E380707A. The Seraphim.
The Athenæum, 7 July 1838, pp. 466–468.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 375–378.
This is an extraordinary volume—especially welcome as an evidence of female genius and accomplishment—but it is hardly less disappointing than extraordinary. Miss Barrett’s genius is of a high order; active, vigorous, and versatile, but unaccompanied by discriminating taste. A thousand strange and beautiful visions flit across her mind, but she cannot look on them with steady gaze;—her descriptions, therefore, are often shadowy and indistinct, and her language wanting in the simplicity of unaffected earnestness. She addresses herself to sacred song with a devotional ecstacy suiting rather the Sister Celestines and Angelicas of Port-Royal, than the religious poets of our sober Protestant communities; yet we are constantly drawn downwards from ecstatic visions by the fantastic spirit which clothes them,—from the loftiest contemplations, to consider some peculiarity of attitude and utterance—the tinkling of the bells of the priest’s garment, as it were, distracting our attention from the divine [p. 467→] wisdom issuing from his lips. Though personally we may not much regard these things,—though we may be content, ourselves, to catch glimpses of genius and of power, and of fancies “chaste and noble,” even though revealed to us from behind a quaint Isis-like veil,—the case is different as concerns the public. We hold that those whose mission it is to declare
Oracles divine, and wisdom golden,
act unfaithfully, if they allow themselves to interpose between the Divinity and their less imaginative audience.
In offering a few specimens to justify our praise, we are quite sure, that, select where we may, they will prove that the strain of our remarks was not uncalled for. The first, and principal poem gives the work its title. In its manner it occupies, as it were, an intermediate ground between an ancient Greek tragedy and a Christian mystery: as regards its matter,—we shall allow Miss Barrett to explain her own intentions:—
“The subject of the principal poem in the present collection having suggested itself to me, though very faintly and imperfectly, when I was engaged upon my translation of the ‘Prometheus Bound’ of Æschylus, I thought, that, had Æschylus lived after the incarnation and crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, he might have turned, if not in moral and intellectual yet in poetic faith, from the solitude of Caucasus to the deeper desertness of that crowded Jerusalem where none had any pity: from the ‘faded white flower’ of the Titanic brow, to the ‘withered grass’ of a Heart trampled on by its own beloved; from the glorying of him who gloried that he could not die, to the sublimer meekness of the Taster of death for every man; from the taunt stung into being by the torment, to his more awful silence, when the agony stood dumb before the love! And I thought, how, ‘from the height of this great argument,’ the scenery of the Prometheus would have dwarfed itself even in the eyes of its poet,—how the fissures of his rocks and the innumerous smiles of his ocean would have closed and waned into blankness,—and his demigod stood confest, so human a conception as to fall below the aspiration of his own humanity. He would have turned from such to the rent rocks and darkened sun—rent and darkened by a sympathy thrilling through nature, but leaving man’s heart untouched—to the multitudes, whose victim was their Saviour—to the Victim, whose sustaining thought beneath an unexampled agony, was not the Titanic ‘I can revenge,’ but the celestial ‘I can forgive!’”
An extrinsic interest attaches to this preface, independently of its great and original merit, from a remarkable coincidence in its spirit with some observations—probably not known to the writer—by Edgar Quinet, in his prelude to the “Prométhée,” in which the lofty-thoughted but wild genius also proposes to himself the completion of the Pagan fable. We shall translate one passage, by way of drawing the attention of our readers to a subject, which—though far from the circuit of everyday contemplation—is increasingly attracting the meditation of the poets and thinkers of Europe.
“In completing, by Christianity, the tradition of Prometheus,” says M. Quinet, “we conform ourselves to the natural progress of religious revolutions. We finish this divine tragedy after the very plan which has been marked out in history by Providence, and, in fact, followed by humanity. The poems thus become the image of the same reality. Besides, in this idea, we meet with the imagining of many fathers of the church. Long before me, an ancient commentator upon Eschylus—the Englishman, Stanley, remarked that the founders of Christianity addressed themselves in this manner to interpret the allegory of Prometheus. In spite of the horror which paganism inspired in them, they have not ceased to associate this tradition with the spirit of the most sacred mysteries of the church. They have often compared the torture upon Caucasus with the passion upon Calvary,—thus making of Prometheus a Christ before the Christ. Among these authorities that of Tertullian is, above the rest, striking. Twice, in proclaiming to the Gentiles, the God of the martyrs, he exclaims, ‘Behold the real Prometheus—the omnipotent God! transpierced by blasphemy!’ Elsewhere, and conformably with the same idea, he speaks of the ‘Cross of Caucasus.’ Although expressed in other terms, the sentiment of the Greek and Latin apologists is the same as that of the African. Nor is it, perhaps, useless to observe that the most remarkable bas-relief of Prometheus was discovered in the crypts of a church, among the tombs of bishops and catholic sculptures, with which it was confounded during many ages. But, without attaching to this circumstance more importance than belongs to it, the testimonies just adverted to, will suffice to prove that the connexion which I have established between the antique fable, and the spirit of Christianity, is no artifice of modern fantasy; that, on the contrary, it reposes, in some sort, upon tradition, and, I may dare to say, upon the inmost nature of things.”
