E620607A. Last Poems.
Chambers’s Journal, 7 June 1862, pp. 363–366.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
I am a person of commercial pursuits, and my habits and tastes are those of a man of business who would as soon think of cultivating the Muse as of investing just now in United States stock at a premium, if any such thing there be. At our club the other day, Coupon of the Stock Exchange was observed to be more than ordinarily melancholy.
‘He is composing the last lines of a volume of Poems of the Affections, which he purposes to bring forth next week,’ observed the Wit of the Gresham.
‘Nay,’ said Coupon; ‘I thank Heaven I never read two lines of poetry in the whole course of my life—far less composed them.’
He considered his character as a man of judgment to be assailed, no doubt, by such an imputation, and therefore repudiated it with this uncommon vigour; otherwise, two lines of poetry is really a very small [p. 364→] average. He must at least have learned The Busy Bee, I should think; and I am almost confident that I once heard him repeat (not without pathos), in excuse for leaving his wine before midnight—
Early to bed, and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise;
albeit that course of conduct has by no means secured Coupon from the ravages of indigestion.
At all events, I, for my part, am not so violently opposed to poetry as my friend expressed himself to be; I can make shift to read Walter Scott when he is not too much upon scenery; and there are some things in Crabbe which, ’pon my life, might be almost written in prose, they are so true and intelligible; only when my little Miriam (I call her ‘little,’ though she is eighteen now, and as like poor Mary, whom we lost, God bless her! as one sweet pea to another), when she reads Tennyson to me, I put my handkerchief over my eyes, to conceal my emotions, and go off to sleep like a lamb. The City Article of the Times may not, perhaps, have so much music in it, but, on the other hand, it has the faculty of keeping one awake. As for travelling with a book of poems about me (except for the express purpose of producing repose), I should as soon think of taking a lap-dog for a companion. Once in my life I travelled in an omnibus with a man who had a verse-book in his hand, and the same occasion was the only one on which I ever had my pocket picked. A female may carry such a thing, but a male must be either mad or worse to do so.
Such was my opinion up to Friday last, when I came up as usual by the morning express from Dover, where Miriam has inveigled me to take a house for the benefit of her father’s health; and not only a house, but horses, and a riding-master for herself, and a number of other unnecessary things, which, Heaven knows, I don’t grudge her, for what use is my money now but for her, dear girl, now that little Mary and my poor wife are both gone.
Well, the child came as usual to the railway station to see papa off, and as usual, too, she had a book in her hand—for she is like her poor sister in that also, though where they got it from, goodness knows, for neither I nor her mother, sweet soul, was ever much of a reader. Miriam generally gets the Times while I am securing my place, and hands it in to me just as the train is starting; for I am never a moment earlier than is necessary, hating to kick my heels about the station, and lose precious time, as your occasional traveller almost invariably does. Upon this occasion, however, the Times was not to be got; the copies had been all bought up; and she reached out her tiny hand with a smile, as I sat in the otherwise unoccupied carriage, and gave me her book instead.
I shook my head at her, pretending to be very angry; and, indeed, when I found that the volume was Last Poems, by Elizabeth B. Browning, and that the train was off, I was not very well pleased. However, as Miriam had left the thing for me, I took it up, and then perceived there was a book-marker in it; she works such things herself very prettily, with the words ‘Keep the place,’ or ‘Open here’ upon them, and a long tag of ribbon or filigree to each. So the book opened at a poem called Little Mattie.
Dead! thirteen a month ago!
it began. Now, I liked that line for two reasons: first, because it was written as folks speak in real life; it didn’t say that thirteen summers had passed over Mattie’s head, which could not have happened, or a poet will always have you believe, without the corresponding number of winters; and, secondly, because the line had a very particular interest for me, since my own little Mary died at almost the very same age; and that was why Miriam marked it.
Dead! thirteen a month ago!
Short and narrow her life’s walk;
Lovers’ love she could not know,
Even by a dream or talk:
Too young to be glad of youth,
Missing honour, labour, rest,
And the warmth of a babe’s mouth
At the blossom of her breast.
