E620700C. Poems (1862) and Last Poems.
The Christian Spectator, July 1862, pp. 415–427.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
The last edition of Mrs. Browning’s poems comes to us like old letters from a departed friend. Now that the writer has passed away, as we con them over again, new beauties meet our eye and a new interest attaches to them as we think that the pen from which they issued is now still for ever.
The highest faculty of poetry, the power of moulding from abstract and general truths ideas and characters which bear the stamp of individuality, Mrs. Browning possesses in an eminent degree. We have proof of it in the Drama of Exile, the poem placed first in her collection, and in some respects the finest of the whole. It takes up the argument of the “Paradise Lost” at the point where Milton leaves it; a daring attempt to choose such a theme, but while treating it in a manner as different from Milton’s as could possibly be conceived, she has exhibited powers of imagination which prove her not unworthy to follow (it may be at a distance) the footsteps of “the Blind Bard.” Her Lucifer is a sublime con- [p. 416→] ception, modelled in some measure, no doubt, after the type of Milton’s Satan, but by no means identical with him. In the following extract he addresses Eve and the Earth—spirits wailing outside the gate of Eden:—
Lucifer. I scorn you that ye wail,
Who use your petty griefs for pedestals
To stand on, beckoning pity from without,
And deal in pathos of antithesis
Of what ye were forsooth, and what ye are;—
I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cry,
I too would drive up like a column erect,
Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven,
A monument of anguish to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints
Expressed from feeble woes.
Earth Spirits. I wail, I wail!
Luc. For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses,
That I, struck out from nature in a blot,
The outcast and the mildew of things good,
The leper of angels, the excepted dust
Under the common rain of daily gifts,—
I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,—
To whom the highest and the lowest alike
Say, go from us—we have no need of thee,—
Was made by God like others. Good and fair,
He did create me!—as Him, if not fair!
Ask if I caught not fair and silverly
His blessings for chief angels on my head,
Until it grew there, a crown crystallized!
Ask if He never called me by my name,
“Lucifer”—kindly said as “Gabriel”—
“Lucifer”—soft as “Michael,” while serene,
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered “my Father,” innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,
White angels in your niches,—I repent,
And would tread down my own offences back
To service at the footstool! That’s read wrong!
I cry as the beast doth, that I may cry—
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep
Against the sides of this prodigious pit,
I cry—cry—dashing out the hands of wail
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere,
And to attest it in the ecstacy,
And exaltation of a woe sustained,
Because provoked and chosen.
How fine is the abrupt transition from the strain of almost pensive remembrance to one of bold defiance; and well conceived is the thought lower down where he exclaims,—
Still, what’s your hurt to mine of doing hurt,
Of hating, tempting, and so ruining?
This sword’s hilt is the sharpest, and cuts through
The hand that wields it. [p. 417→]
And the peroration of this address to Adam and Eve is absolutely fearful in its fiendish hate and scorn. Nor is Mrs. Browning’s singular imagination less apparent in “The Seraphim,” a dramatic dialogue between Ador the Strong and Zerah the Bright One, and here it is almost entirely of that wild mysterious cast which characterises so much of her poetry, especially at one period of her writing. In “Isabel’s [sic] Child” we have a rare combination of lofty imagination, womanly tenderness, and deep feeling, while a weird light is thrown over the whole which lends it an irresistible charm. The poem introduces a mother with her child on her knee, blessing God that the fever has been taken away from her little one, and his life preserved in answer to her prayers. She is musing on what his future life will be, when lo! the babe’s mouth is opened, and from it there comes a wondrous description of the celestial places from which he has been shut out by his mother’s entreaties. The sequel shall be told in Mrs. Browning’s own words.
“Wake nurse!” the lady said;
“We are waking—He and I—
I, on earth, and He, in sky:
And thou must help me to o’erlay,
With garment white this little clay,
Which needs no more our lullaby.
I changed the cruel prayer I made,
And bound my meekened face and prayed
That He would do His will; and thus
He did it nurse! He parted us:
And His sun shows victorious
The dead calm face. And I am calm,
And heaven is hearkening a new psalm.
“This earthly noise is too anear,
Too loud, and will not let me hear
The little harp. My death will soon
Make silence.” And a sense of time,
A satisfied love meanwhile,
Which nothing earthly could despoil,
Sang on within her soul.
Oh you
Earth’s tender and impassioned few,
Take courage to entrust your love
To Him so named, who guards above
Its ends and shall fulfil.
Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit your narrow souls away
In His broad, loving will.
Perhaps, of any single poem this exhibits most of Mrs. Browning’s excellencies. But her minor poems are exquisitely beautiful, and display that depth of feeling which, for a true poet, is scarcely less requisite than a vigorous imagination. “Loved Once,” “Cow- [p. 418→] per’s Grave,” “L. E. L.’s Last Question,” and the “Cry of the Children,” are amongst the most remarkable of her former poems in this respect; and in her new book there are several exhibiting and awakening the deepest emotion. Such are “De Profundis,” “Mother and Poet,” “Void in Law,” and the “Ragged Schools of London.” As a specimen of jealous passion, a genuine Italian furor, nothing can be finer than “Bianca among the Nightingales.”
Mrs. Browning is great in translation, especially when she translates from the Greek. That language has evidently been her favourite study. A translation of a Greek play is generally a most wearisome piece of reading—acceptable only when the reader is shut up with nothing else in an inn on a wet day, or under some similar circumstances; but let any one read the “Prometheus Bound,” as given in the first volume of Mrs. Browning’s poems, and if he does not enjoy it he has no soul for poetry. She has thoroughly caught the sublime spirit of Æschylus. Very beautiful, too, is her rendering of the parting between Hector and Andromache (Iliad vi.), which is found among the paraphrases of Greek and Latin poets at the end of her new book. But Mrs. Browning can lay aside all her wealth of intellect and sing a strain that touches us by its simple beauty as much as her grander outbursts entrance us with awe-struck admiration of her glowing genius and fervid emotion. Such are “A Child’s Thought of God,” and “The Weakest Thing,” in the third volume of her earlier works, but we prefer giving here one from the “Last Poems.”
A FALSE STEP.
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 hast stepped unaware,—
Malice, not one can impute;
And why should a heart have been there
In the way of a fair woman’s foot?
It was not a stone that could trip,
Nor was it a thorn that could rend:
Put up thy proud underlip!
’Twas merely the heart of a friend.
And yet peradventure one day
Thou, sitting alone at the glass,
Remarking the bloom gone away,
Where the smile in its dimplement was,
And seeking around thee in vain,
From the hundreds who flattered before,
Such a word as “Oh, not in the main
Do I hold thee less precious, but more!” [p. 419→]
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!”
This little piece is perfect of its kind,—a simple idea, simply expressed, with a truth in it that strikes home to every heart. “My Heart and I” is scarcely less beautiful in its simplicity and grace; and linked in spirit with such poems as these are the sudden beautiful thoughts that are thrown out like blossoms from the branches of a tree in spring, or like flowers by the hedge-side, along the course of her long poems. As when the mother calls to
God who hears
Thro’ seraph-songs the sound of tears.
And in these lines from the “Soul’s travelling,”
Thou knowest eyelids raised not always up
Unto thy love (as none of our’s are) droop
As ours o’er many a tear:
Thou knowest, though thy universe is broad,
Two little tears suffice to cover all.
And again how much is conveyed to the mind in the five concluding words of this verse from “Ragged Schools of London.”
Wicked children, with peaked chins,
And old foreheads, there are many
With no pleasures except sins,
Gambling with a stolen penny.
The tone of the first two extracts suggests to our notice two very important characteristics of Mrs. Browning’s poetry. One is the religious element. We know no poet of the present day in whom religion appears so thoroughly a part of their whole being. The “trumpet” of Tennyson, worthily poet-laureate, gives no “uncertain sound,” but the lute of Mrs. Browning gives something more certain still. The great doctrine of the atonement finds expression in her writings easily and naturally. Thus she speaks of
That love and that sorrow which reconciled so
The above and below.
And describes Cowper waking to immortality,
Beneath those deep, pathetic eyes,
That closed in death to save him.
All honour to Tennyson for the noble prologue to “In Memoriam” and for other poems in that work, in which he goes beyond the fashionable sentimentalities of the present day. It shows us a strong mind grappling with doubts and difficulties, peering through the veil with which time and sense cover futurity, and discerning, perhaps but dimly, the light on the other side. In Mrs. Browning we have something different from this. We see a strong mind [p. 420→] cleared of doubts and difficulties resting in simple faith upon the mediator. She finds one faithful where all others are faithless. Her religion mixes with almost every thought; it is a light in the darkest gloom, a comfort in the deepest woe. What can be finer than the spirit of the following stanzas from De Profundis:—
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;
Thro’ dark and dearth, thro’ 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.
