I wander in pale dreams away

Sarah Helen Whitman was born in Providence, Rhode Island on January 19, 1803, six years to the day before her future betrothed Edgar Allan Poe. Whitman and Poe ultimately never married but their short engagement has overshadowed her role as one of the most famous women poets in the middle of the 19th century.

Her poem "The Past" (1846):

Thick darkness broodeth o'er the world:
The raven pinions of the Night,
Close on her silent bosom furled,
Reflect no gleam of orient light.
 E'en the wild Norland fires that mocked
The faint bloom of the eastern sky,
Now leave me, in close darkness locked.
To night's weird realm of phantasy.

Borne from pale shadow-lands remote,
A morphean music, wildly sweet,
Seems, on the starless gloom, to float,
Like the white-pinioned Paraclete.
Softly into my dream it flows,
Then faints into the silence drear;
While from the hollow dark outgrows
The phantom Past, pale gliding near.

The visioned Past; so strangely fair!
So veiled in shadowy, soft regrets,
So steeped in sadness, like the air
That lingers when the day-star sets!
Ah! could I fold it to my heart,
On its cold lip my kisses press,
This waste of aching life impart,
To win it back from nothingness!

I loathe the purple light of day,
And shun the morning's golden star,
Beside that shadowy form to stray,
For ever near, yet oh how far!
Thin as a cloud of summer even,
All beauty from my gaze it bars;
Shuts out the silver cope of heaven,
And glooms athwart the dying stars.

Cold, sad, and spectral, by my side,
It breathes of love's ethereal bloom—
Of bridal memories, long affied
To the dread silence of the tomb:
Sweet, cloistered memories, that the heart
Shuts close within its chalice cold;
Faint perfumes, that no more dispart
From the bruised lily's floral fold.

"My soul is weary of her life;"
My heart sinks with a slow despair;
The solemn, star-lit hours are rife
With phantasy; the noontide glare,
And the cool morning, fancy free,
Are false with shadows; for the day
Brings no blithe sense of verity,
Nor wins from twilight thoughts away.

Oh, bathe me in the Lethean stream,
And feed me on the lotus flowers;
Shut out this false, bewildering dream,
This memory of departed hours!
Sweet haunting dream! so strangely fair—
So veiled in shadowy, soft regrets—
So steeped in sadness, like the air
That lingers when the day-star sets!

The Future can no charm confer,
My heart's deep solitudes to break;
No angel's foot again shall stir
The waters of that silent lake.
I wander in pale dreams away,
And shun the morning's golden star,
To follow still that failing ray,
For ever near, yet oh how far!

A will that might have subjugated an empire

Juno Clifford, a novella, was published in 1855, attributed only to "A Lady." That lady was, in fact, 19-year old Louise Chandler Moulton — an up and coming writer from Boston (originally from Connecticut, where she was educated alongside Edmund Clarence Stedman). Moulton had only recently published her first book of poems and, hoping to get advice, she contacted a more established woman writer to get an opinion.

In a letter dated November 15, 1855, Sarah Helen Whitman wrote to Moulton: "It is a very fascinating story, eloquently related." Whitman was, for a time, one of the most famous woman poets in the United States (more recently overshadowed by her involvement with Edgar Allan Poe) so her compliments rank highly. "You have all the qualities requisite for a successful novelist," she wrote, "and some very rare ones, as I think." The Providence, Rhode Island-based writer was so taken by Juno Clifford that she wrote and published a review of it.

But Whitman did not offer praise exclusively. In the book, Juno unofficially adopts a boy only 12 years younger than she. They separate for a time but meet again when he has grown up — and she falls in love with him. On the anniversary of her husband's death, Juno reveals her love and is immediately scorned; he thinks of her as a mother. "In a paroxysm of despair," she fell to the floor and began "tearing out her magnificent hair by handfuls." Whitman thought the scene a bit much and also noted, "there is a lavish expenditure of love scenes in the latter part of the book."

Whatever the flaws, the book is well-written, particularly for such a young author. Moulton's prose style flows very easily and pulls in the reader from its first page:

Juno Clifford stood before the mirror of her richly furnished breakfast parlor... It was ten o'clock. Men, whose business hours had commenced, were hurrying to and fro in the street — the city was teeming with life and turbulent with noise, but the hum only stole through the heavily curtained windows of that lofty house on Mount Vernon street, with a subdued cadence that was very pleasant. It was a lounging, indolent attitude, in which the lady stood. In her whole style of manner there was a kind of tropical languor, and it was easy to see that she was seldom roused from her habitual calmness. And yet there was something in the curving of her dainty lips, the full sweep of her arching brows, nay, in every motion of her hand, which told of a slumbering power; an energy, resistless in its intensity; a will that might have subjugated an empire.