E380901A. An Essay on Mind; Prometheus Bound; and The Seraphim.
The Sunbeam, 1 September 1838, pp. 245, 243; 8 September, pp. 254–255; 22 September, pp. 269–270; 6 October, p. 287; 13 October, pp. 293–295.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 387–400.
We this week give the commencement of a review on Miss Barrett’s poems, and of another on Mr. Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus; for both which we expect the reasonable thanks of our readers. Each of these works has been before the public for some weeks, and has doubtless received such notice as the ordinary publications afford. But something more is wanted by the present state of literature; and therefore, we mean to adopt, in our reviewing department, a very different system from that which is now only too common.
In illustration of our proposed method, we beg to refer to the practice of some portion of the French press, in relation to the stage. Unlike ourselves, our neighbours are not solicitous of inserting an ad captandum notice in the next morning’s paper, in review of the over-night’s performance; but wait for days, or weeks, until the critic has had ample means of judging of a new piece—a new actor—or a new part; and then, duly prepared and informed, the writer proceeds to the composition of an elaborate essay upon the subject. Thus, the decision is well-weighed, before it is pronounced, and the review is worthy of its subject and its author.
In like manner, it is our intention to deal with all possible matters, that in our opinions there may be always something of permanent value, however temporary may seem to be the topic dealt with. We shall continue both the subjects we have alluded to, until we extract the heart and soul from them, and present to the reader the very concentrated essence of their virtue. There is enough of weekly reviewing, and reviewing of all kinds, which is only meant to be read for the day and then thrown aside for ever. We shall select the worthiest works, and hold them up in a mirror which the reader shall prize both for ornament and use. We will give, in “The Sunbeam,” a standard for criticism, such as has seldom if ever been witnessed. We have the means of doing it, and it shall be done. [p. 243→]
The Poetry of Elizabeth B. Barrett.
We have already, as our readers well know, noticed in terms of great commendation the poems of Elizabeth B. Barrett.* But it is not by means of a cursory notice that poetic merit like hers should be rewarded. Perceiving of what calibre her genius was, we determined, pursuant to a design more particularly announced in our leading article of the present number, to give this lady a prominent place on the first opportunity, in our reviewing department. That opportunity now occurs, and we proceed in our promise.
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*On 11 August 1838, p. 219, The Seraphim was described as “beautiful exceedingly.”
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The title-page of The Seraphim, and other poems, mentions the authoress as a translator of Æschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Her version of this splendid drama we had not seen, but desired much to read. When we succeeded in obtaining a sight of it, we found it to be anonymous,—we were again referred on to an Essay of Mind and other Poems, by the same writer. This last work we were lucky enough to possess, by some chance, in our own library. We have, therefore, now before us ample materials for judging of this new and prerogative appearance in the arena of poetic endeavour.
It is not with a slight and cursory notice, as we have before intimated, that a true poet should be greeted. Here is one, who has previously made two attempts on the public mind, from which no impression has been received—worthy attempts, too; and in the meanwhile, a cry was raised that the fountains of poesy had been dried-up at its source, that the tree of poesy had been withered branch and bole and root, that the time for the singing of birds had utterly gone, and that the turtle should no more be heard in our land for ever and ever.
Never, perhaps, was a more profane and impious assertion made than this. Do the raisers of such a cry know what poetry is, and why it was granted as a gift by God to man? Do they know that it is one of the highest and holiest of things, and never can cease while piety and religion are dwellers of man’s bosom?—never while hope and fear and memory and love are the elements of man’s life? Little they know, and less they feel, who dream of the possibility of poetry decaying. Let it be no less esteemed than a perpetual inspiration, for the supply of truth and goodness, and beauty, as oracular utterances, even when they cease to be visibly exhibited in the character and conduct of men, in their daily walk and conversation.
The poet Southey, says rightly in his Colloquies, that in these days, there is, and will be, more verse written than ever. He adds, “but that there will be less printed.” Now, we say, that more poetry will be written undoubtedly; and we believe more printed too; but perhaps not more in proportion to the quantity produced. Much of what has been written of the kind implied by Southey, has fallen under the eye of the present writer; and all bespeaks to his apprehension an increased susceptibility to poetical influences, and an originality and a facility in expressing them, peculiar to the present age in England, and giving promise of her at length rivalling Greece in the truthfulness and abundance of the poetical harvest.
The tendencies that he remarks are chiefly of a lyrical kind, and the feeling and experiences embodied of a personal character. Self-introspections—mystical speculations—spiritual aspirations—remote and interior analogies—these are the subjects mostly of poetic argument, with the increasing number of minds who are seeking now to pour themselves forth in the media of verses; and thereby to get rid of the haunting thoughts—the air-drawn daggers that float before the heat-oppressed brain—the over-stimulated nerves—and the excited states of being, that education induces in the mind which it instructs and awakens into consciousness of power and desire of action.
One of this class evidently is Elizabeth Barrett, and one who has been for some period endeavouring to procure audience for the communications which her bosom was throbbing to deliver. For a long time she must have been accustomed to self-investigation, and have qualified herself for looking into the essences of things about her, by forming a previous acquaintance with that essential thing which she herself was, and is, and will be. The fact of her commencing with an Essay upon Mind, is of itself a sufficient ostent and indication of psychological habits. She repudiated the notion that poetry is not a proper vehicle for abstract ideas;—she disdained to believe that the imaginative is incompatible with the philosophic. With the name of Bacon upon her lips, she demands finely, why should we expel the argumentative from the limits of the poetic? She beheld in poetry, the inspiritings to political feeling—the monumentum ære perennius of buried nations; and therefore had faith in poetry being on a level with any walk of intellect however high, and in the poetic spirit being equal to the loftiest exercises of ratiocination. With the works before her of the great though erring Lucretius, the sublime Dante, the syllogistic Pope,—corroborated by a Quintillian’s acknowledgment of submission due from philosophers to poets—and a Gibbon’s declaration that Homer was the lawgiver, the theologian, and the philosopher of the ancients—poetry to her was nothing less than the enthusiasm of the understanding; and, with Milton, she burned to confess “the high reason” that must ever be recognized “in her fancies,” by whoso is capable, and apt to finely perceive the fine issues whereto heaven itself has touched some hearts and lips, for the illustration of its own mysteries.
Such an one was precisely the spirit to attempt an Essay on Mind in immortal verse. She had no need to wish that it had fallen to the lot of one more familiar than herself with the dwelling-place of mind;—one who could better search her secret chambers, and call forth those that sleep;—one who could fitlier enter into her temples and cast out the iniquitous who buy and sell, profaning the sanctuary of God; one who could wiselier try the golden links of that chain which hangs from heaven to earth, and show that it is not placed there for man to covet for lucre’s sake, or for him to weigh his puny strength at one end against omnipotence at the other, but that it is placed there to join in mysterious union the natural and the spiritual, the mortal and the eternal, the creature and the Creator. Still, with the modesty of true genius, she did wish this—and only reconciled herself to the task to which she was appointed, by the reflection, that if she had failed in representing, she had never ceased to love Truth. What capacity would not be narrow as opposed to the infinite object that she sought to embrace? To us, the illustrations that she has rendered are dear for the sake of their subject, and receive elevation from having been identified with an argument so exalted. Thus, (to use her own exquisite language) the waters of Halys acquire a peculiar taste from the soil over which they flow.
With trembling steps she might well adventure on the field of endeavour which her muse has best delighted to cultivate. It will be our part, in our next number, to trace her print-marks,—to follow her in her wanderings—to mark her progress—and to declare the station whereat we find her at present to have arrived. Nor will our readers be less delighted than ourselves, by partaking of this enchanting pursuit, to which we heartily invite them all this day week.
[Continued in the issue of 8 September 1838.] [p. 254→]
It is now twelve years ago since Miss Barrett’s Essay on Mind was published, yet new to the world, (is it not?) as if it appeared only yesterday. Well! it was with trembling steps, as we have said, that she ventured on the mighty argument; for clear enough it is that her mind was then less developed than it is now. This might have been expected. She seems to have considered, at that time, that Byron was the chief of poets, and Jeffrey the chief of critics. In this, the gifted one shared the error of the multitude. In the same degree she depreciated the merits of Southey; nor did his hexameters meet with much favour at her hands. We believe that there is no reference to Wordsworth, or to Coleridge, in the whole two books, of which her poem consists. Scott, and Moore, and Rogers, and Campbell, were evidently over-estimated by her in this part of her progress. Indicative these omissions and commissions, of immature judgment and defective experience. Time was evidently wanted to perfect the fruit which was but as yet green.
