E620500C. Last Poems.
The Eclectic Review, May 1862, pp. 419–425.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
Although we so recently devoted several pages to a review of the works of the greatest poet of womanhood, we cannot allow this volume to appear and to pass without some words: painful words they must be, since how grateful soever we may be for so much received from this pen, we now shall receive no more: these are the last, and they are like flowers on a grave. We are very grateful to receive poems from the author’s own and deeper heart, enthusiast as she was for Italy. We never cared so much for her lyrics of Italian freedom; the tones which will be for ever prized are those deep notes, rich and thrilling as if her heart were itself a cathedral, and all the tenderest and most sorrowful experiences celebrating sacrament there beneath the flow of its rich music. When years have made her more distant to her critics, some remarks may be offered upon some of the mental phenomena exhibited in her poems. Sometimes it seems to us that had she been a strong and healthful, instead of what she was, a weak and suffering woman, her genius could never have borne such rich and refreshing fruit: nay, it might be possible to mark her progress in health and strength by the inverse value of her verse. In her, eminently, the sweetness of the strain resulted from the tightening of the chords. In one of the most remarkable of all her poems—one contained in this volume—she expresses in most memorable words the faith, that the man suffers in the making the poet. Well known as we believe these lines are, we cannot forbear their quotation, because they seem to reveal so much of the lamented writer’s sense of the personal history involved in the author. [p. 420→]
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan
(How tall it stood in the river),
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sate by the river),
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true god sighs for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
This is one of the most perfect of Mrs. Browning’s poems, but its doctrine is not always true. Nor is it necessarily true. True, the pith of the poem is the heart of the poet; true, the poet made out of the man frequently becomes a sadly self-conscious and spoilt creature; yet we believe this will only be the case with inferior writers who have not much pith to spare. It was [p. 421→] not especially the case with Mrs. Browning. If her verse and inspiration ever deteriorated, we trace the deterioration rather to what the world and knowledge of the world have given to her, than to what the exercise and utterance of her imagination have taken from her. The thought is wonderfully expressed; but we hope we may take it as rather representative of a mood of mind in its beloved author, than as the expression of the faith that all those fine natures whose music has enchanted us, became wasted, and spoilt, and impaired in the efforts they made to give freedom to their spiritual being. We even think that in such work the spirit loses its unhealthy self-consciousness rather than gains. Foremost among our sacred poets stands this writer, and there is one poem in this volume equal to anything we have received from her in this line. A lengthy poem, De Profundis, may take its place with “The Sleep.” It is a liturgic strain, of great and painful beauty. It reminds us of those sacred measures which she poured forth from the sick room in London, where, many years since, to the eyes of her friends she seemed to lie dying. We must believe it belongs historically to those days before she was either wife or mother, when she was smitten down by pain, languor, and illness, and threatening death, and bereavement in the unexpected departure of the most beloved friends. It is “De Profundis,” out of the depths indeed. It is like one of those rich Mozart Masses: a pained and agonized spirit, respiring on the keys of the cloistered organ, and from the largeness of the overwhelming grief, to the lesser sharpness of the vexation and the fret, expending its passion, and crying and sighing itself to sleep, upon the spear-pierced heart of the Redeemer. Nothing else can be conceived than that the writing of these words must have been an ineffable refreshment to her. They are of those words which quite disarm all power of criticism by the reverence they inspire for the writer. There come to all men, it is to be hoped, moments when a tortured, and wrenched, and wretched being cries aloud with Elijah, “It is enough: Lord, let me die now.” But we do not die, and out of such wretchedness the spirit learns to find its way to its true centre and rest. In such moments the brightness and sweetness of nature do not comfort; they even add to the intensity of the misery. Nature helps nature’s world; nature ministers to nature’s heart; but to such depths as a soul’s despondency and despair nature’s sunlight and songs cannot descend. We are afraid to quote from this psalm of life: we dare not to quote the whole, and we fear to injure the sublime and hallowed effect of the whole. Here is the opening grief:— [p. 422→]
The face which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away,—
And yet my days go on, go on.
The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone,
And every morning with “Good day”
Make each day good, is hushed away,—
And yet my days go on, go on.
The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon.
The strongest on the longest day
With steadfast love, is caught away,—
And yet my days go on, go on.
The world goes whispering to its own,
“This anguish pierces to the bone;”
And tender friends go sighing round,
“What love can ever cure this wound?”
My days go on, my days go on.
Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
As one alone, once not alone,
I sit and knock at Nature’s door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
Whose desolated days go on.
I knock and cry,—Undone, undone!
Is there no help, no comfort,—none?
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
Where others drive their loaded wains?
My vacant days go on, go on.
This Nature, though the snows be down,
Thinks kindly of the bird of June:
The little red hip on the tree
Is ripe for such. What is for me,
Whose days so winterly go on?
I ask less kindness to be done,—
Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon
(Too early worn and grimed), with sweet
Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,
Till days go out which now go on.