Enough has been quoted to indicate a parallel singular and worthy of examination: to trace it further,—to illustrate at length the several and national preponderances of the artist and the devotee, in the respective works of the French and English writers, would lead us too far, and through speculations for which the many have but little appetite. Let us, therefore, return to Miss Barrett’s volume, and in particular to the division containing her miscellaneous poems. Each of these is tinctured with one prevailing purpose and idea: among them are “The Romaunt of Margret,” which appeared in the New Monthly—and which is not improved by sundry verbal changes its authoress has made in it. Here, too, is its companion, “The Poet’s Vow.” “Isobel’s Child,” the next lyric, has never been published before: we shall therefore make our principal selections from it. The idea is simple:—a young mother is watching by the side of her baby, cheating herself with hopes, and pouring forth prayers for its recovery:—
Motionless she sate!—
The hair had fallen by its weight
On either side the smile, and lay
Very blackly on the arm
Where the baby nestled warm!—
Pale as baby carved in stone
And seen by glimpses of the moon
In a dark cathedral aisle!—
But through the storm no moonbeam fell
Upon the child of Isobel—
I ween you saw it by the ray
Alone of her still smile.
’Tis aye a solemn thing to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps—
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The unrevealëd mystery
Of its Adam’s taint and woe,
Which, when they revealëd be,
Will not let it slumber so!
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death,
With that soft low quiet breath,
As if it felt the sun!—
Knowing all things by their blooms,
Not their roots!—yea!—sun and sky,
Only by the warmth that comes
Out of each!—earth, only by
The pleasant hues that o’er it run!—
And human love, by drops of sweet
White nourishment still hanging round
The little mouth so slumber-bound!—
All which broken sentiency
Will gather and unite and climb
To an immortality
Good or evil, each sublime,
Through life and death to life again!—
O little lids, now closëd fast!
Must ye learn to drop at last
Our large and burning tears?—
O warm quick body! must thou lie,
When is done the round of years,
Bare of all the joy and pain,
Dust in dust—thy place upgiving
To creeping worms in sentient living?—
* * * * *
More soft, less solemn images
Drifted o’er the lady’s heart,
Silently as snow;
She had seen eight days depart,
Hour by hour, on bended knees,
With pale-wrung hands and prayings low
And broken—through which came the sound
Of tears that fell against the ground,
Making sad stops! “Dear Lord, dear Lord!”
She aye had prayed—(the heavenly word,
Broken by an earthly sigh!)
“Thou who didst not erst deny
The mother-joy to Mary mild
Blessëd in the blessëd child—
Hearkening in meek babyhood
Her cradle-hymn, albeit used
To all that music interfused
In breasts of angels high and good!
Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away:
Oh, take not to thy songful heaven,
The pretty baby thou hast given;
Or ere that I have seen him play
Around his father’s knees, and known
That he knew how my love hath gone
From all the world to him!
And how that I shall shiver, dim.
In the sunshine, thinking e’er
The grave-grass keeps it from his fair
Still cheeks! and feel at every tread
His little body which is dead
And hidden in the turfy fold,
Doth make the whole warm earth a’cold!
O God! I am so young, so young—
I am not used to tears at nights
Instead of slumber—nor to prayer
With shaken lips and hands out-wrung!
Thou knowest all my prayings were
‘I bless thee, God, for past delights—
Thank God!’ I am not used to bear
Hard thoughts of death! The earth doth cover
No face from me of friend or lover!
And must the first who teacheth me
The form of shrouds and funerals, be
Mine own first-born belovëd? he
Who taught me first this mother-love?
Dear Lord, who spreadest out above
Thy loving piercëd hands to meet
All lifted hearts with blessing sweet,—
Pierce not my heart, my tender heart,
Thou madest tender! Thou who art
So happy in thy heaven alway,
Take not mine only bliss away!”
Her prayer—how beautiful and simple in its agony!—appears to be answered; the infant drops into slumber, and—the mother’s heart running over with an exulting and thoughtful hopefulness,—she begins, with a fond prescience, to question her darling as to its wishes for the future,—little dreaming that the Angel of Death is about to answer her upbraidingly at the mouth of her child! She has asked it, as if the fulness of her pride and love gave her the power of endowment, whether it will have the crown and the glory appertaining to knowledge and genius. The following is a part of the Spirit’s reply, put into the mouth of the expiring infant:—
Is your wisdom very wise,
Mother, on the narrow earth?
Very happy, very worth
That I should stay to learn?
Are these air-corrupting sighs
Fashioned by unlearnëd breath?
Do the students’ lamps that burn
All night, illumine death?