The other characteristic to which we have alluded is the melancholy tone which pervades nearly all Mrs. Browning’s poetry. It has been said of Adelaide Anne Proctor that “she is never cheerful; at the best only mournfully resigned.” And very nearly the same might be said of our poetess. The pieces written in a cheerful strain might be numbered almost by units. We admire the elasticity that rebounds
“From grave to gay, from lively to severe;”
but we shall be disappointed if we look for it in Mrs. Browning. Early troubles, and no doubt natural temperament, seem to have cast a shadow over her whole life, and she is almost always “under the cloud.” There are some of her poems which run in a light and pleasant vein, such as “Man’s Requirements,” “Cyprus Wine,” “To Hush [sic] My Dog,” [“]May’s Love,” &c., but they are few and far between. Still, after all, this is not what we most require in a great poet; and we hope to show presently that the dark shade of her poetry has not on the whole an injurious tendency.
We have as yet said nothing about Mrs. Browning’s sonnets. They contain the very essence of her poetry. Striking in conception, profound in feeling, exquisitely beautiful in illustration, often (though not always) musical in expression, they present an epitome [p. 421→] of her poetic power. We are speaking now, more especially, not of the forty-four “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” but of those placed at the end of the second volume of her works. It is a difficult task from gems all so dazzling and so rare to pick out one or two and say, “these out-vie the rest,” but here are a couple which need no critical comment, and may serve to give some idea of the beauty of the others.
AN APPREHENSION.
If all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
For life than pity,—I should yet be slow
To bring my own heart nakedly below
The palm of such a friend that he should press
Motive, condition, means, appliances,
My false ideal joy, and fickle woe
Out full to light and knowledge; I should fear
Some plait between the brows, some rougher chime
In the free voice.—O angels, let your flood
Of bitter scorn dash on me! do ye hear
What I say who bear calmly all the time
This everlasting face to face with God.
COMFORT.
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet!
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber while I go
In reach of Thy divinest voice complete,
In humanest affection—thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing. As a child
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother’s mouth,
Till, sinking on her breast love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
Equally fine are the sonnets entitled, “Tears,” “Grief,” “Consolation,” “Perplexed Music,” “Substitution,” “Futurity.” The idea conveyed may or may not be absolutely new, but the way in which it is conveyed overwhelms us with its beauty, and never afterwards does the idea pass through our mind but the sonnet which sings of it is recalled. It may be further remarked that these sonnets observe with more than usual strictness, and more than usual elegance, the rule that a sonnet is to be the expression of a single idea.
If we turn to her faults, a charge which has some foundation to rest upon is that Mrs. Browning is unpatriotic. We certainly wish that she had not written “A Curse for England” among her “Poems [p. 422→] before Congress,” though, to do her justice, it should be stated that the title is the worst part of this poem. We think, too, that her song for the ragged schools of London in her new book, and some parts of “Aurora Leigh” might have been written in a more charitable spirit. She seems to see but few of England’s excellencies while she discerns with a keen eye all her faults. Still it is well we should be told of them sometimes, and if we would be charitable on our part we shall believe that she desires to amend what is amiss in a country she loves, rather than to condemn one she hates. She has an ideal for England, and wishes her to rise to it. Her ideal, perhaps, is not our ideal, but of course she is at liberty to advocate it. And we would remark that whatever conclusion we come to upon the matter, Mrs. Browning’s reputation as a poet is not in the slightest degree affected either by this accusation or the preceding. Still we think a mistake is made when any one mixes politics with poetry as she has done in “Casa Guidi Windows” and many other poems. The best excuse, and we might almost call it a justification, is that the wrongs and sufferings of down-trodden Italy, which her long residence at Florence has given her the opportunity of appreciating to the full, have called forth all the noblest feelings of her breast, and made her give vent to them in passionate and poetical remonstrance. These feelings of sympathy for the oppressed, and desire for justice, we always see in every true-hearted woman, and especially every true-hearted English-woman, and really when they produce such a magnificent piece of declamation as the following (from the “Last Poems”) we can forgive them for having gone a little too far upon some occasions.
FIRST NEWS FROM VILLAFRANCA.
Peace, peace, peace, do you say?
What!—with the enemy’s guns in our ears?
With the country’s wrong not rendered back?
What!—while Austria stands at bay
In Mantua, and our Venice bears
The cursed flag of the yellow and black?
