Holograph poem (signed 'G J W A E') by George James Welbore Agar-Ellis, titled 'Remembrance & Hope | addressed to my dearest Caroline', lamenting the depression of his sister Caroline-Anne Agar-Ellis over their mother's death.

Author: 
George James Welbore Agar-Ellis (1797-1833), 1st Baron Dover, politician and art patron, and his sister Caroline-Anne Agar-Ellis (1794-1814), children of Henry Welbore Agar-Ellis, 2nd Viscount Clifden
Publication details: 
Dated 'April 1814'.
£180.00
SKU: 12612

2pp., 4to. Fair, on aged paper, with a thin strip from a stub adhering to one edge on the reverse. Previously folded into a packet, and docketed in a contemporary hand 'by Agar Ellis'. 24 lines in heroic couplets. Agar-Ellis's sister Caroline-Anne would die at Roehampton on 12 May 1814, a month after the writing of this poem, which links her demise with that of their mother, Caroline, daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough, a few months before (23 November 1813). Apparently unpublished, it laments the fact that Caroline is 'still mourning o'er a mother's urn', and urges her 'Back from these scenes to brighter days return: | Recall to mind those hours, which almost seem, | The slight remembrance of a faded dream. | Those happy hours of fancy's golden reign, | Devoid of foresight, & unvexed by pain; | While Childhood yet remained, whose cloudless sky | With dazling [sic] brightness glads the youthful eye.' The poem concludes by describing the 'two blessings' which the Gods bestow on men, among the evils which they inflict: remembrance and hope. Of the latter Agar-Ellis writes, in the last four lines, 'Tis she, who comes alike to all degrees; | Tis she, who gives the throbbing bosom ease; | From youth's gay morn, to evening's calm decline, | To all alike she shews her power divine.'