Must you pity her for this,
And for all the loss it is,
You, her mother, with wet face,
Having had all in your case?
Yes; Heaven knows her mother did pity her; she pitied her even unto death. The loss of that child killed her. She never told me so; but from that miserable hour when we two closed our darling’s eyes, her own lost their light, and day by day she pined away. Her greatest pleasure after that was to talk with me about our darling. ‘Did I think she looked upon us down from heaven?’ she would ask; and when I said: ‘Perhaps, my dear, it may be so,’ she would answer: ‘I am certain.’
And now, she and Mary are together again—alas for me!
Just so young but yesternight,
Now, she is as old as death.
That is a curious thought which has often struck me; and how naturally is it expressed!
Meek, obedient in your sight,
Gentle to a beck or breath
Only on last Monday!
There, again, how natural! That last is the very thing that we said, and indeed the very words, for ours was taken on a Monday too.
Meek, obedient in your sight,
Gentle to a beck or breath
Only on last Monday! Yours,
Answering you like silver bells
Lightly touched! An hour matures;
You can teach her nothing else;
She has seen the mystery hid
Under Egypt’s pyramid.
By those eyelids pale and close,
Now she knows what Rhamses knows.
Cross her quiet hands, and smooth
Down her patient locks of silk,
Cold and passive, as in truth
You your fingers in spilt milk
Drew along a marble floor;
But her lips you cannot wring
Into saying a word more—
‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ or such a thing.
Though you call and beg, and wreak
Half your soul out in a shriek,
She will lie there in default,
And most innocent revolt.
Ay, and if she spoke, may be
She would answer, like the Son:
‘What is now ’twixt thee and me?’
Dreadful answer! better none.
Yours on Monday, God’s to-day!
Yours, your child, your blood, your heart
Called—you called her, did you say,
Little Mattie, for your part?
Now already it sounds strange;
And you wonder, in this change,
What He calls His angel-creature,
Higher up than you can reach her.
Ay, I have often thought of that, for we, too, [p. 365→] had a pet name for our darling—a foolish, loving name. Everybody else has forgotten it, save Miriam and me. . . . I am glad those people did not get in here at the last station; I am glad I am alone now with this little book.
’Twas a green and easy world
As she took it; room to play,
Though one’s hair might get uncurled
At the far end of the day.
What she suffered, she shook off
In the sunshine; what she sinned,
She could pray on high enough
To keep safe above the wind.
If reproved by God or you,
’Twas to better her, she knew;
And if crossed, she gathered still
’Twas to cross out something ill.
You, you had the right, you thought,
To survey her with sweet scorn,
Poor gay child, who had not caught
Yet the octave stretch forlorn
Of your larger wisdom! Nay,
Now your places are changed so,
In that same superior way,
She regards you dull and low,
As you did herself exempt
From life’s sorrows. Grand contempt
Of the spirits risen awhile,
Who look back with such a smile.
There’s the sting of’t. That, I think,
Hurts the most a thousandfold,
To feel sudden, at a wink,
Some dear child we used to scold,
Praise, love both ways, kiss and tease,
Teach and tumble, as our own,
All its curls about our knees,
Rise up suddenly full-grown.
Who could wonder such a sight
Made a woman mad outright.
Shew me Michael with the sword
Rather than such angels, Lord!
That is all the poem; but how true and beautiful! There was a funeral-hymn sung in church on the day our darling was buried, but it did not touch me nearly so much. Elizabeth Browning! I never heard of her before, and now it seems she is dead, poor thing. She must have had a large and loving soul. She must, said I here to myself, have known what it is to lose a child; but as I read on, I found this was not so. I never did lose one, says she;
Yet my arm’s round my own little son,
And Love knows the secret of Grief.
She imagines what this loss is, all the same, and that, I suppose, is to be a real poet.