Peace, peace, peace, do you say?
And this the Mincio? where’s the fleet,
And where’s the sea? Are we all blind
Or mad with blood shed yesterday,
Ignoring Italy under our feet
And seeing things before, behind.
Peace, peace, peace, do you say?
What!—uncontested, undenied?
Because we triumph, we succumb?
A pair of emperors stand in the way
(One of whom is a man beside)
To sign and seal our cannons dumb. [p. 423→]
No! not Napoleon?—he who mused
At Paris, and at Milan spake,
And at Solferino led the fight;
Not he we trusted, honoured, used
Our hearts and hopes for, till they break—
Even so, you tell us—in his sight.
Peace, peace, is still your word,
We say you lie, then!—that is plain,
There is no peace, and shall be none,
Our very dead would cry “absurd!”
And clamour that they died in vain,
And whine to come back to the sun.
Hush, more reverence for the dead!
They’ve done the most for Italy
Evermore since the earth was fair.
Now would that we had died instead,
Still dreaming peace meant liberty,
And did not, could not mean despair.
Peace you say?—yes, peace, in truth!
But such a peace as the ear can achieve
’Twixt the rifles’ click and the rush of the ball.
’Twixt the tiger’s spring, and the crush of the tooth
’Twixt the dying atheist’s negative,
And God’s face,—waiting, after all!
No doubt the acute critic who discovered that Tennyson’s “Maud” exhibited “a rampant and rabid bloodthirstiness of soul” would say the same of the above. We will not argue the point, but asking the reader to remember Mrs. Browning’s love for Italy, leave him to decide the question.
Is Mrs. Browning’s poetry “full of metaphysics”? What do we mean by metaphysics? Shall we take the old Scotchman’s definition? “When ye hear a man talking and ye dinna ken what he says, and when naebody else kens what he says, and when he doesna ken what he says himsel—that’s metaphyhsics.” If we take this definition we answer without hesitation in the negative. There are certainly some passages in Mrs. Browning’s poetry where we are not quite sure that we know what she is saying, but we are far from supposing that nobody else understands them, and we have a very decided conviction that Mrs. Browning always “kenned what she was saying hersel.” But if by metaphysics we denote the investigation of certain subjects in the world of mind, there is something of metaphysics in Mrs. Browning’s poetry, especially in “Aurora Leigh,” a work not now under our review. Nor is it altogether objectionable. Such investigations are certainly not the main object of poetry, but they may be made to harmonize with it, and always prevent it from degenerating into mere sentimental nonsense. It is true that this often makes Mrs. Browning no light reading. Combined with other things it frequently renders some passages [p. 424→] somewhat obscure. There is a want of clearness about them with which many readers have no patience, but if they had patience, and studied them until they discovered the poet’s meaning, they would be richly rewarded by the force and beauty of it. The difficulty of comprehension in Mrs. Browning arises, almost without exception, not from the use of involved expressions, nor from the suppression of connecting links of thought, but from the very sublimity of the thoughts themselves or from the subtlety of the connection between them. Herein she differs from sundry other poets of the present day, whose writings present passages hard to be understood, and when they are understood contain nothing adequately to reward the reader for his pains,—some pretty but commonplace idea wrapped up in a multitude of words and illustrated by a far-fetched simile. The indistinctness of such writers reminds us of the fog that hangs over the village, which, when it parts, discloses to us only the street,—very pretty with its thatched cottages, rustic porches, trim gardens, and quaint old shops, but only the village-street after all. But the dimness of Mrs. Browning is like the mist that envelopes the summit of Snowden or Ben Nevis, that envelopes it just because of its height, and when it draws off reveals to our enraptured gaze the grand old mountain towering above the clouds in all its sublime majesty, ever pointing heavenwards and leading us half-way there.
In conclusion, what shall we say of the general tendency of these poems, and of the influence they are calculated to exert? The tendency is somewhat melancholy, no doubt. But what sort of melancholy? Not the “black bile” of Byron, discontented with everything around him, finding bitterness in all things, and where he cannot find it making it. No—simply the melancholy of a heart that has itself experienced grief, and is too sympathetic and too spiritual to feel gay in a world where there is so much sin, and consequently so much sorrow. But Mrs. Browning finds deep joy in the beauties of external nature, and still more in the beauties of human nature. Love and grief are sacred things with her. Thus she says in her sonnet on
EXAGGERATION.
