E620300B. Poems (1862).
The Eclectic Review, March 1862, pp. 189–212.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 367.
elizabeth barrett browning.
We have long purposed to devote a few pages to a paper on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a woman for whom has been claimed “the place among women that Shakspere occupies among men;” but as we have approached the possibility and the subject, it has fallen away from us—we have feared to speak a name we desired to pronounce with more than usual reverence, and we have also feared that the sublime reach of the writer’s ordinary expression and conception would find us and our subject remote from many in our audience. We purposed, when we were prepared, to give some careful preliminary thought. Especially we wished to have spoken with more distinctness, because our subject closely touches upon a question which is no nearer solution now than ever, namely, that of the intellectual relation of the sexes. There is a certain order of mind belonging to us, which will never understand this; and there are multitudes who will never condescend to attempt to comprehend the question—“it is foolishness to them;” but the appearance of a woman like Mrs. Browning does something, in a very emphatic way, to settle the question. We must entreat our readers’ patience. We think this woman also demands our reverence. Reverence is seldom unbecoming in us, but the worst of talking, such as we indulge in from time to time, about the great dead, is, that it endangers our reverence by too great a familiarity. But what can we reverence—suffering?—if we would speak reverently to Aaron in his bells, about to minister within the veil, or to the minister touching sacred things at the altar; even a bad man has this, that while ministering, he has the power of overawing given to him. Well! may we not reverence suffering then? The very bereaved become venerable while the power of their [p. 190→] bereavement is on them. Shall we not reverence those who are able to climb the highest altar-stairs—who can hold and handle the true sublime? Is not that a great power still given to man, to call down fire from heaven, and not to consume the unbeliever, but to kindle the sacrifice? Elizabeth Barrett Browning had, in a very eminent degree, all these powers; and we feel for her the reverence which we would fain infuse into other hearts. She has suffered something from editors and reviewers, and their race (who that is best and noblest has not?) The race of Gifford or of Zoilus is not extinct: would that it were! But fancy a critic without reverence. Yet such have mostly spoken of Mrs. Browning, and even while they spoke, we have thought we heard the echo of the consecrating works of the very genius of Dulness—“Here and hereby, I anoint thee and set thee apart to be the chief ass and noodle; an ass thyself, thou shalt also be able to give ears to others.” Oh! brother critics, we sometimes say, do but let us think, there is somewhere in our midst the chiefest of donkeydom and dulness. It may be we—we know not—but how careful it behoves us to be lest, while pointing the finger of contempt at some venerable form, by that very sign, the genius of dulness should claim us as best-beloved, and nearest to his love and liking. We may presume our friends to be not unacquainted with Luther’s rookery. Just beneath his window, he says, is a small wood, and there the rooks and jackdaws do hold their diet. They are journeying to and fro, and keeping up a clamour without any ceasing, as if they were all drunken—all chattering at once. “Their emperor,” says good Martin, “I have not seen, but their nobles are forever strutting before our eyes—not in very costly garments, but rather simply clad in one colour, all dressed in black; all are grey-eyed, all sing the same song, with some petty differences. There are high and mighty lords among them, but what they resolve I know not. Thus much have I gathered from an interpreter, that they have a mighty expedition and war in hand against wheat and barley, oats, rye, and all manner of corn and grain; and herein will many win knighthood and do great feats of arms. We humbly salute them all, and wish them all spitted on a page-stake together.” It will not be very unrighteous to give some such characterization as the fitting one to that singular literary rookery, the Diet of Reviewers. We belong to the craft, but it may truly be said, a more horny-eyed race of dotards has seldom been seen. They sought to clamour down Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Elizabeth Browning. Truly, when we think of these things, we perceive that the world has need of us! to read to critics lessons in the art of criticism. [p. 191→]
[This review continues with an abstract discussion of poetry, which we omit.]
But still this poetry, it may be said, is very pretty, but what is the use of it after all? Is it not very much like an old lady’s china, more remarkable as a curiosity than a necessity? Like chimney-ornaments, or Indian antiquities, rather a matter of trifling than even of taste, and more useful to fill up the corners of an idle life, than to strengthen the activities of a busy one? We have thought the question may be put thus:—Is there any value in the work of ministers; and what is their value? We used to know an amiable friend, who declared his will and wish to have a dozen of the ringleaders, as he called the more eminent of our ministers, shot in the market-place for a public example, and the remainder ordered off and confined to some distant penal and industrial settlement. Amiable and friendly man! Not a bad fellow either in some moods of him. We have lost sight of him now for twenty years. We can see that a man like that would not be likely to relish the works of our authoress. But suppose the race of ministers to be [p. 194→] useful, who then is to be the minister’s minister? For man cannot live by bread alone, and of all men the minister. But who then is to be the minister? not our brethren, for they have most likely got no farther than we have, and see no more; they are in the shock of battle as we are. Who then? Why some old middle-age monk in his old black letter cowl, or some still and tranquil heart, shut up to its sick chamber from a life of strife; or some such being as Mrs. Browning, in whom may be united the lofty intuition to the widest possible culture, and the reach of hopes and aspirations most sublime. She is the minister’s minister.
