E510201A. Poems (1850).
The Literary World (New York), 1 February 1851, pp. 85–86.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 288–290.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poems.
Even grown up men, if they have preserved anything of the heart of childhood, are disposed to clap the hands when, looking up into the sky, they discover new tints in the cloud, streaks of beauty along the horizon, flushing the afternoon, of which the morning gave no promise. As it is, this ceaseless movement and development which form the prime excellence of nature, the hushed and hopeless pause when growth is at its height and we can look for no further glad surprises, fills the eye with tears. When we have reached the outer edge of the circle in which the poet is allowed to walk; when we learn that he has given us the whole sum of his powers, and can furnish no more; when we see that the new book is but a mechanical repetition of the old; he ceases to be to us thenceforth, for ever, the hopeful and glorious guide into endless new realms and boundless tracts of fancy and ever fresh delights. The reader can therefore share our sympathy when we tell him with what solicitude we looked into the new volumes of our early favorite, remembering her ancient power, her courage of soul and speech, the dauntless fidelity to her own sphere and her own convictions, with high hope certainly; with friendly fear, too: for time is busy with us all in jealous depreciation. With what joy and gladness, then, have we discovered no abatement, but tokens everywhere of a noble progress. In truth, the improvement, if we must call it so, is so radical and significant, that whoever should attempt to form a full estimate of the faculty of Mrs. Browning, from the edition of Messrs. Francis (imperfect as it is in many most important respects), even in those poems which are retained in her own authorized publication by Messrs. Chapman and Hall (the only correct and authentic edition, by the way, in the market), would do that lady a serious wrong. The changes are in some cases slight, no more than a mere cadence or adjective, but almost always so pertinently made as to involve the whole wide interval between commonplace and genius. By way of brief illustration we take the poem of “Earth and Her Praisers,” in the two versions, suggesting that all these changes, it is observable, tend to greater clearness and a wider comprehension of Mrs. Browning’s genius; even to the omission of the Greek motto at the head. In the first edition we have—
“And now no angel would
Descend with sweet dew silence on my mountains
To glorify the rivers and the fountains
That rush along my side.”
In the new edition we have a simple change, but most effective, in the cadence—
“To glorify the lovely river-fountains.”
For “I have chas’ed squirrels three,”
“I have hunted squirrels three.”
and, throughout, we may mention a general avoidance of the diæresis.
Another of these substitutions is still more striking:—
“Earth, earth!” saith he,
“If spirits, like thy roses, grew
On one stalk; and winds severer
Could but only blow them nearer,
To share each other’s dew—
If, when thy summers be
Verduring the hills, I knew,
Looking off them, I might see,
Something beauteous too,
Then, Earth,” saith he,
“I would praise—nay, nay, not thee!”
For these quaint, impersonal, and constrained verses, we have this noble substitution of melody and feeling—done with a touch:—
“Earth, Earth!” saith he,
“If spirits, like thy roses, grew
On one stalk, and winds austere
Could but only blow them near,
To share each other’s dew;
If, when summer rains agree
To beautify thy hills, I knew,
Looking off them, I might see
Some one very beauteous, too,
Then, Earth,” saith he,
“I would praise—nay, nay, not thee!”
So much for the spirit of change which has wrought throughout these volumes.
We cannot omit, among the new poems (not to be found in the Francis edition), a tribute to our country in the verses entitled
hiram powers’ greek slave.
They say ideal Beauty cannot enter
The house of anguish. On the threshold stands
An alien image with the shackled hands,
Called the Greek Slave, as if the artist meant her
(That passionless perfection which he lent her
Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands)
To so confront man’s crimes in distant lands
With man’s ideal sense. Pierce to the centre
Art’s fiery finger! and break up ere long
The serfdom of this world! Appeal, fair stone,
From God’s pure height of beauty, against man’s wrong!
Catch up in thy divine face not alone
East griefs, but West; and strike and shame the strong,
By thunders of white silence overthrown.
While this is grateful to our national pride, there is another American poem in the collection, which we cannot receive without dissent. With all respect and acknowledgment of the pure and elevated impulses which prompt her in all her utterances, as well of thought as of feeling, we must plainly assure Mrs. Browning that she has erred in her poem of “The Runaway Slave,” in as far as it is directed against our American Union. With slavery, whether it be regarded with loathing, liking, or indifference, the Union has nothing to do; the American is not responsible for it: it is purely a local institution: if there is any complaint to utter it should be addressed, respectively, to the citizens where slavery exists; and in the individual States—which are in many, if not most respects, independent communities—you must seek audience and relief. The plan of the American Federation, which hereby proves itself essentially original, seems difficult of apprehension to the foreign mind; and statesmen and practical men have committed the confusion in which our respected poet is involved. We can cheerfully turn from this to a more proper and more truly poetical theme, in
a dead rose.
i.
O Rose! who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble wheat,—
Kept seven years in drawer—thy titles shame thee.
ii.
The breeze that used to blow thee
Between the hedge-row thorns, and take away
An odor up the lane to last all day,—
If breathing now,—unsweetened would forego thee.
iii.
The sun that used to smite thee,
And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,
Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn.—
If shining now,—with not a hue would light thee.
iv.
The dew that used to wet thee,
And, white first, grow incarnadined, because
It lay upon thee where the crimson was,—
If dropping now,—would darken where it met thee.
v.
The fly that lit upon thee,
To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet,
Along thy leaf’s pure edges, after heat,—
If lighting now,—would coldly overrun thee.
vi.
The bee that once did suck thee,
And build thy perfumed ambers up in his hive,
And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive,—
If passing now,—would blindly overlook thee.
vii.
The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete—
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.
viii.
Yes, and the heart doth owe thee
More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold
As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold!—
Lie still upon this heart—which breaks below thee!
Besides these novelties and many others, Mrs. Browning has enriched her “new edition,” not only with careful revisions of her previous compositions: she has given us an entirely new version of the Prometheus (which we are pleased to see promised for a new edition of Messrs. Francis) and to which she refers in her London preface, as follows:—“One early failure, a translation of the Prometheus of [p. 86→] Æschylus, which, though happily free of the current publication, may be remembered against me by a few personal friends, I have replaced by an entirely new version made for them and my conscience, in expiation of a sin of my youth, with the sincerest application of my native mind.”
To state them briefly, the chief characteristics of Mrs. Browning are profound learning harmonized with profound feeling; a range of thought limited only by the subjects within our human grasp and conception: a fearless utterance: at one time defying the utmost verge of language, at another sinking to the humblest tone of familiar and household affection—again literal and Dantesque in matter-of-fact statement—with cadences, too, sweeping onward to the loftiest melodies of speech, alternating with measures scarcely differing from the plain progress of every-day prose—above all a Christian soul, ever present, inspiring, guiding, irradiating the page in mountain and valley, by the hearth of poverty, by the stream of plenty, in the turreted city and far away over the desert back to the first habitation of man, in humble dependence on the Supreme: altogether a combination of gifts and virtues which place this lady in the van of her noble sex—in ancient and modern times. And, as if to heighten the marvel beyond all possible rivalry, we are reminded by the new name in which we have now to write of her, of an alliance with a partner whose genius is as singular, as varied, as deeply-grounded and as far-reaching as that of any writer of our times; a union to which, we believe, there is no equal parallel in history. May the constellation, Browning, be seen of men shining far over head in its clear upper region, for a long, long day, quiring its sphere-like music, and shedding its pure and gentle radiance upon paths of meditation and peace!
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1850.
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