E620500B. Last Poems.
The English Woman’s Journal, May 1862, pp. 204–206.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
Poems printed after the death of their writer come to us, in any case, with a claim apart from their merit, and we take up such a volume with a strange reverent interest, which too often the mere contents would not deserve. It is touching sometimes to meet with such verses, which the author perhaps judged too wisely to print—but which some loving survivor has tenderly gathered together. He has gazed through the dense mists of love and sorrow till he fancies that the world also will see in the poor rhymes a sacred value, and give back a crown of fame to be laid—upon a grave. We glance through the book in silence: no commonplaces can provoke our sneers—no absurdity can excite our smiles—and [p. 205→] we put it aside with pity and sympathy, only wishing we could in honesty say some words of praise—not in this case to minister to vanity; not in this case to lead to a second worthless volume—but just to comfort a mother or a husband in the longing of their sorrowful pride in what is so dear to them.
But when we knew that these “Last Poems” were to be given to us there can have been few hearts that did not feel impatient to welcome them not only as a legacy that must have a great intrinsic value, not only as poems from a hand which never wrote an unmeaning page, never one verse that did not hold some deep thought, but moreover precious—not to loving relatives alone or sorrowing friends, but to us all as the last. Trivial things and careless phrases are consecrated by that word; how much more then the earnest utterance of one whose genius we all reverenced and whose loss we all claim a right to mourn!
This little volume contains twenty-eight short poems and twenty-five translations. Of the original poems eleven refer to the political events and characters in which Mrs. Browning took so warm an interest, and for whom she felt and pleaded with such generous, such blind enthusiasm. The readers of the Cornhill Magazine, &c., have already read and doubtless copied some few of the poems in this volume—but the greater part come to us for the first time.
This is not the time for criticism were we so inclined, and praise would be almost needless; we will therefore only say that every page in the book has the old tone of thought and ring of expression so familiar to us.
There is perhaps more general smoothness in the versification and more simplicity in the rhymes than in many of her earlier poems; perhaps too, more concentration, and we think we note more clearly than ever the strength and it may be boldness of expression which gives such peculiar and startling force to Mr. Browning’s writing.
We can fancy indeed that one or two lines in their brave daring and honesty may jar on some ears—whether justly or not it is hardly for us to decide: of one thing we all rest assured that such lines are but used to enforce some pure meaning or to thrust upon us some righteous truth, which in vaguer and more conventional phraseology might have flowed on in smooth words, to join that placid sea of idle compassion and regret with which we all try to drown the knowledge and recollection of the sores and plague-spots of the world. It was Mrs. Browning’s mission to show to each individual soul that none can stand aloof in blameless inactivity, but that a share of the great universal wrong lies at the door of each one of us, who does not rise up to protest and to redress it.
Some will say poetry is hardly a suitable vehicle for so stern a lesson, but she was a poet and she judged differently—and if we look back we see that the names of the great masters of the art are all more or less associated with solemn reproof of their age and a [p. 206→] passionate pleading for right and truth against wrong and falsehood. That is indeed the “certain sound” of the trumpet which roused their own generation to a just battle, and which rings, and will ring on to succeeding ages.
No one will be satisfied with an extract or two out of such a book—but we cannot resist giving the following as one of the gems of the volume:—
the best thing in the world.
What’s the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May dew impearled;
Sweet South-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over plain;
Light that never makes you wink;
Memory that gives no pain;
Love, when, so, you’re loved again.
What’s the best thing in the world?
—Something out of it, I think.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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