Of all the poets to whom poetry has been a terribly beautiful delineation of souls, and of the land of souls, we will not surely say through all ages Mrs. Browning is the highest; but we will say she must rank as high as any. Have we not in reading poets said, That is very beautiful! That is great! That is true! but we have closed the book, and have turned our face to the fire, and mused, and said: “Ah, but that is not highest, there is more than that!” Why, we say that when we read Shakspere, How beautiful! how glorious! Ah, vivid scenes! Ah, terrible! Ah, fairy world! but there is more than that. And when we read Goethe, how soon we turn from that crystal palace where iron is made to mingle with the glass in its firm transparency; and we say, yes, how beautiful, and how terrible! but there is more than that. And when we read Schiller—brave, passionate, free, devoted; after his noble ballads have rung their most sonorous chime, we say, Ah! but there is more than that. And of Cowper, we say the same; and of Wordsworth, and of Tennyson. We cannot perhaps always superadd to that we have received, the more than that, but the height of the poetry may be measured by the depth of the peace that it bestows, the calm of the satisfaction it gives,—as it leaves the spirit unable to say, “More than that! more than that.” That shall always be in our estimation the highest which fills up most completely the void vessel of our humanity—our heart. You read Goethe. Is it not eminently unsatisfactory? Have we not exclaimed, “Oh, God! this won’t do; this answers no highest.” And turning to Schiller, have we not felt the satisfaction of accomplished rest? But there come times when Schiller is as far from satisfying as Goethe; the highest in us listens for the highest while we read, and listen in vain. Shall we make our readers understand what we mean, when we say, as comparing Goethe and Schiller together, the latter poet answers most to the desire of the soul? So we would call Elizabeth Browning the Schiller of our higher nature. Oh, had she possessed the [p. 195→] artist faculty so richly possessed by the German! But know that she spoke of far more distant things. She could touch plaintive tones, moving to the every day tears of life. She had a reed, a simple reed, on which she poured forth notes, as we may hear, to charm very human simple hearts. She had flute-like airs, but you know her best by the trumpet. This simple, blithe woman, has, against all the hostility of critics, shattered away the prejudices of thousands who did not hear her gladly, but were compelled to hear—universally now crowned chief woman-poet of any age or time. This homage was wrung for her from even the cold lip of the Athenæum, as she descended into her prematurely sculptured tomb—chief poetess of all ages. We may, perhaps, scarcely compete for her admission into that rank of men, where perhaps only should be seen the sacred four,—Homer and Dante, Milton and Shakspere; and yet, with the exception of Dante, not one had, as she had, entered into the scenery, the mystery, the majesty, the sorrow and glory of the higher life. Could she have learned more? The “Casa Guidi Windows” is full of a vehement flow of passionate speech, revealing the amazing flood which rushed through her soul; thus the following on—
priests.
Priests, priests!—there’s no such name,—God’s own, except
Ye take most vainly. Through Heaven’s lifted gate
The priestly ephod in sole glory swept,
When Christ ascended, entered in, and sate
With victor face sublimely overwept,
At Deity’s right hand, to mediate,
He alone, he for ever. On his breast
The Urim and the Thummim, fed with fire
From the full Godhead, flicker with the unrest
Of human, pitiful heartbeats. Come up higher,
All Christians! Levi’s tribe is dispossest!
That solitary alb ye shall admire,
But not cast lots for. The last chrism, poured right,
Was on that Head, and poured for burial
And not for domination in men’s sight.
What are these churches? The old temple wall
Doth overlook them juggling with the sleight
Of surplice, candlestick, and altar-pall.
East church and west church, ay, north church and south,
Rome’s church and England’s,—let them all repent,
And make concordats ’twixt their soul and mouth,
Succeed St. Paul by working at the tent,
Become infallible guides by speaking truth,
And excommunicate their own pride that bent
And cramped the souls of men.
The following extract is from her “Poems before Congress,” from much of which, politically, we cordially dissent:— [p. 196→]
the regeneration of italy.
Is it true—may it be spoken,—
That she who has lain so still
With a wound in her breast,
And a flower in her hand,
And a grave-stone under her head,
While every nation at will
Beside her has dared to stand
And flout her with pity and scorn,
Saying, “She is at rest,
She is fair, she is dead,
And, leaving room in her stead
To us who are later born,
This is certainly best!”
Saying, “Alas, she is fair,
Very fair, but dead,
And so we have room for the race.”
