Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834) was widely known in literary society — and yet nearly unpublished in her lifetime. The daughter and heiress of a courtier in the household of King George III, she was a wit, an artist, a dasher-off of parodic poems, and among the most clever and wry of the political and social observers of her time. Her diary has been lost, which deprives us of some of what may have been the sharpest comments on her era, but her letters and a handful of poems survive. Her “Fragment in Imitation of Wordsworth,” for example, catches and parodies the Romantic poet’s most annoying traits, but best known is her occasional poem, “A Riddle on the Letter H.”

With the dropping of H’s in certain British accents, the joke of the poem is slightly elevated for readers in the United Kingdom, but every reader can see the H’s in the poem: “’Twas in heaven pronounced — it was mutter’d in hell, / And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell.” A fun, clever poem for the lighter Poem of the Day that The New York Sun offers each Wednesday.

A Riddle on the Letter H
by Catherine Maria Fanshawe

’Twas in heaven pronounced — it was mutter’d in hell,       
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;  
On the confines of earth ’twas permitted to rest,       
And the depths of the ocean its presence confess’d.  
’Twill be found in the sphere when ’tis riven asunder,          
Be seen in the lightning and heard in the thunder.     
’Twas allotted to man with his earliest breath,           
Attends at his birth and awaits him in death: 
Presides o’er his happiness, honour, and health,        
Is the prop of his house and the end of his wealth.
In the heaps of the miser ’tis hoarded with care,        
But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir.      
It begins every hope, every wish it must bound,        
With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs is crown’d. 
Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam,
But woe to the wretch who expels it from home!      
In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,           
Nor e’en in the whirlwind of passion is drown’d.      
’Twill not soften the heart; and tho’ deaf be the ear, 
It will make it acutely and instantly hear.
Yet in shade let it rest like a delicate flower, 
Ah, breathe on it softly — it dies in an hour.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.