E510300B. Poems (1850).
The Eclectic Review, March 1851, pp. 295–303.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 290–293.
Mrs. Browning has presented us with her collected poems, in two compact and yet handsome volumes, so that we have all her productions at once before us in a very convenient and inexpensive form. We are thus enabled to compare her writings at all points of her progress, and to take a comprehensive view of their lights and shadows, and of the real character and strength of her genius. The result, as a whole, is highly favourable; and we are glad to be in possession of a work of a living authoress, which abounds so with splendid poetry, with evidences of profound thought, and with a pervading spirit so pure and so womanly. At the same time, we do not mean to represent this collection as faultless; it would have been much the better for a degree of [p. 296→] stern selection. There are various poems which are of comparatively little merit, which are written on trivial subjects, and only tend to dilute the collection as a whole; and, what was least to be expected, these are chiefly met with in the last volume. Such poems as “The Deserted Garden;” “Hector in the Garden;” “A Lay of the Early Rose;” “A Flower in a Letter;” and “The Pet Name;” would do very well for an annual; but we pass them over impatiently amongst such things as “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship;” “The Rhyme of the Duchess May;” “The Cry of the Children;” “The Cry of the Human;” or the fine “Drama of Exile.” Many of these poems that we speak of are drawn out to a most unconscionable length, totally disproportionate to the value of the subject or the amount of thought expended upon it. “The Lost Bower,” for instance, consists of no less than seventy-four stanzas; the whole burthen being, that the authoress, going into a wood, finds a sort of natural bower under a lime-tree, and never can find it again.
We note these as defects in the volumes, but by no means such as to prevent the whole being a very noble and delightful one; yet, at the same time, tending to lower that idea of the authoress’s greatness which would have followed a more exclusive perusal of such truly masterly productions as those we have alluded to. While we are looking on the shadow side of Mrs. Browning’s genius, we must, in strict justice, also, note that affected quaintness which disfigures a great number of her best performances, and often induces her to use terms which are utter nonsense. In “The Lost Bower” occur such stanzas as these:—
As I entered, mosses hushing,
Stole all noises from my foot;
And a green elastic cushion,
Clasped within the linden’s root,
Took me in a chair of silence, very rare and absolute.
Why so absolute a chair? Because it is quaint, and rhymes. Again, in “The Vision of Poets,” we are treated to such stanzas as these, as descriptive of particular poets:—
And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount’s issuings.
And Shelley, in his white ideal,
All statue blind: and Keats, the real
Adonis, with the hymeneal
Fresh, vernal buds half-sunk between
His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen
In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen. [p. 297→]
And poor, proud Byron,—sad as grave,
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.
And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings, with cadence up the Blue.
—Vol. i. p. 220.
Angels “sweeping their wings with cadence up the Blue,” must be pronounced more fantastically visionary than Coleridge himself. These passages, here and there, betray rather a straining after the sublime, which does not succeed, than a reliance on the simple power which Mrs. Browning really possesses. It must strike the reader, too, that in one portion of these volumes she has been deeply infected by that imitation of Tennyson—perhaps unconsciously—which has spread itself so provokingly amongst our younger poets. “The Lost Bower” is full of it. “The Vision of Poets” is still more so; and “The Romaunt of Margaret” is of the same borrowed character. We are delighted with the music of Tennyson’s own poetry, but we would wish it to remain his; writers of real genius who echo it, do it to their loss; and we rejoice to perceive that, as Mrs. Browning proceeds, she gradually regains her own character. That character is one of peculiar beauty and earnestness. It is full of tenderest pathos, the most graceful fancy, and an imagination capable of reaching the heights and depths of the profoundest thought. “The Drama of Exile,” or the banishment of Adam and Eve, shows Mrs. Browning to possess dramatic talent of the highest stamp. After Milton and Byron, the attempt was a bold one; but it is amply justified by its originality, by the masculine vigour of intellect, and the grave mastership of the language; while the character of Eve, drawn by a woman’s hand, is pre-eminently beautiful. There is none of the impiety of Byron, nor of the recriminating spirit in the fallen pair which we have in Milton; they are fallen, but not so low as to weaken their love and trust in each other. There is something fantastic in the spirits of the zodiac presenting themselves in the way of the flying pair, but again the spirits of the earth, whom their transgression has plunged into trouble and dissonance, opposing and accusing them, and having no pity on them, till softened by the appearance and tender sentiments of the Saviour—has something very fine and original in it:—
Eve—
They wail, beloved! They speak of glory and God,
And they wail—wail! That burden of the song
Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls
Into the lap of silence!