—Can it be true, be true,
That she lives anew?
That she rises up at the shout of her sons,
At the trumpet of France,
And lives anew?—is it true
That she has not moved in trance,
As in Forty-eight?
When her eyes were troubled with blood
Till she knew not friend from foe,
Till her hand was caught in a strait
Of her cerement and baffled so
For doing the deed she would;
And her weak foot stumbled across
The grace of a king.
And down she dropt at heavy loss,
And we gloomily covered her face and said,
“We have dreamed the thing;
She is not alive, but dead.”
Ay, it is so, even so.
Ay, and it shall be so.
Each broken stone that long ago
She flung behind her as she went
In discouragement and bewilderment
Through the cairns of Time, and missed her way
Between to-day and yesterday
Up springs a living man.
And each man stands with his face in the light
Of his own drawn sword,
Ready to do what a hero can.
Wall to sap, or river to ford,
Cannon to front, or foe to pursue,
Still ready to do, and sworn to be true,
As a man and a patriot can.
Piedmontese, Neapolitan,
Lombard, Tuscan, Romagnole,
Each man’s body having a soul,— [p. 197→]
Count how many they stand,
All of them sons of the land,
Every live man there
Allied to a dead man below,
And the deadest with blood to spare
To quicken a living hand
In case it should ever be slow.
Count how many they come
To the beat of Piedmont’s drum,
With faces keener and grayer
Than swords of the Austrian slayer,
All set against the foe.
“Emperor
Evermore.”
Out of the dust, where they ground them,
Out of the holes, where they dogged them,
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 the 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 by what seems to hinder.
Could she have given us more had she lived longer—“this Britomart among poets”—this Una among poetesses. As we do not desire especially to refer to her political poetry again, we may say here, that she with her husband—her peer in genius—lived in Florence for the last twelve years, and with wonderful energy threw herself into the Italian cause. We do not admire this order of her poems in an equal degree with those more truly hers; but let these suffice as illustrations of the majestic vehemence to which she could knit her speech.
We suppose life never opened more radiantly than it opened for Elizabeth Barrett. She was born in London—born in opulence—the daughter of a merchant in one of our Dissenting circles; and the first vision we have of her is about the year [p. 198→] 1830—a young girl, with a radiant shower of golden curls—her loyal young head filled with all audacious thoughts. Miss Mitford vividly brings her before our eyes as she saw her, and gives us to see her most expressive face, and large tender eyes fringed with dark eye-lashes; her sweet smile, and a look, she says, of such youthfulness, that it was difficult to persuade some friends she was old enough to be introduced into company. Yet this young creature had dared to translate the Prometheus of Æschylus, and to be the authoress of an Essay on Mind, in which she deals freely with the names of Gibbon, Berkley, Bolingbroke, Plato, and Bacon. Miss Mitford was far advanced in life, but it seems a pleasant intimacy sprang up between the cheerful old lady and the young girl. One likes to see her at this period of her life, little as we know of her at all—in fact, a bright, glorious girl—with womanhood before her, and the prospect of easy, happy womanhood. It is worth noticing, that as yet her higher feelings and emotions had taken no shape. She had thought, and read, and translated, but her verses, by all account, do not take rank above those of Hayley or Miss Seward. We will conceive her as a buoyant, happy girl. Some will perhaps say, Elizabeth Browning never could have been a happy girl. What! do we not remember how happy we were till—till when? That was not the time when there was a danger of some unhappy question in every book you touched. Men lived much farther from the knowledge of human woes, and the more daring methods in which we now arraign Divine governments; and ordinances were not yet followed by system. Remembering what her life became, one lingers tenderly round the girl’s years, soon and suddenly to close before her by a black, impenetrable veil. Those first years were passed alternately in London and near Malvern, among those wild and charming hills on the Herefordshire side. Her father had a country residence there, and thus, with her beloved brother, she followed her early and beloved studies, especially Greek. Her lines to her well-known teacher, Hugh Stewart Boyd, glance back to that time: they have often been quoted. “The wine of Cyprus,”—but space forbids the quotation here.
The evil days speedily came. Miss Mitford’s acquaintance with her began about the year 1835, and it was the year following she broke a blood-vessel on the lungs, which did not heal, yet consumption did not intervene. She was confined for twelve months to her chamber, in her father’s house, in Wimpole Street; and there Dr. Chambers on the approach of winter, ordered her removal to a milder climate. She was removed to Torquay. Her brother, more beloved far beyond what that relationship usually represents, accompanied her, and there at last [p. 199→] happened that calamity which, even far more than personal illness and danger, threw the shadow and gloom over her life.
[This review continues with an extract from Mary Russell Mitford’s Recollections of a Literary Life (3 vols., 1852), I, 269–271, omitted here.]