On the other hand, we find her capable of admiring Irving’s pierian eloquence, which, at the time she speaks of, was certainly captivating, soul-stirring, and instructive, yet infected with certain taints and spots that prophesied the possible fall one day of the mighty in speech and action! Historical scepticism, as illustrated in the Gibbons and Humes, and Mitfords, falls in for condemnation; and indeed, to the historical spirit in itself, she shows but little quarter. For the philosophical, she manifests some esteem, and for the poetical, much love. Sometimes, however, she wanders into the vulgar hypothesis that poetry draws from nature. We like her better when exclaiming,
All poetry is beauty, but exprest
In inward essence, not in outward vest.
Hence lovely scenes, reflective poets find,
Awake their lovelier images in Mind:
Nor doth the pictur’d earth, the bard invite,
The lake of azure, or the heav’n of light,
But that his swelling breast arouses there,
Something less visible, and much more fair!
There is a music in the landscape round,—
A silent voice, that speaks without a sound—
A witching spirit, that reposing near,
Breathes to the heart, but comes not to the ear!
These softly steal, his kindling soul t’ embrace,
And natural beauty, gild with moral grace.
Think not, when summer breezes tell their tale,
The poet’s thoughts are with the summer gale;
Think not his Fancy builds her elfin dream
On painted flowret, or on sighing stream:
No single objects cause his raptured starts,
For Mind is narrow’d, not inspir’d by parts;
But o’er the scene the poet’s spirit broods,
To warm the thoughts that form his noblest moods:
Peopling his solitude with faëry play,
And beckoning shapes that whisper him away,—
While lilied fields, and hedge-row blossoms white,
And hills, and glittering streams, are full in sight—
The forests wave, the joyous sun beguiles,
And all the poetry of Nature smiles!
Such poetry is formed by Mind, and not
By scenic grace of one peculiar spot.
The artist lingers in the moon-lit glade,
And light and shade, with him, are—light and shade.
The philosophic chymist wandering there,
Dreams of the soil, and nature of the air.
The rustic marks the young herbs’ fresh’ning hue,
And only thinks—his scythe may soon pass through!
None “muse on nature with a Poet’s eye,”
None read, but Poets, Nature’s poetry!
Its characters are trac’d in mystic hand,
And all may gaze, but few can understand.
The conclusion of the poem is fine:—
I love my own dear land—it doth rejoice
The soul, to stretch my arms, and lift my voice,
To tell her of my love! I love her green,
And bowery woods, her hills in mossy sheen,
Her silver running waters—there’s no spot
In all her dwelling, which my breast loves not—
No place not heart-enchanted! Sunnier skies,
And calmer waves, may meet another’s eyes;
I love the sullen mist, the stormy sea,
The winds of rushing strength which, like the land, are free!
Such is my love—yet turning thus to thee,
Oh Græcia! I must hail with hardly less
Of joy, and pride, and deepening tenderness,
And feelings wild, I know not to controul,
My other country—country of my soul!
For so, to me, thou art! my lips have sung
Of thee with childhood’s lisp, and harp unstrung!
In thee, my Fancy’s pleasant walks have been,
Telling her tales, while Memory wept between!
And now for thee I joy, with heart beguiled,
As if a dying friend looked up, and smiled.
Lo! o’er Ægæa’s waves, the shout hath ris’n!
Lo! Hope hath burst the fetters of her prison!
And Glory sounds the trump along the shore,
And Freedom walks where Freedom walk’d before!
Ipsara glimmers with heroic light,
Redd’ning the waves that lash her flaming height;
And Ægypt hurries from that dark blue sea!
Lo! o’er the cliffs of famed Thermopylæ
And voiceful Marathon, the wild winds sweep,
Bearing this message to the brave who sleep—
“They come! they come! with their embattled shock,
From Pelion’s steep and Paros’ foam-dash’d rock!
They come from Tempe’s vale, and Helicon’s spring,
And proud Eurotas’ banks, the river king!
They come from Leuctra, from the waves that kiss
Athena—from the shores of Salamis;
From Sparta, Thebes, Eubœa’s hills of blue—
To live with Hellas—or to sleep with you!”
Smile—smile, beloved land! and though no lay
From Doric pipe, may charm thy glades to day—
Though dear Ionic music murmur not
Adown the vale—its echo all forgot!
Yet smile, beloved land! for soon, around,
Thy silent earth shall utter forth a sound,
As whilom—and, its pleasant groves among,
The Grecian voice shall breathe the Grecian song,
While the exiled muse shall ’habit still
The happy haunts of her Parnassian hill.
Till then, behold the cold dumb sepulchre—
The ruin’d column—ocean, earth, and air,
Man, and his wrongs—thou has Tyrtæus there!
And pardon, if across the heaving main,
Sound the far melody of minstrel strain,
In wild and fitful gust from England’s shore,
For his immortal sake, who never more
Shall tread with living foot, and spirit free,
Her fields, or breathe her passionate poetry—
The pilgrim bard, who lived, and died for thee,
Oh land of Memory! loving thee no less
Than parent—with the filial tenderness,
And holy ardour of the Argive son,
Straining each nerve to bear thy chariot on—
Till when its wheels the place of glory swept,
He laid him down before the shrine—and slept.
So be it! at his cold unconscious bier,
We fondly sate, and dropp’d the natural tear—
Yet wept not wisely, for he sank to rest
On the dear earth his waking thoughts loved best,
And gently life’s last pulses stole away!
No Moschus sang a requiem o’er his clay,
But Greece was sad! and breathed above, below,
The warrior’s sigh, the silence, and the woe!
The remaining thirty or forty lines are of inferior merit.
The versification of the poems in this volume is far more mechanical than in the author’s later publications. The lyric verses have not the same freedom and flow—that mastery had not yet been won which should be ultimately—nevertheless, it was winning—and though thought and feeling were struggling with expression, thought and feeling were there to struggle. Clear enough there was hope.
Eight years had passed, and their immaterial suns had ripened her soul with the light of light, and the fruit of psychological experience, growing on that tree of life, had proved for the healing of opinion and taste, wherever they had suffered from the world’s contact and accident. Æschylus present difficulties to the manliest Greek scholar—think of these rugged obstacles to a woman’s mind!—then think that they have been conquered, and then esteem Elizabeth Barrett as ye ought!
It has been stated that the drama of Greece was unlike our own, in not having ascended to excellence by slow steps. In our own, there are many names of the illustrious obscure, previous to that of Shakspere. Æschylus stood alone; having only his country’s legends for quarry, out of which the dramatic sculptor shaped those stately groups which, by their stern beauty, gave his fellow men a love for dramatic representation. Stern, indeed, was the beauty in which he delighted—austere—sublime—terrible. It was like that of the antediluvian Amazarah:—
——Whose beauty was so terrible,
Whose courage wooed her merited reward
Of ample realm and huge metropolis;
Ay, for surpassing bravery, merited
Power and all adoration, like a god. [p. 255→]
What with a masculine genius like this was a woman to do. To her, the beauty so extravagant, must have been as sublimity, and the sublimity!—why—even as the ineffably divine! Nay, had not even a man signally failed in rendering this great poet? Who can endure to read Potter’s version? With a boldness only to be accounted for by the rightful consciousness of power, Elizabeth Barrett felt that, even relative to this mighty mind as manifested in his mightiest work, The Prometheus, “a mirror may be held in different lights by different hands; and, according to the position of those hands, will the light fall. A picture may be imitated in different ways,—by steel engraving, or stone engraving; and according to the vocation of the artist will the copy be.” But it is desirable, as the translator justly opines, that the same composition should be conveyed by different minds, that the character of the medium may not be necessarily associated with the thing conveyed.
The would-be originality of the present age, operates against the success of translations, however excellent; nor would Elizabeth Barrett nor would we repine at this. Let it dream its undreamt of dreams—let it glow with unearthly frenzy. If its dreams be noble dreams, may they, exclaim we both, be dreamt on; if its frenzy be the evidence of inspiration, may we, as Prometheus said, be mad! But let the age take heed, warns the muse before us, “There is one step from dreaming nobly to sleeping inertly; and one from frenzy to imbecility.”
