E620500F. Last Poems.
Weldon’s Register, May 1862, pp. 209–212.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
We believe that the time is not yet come for anything like a general appreciation of the true value of the works of Mrs. Browning. She, indeed, was no “empty rhymer,” lying “with idle elbow on the grass,” fitting her singing “like a cunning timer, to all men’s prides and fancies as they pass.” A living poet has told us that—
In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder,
The poet’s song with blood-warm truth was rife;
He saw the mysteries which circle under
The outward shell and skies of daily life;
and it seems to us that in the works of Mrs. Browning there is immeasurably more “blood-warm truth,” and immeasurably more insight into the unseen realities which underlie the shadows which are seen and felt, than in the works of any other poet of this age,—nay, than in the works of any other poet of any age. Let “she” and “her” be read for “he” and “him,” and let the lines relating to the poet’s acceptance by all men be disregarded, and we cannot but think that the following further verses from Lowell’s wondrous “Ode” already quoted describe Mrs. Browning more correctly than they describe any other poet that ever lived:—
Nothing to him were fleeting time and fashion,
His soul was led by the eternal law;
There was in him no hope of fame, no passion,
But, with calm, godlike eyes, he only saw.
He did not sigh o’er heroes dead and buried,
Chief mourner at the Golden Age’s hearse,
Nor deem that souls whom Charon grim had ferried
Alone were fitting themes of epic verse:
He could believe the promise of to-morrow,
And feel the wondrous meaning of to-day;
He had a deeper faith in holy sorrow
Than the world’s seeming loss could take away.
To know the heart of all things was his duty,
All things did sing to him to make him wise,
And with a sorrowful and conquering beauty,
The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes.
He gazed on all within him and without him,
He watched the flowing of Time’s steady tide,
And shapes of glory floated all about him
And whispered to him, and he prophesied.
Than all men he more fearless was and freer,
And all his brethren cried with one accord,—
“Behold the holy man! Behold the Seer!
Him who hath spoken with the unseen Lord!”
He to his heart with large embrace had taken
The universal sorrow of mankind,
And from that root a shelter never shaken,
The tree of wisdom grew with sturdy rind.
He could interpret with the wondrous voices
Which to the calm and silent spirit come;
He knew that the One Soul no more rejoices
In the stars anthem than the insect’s hum.
He in his heart was ever meek and humble,
And yet with kingly pomp his numbers ran,
As he foresaw how all things false should crumble
Before the free, uplifted soul of man:
And, when he was made full to overflowing
With all the loveliness of heaven and earth,
Out rushed his song, like molten iron glowing,
To show God sitting by the humblest hearth.
With calmest courage he was ever ready
To teach that action was the truth of thought,
And, with strong arm and purpose firm and steady,
The anchor of the drifting world he wrought.
So did he make the meanest man partaker
Of all his brother-gods unto him gave;
All souls did reverence him and name him Maker,
And when he died heaped temples on his grave.
And still his deathless words of light are swimming
Serene throughout the great, deep infinite
Of human soul, unwaning and undimming,
To cheer and guide the mariner at night.
Further on, Lowell describes his ideal poet as—
One who hath dwelt with Nature well-attended,
Who hath learnt wisdom from her mystic books,
Whose soul with all her countless lives hath blended,
So that all beauty awes us in his looks;
Who not with body’s waste his soul hath pampered,
Who as the clear northwestern wind is free,
Who walks with Form’s observances unhampered,
And follows the One Will obediently;
Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,
Control a lovely prospect every way;
Who does not sound God’s sea with earthly plummet,
And find a bottom still of worthless clay;
Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,
Knowing that one sure wind blows on above,
And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking
One God-built shrine of reverence and love; [p. 210→]
Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches
Around the centre fixed of Destiny,
Where the encircling soul serene o’erarches
The moving globe of being like a sky;
Who feels that God and Heaven’s great deeps are nearer
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,
Who doth not hold his soul’s own freedom dearer
Than that of all his brethren, low or high;
Who to the right can feel himself the truer
For being gently patient with the wrong,
Who sees a brother in the evildoer,
And finds in Love the heart’s-blood of his song.
