E510531A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Literary Gazette, 31 May 1851, p. 372.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 301–303.
Under this somewhat eccentric title Mrs. Browning has given an elegant record of her own impression of the political events which have passed around her in Italy during the last three years, the Casa Guidi being her residence at Florence. The first part of the poem was written when the hopes of the world for the freedom of Italy were roused for a short space in 1848; the second part resumes the actual position of affairs in 1851. The poem has all the charm which might be expected from Mrs. Browning’s fine and original perceptions and ardent style. The voice of the poetess sounds throughout in tones that cannot be mistaken; and many of its passages are dashed off with a fiery energy and a picturesque brevity which are almost Dantesque. It was with regret that we observed in the earlier portions frequent lapses into loose rhythm and unmusical rhyme, and the introduction of thoughts and modes of expression essentially prosaic, which have marred the beauty of many of Mrs. Browning’s finest works. But as the poem advances these gradually disappear, and in the second part, written at an interval of three years, there is almost nothing to be wished away. This may, we trust, be accepted as an augury that Mrs. Browning has systematically adopted a chaster and severer style.
The poem is one which, to be thoroughly enjoyed, must be read continuously, and it is difficult to give an idea of its merits by quotation. But all will recognise the beauty of Mrs. Browning’s treatment of the subject, which at present occupies three parts of everybody’s thoughts:—
Just now, the world is busy: it has grown
A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws
The flowing ends of the earth, from Fez, Canton,
Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid,
The Russias and the vast Americas,
As a queen gathers in her robes amid
Her golden cincture,—isles, peninsulas,
Capes, continents, far inland countries hid
By jaspar sands and hills of chrysopras,
All trailing in their splendours through the door
Of the new Crystal Palace. Every nation,
To every other nation, strange of yore,
Shall face to face give civic salutation,
And hold up in a proud right hand before
That congress, the best work which she could fashion
By her best means—“These corals, will you please
To match against your oaks? They grow as fast
Within my wilderness of purple seas.”—
“This diamond stared upon me as I passed
(As a live god’s eye from a marble frieze)
Along a dark of diamonds. Is it classed?”—
“I wove these stuffs so subtly, that the gold
Swims to the surface of the silk, like cream,
And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!”—
“These delicated muslins rather seem
Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold,
Though such veiled Chakhi’s face in Hafiz’ dream.”—
“These carpets—you walk slow on them like kings,
Inaudible like spirits, while your foot
Dips deep in velvet roses and such things.”—
“Even Apollonius might commend this flute.
The music, winding through the stops, upsprings
To make the player very rich. Compute.”—
“Here’s goblet-glass, to take in with your wine
The very sun its grapes were ripened under.
Drink light and juice together, and each fine.”—
“This model of a steam-ship moves your wonder?
You should behold it crushing down the brine,
Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder.”—
“Here’s sculpture! Ah, we live too! Why not throw
Our life into our marbles? Art has place
For other artists after Angelo.”—
“I tried to paint out here a natural face—
For nature includes Raffael, as we know,
Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case?”—
“Methinks you will not match this steel of ours!”
“Nor you this porcelain! One might think the clay
Retained in it the larvæ of the flowers,
They bud so, round the cup, the old spring way.”—
“Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers,
With twisting snakes and climbing cupids play.”
To us the following passage appears full of a high order of power, and of a kind different from what Mrs. Browning has previously shown:—
The least
Dead for Italia, not in van has died,
However vainly, ere life’s struggle ceased,
To mad dissimilar ends they swerved aside.
Each grave her nationality has pieced
By its own noble breadth, and fortified,
And pinned it deeper to the soil. Forlorn
Of thanks, be, therefore, no one of these graves!
Not Hers,—who, at her husband’s side, in scorn,
Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves,
Until she felt her little babe unborn,
Recoil, within her, from the violent staves
And bloodhounds of the world: at which her life
Dropt inwards from her eyes, and followed it
Beyond the hunters. Garibaldi’s wife
And child died so. And now the sea-weeds fit
Her body like a proper shroud and coif,
And murmurously the ebbing waters grit
The little pebbles, while she lies interred
In the sea-sand. Perhaps, ere dying thus,
She looked up in his face which never stirred
From its clenched anguish, as to make excuse
For leaving him for his, if so she erred.
Well he remembers that she could not choose.
A memorable grave! Another is
At Genoa, where a king may fitly lie,—
Who bursting that heroic heart of his
At lost Novara, that he could not die,
Though thrice into the cannon’s eyes for this
He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky
Reel back between the fire-shocks; stripped away
The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared,
And naked to the soul, that none might say
His kingship covered what was base and bleared
With treason, he went out an exile, yea,
An exiled patriot! Let him be revered!
Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well;
And if he lived not also, as one spoke,
The sin pass softly with the passing bell.
For he was shriven, I think, in cannon smoke,
And taking off his crown, made visible
A hero’s forehead. Shaking Austria’s yoke,
He shattered his own hand and heart. “So best,”
His last words were upon his lonely bed,—
“I do not end like popes and dukes at least—
Thank God for it.” And now that he is dead,
Admitting it is proved and manifest
That he was worthy, with a discrowned head,
To measure heights with patriots, let them stand
Beside the man in his Oporto shroud,
And each vouchsafe to take him by the hand,
And kiss him on the cheek, and say aloud,
“Thou too hast suffered for our native land!
My brother, thou art one of us. Be proud!”
There is a music in the lyre that can give forth such tones as these, which is fitted to move men’s hearts deeply. We cannot lay down this delightful volume without quoting its concluding lines, whose beauty it is to be regretted should have been marred by the unfortunate introduction of double rhymes in one passage, which breaks in upon the music of the verse like a harsh discord:—
The sun strikes, through the windows, up the floor:
Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,
Not two years old, and let me see thee more!
It grows along thy amber curls, to shine
Brighter than elsewhere. Now look straight before,
And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,
And from thy soul, which fronts the future so,
With unabashed and unabated gaze,
Teach me to hope for, what the angels know,
When they smile clear as thou dost. Down God’s ways,
With just alighted feet between the snow
And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze,
Thou hast no fear, my lamb, about the road,
Albeit in our vain-glory we assume
That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God.
Stand-out, my blue-eyed prophet!—thou, to whom
The earliest world-day light that ever flowed,
Through Casa Guidi windows, chanced to come!
Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair,
And be God’s witness;—that the elemental
New springs of life are gushing everywhere,
To cleanse the water-courses, and prevent all
Concrete obstructions which infest the air!
That earth’s alive, and gentle or ungentle
Motions within her, but signify growth:
The ground swells greenest o’er the labouring moles.
Howe’er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,
Young children, lifted high on parent souls,
Look round them, with a smile upon the mouth,
And take for music every bell that tolls.
Who said we should be better, if like these?
And we—despond we for the future, though
Posterity is smiling at our knees,
Convicting us of folly? Let us go—
We will trust God. The blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into,
With pillared marbles rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane’s complete.
This world has no perdition, if some loss.
Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!
The self-same cherub faces which emboss
The rail, lean inward to the mercy-seat.
Long may such music as this come to us from Casa Guidi windows!
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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