“I do not ask,” she continues, “I would not obtain, that our age should be servilely imitative of any former age. Surely it may think its own thoughts and speak its own words, yet turn not away from those who have thought and spoken well. The conemplation of excellence produces excellence, if not similar, yet parallel. We do not turn from green hills and waving forests, because we build and inhabit palaces; nor do we turn towards them, that we may model them in painted wax. We make them subjects of contemplation, in order to abstract from them those ideas of beauty, afterwards embodied in our own productions; and, above all, in order to consider their and our Creator under every manifestation of his goodness and his power. All beauties, whether in nature or art, whether in physics or morals, whether in composition or abstract reasoning, are multiplied reflections, visible in different distances and under different positions, of one archetypal beauty. If we owe gratitude to Him, who created and unveiled its form, should we refuse to gaze upon those reflections? Because they rest even upon heathen scrolls, should we turn away from those scrolls? Because thorns and briers are the product of the earth, should we avert our eyes from that earth? The mind of man and the earth of man are cursed alike.
“But the age would not be ‘classical.’ ‘O, that profaned name!’ What does it mean, and what is it made to mean? It does not mean what it is made to mean: it does not mean what is necessarily regular, and polished, and unimpassioned. The ancients, especially the ancient Greeks, felt, and thought, and wrote antecedently to rules: they felt passionately, and thought daringly; and wrote because they felt and thought. Shakspeare is a more classical writer than Racine.”
How qualified to judge of the character of Prometheus, was the author before us, no other evidence is required than that of the passage which we gave in the Family Circle of No. 28, under the title of “Prometheus.” We say, that that passage gives sufficient evidence, that Elizabeth Barrett is qualified to estimate Æschylus’ claims, for his Conception of Character, as worked out in this dramatic person. It would seem as if he himself had been desirous of resting his ambition on even such fulcrum, and none other in this tragedy.
For, as our author justly observes, it is not in Æschylus’ usual manner to produce upon his canvass any very prominent figure, to which every other is made subordinate, and to which the interest of the spectator is very strongly and almost exclusively attached. Agamemnon’s πληγὴν ἔχω we do not feel within our hearts. In the Seven Chiefs, there is a clear division of interest; and the reader willingly agrees with Antigone, that Polynices should be as honourably buried as Eteocles. In the Supplices, we are called upon to exercise universal charity towards fifty heroines. In the Persæ, we cannot weep with Atossa over the misfortunes of Xerxes; not even over what she most femininely considers to be his greatest misfortune—μάλιστα δ᾽ ἥδε συμφορὰ δάκνει—his wearing a tattered garment. Perhaps we know more of Orestes than of any personage, always excepting Prometheus, introduced by Æschylus: and yet both in the Choëphorœ and Eumenides, we are interested in his calamities, rather from their being calamities than from their being his. But Prometheus stands eminent and alone; one of the most original, and grand, and attaching characters ever conceived by the mind of man. That conception sank deeply into the soul of Milton, and, as has been observed, rose from thence in the likeness of his Satan. But the Satan of Milton and the Prometheus of Æschylus stand upon ground as unequal, as do the sublime of sin and the sublime of virtue. Satan suffered from his ambition; Prometheus from his humanity; Satan for himself; Prometheus for mankind: Satan dared perils which he had not weighed; Prometheus devoted himself to sorrows which he had foreknown. “Better to reign in hell,” said Satan: “Better to serve this rock,” said Prometheus. But in his hell, Satan yearned to associate man; while Prometheus preferred a solitary agony: nay, he even permitted his zeal and tenderness for the peace of others, to abstract him from that agony’s intenseness.
[Continued in the issue of 22 September 1838.] [p. 269→]
Not as he deserved was Æschylus rewarded by his country; even Athens could be unjust to the merits of her greatest tragic poet, indeed, the father of her tragedy. Miss Barrett dwells on the bitter feeling with which the conceiver of Prometheus must have regarded this treatment. “Are you not ashamed,” said Menander to Philemon, “to conquer me in comedy?” “Such a reproach,” she exclaims, “might Æschylus have used to his dramatic rival, and extracted as deep a blush as ever stained Philemon’s cheek. But he did not. Silent as his own Prometheus, he left for ever the Athens on whom he had conferred the immortality of his name and works; and went to Sicily to die.” Notwithstanding our love for Æschylus, we fear that Miss Barrett has forgotten that this dramatic rival was none other than Sophocles. Could Æschylus envy a younger poet? Let us not think it; if we would not have him now contract his divine brows into a frown amid the gardens of Elysium, where haply he may have power of knowing, (for is not Hades the realm of soul?) all that passes respecting himself in the minds of the dwellers on earth. Who shall say that the Fame-immortality which some have substituted for the personal, may not be in addition instead, and be even such a privilege as this? Were it not indeed to live in human memory? But to quit this pleasant reflection.
There are considerable doubts on the historical point. If Sophocles was only a few years younger than Æschylus—seven or seventeen—he was not very young when his master was sixty-four. Take seventeen from sixty-four and there remains forty-seven; add to this, the circumstance that the prize was adjudged to the last exhibition of “the Father,”—and which exhibition consisted of the Agamemnon, the Choephoræ, the Furies, and a satyric piece. But the tragedy of the Furies, we are told, gave great umbrage to the city; and the poet, whether for that or on some other pretence, was accused of impiety. His brother Amynias having pleaded his cause, and thus impressed his audience with a spectacle of fraternal affection; the Athenians reverenced their maimed veteran, and Æschylus was acquitted.
However all this be, certain it is, that the poet quitted his native city indignant. In his place of exile, says Miss Barrett, “he wrote his epitaph instead of tragedies, calling with his dying voice on the grove of Marathon and the conquered Persians, as the only witnesses of his glory.”
Marathon and Platæa! ye witnessed what martial spirit could inspire the bosom of a poet. We read not that Æschylus ran away, as a celebrated orator did afterwards when in the shock of fight. The poet is a braver man than the rhetorician. We cannot help thinking here of Glover’s Athenaid, a neglected poem, superior to the Leonidas of the same author, and which ought always to be bound up with the rest of his works. In this poem Æschylus is a prominent person; and thus opens it:—
A burning ray the summer solstice cast,
Th’ Olympiad was proclaim’d; when Xerxes pour’d
His millions through Thermopylæ, new-stain’d
With blood. From Athens Æschylus divine
In genius, arts, and valour, musing deep
On his endanger’d country’s future doom,
Repairs, invited by an evening still,
To clear Ilissus, Attic stream renown’d.
Beneath on oak, in solitary state
Apart, itself a wood, the hero’s limbs
On tufted moss repose. He grasps the lyre;
Unfolded scrolls voluminous he spreads
Along the ground: high lays repeating thence,
Leonidas the Spartan he extols,
And sweeps th’ accordant strings. To closing day
He bade farewell, and hail’d th’ ascending stars
In music long continued; till the stream
With drowsy murmur won his eye to sleep,
But left his fancy waking, In a dream,
The god of day, with full meridian blaze,
Seem’d to assume his function o’er the skies;
When, lo! the earth divided: through the cleft
A gush of radiance dimm’d the noon-tide sun.
In structure all of diamond, self pois’d,
Amid redundant light a chariot hung
Triumphal. Twelve transparent horses breath’d
Beams from their nostrils, dancing beams of day
Shook from their manes. In lineaments of man,
Chang’d to immortal, there the mighty soul
Of Sparta’s king apparent shone. His wounds
Shot forth a splendour like the clust’ring stars,
Which on Orion’s chest and limbs proclaim
Him first of constellations. Round in cars
Of triumph too arrang’d, the stately forms
Of those whom virtue led to share his doom,
And consecrate Thermopylæ to fame.
Pines tipp’d with lightning seem’d their spears: their shields
Broad like Minerva’s ægis: from their helms
An empyreal brightness stream’d abroad:
Ineffable felicity their eyes,
Their fronts the majesty of gods display’d.
He is charged by the awful and honoured shade to alarm the Olympian concourse; and, being thereto further advised by Themistocles, sets out accordingly, not unaccompanied, on a journey to “Phœbean Delphi, seated on a rock abrupt, sublime.” There he meets Timon, the priest of Phœbus, whose daughter Amarantha had even that very hour been captured by the barbarians, and who tells his sad story to the tragic bard. The following lines present a grand image.
