E600317A. Poems Before Congress.
The Athenæum, 17 March 1860, pp. 371–372.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 358.
Mrs. Browning is in this book authoritatively dithyrambic, blessing or banning as suits an anointed priestess. She is more political than poetical, expressing her blind faith in Napoleon the Third as the hope of Italy, and flinging out a malediction against England,—infallible, arrogant; yet, nevertheless, “with a difference,” poetical. She may not have been born to be a Thalestris; but as she has of late selected buckler and mail, and (as the Americans say) “thrashed into” the world of polemics, her old friends and admirers can but thank the Gods for her poetry, and leave her politics to those who have stomach for them.
How shall we best give an idea of this pamphlet of sixty pages? It must first be remarked that Mrs. Browning’s Art suffers from the violence of her temper. Choosing to scold, she forgets how to sing. In the verse which we quote, there is not so much of lute as of marrow-bone and cleaver:—
Florence, Bologna, Parma, Modena.
When you named them a year ago,
So many graves reserved by God, in a
Day of judgment, you seemed to know,
To open and let out the resurrection.
Surely the above jingle reminds us of the Jacobite ballad:—
Ken ye what’s the rhyme to porringer?
The Duke of York had one daughter,
And he gave the Prince of Orange her.
Mrs. Browning’s “Tale of Villafranca” (it may be remembered) appeared in the Athenæum. Her present pamphlet opens with a pœan to the Emperor of the French, and ends with a curse to England, whereof the following is the copy:—
Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation’s height,
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others,—for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.
Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom’s foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time
On writhing bond-slaves,—for this crime
This is the curse. Write. [p. 372→]
Because ye prosper in God’s name,
With a claim
To honor in the old world’s sight,
Ye do the fiend’s work perfectly
In strangling martyrs,—for this lie
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people’s smouldering fire,
And, warm for your part,
Shall never dare—O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death,
And only under your breath
Shall favour the cause.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak,
And, counting the sin for a sin,
Your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.
When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge his elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe
That’s driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.
When wise men give you their praise,
They shall pause in the heat of the phrase,
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush;—for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.
When fools cast taunts at your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o’er the wall,
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.
Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done,
Go, plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of God’s witnessing Universe
With a curse of yours.
This is the curse. Write.
The terrible assumption of vain-glory, that those whom the poetess curses must be accursed, seems to be lost in the blaze of her own infallibility as regards Italian men and affairs,—French relations,—English abominations, and every grave, intricate question which makes men weigh, wait and suspend the sledge-hammer or—the curse. For all this, Mrs. Browning is here, as before, a real poetess,—one of the few among the few,—one who has written, in her time, better than the best of English poetesses,—and proves the same on this occasion, by taking to its extremity the right of “insane prophet” to lose his head,—and to loose his tongue.
[Henry Fothergill Chorley]
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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