,

Is no kind arm outstretch'd to save!

When those who rise, by noble birth,

Above the wants of vulgar earth—

Receive within the cultur'd breast,

The Muses' sacred seal imprest,—

And pour from the enraptur'd lyre

The song of pure poetic fire;—

Must they too feel each varying pain,—

The maddening pulse— the fever'd brain,—

Each varying form of heart-felt woe,—

The lingering pang—the sudden throe—

And all the stings, that breast must prove,

That mourns the lot of blighted love;—

Till apathy each thought o'ercomes,

And every finer sense benumbs!

Or,—if the harp's deep notes still flow—

Speak but of scenes of guilt or woe—

Of victims none have power to save,

Or the dark slumbers of the grave!

BYRON ! is this thy genuine tale?

No!-- let thy friend remove the veil;—

Shew to thy heart its real state,—

And kindly warn thee ere too late;—

Rend the deep cloud that shrouds thy mind—

The richest—brightest—of its kind!

Why dost thou, the cold Sceptic's slave,

Renounce the Almighty's aid, who gave

That choicest gift—a soul refin'd—

Thy almost more than human mind?

To some, one feeble spark is sent;

To thee the Poet's sun is lent!

Others may catch a transient ray;

On thee, its beams unclouded play!

But, were those glories given to shine—

For thee alone, a wreath to twine?

To bid thee point a gloomy road,—

And steal the listener's heart from God?—

To prove us pilgrims of an hour—

Deny his everlasting power?—

And shew—'midst darkness, doubt, and gloom—

The lasting slumbers of the tomb?

To rend the bands of home-felt joy,

And life's sweet charities destroy?—

To raise the crowd's base censures wild,

And from the Sire divide the Child?

I am thy friend! ---none more admires

Thy genuine, true, poetic fires!

None hears, with purer joys, thy lays;

None, with more pleasure, speaks thy praise;

And none more truly can lament

Those rich, best gifts, so basely spent;—

And on thy tale of private woe,

None can a tenderer thought bestow!

Then be it mine the path to shew,

Where the rich fruits of grief may grow!

Bow thy proud heart beneath His rod,

And own the chastening hand of God!

Then happier, nobler, purer rise,

Fresh from thy grateful sacrifice!

Then fill thy lofty proper sphere,

And, whilst applauding senates hear,

Assert thy Country's sacred cause, 

Maintain her rights, protect her laws!

Stand the supporter of the Throne,

And make thy Sovereign's cause thy own!

Oh! let that choicest gift of heaven,—

To favor'd mortals only given—

Thy rich enchanting stream of song—

Be pour'd pure Virtue's course along!

Proclaim the triumphs of the brave,

Who fought their Country's rights to save;—

And their more mournful glories tell,

In Victory's field who nobly fell!

Or bid those beauteous scenes arise,

That ne'er must bless these wishful eyes!

Tell the proud tale of Greece once more;

Her long-lost lyre, to life restore!

And let thy purer notes proclaim

How sunk 'mid shades of Vice her name!

Ah! let the pure, the moral tale,

O'er every feeling heart prevail;

And, as the tears of Beauty flow,

Spread through her bosom Virtue's glow!

But there is still a higher theme,

Bright as the Poet's brightest dream!—

To sing the praise of Him, whose love

Descended from the realms above,—

From Sin's dark chains, the mind to save,---

And captive lead the vanquish'd grave!

Oh! worthy of thy lyre such strain! 

To sing Jehovah's endless reign;

To pint in raptured strains the road,

And lead the wandering heart to God!

Then shalt thou own a saving power,

Descending in this mournful hour;—

Then shall thy swelling sorrows cease;—

Thy life be joy—thy close be peace!

As sinks the slow declining sun,

When the long summer's day is done,

Yet leaves a track along the skies,

To shew he soon again shall rise;—

So calm may be thy setting day,

When life's last years are roll'd away!

Calm in the grave may'st thou repose

Till Heaven's eternal gates unclose!

Then may'st thou, with enraptur'd ears,

Drink the rich music of the spheres;

And join, with seraph hosts, the song,

Through endless ages pour'd along!

