Reviews

E600500C.  Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems.

The Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal, May 1860, pp. 342–343.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 396.

Two sentiments inspire Mrs. Browning,—unbounded admiration of the Emperor, and fervent love of Italy. We pardon the former from sympathy with the latter, as we follow the “rhythmic march” of her verses, grand as the tramp of armies. She cannot make us forget the stains of perjury and murder that cleave to her hero, and which “the poet’s chrism, which smells beyond the priest’s,” will not avail to expiate. But her love of liberty is deep and stirring, and even her “curse for a nation”—meaning our slave republic—for its sins against human rights, we receive as it was intended, and as is richly deserved.

The following is her description of the rising of Italy against the Austrian slayers:—

Out of the dust, where they ground them,

Out of the holes, where they dogged them, [p. 343→]

Out of the hulks, where they wound them,

In iron, tortured and flogged them;

Out of the streets, where they chased them,

Taxed them and then bayonetted them—

Out of the homes, where they spied on them,

(Using their daughters and wives,)

Out of the church, where they fretted them,

Rotted their souls and debased them,

Trained them to answer with knives,

Then cursed them all at their prayers!—

Out of cold lands not theirs,

Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them;

Back they come like a wind, in vain

Cramped up in the hills, that roars its road

The stronger into the open plain;

Or like a fire that burns the hotter

And longer for the crust of cinder,

Serving better the ends of the potter;

Or like a restrainèd word of God,

Fulfilling itself with what seems to hinder,

Emperor

Evermore.

Reviewed:

Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1860.

___________________