He scarce had finish’d, when the earth beneath
Rock’d from her centre in convulsive throes;
From pole to pole th’ ethereal concave groan’d:
Night from her cavern with gigantic steps
Bestrode the region, lifing high as heav’n
Her broad, infernal palm, whose umbrage hides
The throne of light; while, glancing through the rifts
Of her black mantle, overlaid with clouds,
Blue vapours trail’d their fires. The double head
Of tall Parnassus reeling, from the crag
Unloos’d two fragments; mountainous in bulk,
They roll to Delphi with a crashing sound,
Like thunder nigh whose burst of ruin strikes
The shatter’d ear with horror.
Æschylus advises the priest to arm himself and turn soldier awhile for his daughter’s sake; and the party proceed to attack the wrongous invaders, whom, from the suddenness of their onset, they defeat. Then follows the bard’s ablution in Castalia’s fount and grove; his prayer to Phœbus in his own temple; the prophecy of the Pythian maid—his departure for Elis.
Ready are the barks——
These with extended canvas quit the port,
And, doubling round Achaia, cut the main
To sacred Pisa. On their way the harp
Of Æschylus, preluding to the strain
Which on his banks Alpheus was to hear,
Relieves the sailor toiling at his oar,
Enchants the wind retentive of the sounds
Which harmonize his breath. If round the keel
Of sweet Arion dolphins ever play’d,
Or blithsome Nereids to the pleasing mood
Of Orpheus danc’d, while Argo plough’d the deep;
They now had felt controulment as in bonds,
Not on their pliant, azure-glossy fins
Disporting light, but rigid with amaze
At this majestic muse. Yet sounding verse,
In solemn cadence to the deep-ton’d lyre,
Which could the boist’rous mariner subdue,
The ear of Timon, languid by despair,
Rejects, attentive to his grief alone,
Which sighs within. Society is pain,
Ev’n with his friend.
Timon thought only of his daughter—what to him was the voice of Æschylus, singing on the waters! what is it not to us? Honour awaited the bard’s landing at Elis—the victor’s chaplet—the processional car—the Elean judgment—and Greece’s awakening, as one man, in resistance of invasion.
But we must pass from the Glover to the Barrett, who has “brave translunary things” in her of which he had no notion. It is from her deep sympathy with Æschylus that she writes indignantly of his supposed wrongs. But not to dwell on these; his memory has suffered real ones enough to exhaust the stock of a translator’s patience. According to Suidas, the Athenians “brake down the benches,” on the occasion which gave offence to the poet, and caused his departure for Sicily. This according to Scaliger, would seem to be their mode of condemning the poet. But this violent proceeding, in the Barrett’s estimation, is preferable to the “faint-praise” of succeeding Grecian commentators, which damns more surely, or would do, if, after all, truth were not omnipotent, even in this world of deceptive shadows.
The fact is that the game that has been played with Shakspere, and is now, happily, almost played out, was played with Æschylus. Acknowledge, by all means, the poet’s genius; but show the acumen of the critic, by censuring his taste. The world is slow to admit that the greatest genius involves the correctest judgment.
All comparison of Æschylus with Sophocles and Euripides, is, without question, invidiously meant—and the father of tragedy has suffered much from this kind of abusive opposition, on the part of the ancient critics. It is quite evident that too frequently they render him churlish mention. Of the three great critics of antiquity,—Longinus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Quintilian,—Dionysius alone does not measure his criticism to twice the length of his commendation. Quintilian calls him “rudis in plerisque et incompositus,” which the authoress’s sense of justice almost gives her courage to call a false criticism. “Longinus,” she exclaims,”—Longinus!! uses similar language:—ἐνίοτε μέντοι ἀκατεργάστους και οἱονεὶ ποκοειδεῖς τἀς ἐννοίας καὶ ἀμαλάκτους φέροντος. Now there are, undeniably, some things in Æschylus, which, like the expressions of Callisthenes, would properly fall under the censure of Longinus, as being οὐχ ὑψηλὰ, ἀλλὰ μετέωρα. But according to every principle by which he himself could urge his immortal claim upon posterity, the Homer of criticism should have named with less of coldness and more of rapture, the Homer of dramatic poetry.”
From the poet, let us turn to his poem, and its hero—that powerful portraiture of which the dramatic bard felt the force in its weight and fulness. In sign of this—mark, that he never removes Prometheus from the spectator’s sight. Nor do the readers of Æschylus fail to feel its engrossing interest. They are impatient at Io’s long narrations; not because those narrations are otherwise than beautiful, but because they would hear Prometheus speak again: they are impatient even at Prometheus’s prophetic replies to Io, because they would hear him speak only of Prometheus. From the moment of the first dawning of his character upon their minds, its effect is electrifying. He is silent: he disdains as much to answer the impotent and selfish compassion of Vulcan, as to murmur beneath the brutal cruelty of strength. It was not thus that he pitied in the days of his joy: it was not thus that he acted in the days of his power: and his spirit is above them, and recks not of them: and when their pity and their scoffs pollute his ears no more, he pours out his impassioned sorrows to the air, and winds, and waters, and earth and sun, whom he had never visited with benefits, and “taxed not with unkindness.” The striking nature of these, our first ideas of Prometheus, is not enfeebled by any subsequent ones. We see him daring and unflinching beneath the torturing and dishonouring hand, yet keenly alive to the torture and dishonour; for himself fearless and rash, yet for others considerate and wary; himself unpitied, yet to others pitiful. And when, at the last, he calls no longer upon the sun, and earth, and waters, from whom the Avenger is secluding him; but demands of Æther, who is rolling light to all eyes excepting his, whether he beholds how he suffers by injustice;—our hearts rise up within us, and bear witness that the suffering is indeed unjust.
Now then suppose that Vulcan, Strength, and Force have chained the Providence of God (such is the meaning of Prometheus) to the rock of the World’s Necessity: then under the dominion of “the Prince of the Power of the Air,” who was and is “the god of this world,”—and that the sufferer is left alone. Thus he pours out his anguish—
O holy æther, and swift-winged winds,
And river founts, and dimples numberless
Of oceanic waves—all-fostering earth,
And, all-beholding sun, on thee I call,
Behold me, what I bear—a god, from gods.
Behold me, by what anguish worn,
These eyes of mine shall weary turn
Unto time’s myriad years.
So harsh a chain of suffering,
Hath form’d for me heav’n’s new-made king!
Alas! alas! my tears [p. 270→]
Alike for present and for future flow!—
Where lies the bound’ry of my mighty woe?
What do I say? all things, all future things,
I view unclouded; nor can sorrow come
Strange to my soul. It doth behove to bear
Calmly what Fate ordaineth, knowing that
Necessity hath force impugnable.
Yet can I not be silent, or unsilent,
Of these my woes. To these necessities,
Because I gave to man a glorious gift,
I have been yoked—because I stole away
The ferule-treasured secret fount of fire,
Teacher of every art, high help to mortals—
For such sin I endure such punishment!
Rock-fixëd, in the desert air, in chains.
Ah me! ah me! ah me! what sound,
What viewless odour hovers round?
From god or man, or half divine
Being, who nears this rock of mine,
This limit of the earth, to see
My woes, or seek—whate’er it be?
View me a bound and sorrowing god,
The foe of Jove, the hate of such
As Jove’s imperial courts have trod;
Because I lovëd man too much.
Ah me; ah me! what sound I hear
Of coming birds! Air murmuring sings,
Beneath the soft light stroke of wings—
And all society is fear.
Prometheus and Chorus
Chorus.
Fear nothing. Lo! This friendly train
On the fast-flashing oar of pinions,
Draws nigh; but scarce such boon could gain
From him who holdeth sea dominions.
Me too the rapid winds have borne afar.
Deep thro’ our caves the clank of iron came—
Forth from my cheek was struck the blush of shame—
And rush’d I shoonless on my wingëd car.
Prometheus.
Ah me! ah me! ah me!
Children of Tethys, who hath given birth
To many, and involveth all the earth
With an unsleeping sea!
Daughters of old Oceanus,
Behold, look on me, how constrainëd thus
By chains to this exalted rocky steep,
Sad vigil I must keep.
Chorus.
Prometheus, I do look on thee!—but now
A cloud is o’er mine eyes,
A trembling cloud surcharged with many tears;
When I would gaze where rock-constrainëd thou
Hangest consumed by iron miseries—
Because new gods th’ Olympian hill obtaineth,
And by new laws the son of Saturn reigneth–
And past the mighty things of former years.
Prometheus.
Would that under earth, beneath
Haïdes, the host of death,
Into baseless Tartarus,
He had hurled me shackled thus
Cruelly, infrangibly!
