E380900A. The Seraphim.
The Monthly Review, September 1838, pp. 125–130.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 385–387.
“The Seraphim, and other Poems,” by Miss Barrett, the able translator of no less a work of genius than the “Prometheus Bound” of Æschylus, is by far the most remarkable and promising work of the four.* These pieces are in various respects extraordinary productions, and especially, when considered as the compositions of a female, must they command admiration and awaken hope. Still it is rather on account of the promise they give than their own positive qualities that we admire the author; for while they afford ample evidence of a singularly original mind, yet the peculiarities of that mind, which must be carefully directed and forcibly controuled to render them advantageously available, seem to be so strongly interwoven with the beauties and powers of her genius, that we almost make ourselves sure of witnessing its shipwreck. Sacred subjects are her themes, and Miss Barrett can soar aloft and happily seize upon them. But, alas! such is her flightiness and such the indulgence of a vigorous and restless wing, that she is constantly putting our complacency to a severe test, and alarming us or making us conscious that we are upon the verge of what will precipitate herself and her readers to an offensive or irrecoverable condition. We have not room for doing critical justice or even showing to proper advantage any of the special beauties of the main poem; and finding ourselves at present thus precluded, we shall merely have recourse to one or two of the miscellaneous pieces, which, however, are sufficiently characteristic to bear out any general opinion we have offered. But to show that Miss Barrett’s mind and genius are after no ordinary stamp, and that the “Seraphim” aims at no mean or common [p. 126→] object, let us present a specimen of what she can do in prose, that specimen, besides, explaining her own intentions in the principal poem before us:—
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*Reviewed with The Seraphim, under the title “Minor Books of Poetry,” were three other titles, here omitted.
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“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 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!’”
Our first selections from her smaller pieces shall belong to “Isobel’s Child,” a lyric founded upon the simple idea of a young mother keeping her vigils over her sick babe, and uttering yearning love-prayers for its restoration to health:—
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! [p. 127→]
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?—
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 [p. 128→]
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 beloved? he
Who taught me first this mother-love?
Dear Lord, who spreadest out above
Thy loving pierced 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!”
Our readers are to imagine that the child drops into a gentle sleep, as if in answer to the importunate and agonizing uncertainty of the watcher. She begins to indulge careering and bright hopes, and in her exultation cannot but be led to prophesy, to gaze into the future regarding the powers, the doings, and the destinies of her son. But alas the Angel of Death is at hand, and the response of the Spirit, coming miraculously from the lips of the child, informs her that it is not the mortal glory or fame which genius earns on earth that she so passionately longs to witness that is worthy of such ecstacies of hope:—
“Is your wisdom wise
Mother, on the narrow earth?
Very happy, very worth
That I should stay to learn?
Are these air-corrupting sighs
Fashioned by unlearned breath?
Do the student’s lamps that burn
All night, illumine?
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 [p. 129→]
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 Heaven 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 its 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 chieftest Fair!”
There is something not very remote from a trenching on debateable ground in more than one portion of these remarkable extracts. It will be seen also that the fair writer is easily led into the pursuit of fantastic images and overwrought conceits, when the nature of the topic and the solemnity of concomitant thoughts demand a sustained and straightforward simplicity. But the beauty and the power of the poetess are, nevertheless, so apparent in these lines, that the reader must feel she has only to set her mind to the task and she will perform still more admirable things. We present another specimen, in which imagination and depth of sentiment are finely blended.
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!) [p. 130→]
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 into
A grassy place where he might view
The flowers 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 winglëd 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.
Reviewed:
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
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