There is scarcely what can be called even a verbal allusion to all this in her published poems. Her writings, heaving as they do with wildest utterances, and the most passionate and burning words, make no reference either to the dreadful blow which struck her young life down in its vigour, and its hope and beauty, or to that dreadful bereavement which shook so cruelly the fair and fragile flower. Yet many of her writings look to us like the tortu[r]ous expressions of unrevealed sorrow. Affliction was certainly henceforth to be the angel of her verse; that angel struck all the chords of her heart, and they broke forth beneath the touch, in music most tender, eloquent, and awful. It belongs to those years to mention that readers were startled, from time to time, by the appearance, in two or three of the periodicals, of poems so new and original, so weird, so majestic in their expression, so calm in their up-springing over the passions which it was felt had first inspired them; one, especially—the “Romance of Margret,” and its weird and ghostly refrain:—
It trembled on the grass
With a low shadowy laughter,
And the wind did toll, as a passing soul
Were sped by church bell after;
And shadows, ’stead of light,
Fell from the stars above
In flakes of darkness on her face,
Still bright with trusting love.
Margret Margret.
The curiosity was aroused, and they were at last traced to the sick chamber, where the broken body and broken heart of the sweet singer, Elizabeth Barrett, lay waiting for consolations which came to her with Divine strength from the hopes of the cross.
It was from such experiences as we have referred to that she acquired power to sing and to say,—
“And were it wisely done,
If we who cannot gaze above, should walk the earth alone?—
If we whose virtue is so weak, should have a will so strong,—
And stand blind on the rocks, to choose the right path from the wrong?
To choose perhaps a love-lit hearth, instead of love and Heaven,—
A single rose, for a rose-tree, which beareth seven times seven?
A rose that droppeth from the hand, that fadeth in the breast,
Until, in grieving for the worse, we learn what is the best!”
Then breaking into tears,—“Dear God,” she cried, “and must we see
All blissful things depart from us, or ere we go to Thee?
We cannot guess thee in the wood, or hear thee in the wind?
Our cedars must fall round us, ere we see the light behind;
Ay sooth, we feel too strong in weal, to need thee on the road;
But woe being come, the soul is dumb, that crieth not of God.” [p. 201→]
And we love much some of those pieces of our authoress which, while they do not at all touch those high questionings with which her Poems abound, by a sweet simplicity charm us with the life of the sick room, and its more solemn fears and thoughts. In those brighter days to which we referred, Miss Mitford had given to her—a dog. Dogs have often been honoured by immortality in poets’ verses, but never did sweeter verses celebrate and do honour to canine affection. After some equally pleasant description of the body, most beautiful and distinct, of her loving friend, she proceeds:—
Yet, my pretty, sportive friend,
Little is ’t to such an end
That I praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in these drooping ears,
And this glossy fairness.
But of thee it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary,—
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam breaks the gloom
Round the sick and dreary.
Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning
This dog only, waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone,
Love remains for shining.
Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow—
This dog only, crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept,
Sharing in the shadow.
Other dogs of loyal cheer
Bounded at the whistle clear,
Up the woodside hieing—
This dog only, watched in reach
Of a faintly uttered speech,
Or a louder sighing.
And if one or two quick tears
Dropped upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double,—
Up he sprang in eager haste,
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
In a tender trouble.
And this dog was satisfied,
If a pale thin hand would glide,
Down his dewlaps sloping,— [p. 202→]
Which he pushed his nose within,
After,—platforming his chin
On the palm left open.
And so on, in words of pathetic humour, to the close.
To the same order of poetry, and to the same period, we must assign those well-known lines of exquisite tenderness and beauty now well known to us:—
the sleep.
Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inwards unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift of grace, surpassing this
“He giveth His beloved, sleep!”
What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart, to be unmoved,
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,
The patriot’s voice, to teach and rouse,
The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith, all undisproved,
A little dust, to overweep,
And bitter memories, to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
“Sleep soft, beloved!” we sometimes say,
But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber, when
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And “giveth His beloved, sleep.”
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That see through tears the jugglers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose,
Who “giveth His beloved, sleep!”
And, friends, dear friends,—when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one, most loving of you all,
Say, “Not a tear must o’er her fall—
He giveth His beloved, sleep.” [p. 203→]
But things like these would not have given to this distinguished lady that great empire of fame she enjoys, and which will surely yet greatly extend. On far other, if not far higher grounds, she claims a place among the poets of our country. In a far different manner from any other poet she has wrought at her own being, seeking to express herself. The following sonnet finely conveys the poet’s work, and thought, and intention. She has called it, “The Soul’s Expression.” What can we think of the critic who should misunderstand so very plain a thing?
With stammering lips and insufficient sound,
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling, interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground!