Then, neither god nor man could be
Rejoicer o’er Prometheus’ woes:
Now, motion’d by each wind that blows,
I gladden—wretched me!—my foes.
Chorus.
Who of the gods so stern as to be gladden’d?
Who by thy fate unsadden’d?
Who of the gods save Jove? He ever lending
To wrath his soul unbending,
Ruleth the heav’ns, nor e’er shall cease from ill,
Until his heart be satiate, or until
By fraud the sceptre’s strength be wrested from his will.
Prometheus.
Yea! even me, albeit indeed
By fetter strong consumed I lie,
The ruler of the blest shall need—
To show that counsel new whereby
He loseth honour, sov’reignty.
And honey’d, suasive words shall be,
Though charmed, no spell to soften me;
Nor iron threats shall move me e’er
By fear this counsel to declare,
Before he break my cruel chain,
And pay the price of all this pain.
Chorus.
Daring thou art, nor aught to bitter woe
Dost yield, but speakest words too free—
And fear doth vex and pierce my spirit thro’!
I fear the fate attending thee,
Where thou shalt voyage ere thou see
The shore of grief; for none can move
The will or melt the heart of Jove.
Prometheus.
I know that Jove is cruel; that he hath
For his sole justice, his own will.
Yet shall he soft and tender be,
Moved by this threaten’d ill;
And calming his unconquerable wrath,
He shall not hasten less than I,
To concord and to amity.
Cho. Remove the veil from all things, and narrate
In what offences Jove detecting thee,
Imposed such cruel and dishon’ring woe.
Instruct us, if th’ instruction grieve thee not.
Pro. Grievous to me to speak of what is past:
Grievous to speak not—each way miserable!—
What time the gods their primal wrath began,
And ’mid their ranks arose the mutual strife,
Some eager to thrust Saturn from his throne,
That Jove forsooth should fill it; some averse,
Resolved that Jove should never rule the gods—
Did I by wisest counsel seek to move
The Titans, children of the heav’ns and earth;
But failed in power. For all my courteous guile,
Contemning with inexorable mind,
They thought to lord it, without toil, by force.
Oft had my mother Themis, yea, and Gaia,
(Albeit one, she beareth many names)
Foretold to me what future was to come;
That not by fortitude or force, but fraud,
The victors were to vanquish. Such decree
When I unfolded in mine arguments,
They deignëd not to view the whole! what time
Meseem’d it best of every present ill,
That having won my mother to my side,
I willing should assist the willing Jove—
And by my counsel the Tartarean pit,
Basëd in darkness, covers ancient Saturn,
And with him his allies. The King of gods,
Being by me so benefited, now
Hath paid me back with this ill recompense;
Because there lies inbred in royalty,
A rank disease—distrustfulness of friends.
But that which ye demand, the cause wherefrom
He doth afflict me, I will render clear.
What time he sate upon his father’s throne,
First, unto various deities he gave
Gifts various, and arranged his government;
But reck’d he nothing of unhappy man,
Eager to rase his universal kind,
And generate another; which desire
None dared resist, save I: but I, with daring
Interposition, rescued mortal man
From sinking into hell, exterminate.
Wherefrom beneath this anguish am I bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold;
And I who pitied man, am deem’d myself
Unmeet for pity; but am harped on thus
By Jove’s fell hand, dishonour’d spectacle!
Cho. Oh, iron-hearted, formëd from the rock,
Is he, Prometheus, who lamenteth not
Thy woes. I yearned, not to look on them,
And, having looked, mine heart was anguished.
Pro. Yea:
To friends I am a piteous spectacle.
Cho. But didst thou not offend in more than this?
Pro. I smote with blindness man’s prophetic sight.
Cho. What drug devising for their malady?
Pro. Blind hopes I sent among them.
Cho. Mighty help
Thereby thou didst afford to men.
Pro. Besides,
I yielded them the gift of fire—
Cho. And now
Th’ ephemerals possess the red-eyed fire—
Pro. By which they shall be learn’d in many arts.
Cho. For such crimes doth the hand of Jove afflict,
And loosen not the chain of chastisement?
Is there prescribed no limit to thy woe?
Pro. No limit—none; save what seems good to him.
Cho. And how will it seem good? What hope remains?
Seest thou not, thou hast sinn’d? To say, thou hast,
Gives me no joy, and may increase thy grief;
So let that pass, and seek out thy deliv’rance.
Pro. Easy for him, whose foot is free from toils
Of grief, to counsel and reproach the grieved!
But all these things I knew. By mine own will—
By mine own will I sinn’d—and will confess—
And, aiding mortals, met with woe myself,
Indeed I thought not, by such chastisement,
Attenuate, against the lofty rocks,
To guard this tenantless and lonely hill—
Nathless bewail not o’er my present woes,
But on the plain descending, what shall come,
Attend, that ye may learn the perfect whole.
Obey me, nymphs, obey me; labour with
Him who is toiling now; for wand’ring Woe
Sits at the feet of every one by turns.
Deferring to some specific essay, an entire dissertation on Æschylus’ Prometheus, we must now pass on (having given this specimen of her powers as a translator) to the author’s original poems.
[Continued in the issue of 6 October 1838.] [p. 287→]
It is in her own poetry that we must trace the progress of the Poet’s own mind. A powerful poem entitled The Tempest succeeds her version of Prometheus, marked with Byronic energy. There is in it much of his spirit which we could well spare—the following, for instance; vigorous and bold as it is—
All hail unto the lightning! hurriedly
His lurid arms are glaring through the air,
Making the face of heav’n to show like hell!
Let him go breathe his sulphur stench about,
And, pale with death’s own mission, lord the storm!
Again the gleam—the glare: I turn’d to hail
Death’s mission: at my feet there lay the dead!
The dead—the dead lay there! I could not view
(For Night espoused the storm, and made all dark)
Its features, but the lightning in its course
Shiver’d above a white and corpse-like heap,
Stretch’d in the path, as if to show his prey,
And have a triumph ere he pass’d. Then I
Crouch’d down upon the ground, and groped about
Until I touch’d that thing of flesh, rain-drench’d,
And chill, and soft. Nathless, I did refrain
My soul from natural horror! I did lift
The heavy head, half-bedded in the clay,
Unto my knee; and passed my fingers o’er
The wet face, touching every lineament,
Until I found the brow; and chafed its chill,
To know if life yet linger’d in its pulse.
And while I was so busied, there did leap
From out the entrails of the firmament,
The lightning, who his white unblenching breath
Blew in the dead man’s face, discov’ring it,
As by a staring day. I knew that face—
His, who did hate me—his, whom I did hate!
Take now a fine image:
I no longer knew
Silence from sounds, but wander’d far away
Into the deep Eleusis of mine heart,
To learn its secret things.
And these verses are of indubitable excellence:
Oh Death—Oh crownëd Death—pale-steedëd Death!
Whose name doth make our respiration brief,
Muffling the spirit’s drum! Thou, whom men know
Alone by charnel-houses, and the dark
Sweeping of funeral feathers, and the scath
Of happy days,—love deem’d inviolate!—
Thou of the shrouded face, which to have seen
Is to be very awful, like thyself!—
Thou, whom all flesh shall see!—thou, who dost call,
And there is none to answer!—thou, whose call
Changeth all beauty into what we fear,
Changeth all glory into what we dread,
Genius to silence, wrath to nothingness,
And love—not love!—thou hast no change for love!
Thou, who art Life’s betroth’d, and bear’st her forth
To scare her with sad sights,—who hast thy joy
Where’er the peopled towns are dumb with plague,—
Where’er the battle and the vulture meet,—
Where’er the deep sea writhes like Laocoon
Beneath the serpent winds, and vessels split
On secret rocks, and men go gurgling down,
Down, down, to lose their shriekings in the depth!
Oh universal thou! who comest aye
Among the minstrels, and their tongue is tied;—
Among the sophists, and their brain is still;—
Among the mourners, and their wail is done;—
Among the dancers, and their tinkling feet
No more make echoes on the tombing earth;—
Among the wassail rout, and all the lamps
Are quench’d; and wither’d the wine-pouring hands!
A Sea-Meditation is unequal:—but what thinks the reader of the following reflection?
I have read
Of that Athenian, who, when ocean raged,
Unchain’d the prison’d music of his lips,
By shouting to the billows, sound for sound.
I marvel how his mind would let his tongue
Affront thereby the ocean’s solemnness.