Then I opened the little book here and there without being so well pleased. The authoress was, it seems, an enthusiastic politician; a passionate admirer of the Emperor of the French, the King of Sardinia, and a number of other persons, of whom we in the City think more soberly. As for her translations, I never read the originals, and so they had little attraction for me. There is an allegory which, I have since heard, all the critics are praising. It refers to the unhappy manner in which a poet must needs learn his trade; for unless a man is poor, and wronged, and despised, and suffers from the jaundice, he is not, it seems, in a fit condition to turn out good verses. Here you have it, however; and it is called a Musical Instrument:
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 the 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 man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
I daresay that the above is very clever. I never saw the great god Pan, myself, and if I did, I doubt I should take him for the devil; but the poem reads as though the writer had certainly seen him, which is a proof of her Art, I suppose. When a couple of men got in at Tunbridge, I was not sorry this time; one of these I knew—an intelligent fellow, officially connected with the Education Board—and a conversation arose between us, out of the boy that offered us some penny papers while the train stopped, concerning Ragged Schools. He was strong against the evils of indiscriminate charity, and, indeed, against all charity, as such, and, as it seemed to me, without sufficient pity for the involuntary beggars; little children, for instance, who would much rather not beg if they could help it.
‘Nay,’ said he, ‘some would perish, doubtless, if everybody made up their minds not to give; but it would be best in the end. The punishment of those who sent them out to beg is difficult to inflict, and does not effect the desired object. The drunken parents or owners, who thus trade upon public sympathy, are like cowardly foes, who place their women and children in the front of the fight, to deter us from firing. We must fire, nevertheless.’
‘Nay,’ said I, ‘rather make it penal to send children out to beg. Seize such, and make them children of the state, and grind the fathers—grind them—to pay for their bringing up.’
‘Unconstitutional,’ remarked the government inspector.
‘Fiddlestick’s end,’ said I.
‘True,’ returned he; ‘but it is also very expensive.’
‘Not the cost of one of your useless three-deckers’——
‘I beg your pardon,’ interrupted Redtape; ‘but this is Red Hill, and my friend and I change here for [p. 366→] Reading. Your views are quite Utopian, I assure you,’ said he, as we shook hands.
Still, after they had left, I could not help repeating to myself (for the lines are easily learned):
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!
I looked into the little book again for these same lines, and then turned over another leaf or two.
Lord Walter’s Wife. Umph; she was a bold woman, to give the tempter so much of her mind; and the author was bold to write it. That I must say for this lady: what she feels to be right, she says, upon all subjects. My Kate. Ah: a love-song, I suppose.
She was not as pretty as women I know.
Then it isn’t a love-song, and may perhaps be worth reading.
She was not as pretty as women I know,
And yet all your best, made of sunshine and snow,
Drop to shade, melt to nought, in the long-trodden ways,
While she’s still remembered on warm and cold days—
My Kate.
Now that very verse might have been written on Mary’s mother. Bless her sweet soul, I have sometimes thought—only sometimes—that perhaps I was too much wrapped up in the child, and neglected—forgot to make much of—the wife. If I did so, God forgive me, as I know she did.
Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace,
You turned from the fairest to look on her face,
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth,
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth—
My Kate.
Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke,
You looked at her silence, and fancied she spoke;
When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone,
Though the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone—
My Kate.
I doubt if she said to you much that could act
As a thought or suggestion; she did not attract
In the sense of the brilliant or wise: I infer
’Twas her thinking of others made you think of her—
My Kate.
She never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown—
My Kate.
None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall:
They knelt more to God than they used—that was all.
If you praised her as charming, some asked what you meant,
But the charm of her presence was felt when she went—
My Kate.
The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
She took as she found them, and did them all good.
It always was so with her—see what you have:
She has made the grass greener, even here —with her grave—
My Kate.
My dear one! when thou wast alive with the rest,
I held thee the sweetest, and loved thee the best;
And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part,
As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet heart—
My Kate.
The train had stopped, and the porters were shouting. I suppose I got out mechanically, and was taken possession of by the cad of the ’bus in which I always travel. But I remember nothing of it. I know only that I reached my place of business with the little book still in my hand. The Last Poems of Elizabeth B. Browning, it is called. She has written many more, I understand. It does not do for a commercial man to be seen asking for such things, but I have told Miriam to get me the rest.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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