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,—as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud,—my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
We say what can be thought of the critic who should sneeringly say, although the Edinburgh is that critic, that we gather from it “that she possessed so astounding a conception of the revelation concealed in this mysterious being, that she tells us that if she could disclose it the revelation would end in her own extinction;” and that, finely expressed as it is, “it is a most unmeasured assertion of her own spiritual value”? Indeed, it is not unfrequently the case we have to say to reviewers, “Are ye blind also? But in such a case as this is it not wonderful? What! do we not often say we must die to know? What! do we not know that as there is One whom no man can see and live, so there are truths which it is not lawful, that is, possible, for man or woman either to utter? There never was a spirit known to us on earth who soared so high as Mrs. Browning, and yet kept so truly along the great highway of the universe. But it was her wont and her habit to float high among the principalities and powers. We have no doubt that she laboured always beneath a painful sense of the inadequacy of her expression to her thought. Milton usually succeeded, but we know that sometimes he signally failed; and it is very possible to find in the Paradise Lost instances of expression in which the queer trots by the side of the sublime, and the grotesque ambles heavily through the spiritual machinery. We do not doubt [p. 204→] that it would have been easier for Mrs. Browning to have expressed herself on some of these occasions in Greek—her poems fell into Greek metres—and certainly there are times when she dashes aside all possibility of rebuke and strikes criticism dumb by the majesty of her language and her thought. We have a fine instance of this in what she has called, “A Rhapsody on Life’s Progress.” This rhapsody also conducts life through seven stages here, in a measure wild and free, and plunging like advancing tides and retreating waves. She expresses what life is—the period of unconscious infancy, childhood, youth. Youth, realizing life in love—manhood, realising life in strength; manhood realising life in thought, and again in act and idea: and then the close. Here is infancy:—
We are borne into life—it is sweet, it is strange!
We lie still on the knee of a mild Mystery,
Which smiles with a change!
But we doubt not of changes, we know not of spaces:
The heavens seem as near as our own mother’s face is,
And we think we could touch all the stars that we see;
And the milk of our mother is white on our mouth:
And, with small childish hands, we are turning around
The apple of Life which another has found:
It is warm with our touch, not with sun of the south,
And we count, as we turn it, the red side for four
O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art sweet, thou art strange evermore!
Then all things look strange in the pure golden æther:
We walk through the garden with hands linked together,
And the lilies look large as the trees;
And as loud as the birds, sing the bloom-loving bees,—
And the birds sing like angels, so mystical fine;
And the cedars are brushing the archangel’s feet;
And time is eternity,—love is divine.
And the world is complete.
Now, God bless the child,—father, mother, respond!
O Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet!
And here is youth:—
And the winds and the waters in pastoral measures
Go winding around us, with roll upon roll,
Till the soul lies within in a circle of pleasures,
Which hideth the soul:
And we run with the stag, and we leap with the horse,
And we swim with the fish through the broad water-course.
And we strike with the falcon, and hunt with the hound,
And the joy which is in us, flies out with a wound;
And we shout so aloud, “We exult, we rejoice,”
That we lose the low moan of our brothers around;
And we shout so deep down creation’s profound, [p. 205→]
We are deaf to God’s voice—
And we bind the rose-garland on forehead and ears,
Yet we are not ashamed;
And the dew of the roses that runneth unblamed
Down our cheeks, is not taken for tears.
Help us, God, trust us, man, love us, woman! “I hold
Thy small head in my hands,—with its grapelets of gold
Growing bright through my fingers,—like altar for oath,
’Neath the vast golden spaces like witnessing faces
That watch the eternity strong in the troth—
I love thee, I leave thee,
Live for thee, die for thee!
I prove thee, deceive thee,—
Undo evermore thee!
Help me God, slay me man!—one is mourning for both!”
And we stand up, though young, near the funeral-sheet
Which covers the Cæsar and old Pharamond;
And death is so nigh us, Life cools from its heat
O Life, O Beyond,
Art thou fair,—art thou sweet?
Was there ever expressed by any poet more nobly the life of Passion and of Man? We must often have felt that Shakspere’s “Seven Ages” very poorly expressed our experiences and our age. But what youth, what man does not feel that all the noblest has been expressed in many of these vaulting and magnificent lines? Like the horse in Job they shout triumphantly, and say among the trumpets, “Ha! ha!” Yet from this very rhapsody might be quoted some lines exactly illustrating how the heat and the hurry of expression carried our authoress along. There are lines following which have often excited amusement, when man realises himself in strength:—
Then we act to a purpose—we spring up erect—
We will tame the wild mouths of the wilderness-steeds;
We will plough up the deep in the ships double-decked;
We will build the great cities, and do the great deeds,—
Strike the steel upon steel, strike the soul upon soul,
Strike the dole on the weal, overcoming the dole,—
Let the cloud meet the cloud in a grand thunder-roll!
