258. EBB to Uvedale Price
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 42–44.
[Hope End]
To Uvedale Price Esqr on his birthday
March 26th 1827. [1]
My words are on my lips uncalled: I turn
Towards thee, unpermitted, nor inurn
Within the lonely darkness of mine heart,
Such feelings as can never thence depart,
And do inherit sound. It is not fit,
That I, who have rejoiced o’er pages writ
By thy soul’s lamp, should joy not it was lit:
I, who with pilgrim feet did erewhile press
Thy distant paths of leafy secretness,—
When Nature welcomes Man in Natures gear,—
Freed from the tyrants chain, & bondslave’s fear—
Freed by thy generous hand from which was taen
The zone of painting, to replace the chain!
Thence grateful, to thy will her actions timing,
She charms thine hills, & green-grass vales,—subliming
Thy solemn forests’ wild divinities—
Yews, the black mourners for gone centuries,
Veiling the place in shadow—horrent oaks,
Braving the Harpy Winds & thunderstrokes
And blue canicular sulphur—Larches fierce,
Wrestling & grappling with the Earth to pierce
Her royal sides by roots thrust out aslant,
And keeping aye with Heaven proud covenant!
Whereby old solitude, engendered dumb,
Speaks to the soul by gesture: and doth come
She, of the veiled brow, who wont to stay
I’ the Poet’s soul, as his Egeria [2] —
Th’ Idial [sic for Ideal], won by love or forced by spell
To walk such place in glory visible!
Yea! & thy spell is vocal to mine ear— [3]
And Homer leaves his mouldering sepulchre
For a new Nestor! [4] Classic Poetry,
Who hath been forced by cruel Time to be
A Philomela, marred of her sweet speech—
Who hath been therewithal enforced to teach,
With finger gestes, & cunning broideries
And gorgeous painted forms, only our eyes,
And not, as erst, our hearing, with her strain—
Doth look up at thy voice, & speak again!
Yea! thus the shadow of thy time, thine age,
Like to the statue’s shade i’ the antique page, [5]
Seems only shed upon the earth to show
The beamy treasure which was hid below!
For me: for me—shall Memory’s pleasant flood
Keep green within mine heart a gratitude!
Because when, erewhile, by mine Harp I sat,
And faintly gave to sound what thought begat—
When uncommunicable fears,—that sting
And hide beneath their wings the festering,—
Darkened about my spirit—the deep fear
Lest none should hear the tone,––or some should hear—
When the tone faltering grew,—the lamp unbright,—
Thou did’st not still the harp, or quench the light;
But, patient of my lay,—its harshness borne,—
Didst spare the minstrel’s fault, the critic’s scorn!
And therefore it is just,—& so shall be,—
That all I name mine own, my minstrelsy,
Convey this all I have to give .. a prayer!
May many gracious years their freshness share
With thee,—& singing Hope, uncheated, press
To watch thy golden fruit of Happiness!
Farewell! tho’ words were on my lips, my breath
Had let them perish in a silent death,
And hid their grave from Echo: but I thought
That howsoever they were rudely wrought,
Their “truth might be their dower”: [6] & thou might’st hear
In kindness what was spoken in a fear!
For that, the simple words, I, thus, let fall,
Are likest harp strings swept in echoing Hall;–
Only their trembling makes them musical!
EBB.
Publication: HUP, II, 83–86.
Manuscript: Berg Collection. EBB’s draft is at the Armstrong Browning Library.
1. These verses were intended for Price’s 80th birthday, but, as the following letter shows, EBB had mistaken the date of the anniversary. We have been unable to find a source that gives the date of Price’s birth in full; Debrett’s Baronetage gives only April 1747. As EBB speaks of being “a whole week d’avance,” the inference is that the actual birthday was one week later than the date she gave, i.e., 2 April.
2. Egeria advised Numa Pompilius, King of Rome, on legislation; hence, the name signified a woman counsellor.
3. EBB made a cross-shaped mark and wrote a footnote at bottom of page: “Mr Price’s work on accent–”
4. The wisest of the Greek generals fighting at Troy.
5. EBB made an encircled cross-shaped mark and wrote a footnote at bottom of page: “Gesta Romanorum.”
6. Cf. King Lear, I, 108.
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