E620900A. General Review Essay.
Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, September 1862, pp. 297–298.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
Now the beauty and brightness of Summer are over for this year, and from the shadows of their darkening and decay the loveliness of the Autumn will gain its brightest tintings, its wonderful variety of charms, as well as the perfect ripening of its riches gifts for the use of living creatures on the earth.
So it should be in the changes of human life. The fading of youthful beauty, and the decay or darkening of the brightness with which hope and imagination gilded the summer brightness of existence, should not make us sad or even doubtful of the goodness and loving kindness of “Our Father in Heaven.” We may have opportunities before us of gaining better and even more lovely gifts and graces than ever the spring or summer time of life has afforded us.
Is it not a pleasant reflection that, as every season of Nature has its charms, so every change in human life brings its opportunities, its hopes, and its means of happiness? We have but to improve these opportunities cheerfully and faithfully and we shall profit by every change. The true genius of life, which sees and uses opportunities aright, is a precious gift, far exceeding that of the greatest poet, if, with his insight into the nature of humanity, he did not know how to govern his own spirit. And hence the poetry which teaches this art of right life is the highest effort of poetry. None can effectually teach this art except the true Christian, because the fear and the love of God, as the Bible enjoins, are the only sources from which a right life from right motives can be wrought out and perfected. Therefore it becomes a matter of deep interest to all, who wish to promote this true idea of life and its opportunities, to keep the memory of those writers, especially great poets, who have been exemplars as well as teachers of this Christian doctrine, fresh in the minds and warm in the hearts of the young and of those who influence the young. As woman has the home influence in her keeping, she should be well-informed in these sentiments; she should gratefully acknowledge that among the glorious names which have blessed the world with their light and purity we may thankfully place our Anglo-Saxon kinswoman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among the highest of the poets.
In our July number, we gave a sketch of one of her poems—“Aurora Leigh”—and promised some additional selections. On reflection we have thought it better to refer to her other and earlier poems, as we hope our readers have, before this time, made themselves familiar with the fortunes of “Aurora”—and, also, that each reader will make selections from that remarkable History of Ideas, as it affords, on almost every page, axioms and truths well worth treasuring and studying. The learned and popular author of the “Essays in Biography and Criticism” considers “The Drama of Exile” as the greatest of Mrs. Browning’s productions.
He says: “This may fearlessly be pronounced one of the greatest poems in the English language: of a pathos genuine and unfathomable, of sublimity exalted, and in which a resistless imagination casts its lit eye, with a glance swifter than that of logic, far aloft into the regions of intellectual and religious truth.”
Mr. Bayne has a long and elaborate article on this poem, with many selections, which will greatly aid any young reader (and the older also) to understand and sympathize with “the notes of its mighty music.” We have only room now for a portion of what the critic calls “those inimitable passages in which Mrs. Browning is peculiarly herself; in which she vindicates for her sex the distinction that a woman and not a man has written of it most nobly. In fitness of conception, in terseness of diction, in loftiness of thought, the following lines have all that the genius of a man could impart; while the thrill of deeper tenderness pervading them tells, in unmistakable accents, of a heart which can throb with wifely emotion, and a breast on which a babe, sleeping in the light of its mother’s smile, may rest. In all great poems there are lesser poems, complete in themselves; and this passage may be regarded as a poem, on the duties and joys of woman, by Mrs. Browning. It occurs in the form of a blessing, pronounced by Adam, at the command of Christ, on Eve.
Adam. Henceforward, rise, aspire
To all the calms and magnanimities,
The lofty uses and the noble ends,
The sanctified devotion and full work
To which thou art elected evermore,
First woman, wife, and mother!
Eve. And first in sin.
Adam. And also the sole bearer of the Seed
Whereby sin dieth! Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with lever [sic, for level] eyelids the To Come,
And all the dark o’ the world. Rise, woman, rise
To thy peculiar and best altitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope—
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death—the ransom-righteousness,
The heavenly life and compensative rest
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve;
Found acceptable to the world instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood—
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin;
Some pang paid down for each new human life;
Some weariness in guarding such a life—
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without;
And pressures of an alien tyranny,
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life-working. A child’s kiss,
Set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad;
A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich;
An old man, helped by thee, shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head—Christ witnessing
With looks of prompting love—to keep thee clear
Of all reproach against the sin forgone,
From all the generations which succeed. [p. 298→]
Mr. Bayne, in summing up the wonderful power of the poetess, truly says: “Two things appear to be peculiarly characteristic of this poem: beautiful apart, they are still more beautiful in combination. The first is its earnest and essential Christianity; the second its intense and pathetic womanliness. Mrs. Browning is in the highest sense, and always, a Christian poetess. She has drunk more deeply into the spirituality of the Gospel, and, it may even be, looked with greater earnestness and amazement upon certain of its sublime facts than Milton. * * * The Christianity of Mrs. Browning’s poems is far too constant and deep-lying—it enters too pervasively into the warf and woof of her thought and feeling, to be by any possibility an affectation or a fashion. It is manifestly the life of her life, the breath of immortality at the centre of her being. Her genuine womanliness is no less conspicuous.”