While the eagle of thought rides the tempest in scorn,
Who cares if the lightning is burning the corn?
“Let us sit on the thrones
In a purple sublimity,
And grind down men’s bones
To a pale unanimity.
Speed me, God!—serve me, man!—I am god over men!
When I speak in my cloud, none shall answer again—
’Neath the stripe and the bond,
Lie and mourn at my feet!”—
O thou Life, O Beyond,
Thou art strange, thou art sweet! [p. 206→]
Shall we give up that strange commingling of imagery in which we sit—
On the thrones
In a purple sublimity,
And grind down men’s bones
To a pale unanimity?
Absurdity has been assigned to these verses; on the contrary, they do express the imperial magnificence, the crude, machine-like uniformity of great cities, and many remorseless methods of alternately levelling the one to the multitude, or the multitude to one. It is a poet’s definition, but it is an admirable definition of the utilitarianism of our age. These were among our writer’s earlier and more passionate words. We confess we love her more, and feel our homage more awakened for her in her deeper, her more quiet, I will not say, her more Christian moods.
But the great distinguishing attribute of Mrs. Browning as a poet is the fulness of her Christianity. Christianity has, unhappily, become so vague a word that it is necessary to define, and so we say, that her Christianity is of the order of Cowper and Milton; it is that Christianity which is secured by atonement, and sealed by holiness—a Christianity in which Christ is on the cross, to overcome, and the Spirit is in the Church to purify and to console. We believe when she was young she was accustomed to sing some of the burning and magnificent words of Watts. We believe, too, that some of the faults of her style may perhaps be traced to that frequent verbal pomp in which our dear doctor often clothed his thoughts.
One of the earliest of the poems, the first in the present collection, is that entitled, “A Drama of Exile,” in which poem our author has been charged with too bold a following upon the subject chosen by Milton, The boldness of our author only becomes a subject for criticism when the work has proved a failure, and that no one will say, or has, we believe, said, that the “Drama of Exile” is. On the whole, the alternating messages are the very happiest of lyrical effects. It is a sort of “Paradise Lost” and “Regained.” We would have no objection to rest our claim for all that Mrs. Browning was and is to us in this noble poem. Her learning, her astonishing flexibility and variety of rhythm, the majesty and sublimity of her genius, and its pathos and melting tenderness. Among all the writers, too, who have painted the chief of fallen angels, not one has given a more vivid presentiment of the—
Angel of the Sin,
An idea to all souls,
A monumental melancholy gloom,
Seen down all ages. [p. 207→]
The theology is high and great, worthy of a disciple of Howe, or Taylor, or Edwards. How noble is this, when Lucifer sneers at the idea of the creation of the race of man to fill the thrones of heaven, made vacant by the Fall! Gabriel answers:—
Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy bitter words; Glory and Life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, His next breath drew in
A compensation splendour up through skies,
Flushing the starry arteries.
What finer summary has ever been given of the story of all evil than that one comprehensive line, “The Blast of the Lost Angel upon Earth”? Our writer in a too eminent degree, some think, possessed that power by which all things become homologous, and flowers and creatures, of all forms and degrees of life, seem to throb with human emotions. Some perhaps may object to what seems to us the boldest certainly, and bold as it is, the not less noble image, in which Christ, the tamer of Lucifer, masters and surprises the steed of Death. We have read of Him, “the Word upon the white horse;” we have read of “Death upon the pale horse;” but this is another picture:—
Wild is the horse of Death.
pawing the earth’s Aceldama, the drear white steed; but one is found more bright than the crowned seraph, more strong than the cherub, elder than the most ancient angel; and he masters and surprises
The steed of Death.
He leads him where he will,—
With a whisper in the ear,
Which it alone can hear
Full of fear;
And a hand upon the mane,
Grand and still.
He leads the steed of Death through the assembled host of the grave; amidst the curdling darkness he leads him, right up the steep of heaven, through the rings of the planets, in the midst of the pallid moons and the stagnant spaces; he leads the horse of Death up amidst the angels, pale with silent feeling. Cleaving all the silence, cleaving all the glory, he leads the horse of Death, the mystic courser, to the very foot of the throne, and then the beast staggers, and
By life essential the phantasm Death expires.
This is surely imagination justified by the imagery of Scripture, and bold to sublimity. [p. 208→]
The following conversation between the first and second voice—Lucifer and Gabriel—is finely conceived, and the angels’ choruses following after seem to us to be soul piercing in the tenderness of the words. At the same time, here is taught the great lesson of the poem—the doctrine that man, wandering from paradise the weary way of the race, is exiled, but not lost. Lucifer in all things is overmatched and circumvented. The first and second voices represent respectively Lucifer and Gabriel:—
First Voice. Gabriel, O Gabriel!
Second Voice. What wouldst thou with me?