Are we not mute, or speak restrainedly,
When overhead the trampling tempests go,
Dashing their lightning from their hoofs? and when
We stand beside the bier? and when we see
The strong bow down to weep—and stray among
Places which dust or mind hath sanctified?
Yea! for such sights and acts do tear apart
The close and subtle clasping of a chain,
Form’d not of gold, but of corroded brass,
Whose links are furnish’d from the common mine
Of every day’s event, and want, and wish;
From work-times, diet-times, and sleeping-times;
And thence constructed, mean and heavy links
Within the pandemonic walls of sense.
Enchain our deathless part, constrain our strength.
And waste the goodly stature of our soul.
Howbeit, we love this bondage; we do cleave
Unto the sordid and unholy thing,
Fearing the sudden wrench required to break
Those claspëd links. Behold! all sights and sounds
In air, and sea, and earth, and under earth,
All flesh, all life, all ends, are mysteries;
And all that is mysterious dreadful seems.
And all we cannot understand we fear.
Ourselves do scare ourselves: we hide our sight
In artificial nature from the true,
And throw sensation’s veil associative
On God’s creation, man’s intelligence;
Bowing our high imaginings to eat
Dust, like the serpent, once erect as they:
Binding conspicuous on our reason’s brow
Phylacteries of shame: learning to feel
By rote, and act by rule, (man’s rule, not God’s!)
Until our words grow echoes, and our thoughts
A mechanism of spirit.
Her patriotic Appeal to British men is full of devotion as well as of poetry.
Children of our England! stand
On the shores that girt our land;
The ægis of whose cloud-white rock
Braveth Time’s own battle shock.
Look above the wide, wide world;
Where the northern blasts have furl’d
Their numbëd wings amid the snows,
Mutt’ring in a forced repose—
Or where the madden’d sun on high
Shakes his torch athwart the sky,
Till within their prison sere,
Chainëd earthquakes groan for fear!
Look above the wide, wide world,
Where a gauntlet Sin hath hurl’d
To astonied Life; and where
Death’s gladiatorial smile doth glare,
On making the arena bare.
Shout aloud the words that show
Jesus in the sands and snow;—
Shout aloud the words that free,
Over the perpëtual sea.
Speak ye. As a breath will sweep
Avalanche from Alpine steep,
So the spoken word shall roll
Fear and darkness from the soul.
Are ye men, and love not man?
Love ye, and permit his ban?
Can ye, dare ye, rend the chain
Wrought of common joy and pain,
Clasping with its links of gold,
Man to man in one strong hold?
Lo! if the golden links ye sever,
Ye shall make your heart’s flesh quiver;
And wheresoe’er the links are reft,
There, shall be a blood-stain left.
To earth’s remotest rock repair,
Ye shall find a vulture there:
Though for others sorrowing not,
Your own tears shall still be hot:
Though ye play a lonely part;
Though ye bear an iron heart;—
Woe, like Echetus, still must
Grind your iron into dust.
[Continued in the issue of 13 October 1838.] [p. 293→]
A Vision of Life and Death is ballad-like, and touching. A blank verse poem called Earth, bespeaks an advance in the art of composition. The Picture Gallery at Penhurst is in Spenserian stanzas, which are managed with skill and effect. The lines To a Poet’s Child are sweet; as is also the following poem:—
MINSTRELSY.
One asked her once the resun why
She hadde delyte in minstrelsie,
She answerëd on this manère.
Robert de Brunne.
For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature’s pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!—
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer’s flower and leaf,
And shine and shade are very brief,
And that the heart they brighten, may,
Before them all, be sheathed in clay?—
I do not know the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
A few there are, whose smile and praise
My minstrel hope, would kindly raise:
But, of those few—Death may impress
The lips of some with silentness;
While some may friendship’s faith resign,
And heed no more a song of mine.—
Ask not, ask not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
The sweetest song that minstrels sing,
Will charm not Joy to tarrying;
The greenest bay that earth can grow,
Will shelter not in burning woe;
A thousand voices will not cheer,
When one is mute that aye is dear!—
Is there, alas! no reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy?
I do not know! The turf is green
Beneath the rain’s fast-dropping sheen,
Yet asks not why that deeper hue
Doth all its tender leaves renew;—
And I, like-minded, am content,
While music to my soul is sent,
To question not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.
Years pass—my life with them shall pass:
And soon, the cricket in the grass
And summer bird, shall louder sing
Than she who owns a minstrel’s string.
Oh then may some, the dear and few,
Recall her love, whose truth they knew;
When all forget to question why
She had delight in minstrelsy!
The elegiac lines to the memory of Sir Uvedale Price, Bart., are pathetic and striking. But, in The Death-bed of Teresa del Riego, we trace some imitation of Barry Cornwall’s manner: yet is the matter original and of so much merit, that we cannot resist quoting the entire poem:—
THE DEATH-BED OF TERESA DEL RIEGO.
—Si fia muta ogni altra cosa, al fine
Parlerà il mio morire,
E ti dirà la morte il moio martie.
Guarini.
The room was darken’d; but a wan lamp shed
Its light upon a half-uncurtain’d bed,
Whereon the widow’d sate. Blackly as death
Her veiling hair hung round her, and no breath
Came from her lips to motion it. Between
Its parted clouds, the calm fair face was seen
In a snow paleness, and snow silentness,
With eyes unquenchable, whereon did press
A little, their white lids, so taught to lie,
By weights of frequent tears wept secretly.
Her hands were clasp’d and raised—the lamp did fling
A glory on her brow’s meek suffering.
Beautiful form of woman! seeming made
Alone to shine in mirrors, there to braid
The hair and zone the waist—to garland flowers—
To walk like sunshine through the orange bowers—
To strike her land’s guitar—and often see
In other eyes how lovely hers must be—
Grew she acquaint with anguish? Did she sever
For ever from the one she loved for ever,
To dwell among the strangers? Ay! and she,
Who shone most brightly in that festive glee,
Sate down in this despair most patiently.
Some hearts are Niobes! In grief’s down-sweeping,
They turn to every stone from over-weeping,
And after, feel no more. Hers did remain
In life, which is the power of feeling pain,
Till pain consumed the life so call’d below.
She heard that he was dead!—she ask’d not how—
For he was dead! She wail’d not o’er his urn,
For he was dead—and in her hands, should burn
His vestal flame of honour radiantly.
Sighing would dim its light—she did not sigh.
She only died. They laid her in the ground,
Whereon th’ unloving tread, and accents sound
Which are not of her Spain. She left behind,
For those among the strangers who were kind
Unto the poor heart-broken, her dark hair.
It once was gauded out with jewels rare;
It swept her dying pillow—it doth lie
Beside me, (thank the giver) droopingly,
And very long and bright! Its tale doth go
Half to the dumb grave, half to life-time woe,
Making the heart of man, if manly, ring
Like Dodonæan brass, with echoing.
But what shall we say to this lyric addressed to a Boy? Wordsworth might almost envy it.
TO A BOY.
When my last song was said for thee,
The golden hair swept, long and free,
Around thee; and a dove-like tone
Was on thy voice—or Nature’s own: [p. 294→]
And every phrase and word of thine
Went out in lispings infantine!
Thy small steps faltering round our hearth—
Thine een out-peering in their mirth—
Blue een! that, like thine heart, seem’d given
To be, for ever, full of heaven!
Wert thou, in sooth, made up of glee,
When my last song was said for thee?
And now more years are finished,—
For thee another song is said.
Thy voice hath lost its coming tone;
The lisping of thy words is gone;
Thy step treads firm—thine hair not flings
Round thee its length of golden rings—
Departed, like all lovely things!
Yet art thou still made up of glee,
When my now song is said for thee.
Wisely and well responded they,
Who cut thy golden hair away,
What time I made the bootless prayer,
That they should pause awhile, and spare.
The[y] said, “its sheen did less agree
With boyhood than with infancy.”
And thus I know it aye must be.
Before the revel noise is done,
The revel lamps pale one by one.
Ah! Nature loveth not to bring
Crown’d victims to life’s labouring.
The mirth-effulgent eye appears
Less sparkling—to make room for tears:
After the heart’s quick throbs depart,
We lose the gladness of the heart!
And, after we have lost awhile
The rose o’ the lip, we lose its smile;
As Beauty could not bear to press
Near the death-pyre of Happiness.
This seemeth but a sombre dream?
It hath more pleasant thoughts than seem.
The older a young tree doth grow,
The deeper shade it sheds below;
But makes the grass more green—the air
More fresh, than had the sun been there.
