225. Unidentified Correspondent to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 231–232.
[ ]
[ca. 1826] [1]
To
Miss Barrett
on reading her “Essay on Mind”
_________
Enchantress welcome! Poesy’s young child,
That with bold hand hath seized Apollo’s Lyre,
Mingling in sweetest concord words of fire,
I welcome with a votary’s transport wild
Thy lay, so pure—so lofty—modest—mild–
Hail Intellectual Fair, sent to inspire
Our duller day! sure on thy birth Heaven smil’d
And gave us thee to gaze at and admire–
Thy Seraph muse wings her bright meteor flight
Above thy sex’s far as Byron’s harp
Sounds o’er his brother’s, or Day outshines Night.
Ye Fateful Sisters, long forbear your warp
And woof to weave for her! Guard her ye Nine!
And Thou Great God of Song, for Barrett she is Thine!
To
The Same
On reading her poem of “marathon”
_________
But if my heart with ecstasy oerflow’d
When on my wondering, ravished senses fell
Thy Intellectual Song, how may I tell
The heightened rapture in my soul that glow’d
When “marathon” and Greece the lov’d abode
Of heroes charm’d my spirit like some spell
To see thy eaglet muse scarce from the shell
Burst, spurning sonnet, epigram or ode,
And soaring mount the Epic sky to gain!
When thus Mind, Virtue, Genius, Beauty twine
The laurel wreath, as all in thee combine,
Who feels and owns not thy heaven gifted strain?–
Then onward—nor dread Critic’s venom’d dart
Thy fame may well defy his blackest art
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Dated by the fact that An Essay on Mind was published in March 1826. A copy of these verses, in the hand of Mary Moulton-Barrett, is at ABL/Altham.
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