First Voice. Is it true, O thou Gabriel that the crown
Of sorrow which I claimed, another claims?
That He claims that too?
Second Voice. Lost one, it is true.
First Voice. That He will be an exile from His Heaven.
To lead those exiles homeward?
Second Voice. It is true,
First Voice. That He will be an exile by His will,
As I by mine election!
Second Voice. It is true.
First Voice. That I shall stand sole exile finally,—
Made desolate for fruition?
Second Voice. It is true.
First Voice. Gabriel!
Second Voice. I hearken.
First Voice. Is it true besides—
Aright true—that mine orient Star will give
Her name of “Bright and Morning-Star” to Him,—
And take the fairness of His virtue back,
To cover loss and sadness?
Second Voice. It is true.
First Voice Untrue, Untrue! O Morning-Star! O Mine!
Who sittest secret in a veil of light,
Far up the starry spaces, say—Untrue!
Speak but so loud as doth a wasted moon
To Tyrrhene waters! I am Lucifer—
[A pause, Silence in the stars,
All things grow sadder to me, one by one.
Angel chorus.
Exiled Human creatures,
Let your hope grow larger!
Larger grows the vision
Of the new delight,
From this chain of Nature’s,
God is the Discharger;
And the Actual’s prison
Opens to your sight.
Semichorus.
Calm the stars and golden,
In a light exceeding: [p. 209→]
What their rays have measured,
Let your hearts fulfil!
These are stars beholden
By your eyes in Eden;
Yet, across the desert,
See him shining still.
Chorus.
Future joy and far light
Working such relations,—
Hear us singing gently—
Exiled is not lost!
God, above the starlight,
God, above the patience,
Shall at last present ye
Guerdons worth the cost.
Patiently enduring,
Painfully surrounded,
Listen how we love you—
Hope the uttermost—
Waiting for that curing
Which exalts the wounded,
Hear us sing above you—
Exiled, but not lost!
[The stars shine on brightly, while Adam and Eve pursue their way into the far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence, as of the falling tears of an angel.]
But to what other writer shall we refer since Job—shall we say, or Dante—who, in the spirit of the teaching of the highest and most sacred lessons, has so crowned and consecrated sorrow—sorrow of the Divinest? These pages sacredly alternate between the contending spirits of Passion and Rest. In these volumes are the wild utterancy of very vehement hearts: here is no indifference, here is no coldness; this heart has reached this place by severe wrestling with the waves and the winds; and then these passions are so deep—that is much, too; the most of passions are in sight of our shore; we can fret ourselves about very little things, but here indeed “deep calleth unto deep.” How often we have to repeat to ourselves the Gothic parable—“There were some birds once who lived in a spacious aviary. A bullfinch, rather proud of his wisdom, clapped a claw upon the feathers of a goldfinch fluttering from bush to bush, and said, “Do you know, friend, that we are shut up in a cage?” “What do you talk of a cage?” said the goldfinch; “see how we fly about. That’s a cage where neighbour Canary is sitting.” “But I tell you,” said the other, “that we are in a cage too. Don’t you see there the wire grating?” “Yes, I see one there certainly; but look as far as I can see on every side, there is none.” “You can’t see to all sides.” “No more can you.” “But consider, then,” continued the bullfinch, “does not our master bring [p. 210→] us water every morning and put it in our trough, and strew food on the ground? Would he do this if he did not know that we were shut up and cannot fly where we will?” “But,” said the goldfinch, “I tell you I can fly where I will.” Thus they disputed for a long time, till at length the canary called out, “Children, if you cannot settle it whether you are in a cage or not, it’s just as good as if you were not in one.” But it takes a long course of experience to attain to the philosophy of the canary; and indeed the pant for freedom is the strongest of all desires within us after all. It is remarkable enough that our writer was nearer to the repose and freedom of the canary when she was confined to her sick-bed, than when she was in better health, preparing her “Aurora Leigh.” It would seem to us that she had attained to a deeper rest and tranquility in her sick chamber in London than in her sunny Florence. Occasionally, but only occasionally, in those elder volumes, her words become bitter. The poems, more especially of the sick room, have the charmed air of the holiest resignation running over all the chords, and waking the music of “Even so, Father,” from them.
What is the meaning of that word which is so commonly used among us—morbid—that most dangerous of all diseases? No doubt there have ever been morbid men, and the religions of all nations have been famous for the slow, black, creeping blood. It is worth while attempting to discover the secret, for indeed there is no law of life that solves the mystery. A recluse is not necessarily and always a morbid man; nor is the man who lives in the eye of the world always a cheerful one—light and air, light and air; we know nothing better than these two Divine medicines; but even these need not only themselves, but their spiritual analogues—cheerful thoughts. Cheerful thought? But that, says the reader, begs the whole question. How can a man have cheerful thoughts who has them not? Besides, is it not now a settled fact, that creeds and theologies are dependent upon biliary secretions? We know not; but it is certain the highest and the holiest of these poems—those which it might have been supposed would have been most morbid—are not so. There is in her later poem, especially “Aurora Leigh,” less passion and less rest, but more knowledge; indeed, where shall we find such a wondrous collection of wisdom—of aphoristic wisdom—concentrated into rich, and noble, and stirring lines, the strength of a very deeply-taught soul?
