4899. RB to Hans Christian Andersen
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 133.
Rome,
May 21. ’61
My wife has spoken for us both [1] —better but not more truly than I could have done. The South, however, will not be wholly deprived of Andersen so long as the memory of him remains with many an ardent and affectionate admirer,—such a one, though among the humblest, being, in all sincerity,
Robert Browning.
Publication: Scandinavica, 14, No. 2 (November 1975), 139 (in facsimile).
Manuscript: Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.
Enclosure:
The North and the South
I
“Now give us lands where the olives grow,”
Cried the North to the South,—
“Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row!”
Cried the North to the South.
“Now give us men from the sunless plain,”
Cried the South to the North,—
“By need of work in the snow and the rain
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain!”
Cried the South to the North.
2
“Give lucider hills and intenser seas,”
Said the North to the South,—
“Since ever by symbols and bright degrees
Art, childlike, climbs the dear Lord’s Knees–”
Said the North to the South.
“Give strenuous souls for belief and prayer,”
Said the South to the North,—
“That stand in the dark on the lowest stair
While affirming of God, ‘He is certainly there.’”
Said the South to the North.
3
“Yet oh, for the skies that are softer and higher!”
Sighed the North to the South,—
“For the flowers that blaze, and the trees that aspire,
And the insects made of a song or a fire,—”
Sighed the North to the South.
“And oh, for a seer to discern the same!”
Sighed the South to the North,—
“For a poet’s tongue of baptismal flame
To call the tree or the flower by its name”!
Sighed the South to the North–
4
The North sent therefore a man of men
As a grace to the South,
And thus to Rome came Andersen.
—“Alas, but must you take him again?”
Said the South to the North.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Rome. May. 1861.
1. RB’s letter appears on page three of a four-page sheet. Pages one and two contain a fair copy of EBB’s “The North and the South” (see enclosure). The poem was first published in The Independent (New York) on 7 November 1861 (p. 1) and later collected in Last Poems (1862) According to Daniel Sargent Curtis, Andersen wrote a “poem in Danish,” for EBB, which RB later “gave to the Princess of Wales thro’ Lady de Grey” (Diary, entry of 23 November 1889, ms at Marciana).
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