Adam—
Hark again! [p. 298→]
First Spirit—
I was so beautiful, so beautiful!
My joy stood up within me bold and glad,
To answer God—and when his work was full,
To “very good,” responded “very glad!”
Filtered through roses, did the light enclose me,
And bunches of the grape swam blue across me—
Yet I wail!
Second Spirit.—
I bounded with my panthers! I rejoiced
In my young tumbling lions rolled together!
My stag—the river at his fetlocks—poised,
Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather.
In the same ripple which the alligator
Left in his joyous tumbling of the water—
Yet I wail!
First Spirit.—
O my deep waters, cataract and flood,—
What wordless triumph did your voices render!
O mountain-summits, where the angels stood
And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!
How with a holy quiet did your earthy
Accept the heavenly—knowing ye were worthy!
Yet I wail.
Second Spirit.—
O my wild wood-dogs, with your listening eyes!
My horses—my ground-eagles, for swift fleeing!
My birds with viewless wings of harmonies—
My calm, cold fishes of a silver being,—
How happy were ye, living and possessing
O fair half-souls, capacious of full blessing.
Yet I wail!
First Spirit.—
I wail, I wail! Now hear my charge to-day
Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers,
By God’s sword at your backs! I lent my clay
To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:
And now in change for what I lent, ye give me
The thorn to vex, the tempest fire to cleave me—
And I wail!—Vol. i. p. 44.
The translation of the “Prometheus Bound” of Æschylus, in the same volume, is a noble achievement from the hand of a lady, and, indeed, the evidences of a solid classical scholarship abound in these volumes. But we turn from proofs of learning, however honourable, to the proofs of native genius, and that dedicated to the highest purposes, with a satisfaction the more profound because they are here pre-eminently noble. First, we would call the reader’s attention to two superb sonnets, addressed to that eccentric and, from the splendour of her talents, unfortu- [p. 299→] nately, very mischievous, writer, Madame Dudevant, and which so favourably contrast the English female authoress with the French one.
To George Sand.
(A Desire.)
Thou large-brained woman, and large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance,
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:
I would some wild miraculous thunder ran
Above the applauded circus, in appliance
Of thine own noble nature’s strength and science,—
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place
With holier light! That thou to woman’s claim
And man’s, might join besides the angel’s grace
Of a pure genius sanctified from blame;
Till child and maiden pressed to thy embrace,
To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.
To George Sand.
(A Recognition.)
True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn,
And break away the guards and armlets worn
By weaker woman in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn:—
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Flouts back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man’s name: and while before
The world, thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer heart, and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire.—Vol. i. p. 346.
“The Romaunt of the Page,” “The Lay of the Brown Rosary,” and “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” with which the second volume of these poems opens, are all poetic romances of the middle ages, told with singular power and harmony of diction; but this volume is, indeed, amazingly rich in its contents, and the next piece, “Bertha in the Lane,” a tribute to the noble disinterestedness of woman, is unrivalled in its pathetic beauty. A betrothed damsel, while wandering in the summer lanes, overhears her betrothed lover confessing to her sister Bertha, that she it is that he really loves—his betrothed “has all his esteem.” The triumph of the poem is the exquisite manner, so simple, and so [p. 300→] full of feeling, in which it describes the triumph of the heart which has made this woful discovery over all its own wishes, and the heroic strength with which it secures the sister’s happiness at the risk of its own life. The very next poem, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” is a triumph of another sort. It has evidently been suggested by Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall,” it is no imitation however, but a rivalry. It attempts to describe a noble woman, as Tennyson has described, a weak one, yielding to conventional convenience. The hero in this case is a poet of peasant origin, and the heroine, a lady, not only of high beauty and accomplishment, but of very elevated rank.
There’s a lady—an earl’s daughter; she is proud and she is noble,
And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the perfumed air;
And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble,
And the shadow of a monarch’s crown is softened in her hair.
She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles
Follow far on the direction of her little dove-like hand—
Trailing on a thunderous vapour underneath the starry vigils,
So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure of her land.
There are none of England’s daughters who can show a prouder presence;
Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain:
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was I that I should love her—save for feeling of the pain?
I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
Oh she walked so high above me, she appeared, to my abasement
In her lovely silken manner, like an angel clad in wings!
Many vassals bow before her, as her chariot sweeps their door-ways;
She hath blessed their little children—as a priest or queen were she!
Far too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was,
For I thought it was the same smile which she used to smile on me.