And thus our human life is found,
Albeit a darkness gather round:
For patient virtues, that their light
May shine to all men, want the night:
And holy Peace, unused to cope,
Sits meekly at the tomb of Hope,
Saying that “she is risen!”
Then I
Will sorrow not at destiny,—
Though from thine eyes, and from thine heart,
The glory of their light depart;
Though on thy voice, and on thy brow,
Should come a fiercer change than now;
Though thou no more be made of glee,
When my next song is said for thee.
That is beautiful—what follows is sublime.
THE IMAGE OF GOD.
I am God, and there is none like me.
Isaiah xlvi. 9.
Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor. iv. 4.
Thou! art thou like to God?
(I ask’d this question of the glorious sun)
Thou high unwearied one,
Whose course in heat, and light, and life is run?
Eagles may view thy face—clouds can assuage
Thy fiery wrath—the sage
Can mete thy stature—thou shalt fade with age.
Thou art not like to God.
Thou! art thou like to God?
(I ask’d this question of the bounteous earth)
Oh thou, who givest birth
To forms of beauty and to sounds of mirth?
In all thy glory lurks the worm decay—
Thy golden harvests stay
For seed and toil—thy power shall pass away.
Thou art not like to God.
Thou: art thou like to God?
(I ask’d this question of my deathless soul)
Oh thou, whose musings roll
Above the thunder, o’er creation’s whole?
Thou art not. Sin, and shame, and agony
Within thy deepness lie:
They utter forth their voice in thee, and cry
“Thou art not like to God.”
Then art Thou like to God?
Thou, who didst bear the sin, and shame, and woe—
Oh Thou, whose sweat did flow—
Whose tears did gush—whose brow was dead and low?
No grief is like thy grief; no heart can prove
Love like unto thy love;
And none, save only Thou,—below, above,—
Oh God, is like to God!
A poem entitled Idols admits as within the veil of the Poet’s soul. Three times had she been deluded, she says, by Idols. “Natural Beauty” once beguiled her—next, “Moloch Fame”—and subsequently, “Human Love.” Alas!—she has known sorrow—but in her sorrow she has lifted up her eyes to Heaven, to Him who abideth ever with his creatures in weal or in woe.
In woe,—that, while to drowning tears
Our hearts their joys resign,
We may remember who can turn
Such water into wine.
This is an exquisite use of the miracle!
Well prepared was she for her great effort that commences her last published volume—The Seraphim. In the mind of the Poet the subject of the dramatic lyric was associated, in tone and object, with the Æschylean Prometheus. “The great tragic Soul,” writes Miss Barrett, “though untaught directly of Deity, brooded over His creation with exhaustless faculties, until it gave back to her a thought—vast, melancholy, beneficent, malign—the Titan on the rock, the reflected image of her own fallen immortality; rejoicing in bounty, agonizing in wrong, and triumphant in revenge. This was all. ‘Then,’ said He, ‘Lo I come!’ and we knew love, in that He laid down His life for us. ‘By this we know love’—love in its intense meaning. ‘The splendour in the grass and fragrance in the flower’ are the splendour and fragrance of a love beyond them. ‘All thoughts, all passions, all delights,’ are ‘ministers’ of love around us. All citizenship, all brotherhood, all things for which men bless us, saying, ‘Surely this is good,’—are manifestations of a love within us. All exaltations of our inward nature, in which we bless ourselves, saying, ‘Surely this is great,’—are yearnings to a love above us. And thus among the fragments of our fallen state, we may guess at love even as Plato guessed at God: but by this, and this only, can we know it,—that Christ laid down His life for us. Has not love a deeper mystery than wisdom, and a more ineffable lustre than power? I believe it has. I venture to believe those beautiful and often quoted words ‘God is love,’ to be even less an expression of condescension towards the finite, than an assertion of essential dignity in Him who is infinite.
“But if my dream be true that Æschylus might have turned to the subject before us, in poetic instinct; and if in such a case—and here is no dream—its terror and its pathos would have shattered into weakness the strong Greek tongue, and caused the conscious chorus to tremble round the thymele,—how much more may I turn from it, in the instinct of incompetence! In a manner I have done so. I have worn no shoes upon this holy ground: I have stood there, but have not walked. I have drawn no copy of the statue of this Great Pan,—but have caught its shadow,—shortened in the dawn of my imperfect knowledge, and distorted and broken by the unevenness of our earthly ground. I have written no work, but a suggestion. Nor has even so little been attempted, without as deep a consciousness of weakness as the severest critic and the humblest Christian could desire to impress upon me. I have felt in the midst of my own thoughts upon my own theme, like Homer’s ‘children in a battle.’
“The agents in this poem of imperfect form—a dramatic lyric, rather than a lyrical drama—are those mystic beings who are designated in Scripture the Seraphim. The subject has thus assumed a character of exaggerated difficulty, the full sense of which I have tried to express in my Epilogue. But my desire was, to gather some vision of the supreme spectacle under a less usual aspect,—to glance at it, as dilated in seraphic eyes, and darkened and deepened by the near association with blessedness and Heaven. Are we not too apt to measure the depth of the Saviour’s humiliation from the common estate of man, instead of from His own peculiar and primæval one? To avoid which error, I have endeavoured to count some steps of the ladder at Bethel,—a very few steps, and as seen between the clouds.
“And thus I have endeavoured to mark in my two Seraphic personages, distinctly and predominantly, that shrinking from, and repugnance to, evil, which, in my weaker Seraph, is expressed by fear, and, in my stronger one, by a more complex passion; in order to contrast with such, the voluntary debasement of Him who became lower than the angels, and touched in His own sinless being, sin and sorrow and death. In my attempted production of such a contrast, I have been true to at least my own idea of angelic excellence, as well as to that of His perfection. For one holiness differs from another holiness in glory. To recoil from evil, is according to the stature of an angel; to subdue it, is according to the infinitude of a God.”
We may now be sure, that our Poet has been utterly delivered from Byronic passion; the spirit of Wordsworth has evidently been with her, bearing witness with her spirit, that the law of conscience is the voice of Deity. Quarles and Wither too, are mentioned by her with thoughtful reverence. And we believe her when she says, “I assume no power of art, except that power of love towards it, which has remained with me from my childhood until now. In the power of such a love, and in the event of my life being prolonged, I would fain hope to write hereafter better verses; but I never can feel more intensely than at this moment—nor can it be needful that any should—the sublime uses of poetry, and the solemn responsibilities of the poet.”
We tremble as we approach her great poem; and, having read it once, reperuse it that we may do justice to its ambitious order and its not unsuccessful execution.
Ador the Strong and Zerah the Bright One are the two dramatic persons, who hold angelic commune outside the shut heavenly gate. Their brethren have departed at the command of the Father, on a mission to the earth at the time of the Crucifixion. The Strong One has unfurled the thunder cloud of his wing, ready for speed. The Bright One lingers on celestial ground, and looking into his companion’s face asks sympathy for those emotions that “stir too deeply his soul’s secret springs.” But the Strong One thus urges the Bright One to prompt departure.
Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical—
The roar of whose descent hath died
To a still sound, as thunder into rain!
Th’ immeasurable space seems magnified
With that thick life; whereof we nought retain
In vision, save the pale and eddying fall
Of wings innumerous, brightly crossed
By lines of hair that hath not lost
The glitter of the God-smile shed
Last, on bowëd angel’s head!
And gleamed between by hands that fling
Homages like upward rays,
From constant habitude of praise
And high instinct of worshipping.
Zerah. Rapidly they drop below us.
Pointed palm and wing and hair,
Indistinguishable, show us
Only pulses in the air
Throbbing with a fiery beat—
As if a new creation heard
(Late unhearing, still unseeing)
Some divine and plastic word;
And trembling at its proper being,
Did waken at our feet.
Ador. Zerah! stand not lingeringly:
His voice—the voice that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings—uttered Go,
Behold the Holy in his woe—
And all are gone, save thee and—
Zerah. Thee!
Ador. I stood the nearest to the throne.
What time the Voice said Go.
And whether I was shook
By the storm-pathos of the tone
Which swept thro’ Heaven the alien name of woe;
Or that the subtle glory broke
Thro’ my strong and shielding wings,
Bearing to my finite essence
Incapacious of their presence,
Infinite imaginings—
None knoweth save the Throned who spoke!