Some critics have instituted a comparison between Longfellow and Mrs. Browning; and there is a likeness, just the same as we may see between some old, richly-chased, antique Grecian vase—Grecian in mould, but in the handiwork of Benevenuto Cellini— [p. 211→] filled with clear crystal water, and—what claims the likeness? Why, the ocean—calm, and resting, and finished. Longfellow is all that we can desire, as long as he is Longfellow; but you know what we said we felt as we turned our face to the fire. There is more than that; it is very beautiful! And this we will admit. Longfellow speaks up to his gift—a real authentic message from the land of souls. But—but on—the “buts” are infinite and innumerable; hence the chatting of Longfellow is far better; he engraves his base better than Elizabeth Browning, for he possesses what he has more truly; that is the difference ever between passion and repose. In passion—in it, as in a state, we are possessed; in repose, we “possess our souls.” Great possession! But, then, something also is to be said of the vastness or the narrowness of the soul. It is easy for some souls to possess themselves—no great possession after all, we say—hence the perfect handling of an emotion is not always the test of greatness. What is the emotion, and what is the depth of it? We quoted some time since the “Rhapsody of Life’s Progress.” Well, Longfellow has a “Rhapsody of Life’s Progress” in Excelsior. How much more simple, popular, easy, perfect, is Longfellow than Mrs. Browning. But which says most, sinks deepest, soars highest? And there is a verse in “Bertha in the Lane;” how high it reaches, how much it takes of experience to sing, that—
Jesus, victim, comprehending
Love’s Divine self-abnegation,
Cleanse my love in its self-spending,
And absorb this poor libation;
Wind my thread of life up higher,
Up through angels hand of fire
I aspire—while I expire.
And the sonnets of Mrs. Browning show the holiest soul. What sonnets! In those the reader must look more for that rest of the jaded and weary spirit, the sick frame, and the bereaved heart.
We have left ourselves no space to enter into deeper criticism, no space to enter into a notice of many of the noblest verses. Between these two, however, the spirit of the poems constantly moves intense passion and profound rest—the passion of a noble human suffering heart, the rest of a calm and tranquil Christian soul at the feet of Jesus, singing or saying,—
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the Hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet.
The rhythm so strange, frequently the subject of such harsh criticism, represents this; it is as if the soul could not make words express the depth and the vehemence of the passion. It [p. 212→] will be said that this being so is the fault of this versification; be it so; it is a great fault greatly illustrated; doubtless, as Coleridge has well said, “All harmony is founded on a relation to rest—on relative rest;” but the same, also, may be said of the noble discords which rise and swell and sweep themselves on, if possible, into the great river of calm; and she was not able to become an unpersonal spectator of human woes; the “Runaway Slave at Pilgrim Point,” and the cry of the children, are not less than wonderful testimonies to this. In “Isabel’s [sic] Child” is waged the same contest between the contemplative soul which rests and sees, and the anxious and perturbed, and therefore darkened; so also in “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” and in “The Vision of Poets.” But in the very tempest and vehemence of the soul we see the clear shining of the silver wing which floats above the storm; hence these Poems have been very dear to passionate hearts. There is a knowledge of the bruised reed and the smoking flax in them; and there is a knowledge of the peaceable dwellings and quiet habitations! They bear into larger souls and deeper experiences, and to more vexed questions, and intellectual surmisings, a consolation springing from the heights whence the consolations of Cowper was sprung. We have left ourselves no space to speak of much of this. We have left no space to refer to “Aurora Leigh,” that marvellous mosaic of so much that is highest in poetry, with so much most improbable in fact, and even doubtful in the development of a social system.
At a somewhat advanced period of life, Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, and for her health’s sake lived thereafter in Florence. There, last summer, at the age of forty-two [sic], she died. The great heart of the most glorious of Englishwomen sank into stillness. Her last words as her eyes opened into the light—“It is beautiful.” So long a sufferer, her fatal illness was but of a week’s duration. The “beloved” sunk to sleep with her beloved ones around her. She died in Florence, in the house of the Casa Guidi windows, and she sleeps in the English burial ground without the walls of Florence. If we could dare to write an epitaph for that grave, it should only be to quote from her own “Duchess May.”
And said in under breath,
All our life is mixed with death,
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God’s greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness, his rest.”
[Edwin Paxton Hood]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), 5th ed., London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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