E510531B. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Standard of Freedom, 31 May 1851, p. 11.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 303–304.
Poets are so rare with us, and their utterances so few and far between, that we listen to them the more reverently when they do speak, and especially if what they say concerns men’s dearest hopes. For this reason we welcome another volume from Mrs. Browning. There are things even human genius and industry and skill cannot accomplish—things which Kings cannot command, which gold cannot buy. A Crystal Palace may be built, but the poet, to sing it, must be born: to be married to immortal verse, consequently, is not the fate of every heroic achievement or yet more heroic aim. Of Italy, however, this general remark is less true than of any other spot on the earth’s surface. It has ever been the theme of poets; they have sung alike its sunshine and its shade, its storm and calm, its hour of abandonment and despair, and its golden morn of undying hope. In the poem before us, Mrs. Browning makes Italy the subject of her impassioned lay; its latest movements for fatherland and liberty and God are here sung—movements, it is true, crushed for the time beneath the brutal hoofs of Austria and France, but destined once more to march on to victory.
It strikes the reader at once that Mrs. Browning has been happier in her subject than her title, and yet the title does intimate the character of her work. In her preface she tells us “no continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country.” The poem itself consists of two parts—the first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851. The discrepancy between the two parts Mrs. Browning thinks a sufficient guarantee of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly escaped the epidemic—“falling sickness of enthusiasm for Pio Nono”—yet takes shame upon herself that she believed like a woman some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some popular defects. Of the poem itself we must now speak. Its origin was simple enough:—A little child singing under Casa Guidi windows, “O bella libertà, O bella!” suggested it. The hearer’s thought went back to other songs, and deeds yet more poetic sung and done in the same name, and we have now the result. This, the last of Mrs. Browning’s works, will in no degree detract from her well-established fame. It has the same genuine poetic inspiration—the lofty human hopes and sympathies—the same faith in the world’s future. Mrs. Browning’s strength is her humanity; her cry is emphatically the cry of the human—it is not the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but of the human heart crushed and wounded wherever, in its agony, and anguish, and despair, that heart may beat. It is difficult, in a poem like this, to give extracts, but the following one has the merit of appropriateness and novelty, since, with the exception of Mr. Thackeray, the Great Exhibition has excited no poetic utterances at present:—
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 Haffiz’ 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 Apollonious 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 scuplture! 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 birds, where birds in bowers,
With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play.”
O Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent.
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent
In handwork only? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls shall perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for? No light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ,—no cure!
No help for women sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? No brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings?—Hast thou found
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No entrance for the exiled? No repose,
Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?
No mercy for the slave, America?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?
Alas! great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, O world, no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
To poor Italia, baffled by mischance?
O gracious nations, give some ear to me!
You all go to your Fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms—a justice to be done.
So, prosper!
To her work Mrs. Browning brings no common qualifications. She is not merely a poet inspired by the tale of Italian wrong, but she has trod the Italian land herself; we believe she is yet there. When the morning of what seemed a day of promise shone, she was there; and when that morning became clouded over, she was there still—disappointed, but not despairing—seeing beyond the cloud the clear blue of heaven, and the smile of God. In Italy, the “grave and resurrection,” as we read in Festus, “of the slave,” she has faith, and with that faith she closes what otherwise would be but a melancholy wail over the disappointed efforts and ruined hopes of Italian freedom.
Still, graves, when Italy is talked upon!
Still, still, the patriot’s tomb the stranger’s hate.
Still, Niobe! still fainting in the sun
By whose most dazzling arrows violate
Her beauteous offspring perished! Has she won
Nothing but garlands for the graves from Fate?
Nothing but death-songs?—Yet, be it understood,
Life throbs in noble Piedmont! while the feet
Of Rome’s clay image, dabbled soft in blood,
Grow flat with dissolution, and, as meet,
Will soon be shovelled off, like other mud,
To leave the passage free in church and street.
And I, who first took hope up in this song
Because a child was singing one .... behold,
The hope and omen were not, haply, wrong!
Poets are soothsayers still, like those of old
Who studied flights of doves—and creatures young
And tender mighty meanings may unfold.
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 spring’s 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 signify but 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 in 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.
We accept the conclusion. We shall have once more a free and united Italy; once more earth shall see “The brightness in her eye she wore when Rome was free.”
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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