To our minds, as we have said, of all the poets of all time, Mrs. Browning realises this description the most nearly. Women and men of “greater genius,” as the phrase goes, there may possibly have been, although we doubt it; but if certain things which most of us are accustomed to acknowledge really be true, then the highest poetry cannot be so much a matter merely of natural gift to the poet as is usually supposed. If it be true, as it surely is, that “of ourselves we can do nothing,” then it must be that we can originate no thought, no sentiment; that every idea or feeling that a man finds in his mind must have flowed into it,—from above, if it be true, and pure, and capable of making any one wiser or happier, and from otherwhere if it be otherwise. And who are they who shall receive into their minds the truest ideas, the most beautiful thoughts? Is it the man or woman of most “genius,”—of largest intellect—of greatest “mental power?” Certainly not. It is the moral status, not the intellectual capacity, which decides what amount and degree of truth a man or woman shall be capable of receiving and perceiving. Only “they who do the Lord’s will” can “know of the doctrine whether it be true or not,” and as it is only in proportion as a thing is true that it can be really beautiful and noble, it follows that the poet whose works will possess the most real nobleness and beauty will be, not he or she who was born with the largest or most finely organised brain, or who is gifted with the greatest natural talent, but he or she who, by the purest life and fullest obedience to the “One Will,” shall have brought himself or herself into the closest communication with the One only Source of whatever is good and true. The superior excellence which seems to us to belong to the works of Mrs. Browning we hold to be due to her having trusted so little to herself and “genius,”—to her having placed herself in so completely receptive an attitude towards the One Mind from which alone any true thought can proceed.
Believing this, we believe, also, that the works of Mrs. Browning will be more fully appreciated by-and-by than they are now. In other words, believing that she saw and wrote from a higher stand-point than the majority of us have yet attained, we hold that in proportion as we who are less advanced approach more nearly to the moral eminence from which she spoke, we shall be enabled to recognise in her utterances much beauty and wisdom which as yet we have not eyes to see nor ears to hear. To see what she wrote as she saw it, the moral atmosphere surrounding us must be as pure and clear as was hers.
Our present business, however, is not to express our own personal beliefs with regard either to this matter or to any other, but to give some specimens of the “Last Poems,” now before us. They can scarcely, we imagine, be counted among Mrs. Browning’s most important works; but they have a wondrous charm and a most rare value, at least in our eyes, nevertheless. The volume contains forty-eight pieces, of various lengths, but none of them long. A good many are translations of passages from Homer and some of the minor Greek poets; of the others, about one-half relate to Italian affairs. We shall quote some three or four pieces almost at random.
only a curl
Friends of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in your 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.
And I feel what it must be and is,
When God draws a new angel so
Through the house of a man up to His,
With a murmur of music you miss,
And a rapture of light you forego.
How you think, staring on at the door,
Where the face of your angel flashed in,
That its brightness, familiar before,
Burns off from you ever the more
For the dark of your sorrow and sin.
“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
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.
a song for the ragged
schools of london.
written in rome
I am listening here in Rome.
“England’s strong,” say many speakers.
“If she winks, the Czar must come.
Prow and topsail to the breakers.”
“England’s rich in coal and oak.”
Adds a Roman, getting moody,
“If she shakes a travelling cloak,
Down our Appian roll the scudi.”
“England’s righteous,” they rejoin,
“Who shall grudge her exultations,
When her wealth of golden coin
Works the welfare of the nations?”
I am listening here in Rome.
Over Alps a voice is sweeping—
“England’s cruel! save us some
Of these victims in her keeping!”
As the cry beneath the wheel
Of an old triumphal Roman
Cleft the people’s shouts like steel,
While the show was spoilt for no man,
Comes that voice. Let others shout,
Other poets praise my land here:
I am sadly sitting out,
Praying, “God forgive her grandeur.”
Shall we boast of empire, where
Time with ruin sits commissioned?
In God’s liberal blue air
Peter’s dome itself looks wizened; [p. 211→]
And the mountains, in disdain,
Gather back their lights of opal
From the dumb, despondent plain,
Heaped with jawbones of a people.
Lordly English, think it o’er,
Cæsar’s doing is all undone!
You have cannons on your shore,
And free parliaments in London,
Princes’ parks and merchants’ homes,
Tents for soldiers, ships for seamen,—
Ay, but ruins worse than Rome’s
In your pauper men and women.
Women leering through the gas
(Just such bosoms used to nurse you),
Men, turned wolves by famine, pass!
Those can speak themselves, and curse you,
But these others—children small,
Spilt like blots about the city,
Quay, and street, and palace-wall—
Take them up into your pity!
Ragged children with bare feet,
Whom the angels in white raiment
Know the names of, to repeat
When they come on you for payment.
Ragged children, hungry-eyed,
Huddled up out of the coldness
On your doorsteps, side by side,
Till your footman damns their boldness.
In the alleys, in the squares,
Begging, lying little rebels;
In the noisy thoroughfares,
Struggling on with piteous trebles.