Mother! albeit this be so,
Loose thy prayer, and let me go
Where that bright chief angel stands
Apart from all his brother bands,
Too glad for smiling! having bent
In angelic wilderment
O’er the depths of God, and brought
Reeling, thence, one only thought
To fill his whole eternity!
He the teacher is for me!—
He can teach what I would know—
Mother, mother, let me go!
Can your poet make an Eden
No winter will undo?
And light a starry fire, in heeding
His hearth’s is burning too?
Drown in music, earthly din?—
And keep his own wild soul within
The law of his own harmony?—
Mother! albeit this be so.
Let me to mine Heavën go!
A little harp me waits thereby—
A harp whose strings are golden all,
And tuned to music spherical,
Hanging on the green life-tree,
Where no willows ever be.
Shall I miss that harp of mine?
Mother, no!—the Eye divine
Turned upon it, makes it shine—
And when I touch it, poems sweet
Like separate souls shall fly from it,
Each to an immortal fytte!
We shall all be poets there,
Gazing on the chiefest Fair!
With all the beauty of this passage, the interwoven conceit, against which we have protested, cannot but be felt; and the extracts given, are by no means so remarkable for far-fetched allusion, as many we could select from the more ambitious poems. Some among the minor verses have appeared in our columns. We should like to have given the “Deserted Garden” complete, because it shows its authoress in her simplest, and, to our thinking, most becoming garb. [p. 468→] A few stanzas, however, may be linked together, for the sake of their fresh and graceful beauty:
The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.
Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.
Old garden rose-trees hedged it in—
Bedropt with roses waxen-white,
Well satisfied with dew and light,
And careless to be seen.
Long years ago it might befall,
When all the garden flowers were trim,
The grave old gardener prided him
On these the most of all;
And Lady stately overmuch,
Who movëd with a silken noise,
Blushed near them, dreaming of the voice
That likened her to such!
And these to make a diadem,
She may have often plucked and twined;
Half smiling as it came to mind,
That few would look at them.
Oh! little thought that Lady proud,
A child would watch her fair white rose,
When buried lay her whiter brows,
And silk was changed for shroud!—
Nor thought that gardener, full of scorns
For men unlearn’d and simple phrase,
A child would bring it all its praise,
By creeping through the thorns!
* * * * *
My childhood from my life is parted;
My footstep from the moss which drew
Its fairy circle round: anew
The garden is deserted!
Another thrush may these rehearse
The madrigals which sweetest are—
No more for me!—myself afar
Do sing a sadder verse:—
Ah me! ah me! when erst I lay
In that child’s-nest so greenly wrought,
I laughëd to myself and thought
‘The time will pass away!’
* * * * *
The time is past!—and now that grows
The cypress high among the trees,
And I behold white sepulchres
As well as the white rose—
When wiser, meeker thoughts are given,—
And I have learnt to lift my face,
Remembering earth’s greenest place
The colour draws from heaven—
It something saith for earthly pain,
But more for Heavenly promise free,
That I who was, would shrink to be
That happy child again!
We must still add another extract from the fugitive pieces:—
The Sea-Mew.
How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue,
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A forward shade—the only one—
(But shadows aye will man pursue!)
Familiar with the waves, and free,
As if their own white foam were he:
His heart upon the heart of ocean,
Learning all its mystic motion,
And throbbing to the throbbing sea!
And such a brightness in his eye,
As if the ocean and the sky,
Within him had lit up and nurst
A soul God gave him not at first,
To comprehend their majesty.
We were not cruel, yet did sunder
His white wing from the blue waves under,
And bound it—while his fearless eyes
Shone up to ours in calm surprise,
As deeming us some ocean wonder!
We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place where he might view
The flowërs bending to the bees,
The waving of the tall green trees,
The falling of the silver dew.
But flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim;
And when earth’s dew around him lay,
He thought of ocean’s wingëd spray,
And his eye waxëd sad and dim.
The green trees round him only made
A prison, with their darksome shade:
And drooped his wing, and mournëd he
For his own boundless glittering sea—
Albeit he knew not they could fade!
Then One her gladsome face did bring,
Her gentle voice’s murmuring,
In ocean’s stead his heart to move,
And teach him what was human love—
He thought it a strange, mournful thing!
He lay down in his grief to die,
(First looking to the sea-like sky,
That hath no waves!) because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And with our touch, our agony.
And here we must take leave of the poetess: well pleased if our notice shall make a way for her book into the hands of those who seek in literature for the spirit rather than the letter,—well pleased, if any of our words,—which, however hastily said, have not been hastily conceived,—sink into her mind, and like “bread cast upon the waters” be found again “after many days,” in a strengthened resolution on her part to give her fancy, and her strength, and her learning, the only assistance they require to become widely as well as warmly recognized,—that is, a simpler and less mannered clothing than they at present wear.
[Henry Fothergill Chorley]
Reviewed:
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
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