Then shalt thou own the Poet's prize—

The richest present of the skies—

In mercy to mankind was given,

To smooth the path from Earth to Heaven.

(Poem source.)

It's tempting to laugh, e.g. at the thought of Byron taking his Sovereign's cause for his own. Still, I do like her forthrightness. The style of the poem is very much in Byron's own mode (e.g. the splendid punctuation and the speed) and Mary was evidently a genuine fan, though a deploring one, who fell for the first two Cantos of Childe Harold while plainly seeing their tendency. She seems to know something about Byron's forthcoming lines on Waterloo (in Childe Harold III, published November 1816).

THE BUGLE-HORN

by Mrs Henry Rolls

The bugle-horn! How sweet the strain

   That floats along the moon-lit dale!

Oh ! It awakes a thrilling train

  Of thoughts long wrapp'd in time's dim veil:

The scenes, the hopes of  life's young morn,

When first I heard the bugle-horn!

Amidst my native mountains wild,

  When those clear notes responsive rung,

Oft have they roused the lonely child

  From dreams where fairy voices sung;

Starting, I deemed the bugle-horn

Was by some elfin huntsman borne!

Oh! then 'twas sweet at break of day

  To catch from echoing rock and scar,

Those notes which called the hunters gay

  To meet and join the sylvan war;

As those I loved at early morn

Assembled to the bugle-horn!

And it proclaimed the jocund feast,

  When seemed alive the mountain side,

As chief and peasant came; the guest

  To him, of all our race the pride,

With eye, bright as the star of morn,

And voice, clear as the bugle-horn!

But it has poured a solemn strain,

  Borne but by fancy to mine ear;

It floated o'er the sable train

  That wept around his early bier;

E'en now o'er ocean's wave seems borne

The echo of that bugle-horn!

(The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c, 1 November 1828)

Departed greatness claims a sigh,--

We mourn when mighty heroes die,

And tears of anguish dim the eye,

  That sees its love to earth resigned!

But, how deplore the Prince of Song,

So raised above the tuneful throng, 

But who debased, so deep, so long,

  The matchless wonders of his mind!

If strains that angels weep to know,

Are poured upon a world below,

Can bid indignant virtue glow,

  BYRON! such guilty strains were thine:

Yet thine the song could fire impart

To Slavery's chilled and drooping heart,

And bid, fair Greece, thy Patriot start,

  By all the music of the Nine!

(from "A Monody on the Death of Lord Byron", found in Choice Selections and Original Effusions; Or Pen and Ink Well Employed (1828))

I was hoping to find her longer poems, but haven't succeeded; e.g her first book Sacred Sketches from Scripture History (1815), and Moscow, a Poem (1816).

MOSCOW, a Poem; by MRS HENRY ROLLS. London, Law and Whitaker, 1816. 

The author has founded her poem on one of the most dreadful events recorded, the destruction of Moscow, and drawn a moral inference that there is an ever-watching Providence, who may suffer tyranny and oppression to prevail for a time, but will, in an unexpected moment, turn the retributive scales of justice, and hurl the bolts of vengeance on the devoted heads of his guilty victims.

The facts are taken from Labaume; and their authenticity cannot be doubted. The versification is generally good, the descriptions are often lofty, and the interest is pleasingly excited throughout. This is not inferior to her former poem, Sketches from Sacred History, which met with so favourable a reception; and we have no doubt the subject of the poem, and the author's reputation, will induce our readers to become purchasers. 

(Notice in The Ladies' Monthly Museum).

From Legends of the North; or, The Feudal Christmas: a Poem (1825):

Veil'd in a cloud of sober gray,

Arose the year's last parting day;

And as at times a shower pass'd by,

Or swept the gale with plaintive sigh,

Seem'd as though nature join'd to mourn

The hours that never can return!

As though the morrow's rising sun

Had not another year begun,

And spread its ample page sublime

Beneath the rapid pen of Time;

Like Age, which marks its fading powers,

Weeps o'er its few short languid hours,

And, though all conscious of decay,

Would yet their final close delay, --

Unmindful that the reign of death

Ends with its last departing breath,

And that the last expiring sigh

Will waft to immortality.

(Quoted in a review in The Monthly Review, for September 1825.)