O brothers, let us leave the shame and sin
Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
The holy name of grief!—holy herein
That by the grief of one came all our good.
Here is her sonnet on
GRIEF.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air,
Beat upwards to God’s throne in loud access [p. 425→]
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries, lieth silent, bare,
Under the blanching, vertical eye glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eye-lids are not wet:
If it could weep it could arise and go.
Love, in its widest signification, takes its true place in her poetry as a thing high and holy, above all other emotions, whether it is a mother’s love, as in “Isabel’s [sic] Child,” a sister’s as in “Bertha in the Lane,” a friend’s, as in her sonnets addressed to Hugh Stuart Boyd, or the love for “a nearer one still and a dearer,” as in “A Woman’s Shortcomings,” from which the following lines are extracted:
Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by one,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when upraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear, “For life, for death!”—
Oh, fear to call it loving!
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day,
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past—
Oh, never call it loving!
From love for the human Mrs. Browning continually passes by the most natural transition to love for the divine; and when the love of the divine is touched on, the human sinks into insignificance compared with it. This happens again and again in Mrs. Browning’s poetry, and a wild but most beautiful comparison of divine and human love is the poem entitled “A Valediction.” The speaker, bidding farewell to his beloved, would fain bestow a blessing on her as she departs, but finds that all blessing must be left in the hands of God.
We cannot forbear giving the last two stanzas.
Can I bless thee, my beloved,—can I bless thee;
What blessing word can I
From mine own tears keep dry?
What flowers grow in my field wherewith to dress thee?
My good reverts to ill;
My calmnesses would move thee,
My softnesses would prick thee, [p. 426→]
My bindings up would break thee,
My crownings, curse and kill;
Alas, I can but love thee!
May God bless thee my beloved,—may God bless thee.
Can I love thee, my beloved,—can I love thee?
And is this like love to stand
With no help in my hand,
When strong as death I fain would watch above thee.
My love-kiss can deny
No tear that falls beneath it;
Mine oath of love can swear thee
From no ill that come near thee,
And thou diest while I breathe it,
And I—I can but die!
May God love thee my beloved,—may God love thee.
In all this the influence of Mrs. Browning’s poetry is undeniably good. Can we say the same of her long flights into the world of spirits, her weariness of this present life, her yearning after the things unseen and eternal? We think we can. Some will say that such poems unfit us for our daily duty, and that for their part they have no need of these visions of the future, this bringing near of things to the hereafter. But there are many others who will think differently. We are not sure that we envy the man who is so comfortable in this present life that he has no need to look beyond it for something to cheer him on his path; to whom the flowers by the wayside smell so sweetly that he desires no breeze to waft to him the perfume of the lilies in the garden of the heavenly Eden; who has so much light within him, that to anticipate the radiance of the Golden City is altogether superfluous. It is more natural that those who know they are “pilgrims and sojourners here” should feel otherwise, and assuredly the many who have had to drink a bitter cup and bear a heavy cross will find in Mrs. Browning’s poetry the very thing they need.
Moreover, that this poetry tends to unfit for daily life we altogether deny. Does a man work more slowly because he has had a load taken off his shoulders? Does he run a race less swiftly because he sees the prize shining at the end of the course? After reading the poem on the peace of Villafranca, quoted above, no one will say that Mrs. Browning is a mere dreamer, and forgets action while wrapped in clouds of thought. Let the feelings of her mind and the tendency of her poetry be set forth in her own words when she writes thus on
WORK AND CONTEMPLATION.
The woman singeth at her spinning wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
More than of her flax— and yet the reel [p. 427→]
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Church—that we may do
Our Father’s business in these temples mirk,
Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong:
While thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue
Some high, calm, spheric tune, and prove our work
The better for the sweetness of our song.
We do not hesitate therefore to praise the general influence exerted upon the mind by Mrs. Browning’s poetry; and while, perhaps, it does not fall in with so many varying moods as the poetry of Tennyson, we believe it, on the whole not less healthy and not less capable of giving real pleasure. But as we have before said, Mrs. Browning must be studied in order to be appreciated, and by those who do study her she will be appreciated.
The list of her poems is now complete. It will receive no more additions. Her “work and contemplation” are transferred to a higher sphere, and she now enjoys, we hope, His presence in whose honour were raised her noblest and sweetest strains.
“Albeit softly in our ears her silver song is ringing,
The footfall of her parting soul is softer than her singing.”
A.H.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
Poems (EBB), 5th ed., London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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