She has voters in the Commons, she has lovers in the palace,
And of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine;
Even the prince has named her beauty, ’twixt the red wine and the chalice;
Oh, and what was I to love her? my beloved, my Geraldine!
Yet I could not choose but love her; I was born to poet-uses—
To love all set above me, all of good and all of fair.
Nymphs of the mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the Muses,
And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star.
And because I was a poet, and because the public praised me,
With their critical deductions, for the modern writer’s fault,
I could sit at rich men’s tables, though the courtesies that raised me,
Still suggested clear between us, the pale spectrum of the salt. [p. 301→]
And they praised me in her presence—“Will your book appear this summer?”
Then returning to each other—“Yes, our plans are for the moors;”
Then with whisper dropped behind me—“There he is! the last new-comer!
Oh, she only likes his verses! what is over she endures.
Quite low-born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature—
And we make a point of asking him—of being very kind;
You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides he writes no satire—
These new charmers who keep serpents have the antique sting resigned.”
I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among them—
Till as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow;
When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, over-rung them,
And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.
I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit,
Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear before them all—
“Have you such superfluous honour, sir, that, able to confer it,
You will come down, Mr. Bertram, as my guest to Wycombe Hall?”
—Vol. ii. p. 97.
So writes the poet from Wycombe Hall to a friend. The visit there, the description of the place, with its grand old rooms, its gardens, its woods, its fountains and lakes—the aristocratic company, and the way in which the time was passed—wandering in the grounds, or seated in the library with talk of poetry and poets, of life and of books, while the more jovial were out after the hounds—the flocking round the lady hostess of proud suitors, the poor poet’s passion, his outburst of indignation when he thinks that his feelings have been sported with by the noble fair one—and the charming denouement which this produces—are all sketched with a brave hand, and form one of the most charming and finely-elaborated poems in the language. There is such a noble nature in the noble and beautiful woman, and the author has left you so uncertain of the turn which things will take till the last moment—whether we are to have a fascinating intellectual syren, or a true-hearted maiden—that the effect is indescribably delightful.
But fine as this is, there are poems following still finer. They are steeped in the strongest and tenderest sympathies of humanity. They are called all warm from the heart by the miseries that haunt the daily walks of life—the deeds of base oppression—the lash and manacle of the tyrant—the grinding of the bones and sinews of children to make us bread. “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” is a passionate and trenchant denunciation of American slavery. The author seizes on the [p. 302→] antithesis of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers to make the wrongs of the captive negro-women tell with terrible effect.
I stand on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim’s bended knee,
Where exile turned to ancestor,
And God was thanked for liberty.
I have run through the night, my skin is dark,
I bend my knee down on this mark—
I look on sea and sky.
O pilgrim-souls I speak to you!
I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew—
And round and round me ye go!
O pilgrims! I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who, in your names, works sin and woe.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean’s roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land,
Ye blessed in freedom’s evermore.
I am black, I am black;
And yet God made me, they say.
But if He did so, smiling back,
He must have cast his work away
Under the feet of his white creatures,
With a look of scorn—that the dusky features
Might be trodden again to clay.
And yet He has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light.
There’s a little blackbird, sits and sings;
There’s a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O’er the face of the darkest night.
But we who are dark, we are dark!
Ah, God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark
Our blackness shuts like prison-bars;
The poor souls crouch so far behind,
That never a comfort can they find
By reaching through the prison-bars.
—Vol. ii. p. 129.
But we must not indulge in further witness of the wild grief of the unhappy black woman; our space reminds us that we must draw to a close, which we do with regret. [p. 303→]
Whatever may be the eccentricities of style in which Mrs. Browning indulges, or the colours and tones which she may catch from others in passing, she never departs from the sacred sense of her mission. With her, poetry is a high art exercised for a high purpose—the soothing and encouraging of afflicted humanity. This pervades all her writings. Their ideal is not more lofty than their moral character. Though residing in Italy her spirit is essentially English. There is not a touch of foreign sentiment, nor a trace of foreign manner. Her verses might be composed in an English library or under the green oaks of an English park. If we may judge by the tone and spirit of Mr. Browning’s last work, her influence is as much felt and as persuasively operative in its deep religious tone by her own hearth as in her published volumes. Of these we trust that we shall yet receive many more, for we can point to none of our female writers who, combining solemn purpose with large intellect and the same intensity of imagination, are more fitted to make a truly beneficial impression on their age, while they are delighting it by the beauty of their thoughts and the music of their numbers.
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
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