E520911A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Star of Freedom, 11 September 1852, p. 77.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 388–389.
When in the majestic presence of any of Nature’s marvellous works, whether looking up to the sublime old mountain that lifts its silent peak into the face of heaven, or on the ocean when it is clothed in the terrors of the tempest, or the beauty of its summer-calm—or standing in the starry midnight as in God’s own presence-chamber, we do not criticise, we are lost in admiration. It is with a kindred feeling we approach the works of Mrs. Barrett Browning. We feel that praise will be superfluous, and criticism impertinent. We look up to her as the greatest female writer of grand and melodious poetry the world has ever produced. A glorious singer, large in heart and brain! Next to Tennyson, she is the noblest of our living Poets, and only second to him, because less an artist. She has the seer’s vision and faculty divine, in its highest and clearest manifestation: a soul running over with beauty luxuriantly, as a summer-eve brimming over with sun-set, and a heart that warbles into song as naturally as rich notes gush from a sky-lark, and fragrance comes from a rose. She has an imagination clothed in all the glory and tearful splendour of the rainbow. Her pathos pierces deep as human tenderness, and she is wondrously learned in the exquisite lore of love.
In the Poem under notice we find her with richer experiences, and a firmer grasp of life. “Casa Guidi Windows” has a noble purpose, as, in this her latest and wisest work, the Poetess comes forth as the Champion of Freedom and Italy, and well does she wrestle with Wrong and Tyranny. The poem is of Italy, sunny Italy! the land of the glorious but fatal dower of beauty. The loved and lovely Italy, with its peerless wealth of Genius, its palace-home of Art, and its proud array of martyrs. Italy! so full of startling memories and throbbing hopes. Finely does she bewail the broken hopes of ’48, and paint the red sun-rise of retribution which will yet roll up the sky of the Future. Mrs. Browning resided in Florence during the revolutionary struggle, and was with the Italians in spirit. She fought for them then with all her soul and sympathies. She fights their battle now and for ever, with all the fiery force of her roused genius in verse, that beats and burns, with the living pulses of reality. She has dipped her pen in her heart, and her pencil in the hues of her own life-blood, and the result is a poem that goes heart-home as an arrow. Here is some cutting sarcasm shot at Italian bravado. It is intensely bitter, but wholesome.
How grown men raged at Austria’s wickedness,
And smoked,—while fifty striplings in a row
Marched straight to Piedmont for the wrong’s redress!
Who says we failed in duty, we who wore
Black velvet like Italian democrats,
Who slashed our sleeves like patriots, nor forswore
The true republic in the form of hats?
We chased the archbishop from the duomo door—
We chalked the walls with bloody caveats
Against all tyrants. If we did not fight
Exactly, we fired muskets up the void
To show that victory was ours of right.
We met, discussed in every place, self-bouyed
Except, perhaps, ’i the chambers day and night:
We proved that all the poor should be employed,
And yet the rich not worked for anywise,—
Payers certified, yet payers abrogated,
Full work secured, yet liabilities
To overwork excluded,—not one bated
Of all our holidays, that still at twice
Or thrice a-week, are moderately rated.
We proved that Austria was dislodged, or would
Or should be, and that Tuscany in arms
Should, would, dislodge her, in high hardihood!
And yet, to leave our piazzas, shops, and farms,
For the bare sake of fighting, was not good.
We proved that also,—‘Did we carry charms
Against being killed ourselves, that we should rush
On killing others? What, desert herewith
Our wives and mothers!—was that duty? Tush!’
At which we shook the sword within the sheath,
Like heroes—only louder! and the flush
Ran up our cheeks to meet the victor’s wreath.
Nay, what we proved, we shouted—how we shouted,
(Especially the little boys did) planting
That tree of liberty whose fruit is doubted
Because the roots are not of nature’s granting
A tree of good and evil!—none, without it,
Grow gods!—alas, and, with it, men were wanting.
The foolish and fickle people after driving out the Grand-Duke and doing nothing, begin to cry for him to come back, and return he does, to crush them into a deeper slavery with the aid of Austria.
Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street
Line out, from end to end, full in the sun,
With Austria’s thousands. Sword and bayonet,
Horse, foot, artillery—cannons rolling on.
The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards!
Ye asked for mines; these bring you tragedies—
For purple; these shall wear it as your lords.
Ye played like children: die like innocents!
Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch: the crack
Of the actual bolt, your pastime, circumvents.
Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack
To follow any voice from Gilboa’s tents,
Here’s Samuel!—and, so, Grand-duke’s come back!
And yet they are no prophets tho’ they come.
That awful mantle they are drawing close,
Shall be searched, one day, by the shafts of Doom,
Through double fold now hoodwinking the brows.
Resuscitated monarchs disentomb
Grave-reptiles with them, in their new life-throes:
Let such beware. Behold the people waits
Like God. As He, in His serene of might,
So they, in their endurance of long straits.
Ye stamp no nation out tho’ day and night
Ye tread them with that absolute heels which grates
And grinds them flat from all attempted height.
You kill worms sooner with a garden spade
Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die;
’Tis hard to shrivel back a day of God’s
Once fix’d for judgment: ’tis as hard to change
The people’s, when they rise beneath their loads
And heave them from their backs with violent wrench,
To crush the oppressor. For that judgment rod’s
The measure of this popular revenge.
Here is some beautiful writing which rises into the sublime—
In the name of Italy
Meantime, her patriot dead have benizon!
They only have done well: and what they did
Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber,
No king of Egypt in a pyramid
Is safer from oblivion, though he number
Full seventy cerements for a coverlid.
These dead be seeds of life, and shall encumber
The sad heart of the land until it loose
The clammy clods and let out the spring-growth
In beatific green thro’ every bruise.
The Tyrant should take heed to what he doth,
Since every victim-carrion turns to use,
And drives a chariot like a god made wroth,
Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least
Dead for Italia, not in vain hath died.
Of thanks, be, therefore, no one of these forlorn graves!
Not Hers—who, at her husband’s side, in scorn,
Out-faced the whistling shot and hissing waves,
Until she felt her little babe unborn
Recoil within her, from the violent staves
And blood-hounds of the world: at which, her life
Dropt inwards from her eyes, and followed it
Beyond the hunters. Garibaldi’s wife
And child died so. Perhaps, ere dying thus,
She looked up in his face which never stirred
From its clenched anguish, as if to make excuse
For leaving him for his, if so she erred.
Well he remembers that she could not choose.
With the sweetest womanly tenderness, Mrs. Browning combines the finest masculine vigour. What can be loftier, or grander, than the following soul-stirring out-burst on that false “peace,” which they call for, who mean an armistice to give them leisure to put the wounded to death. What withering, annihilating scorn for the peace-mongering hypocrites it breathes; and what glorious poetry it is!
A cry is up in England, which doth ring
The hollow world through, that for ends of trade
And virtue, and God’s better worshipping,
We henceforth should exalt the name of Peace,
And leave those rusty wars that eat the soul—
(Besides their clippings at our golden fleece).
I, too, have loved peace, and from bole to bole
Of immemorial, undeciduous trees,
Would write, as lovers use, upon a scroll
The holy name of Peace, and set it high
Where none should pluck it down. On trees, I say,—
Not upon gibbets!—With the greenery
Of dewy branches and the flowery May,
Sweet mediation ’twixt the earth and sky,
Providing, for the shepherd’s holiday!
Not upon gibbets!—though the vulture leaves
Some quiet to the bones he first picked bare.
Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves
And groans within, stirs not the outer air
As much as little field-mice stir the sheaves.
Not upon chain-bolts! though the slave’s despair
Has dulled his helpless, miserable brain,
And left him blank beneath the freeman’s whip,
To sing and laugh out idiocies of pain.
Nor yet on starving homes! where many a lip
Has sobbed itself to sleep through curses vain!
I love no peace which is not fellowship,
And which includes not mercy. I would have,
Rather, the raking of the guns across
The world, and shrieks against Heaven’s architrave.
Rather, the struggle in the slippery fosse,
Of dying men and horses, and the wave
Blood-bubbling. . . . . . Enough said!—By Christ’s own cross,
And by the faint heart of my womanhood,
Such things are better than a Peace which sits
Beside the hearth in self-contented mood,
And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits
Are howling out of doors against the good
Of the poor wanderer. What! your peace admits
Of outside anguish while it sits at home?
I loathe to take its name upon my tongue—
It is no peace. ’Tis treason, stiff with doom,—
’Tis gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong,
Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome,
Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting ’neath the thong,
And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf
On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress
The life from these Italian souls, in brief.
O Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness,
Constrain the anguished world from sin and grief,
Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress,
And give us peace which is no couterfeit!
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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