Patient children—think what pain
Makes a young child patient—ponder
Wronged too commonly to strain
After right, or wish, or wonder.
Wicked children, with peaked chins,
And old foreheads! there are many
With no pleasures except sins,
Gambling with a stolen penny.
Sickly children, that whine low
To themselves and not their mothers,
From mere habit,—never so
Hoping help or care from others.
Healthy children, with those blue
English eyes, fresh from their Maker,
Fierce and ravenous, staring through
At the brown loaves of the baker.
I am listening here in Rome,
And the Romans are confessing,
“English children pass in bloom
All the prettiest made for blessing.
“Angli angeli!” (resumed)
From the mediæval story)
“Such rose angelhoods, emplumed
In such ringlets of pure glory!”
Can we smooth down the bright hair,
O my sisters, calm, unthrilled in
Our heart’s pulses? Can we bear
The sweet looks of our own children,
While those others, lean and small,
Scurf and mildew of the city,
Spot our streets, convict us all
Till we take them into pity?
“Is it our fault?” you reply,
“When, throughout civilisation,
Every nation’s empery
Is asserted by starvation?
“All these mouths we cannot feed,
And we cannot clothe these bodies.”
Well, if man’s so hard indeed,
Let them learn at least what God is!
Little outcasts from life’s fold,
The grave’s hope they may be joined in,
By Christ’s covenant consoled
For our social contract’s grinding.
If no better can be done,
Let us do but this,—endeavour
That the sun behind the sun
Shine upon them while they shiver!
On the dismal London flags,
Through the cruel social juggle,
Put a thought beneath their rags
To ennoble the heart’s struggle.
O my sisters, not so much
Are we asked for—not a blossom
From our children’s nosegay, such
As we gave it from our bosom,—
Not the milk left in their cup,
Not the lamp while they are sleeping,
Not the little cloak hung up
While the coat’s in daily keeping,—
But a place in Ragged Schools,
Where the outcasts may to-morrow
Learn by gentle words and rules
Just the uses of their sorrow.
O my sisters! children small,
Blue-eyed, wailing through the city—
Our own babes cry in them all:
Let us take them into pity.
MOTHER AND POET.
Turin after News from Gaeta, 1861
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonised here,—
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees
And ’broider the long-clothes and neat little coat:
To dream and to doat.
To teach them—It stings there—I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
And when their eyes flashed—O my beautiful eyes!—
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God! how the house feels!
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses,—of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
Then was triumph at Turin: “Ancona was free!”
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.
I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, “I was not to faint—
One loved me for two—would be with me ere long;
And Viva l’Italia!—he died for our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.”
My Nanni would add: “He was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls—was imprest
It was Guido himself who knew what I could bear,
And how ’twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.”
On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta:—Shot.
Tell his mother. Ah! ah! “his,” “their” mother—not “mine,”
No voice says “My mother” again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through That Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.
O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!
Both boys dead? but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
’Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short? [p. 212→]
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead)—
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy’s there, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this—and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!
(This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.)
a view across the roman campagna.
1861.
Over the dumb Campagna sea,
Out in the offing through mist and rain,
Saint Peter’s Church heaves silently
Like a mighty ship in pain,
Facing the tempest with struggle and strain.
Motionless waifs of ruined towers,
Soundless breakers of desolate land:
The sullen surf of the mist devours
That mountain-range upon either hand,
Eaten away from its outline grand.
And over the dumb Campagna sea,
Where the ship of the Church heaves on to wreck,
Alone and silent as God must be,
The Christ walks. Ay, but Peter’s neck
Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck.
Peter, Peter! if such be thy name,
Now leave the ship for another to steer,
And proving thy faith evermore the same,
Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear,
Since He who walks on the sea is here.
Peter, Peter! He does not speak,
He is not as rash as in old Galilee,
Safer a ship, though it toss and leak
Than a reeling foot on a rolling sea!
And he’s got to be round in the girth, thinks he.
Peter, Peter! He does not stir;
His nets are heavy with silver fish;
He reckons his gains, and is keen to infer
—“The broil on the shore, if the Lord would wish;
But the sturgeon goes to the Cæsar’s dish.”
Peter, Peter! thou fisher of men,
Fisher of fish wouldst thou live instead?
Haggling for pence with the other ten,
Cheating the market at so much a head,
Griping the Bag of the traitor Dead?
At the triple crow of the Gallic cock
Thou weep’st not, thou, though thine eyes be dazed:
What bird comes next in the tempest-shock?
—Vultures! see,—as when Romulus gazed,—
To inaugurate Rome for a world amazed!
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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