But I who years agone
Stood upright while th’ eternal Breath did move,
Shaping the words that lightened—“Let light be”—
Nor trembled but with love;
Now fell down tremblingly,
My face upon the pavement floor,
Without the praise that evermore
In music gusheth there!
As if mine immortality
O’erpowered by God’s eternal were!
Thou—wherefore dost thou wait?
Oh! gaze not backward, brother mine;
The deep love in thy mystic eyne
Deepening inward, till is made
A copy of the earth-love shade—
Oh! gaze not thro’ the gate!
God filleth heaven with God’s own solitude
Till all its pavements glow!
His Godhead being no more subdued
By itself, to glories low
Which seraphs can sustain,
What if thou in gazing so,
Should behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone—
And that the one to which we press
Nearest, for its gentleness—
Ay! His love!
How the deep ecstatic pain
Thy being’s strength would capture!
Without a language for the rapture, [p. 295→]
Without a music strong to come
And set th’ adoring free:
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,—
God-stricken, in seraphic agony!——
Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise
The life-fount whence His hand did gather
With solitary force
Our immortalities!—
Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,—
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source!
My words have mirrored dread!
Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And o’er each droppëd lid, hast bowed
Another broader silver cloud,
A languid wing—as if the glory
Of the God-throne were before thee!
Yet not—not so,
O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
All motions of the one pre-eminent Will
Which stirreth unto will and act our natures
As human souls do stir the fleshly creatures!
Not for obeisance, but obedience,
Give motion to thy wings? Depart from hence—
The voice said ‘Go.’
Zerah. Belovëd! I depart!
His will is as a spirit within my spirit;
A portion of the being I inherit—
His will is mine obedience! I resemble
A flame all undefilëd tho’ it tremble—
I go and tremble! Love me, O beloved!
O thou, who stronger art,
And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with excelling light!
Love me, belovëd! me, more newly made,
More feeble, more afraid—
And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are;
That love being near, heaven may not seem so far!
Compare these verses with the best passages in Moore’s Loves of the Angels, and acknowledge the superiority of the Seraphic Poet, and her school of song. Here are Ideas—Thoughts—Images; glorious, beautiful, and divine. But we must proceed. Zerah suffers under the “Fear of Earth”—“Of Earth,” exclaims Ador:
Of earth, the God-create, the beautiful?
From whence the sweet sea-music hath its birth,
And vernal forests lift their leaves in tune
Beneath the gracious, water-leading moon;
Where every night, the stars do put away
Meekly its darkness dull,
And look their spirit-light into the clay?
Where every day, the kingly sun doth bless
More lovingly than kings,
And stir to such harmonious happiness
All leafed and reeded things,
It seems as if the joyous shout which burst
From angel lips to see him first,
Had left a silent echo in his ray?
Both spirits then unite in lamenting the wickedness and weakness of Earth. The intractability of matter—the war of the flesh against the spirit—the mystery of Death—the primeval innocence of earth—the fall of man—fill them with awful meditations. Zerah dreads to look upon the wreck which time has made of this world.
Zerah. I fear—I fear—
To look upon it now!
I have beheld the ruined things
Only in the picturings
Of angels sent on earthward mission!
Strong one, e’en upon thy brow—
When with task completed, given
Back to us from earthly vision,
I have beheld thee silent stand,
Abstracted in the seraph band—
Without a smile in heaven!
They proceed to more consolatory themes, such as the Angel-Song of Peace on Earth to the shepherds watching at night, when the Redeemer of Men was born: soon however rebuked by more melancholy thoughts of a Shadow laid on Light, and of Death to the Everliving. Nor scarcely less perplexing the mystery of the Incarnation itself—“The crownëd Son—walking in the clay which He created.” Indeed, the contemplation seizes on Ador with a divine frenzy. He exclaims:—
What do I utter? what, conceive? Did breath
Of demon howl it in a blasphemy?
Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated,
By the seven confluent Spirits?—Speak—answer me!
Who said man’s victim was his deity?
Zerah. Beloved, beloved! the word came forth from thee!
Thine eyes are rolling in tempestuous light,
Above, below, around—
As putting thunder-questions without cloud,
Reverberate without sound.
To universal nature’s depth and height.
The tremor of an unexpressëd thought
Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
O’erruns the awful curving of thy lips:
And while thine hands are stretched above,
As newly they had caught
Some lightning from the Throne—or flashed abroad
Some Eden-guarding sword—
Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse
And radiance—with contrasted wrath and love—
As God had called thee to a seraph’s part,
With a man’s quailing heart!
Ador. O heart—O heart of man!
O ta’en from human clay,
To be no seraph’s, but Jehovah’s own;
Made holy in the taking,
And yet unseparate
From death’s perpetual ban,
And human feelings sad and passionate!
Still subject to the treacherous forsaking
Of other hearts, and its own stedfast pain!
O heart of man—of God! which God hath ta’en
From out the dust, with its humanity
Mournful and weak and soft yet holy round it—
And bade its many pulses beating lie
Beside that incommunicable stir
Of Deity wherewith He interwound it!
O man! and is thy nature so defiled,
That all that holy Heart’s devout law-keeping,
And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,
And gushings pitiful of tender weeping
For cruel ones who smote it into woe—
That all could cleanse thee not—without the flow
Of blood—the life-blood—His—and streaming so!
O earth, the thundercleft, windshaken!—where
The louder voice of ‘blood and blood’ doth rise—
Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?—
O heaven—O vacant throne!
O crownëd hierarchies, that wear your crown
When His is put away!
Are ye unshamëd, that ye cannot dim
Your alien brightness to be liker Him,—
Assume a human passion—and down-lay
Your sweet secureness for congenial fears—
And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes
The mystery of His tears?
Zerah. I am strong, I am strong!
Were I never to see my heaven again,
I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain
Which sweeps there with exultant sound
To lose its life in the reachëd ground!
I am strong, I am strong!
To mine inward vision waxeth dim
The shining seat of my heavenly birth—
I see but His, I see but Him—
The Maker’s steps on His cruel earth!
Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweet
To me, as touchëd by His feet?
Will the vexed, curst humanity,
A blessed—yea! a holy thing,
For love, and awe, and minist’ring?
I am strong, I am strong!
By our angel ken, shall we survey
His loving smile through his woeful clay?
I am swift, I am strong—
The love is bearing me along.——
Ador. My wings with thine! At once we go
To see the Holy in his woe!
The reader must pursue the rest of this divine poem for himself; in which he will be taught to hear the voice of all things groaning in pain to be delivered, together with the victorious agony of the deliverer. These themes were wonderful to be spoken of by men—by an Æschylus and a Shelley; how much more wonderful thus uttered by a woman?
After this can we criticise the Barrett’s remaining poems? No! we can but learn from them what mystic oracles there are in earth and heaven, and in the heart of man—and her’s!
On the Poet’s Vow, and The Romaunt of Margaret, the Poet has been her own critic, nor have we a word to add. She teaches two truths—first, that the creature cannot be isolated from the creature, and second, that the creature cannot be sustained by the creature. The other poems are characterised by the distant—the profound and the sublime—by remote analogies, by deep analysis, and by lofty aspirations—all, however, moderated by a spirit of piety and restrained within the scheme of the Christian dispensation. In her style of diction and verse, Elizabeth Barrett is frequently like Alfred Tennyson, but she is capable of sustaining a more prolonged flight, and pours herself out with greater emotion, enthusiasm and more intense feeling. Great as are her merits, however, she has not yet attained those pure intuitions of true philosophy which leave no place for doubt, but is still struggling for light. A smouldering fire is consuming her, which, if it do not quickly blaze into radiance, will slay her in the flesh, that, uncontrolled, she may rise to glory in the spirit. There is something that is preternatural, but not supernatural, in the poems before us—beautiful they are, but pensive in their beauty;—ideal, yet not ideal enough—more speculative than practical. Eternity, in them, meditates on the time-element, in which it hovers, not in its own. Awake, soul of song, and contemplate the immortal in the infinite. Look not downward—but upward and inward—from the sinning to the sinless—from the suffering to the triumphant—from the partly dim to the all-glorious! Equally possible this, to the Perfect Poet and the Perfect Christian. Such an one was the Sainted John; but the meagre religionists of this age shrink from this theology, or contract it by interpretation within the narrow limits of private system, and reduce by accommodation its sublime verities to the standard of modern belief.
[John Abraham Heraud]
Reviewed:
An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (EBB), London: James Duncan, 1826.
Prometheus Bound (EBB), London: A.J. Valpy, 1833.
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
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