We have only intimated, as it were, the richness of imagery, the beauty of diction, the fervidness of love, and the faith in God which pervade this wonderful poem, where the highest hopes of humanity are made not only luminous but lit up with sure fire of faith from the soul of Genius and Christian feeling combined, that no woman’s heart can dwell on it unmoved. We would counsel our young American writers, who are earnest in their zeal to be distinguished worthily, to study the poems of Mrs. Browning. She displays great variety of characters and events; among these we will give one portraiture—the day dreams of a girl, it might be called—which we think exquisite in its touches and tintings, and truth.
the romance of the swan’s nest.
Little Ellie sits alone
’Mid the bushes of a meadow,
By a stream-side, on the grass;
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.
She has thrown her bonnet by;
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water’s flow;
Now she holds them nakedly
In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
While she rocketh to and fro.
Little Ellie sits alone—
And the smile, she softly useth,
Fills the sentence like a speech,
While she thinks what shall be done—
And the sweetest pleasure chooseth,
For her future, within reach.
Little Ellie in her smile
Chooseth—“I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds!
He shall love me without guile;
And to him I will discover
That swan’s nest among the reeds.
“And the steed shall be red-roan,
And the lover shall be noble,
With an eye that takes the breath—
And the lute he plays upon,
Shall strike ladies into trouble,
As his sword strikes men to death.
“And the steed it shall be shod
All in silver, housed in azure,
And the mane shall swim the wind!
And the hoofs along the sod
Shall flash onward in a pleasure,
Till the shepherds look behind.
“But my lover will not prize
All the glory that he rides in,
When he gazes in my face,
He will say—‘O Love, thine eyes
Builds the shrine my soul abides in;
And I kneel here for thy grace!’
‘Then, ay then, he shall kneel low—
With the red-roan steed anear him,
Which shall seem to understand—
Till I answer—‘Rise and go!
For the world must love and fear him
Whom I gift with heart and hand.’
“Then he will arise so pale,
I shall feel my own lips tremble
With a yes I must not say—
Nathless maiden brave, ‘Farewell,’
I will utter, and dissemble—
‘Light to-morrow with to-day.’
‘Then he will ride through the hills,
To the wide world past the river,
There to put away all wrong!
To make straight distorted wills,
And to empty the broad quiver
Which the wicked bear along.
“Three times shall a young foot-page
Swim the stream and climb the mountain,
And kneel down beside my feet—
‘Lo, my master sends this gage,
Lady, for thy pity counting!
What wilt thou exchange for it?’
‘And the first time, I will send
A white rose-bud for a guerdon—
And the second time a glove!
But the third time—I may bend
From my pride, and answer—‘Pardon,
If he comes to take my love.’
“Then the young foot-page will run—
Then my lover will ride faster,
Till he kneeleth at my knee!
‘I am a duke’s eldest son!
Thousand serfs do call me master—
But, O Love, I love but thee!’
“He will kiss me on my mouth
Then; and lead me as a lover!
Through the crowds that praise his deeds!
And, when soul-tied by one troth,
Unto him I will discover
That swan’s nest among the reeds.”
Little Ellie, with her smile
Not yet ended, rose up gayly,
Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe—
And went homeward round a mile,
Just to see, as she did daily,
What more eggs were with the two.
Pushing through the elm-tree copse,
Winding up the stream light-hearted,
Where the osier pathway leads—
Past the boughs she stoops—and stops!
Lo! the wild swan had deserted—
And a rat had gnawed the reeds.
Ellie went home sad and slow!
If she found the lover ever,
With his red-roan steed of steeds,
Sooth I know not! but I know
She could show him never—never,
That swan’s nest among the reeds.
Reviewed:
General Review Essay (EBB).
___________________