Only to lift the turf unmown
From off the earth where it has grown,
Some cubit-space, and say, “Behold,
Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold,
Forgetting how the days go on.”
What harm would that do? Green anon
The sward would quicken, overshone
By skies as blue; and crickets might
Have leave to chirp there day and night
While my new rest went on, went on. [p. 423→]
—A Voice reproves me thereupon,
More sweet than Nature’s when the drone
Of bees is sweetest, and more deep
Than when the rivers overleap
The shuddering pines, and thunder on.
God’s Voice, not Nature’s! Night and noon
He sits upon the great white throne
And listens for the creatures’ praise.
What babble we of days and days?
The Day-spring He, whose days go on.
He reigns above, He reigns alone:
Systems burn out, and leave His throne:
Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall
Around him, changeless amid all,—
Ancient of Days, whose days go on.
He reigns below, He reigns alone,
And, having life in love forgone
Beneath the crown of sovran thorns,
He reigns the Jealous God. Who mourns
Or rules with Him, while days go on?
By anguish which made pale the sun,
I hear Him charge His saints that none
Among His creatures anywhere
Blaspheme against Him with despair,
However darkly days go on.
Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown!
No mortal grief deserves that crown.
O supreme Love, chief Misery.
The sharp regalia are for Thee
Whose days eternally go on!
For us,—whatever’s undergone,
Thou knowest, willest what is done.
Grief may be joy misunderstood;
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on.
Whatever’s lost, it first was won:
We will not struggle nor impugn.
Perhaps the cup was broken here,
That Heaven’s new wine might show more clear.
I praise Thee while my days go on.
I praise Thee while my days go on;
I love Thee while my days go on:
Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
With emptied arms and treasure lost,
I thank Thee while my days go on.
And having in Thy life-depth thrown
Being and suffering (which are one),
As a child drops his pebble small
Down some deep well, and hears it fall
Smiling—so I. Thy days go on. [p. 424→]
This is Mrs. Browning’s especial key. To sing and to say such things, she was born and trained in the school of suffering, and given to us. She was a strong-minded and more passionate Cowper, with an infinite endowment of soul and vision—which, indeed, are one. Through her own tears she saw the golden headlands of eternal truths. Of this same order of poems in which this glorious woman walks steadily along the cliffs in the dark night and storm of sorrow, we notice the lines called “Only a Curl.” They will explain themselves to many a broken-hearted mother, and be a consolation.
Friends of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me,—
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do,
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the violets press nearer than you.
Shall I speak like a poet, or run
Into weak woman’s tears for relief?
Oh, children!—I never lost one,—
Yet my arm’s round my own little son,
And Love knows the secret of Grief.
“God lent him and takes him,” you sigh;
—Nay, there let me break with your pain:
God’s generous in giving, say I,—
And the thing which He gives, I deny
That He ever can take back again.
He gives what He gives. I appeal
To all who bear babes—in the hour
When the veil of the body we feel
Rent round us,—while torments reveal
The motherhood’s advent in power,
And the babe cries!—has each of us known
By apocalypse (God being there
Full in nature) the child is our own,
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan,
Through all changes, all times, everywhere
He’s ours and for ever. Believe,
O father!—O mother, look back
To the first love’s assurance. To give
Means with God not to tempt or deceive
With a cup thrust in Benjamin’s sack.
He gives what he gives. Be content!
He resumes nothing given,—be sure!
God lend? Where the usurers lent [p. 425→]
In His temple, indignant He went
And scourged away all those impure.
He lends not; but gives to the end,
As He loves to the end. If it seem
That He draws back a gift, comprehend
’Tis to add to it rather,—amend,
And finish it up to your dream,—
Or keep,—as a mother will toys
Too costly, though given by herself,
Till the room shall be stiller from noise,
And the children more fit for such joys,
Kept over their heads on the shelf.
So look up, friends! you, who indeed
Have possessed in your house a sweet piece
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need
Be more earnest than others are,—speed
Where they loiter, persist where they cease.
You know how one angel smiles there.
Then weep not. ’Tis easy for you
To be drawn by a single gold hair
Of that curl, from earth’s storm and despair,
To the safe place above us. Adieu.
The reader must go to the book, the volume of the “Last Poems.” There are many in quite other keys, upon which we will not dwell. We have quoted till we are ashamed to quote more. Of the writer’s amazing command over language and metre, for interpreting passion, and interpenetrating words with passion, we must refer to “Bianca among the Nightingales.” Our age has had, and has many noble poets, but we had rather have said farewell to any one of them than to this gifted woman. She was less a cultivator of the art of poetry than many, but she was a poet. Her emotions and experiences frequently hurried her into great errors of metre, and sometimes a passing impulse with her became a generalisation; but she found her poems in the deepest wells of the human heart, and she let down her words—buckets of water into dry wells—into parched hearts. Thus, beyond almost any other poet of our day, we may call her, the Consoler.
[Edwin Paxton Hood]
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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