E620405B. Last Poems.
The Press, 5 April 1862, pp. 326–327.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
The famous poetess whose “Last Poems” it is now our sad duty to notice has certainly never been equalled by any of her sex. Sappho was far below her: Myro and Anyte and Nossis, of whose writings we possess few fragments, considerably farther. Mrs. Hemans may be named as a possible rival in modern times: but the fair and fated Felicia, while she excelled Mrs. Browning in grace and elegance, fell far below her in passion and in strength. There was something manly in the power of Mrs. Browning’s intellect—in the fire of her imagination. She wrote much that was abominable trash, while Felicia Hemans wrote no line that was not charming. One poetess exhibited the perfection of taste; the other the eccentricity of power.
Mrs. Browning’s political poems have always been her worst. There is something curious in this. One expects no logic from poet or from poetess: and the worse the cause the better should be the poetry. Nothing more unhappy could happen to Ireland than severance from this imperial island of Great Britain: yet nobody can deny that the lyrics in which Irish bards demand such severance are real poetry, and of a high order. But Mrs. Browning—though she lived in Italy, land of melody—though the cause she had to chant was Italy’s freedom—always wrote thereof in sadly prosaic fashion. This has always perplexed us. Not expecting common sense from a poet, we may at any rate expect inspiration; but Mrs. Browning’s political rhymes are miserably devoid of both. Who has not laughed sardonically at her Napoleonic refrain—
Emperor!
Evermore?
But when she forgot her politics how exquisite a poetess was she! How tender—how subtle—how passionate! And these “Last Poems” are in no degree inferior to those which preceded them. Every lover of Mrs. Browning’s poetry will read them with avidity. If in any respect they differ from her earlier writings, it is that they are more melancholy. Perhaps some sad presentiment of premature death weighed upon her heart. Why else should she be sad? Herself the greatest poetess the world has yet produced—married to a poet who will, for posterity, dispute the laurelled crown with Mr. Tennyson—why should she be sad? Yet is there real sadness in such a stanza as this:—
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in the old time
When Ralph sat with me ’neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
“Dear love, you’re looking tired,” he said.
I, smiling at him, shook my head.
’Tis now we’re tired, my heart and I.
There is a sadness, a weariness, more than ideal, more than poetical, in the verses whence we have quoted. Was it the coming of death which made it so?
There are some beautiful poems in this volume. “Little Mattie,” first published in the Cornhill Magazine, is somewhat harsh and unnatural. The poem which follows, “A False Step,’ is in Mrs. Browning’s best vein:—
Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.
Pass! there’s a world full of men;
And women as fair as thou art
Must do such things now and then.
Thou only has stepped unaware,—
Malice, not one can impute;
And why should a heart have been there
In the way of a fair woman’s foot?
Surely this is a very pleasant view of the question—for the ladies. One sees the charming creature, filled with fatal fascination, treading upon masculine hearts in the real feminine fashion. Ah! but the poetess has her retributive prophecy:—
Thou’lt sigh, very like, on thy part,
“Of all I have known or can know,
I wish I had only that Heart
I trod upon, ages ago!”
So that, after all, ladies, by the showing of your chief Cassandra, treading on hearts, though pleasant pastime enough, does not answer in the long run.
“Lord Walter’s Wife” is a very fine poem: completely to exhibit its excellence we should have to quote too freely. But we must quote the best and subtlest couplet:—
“Oh that,” she said, “is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.”
“Amy’s Cruelty” is extremely charming, and shows how much humour was mingled with Mrs. Browning’s sterner endowments:—
Fair Amy of the terraced house,
Assist me to discover
Why you who would not hurt a mouse
Can torture so your lover.
You give your coffee to the cat,
You stroke the dog for coming,
And all your face grows kinder at
The little brown bee’s humming.
But when he haunts your door (the town
Marks coming and marks going)
You seem to have stitched your eyelids down
To that long piece of sewing!
We shall not injure the poem by quoting Amy’s justification of herself, which is perfectly satisfactory. Less satisfactory are the political rhymes which follow. Much as we desire to see Italy a great nation, we cannot quite follow our poetess in her enthusiastic admiration for that subtle intriguer, Louis Napoleon, for that stolid adventurer, Victor Emmanuel, for that marvellous bandit, Garibaldi. It would have been well for literature if less of Mrs. Browning’s later verse had been wasted upon politics.
Some admirable translations close the volume. Mrs. Browning owed much of her superiority to having penetrated the adyta of Greek and Roman poetry. She had in her joyous youth read Greek in a subdued voice—
Somewhat low for ais and ois. [p. 327→]
Not many women have inhaled as she did the old Greek æther, which was the very essence of poetry. Although we do not chance to have Anacreon at hand, we feel sure that Mrs. Browning has done justice to the old bard’s “Ode to the Swallow:”—
Thou indeed, little Swallow,
A sweet yearly comer,
Art building a hollow
New nest every summer,
And straight dost depart
Where no gazing can follow,
Past Memphis, down Nile!
Ah! but Love all the while
Builds his nest in my heart
Through the cold winter-weeks.
Anacreon, however, we have always held, ought to be translated to Irish airs. There was something prophetically Celtic about him. Here is an ode, to the air of “The Widow Malone:”—
An old woman was changed to a stone, ochone,
At which all her relations did groan, ochone,
King Pandion’s daughter,
When her governor sought her,
In the shape of a swallow had flown, ochone.
But I’d be thy looking-glass clear, my dear,
Or a soft robe thy form to insphere, my dear,
Or water cool-flowing
To circle thee glowing,
And embrace thee without any fear, my dear.
A perfume thy beauty to greet, my sweet,
A scarf on thy bosom to beat, my sweet,
The pearl that’s reclining
Where tresses are twining,
Or the slipper that’s under thy feet, my sweet.
Well, Earth’s greatest poetess is dead—having left behind her complete proof of her unassailable superiority. Never again, perhaps will woman write as wrote Elizabeth Browning. She was the Shakespeare of women. She lived to prove that women’s highest achievement cannot reach to what mediocre men may do. Her husband is perhaps our greatest living poet—at any rate our second; a greater poet than his wife, assuredly; yet how far below Earth’s greatest poets! Mrs. Browning’s writings should be of infinite value to all women who make literature their pursuit. Beyond her they cannot hope to rise: let them judge what she has done by what men have done.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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