E630100A. Last Poems.
The London Quarterly Review, January 1863, pp. 556–557.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
These poems, some of which have been previously published, exhibit all the peculiarities of Mrs. Browning’s former works. They are disfigured by many instances of extreme harshness. She abuses poetic licence by violent and rugged transpositions, such as are without example in our canonized bards, and are contrary to the very conception of poetry. For example:—
She who scarcely trod the earth
Turned mere dirt? My Agnes—mine!
Called so! Felt of too much worth
To be used so! too divine
To be breathed near, and so forth. (11)—Page 45.
And again:—
Cross her quiet hands, and smooth
Down her patient locks of silk,
Cold and pensive as in truth
You your fingers in spilt milk
Drew along a marble floor.—Page 2.
These poems exhibit the old confusion of thought and expression. For example:—
What she sinned
She could pray on high enough
To keep safe above the wind.—Page 3.
Here is an unwarranted use of an intransitive verb as transitive. But to pass by this, the meaning would seem to be that “Little Mattie” could pray her sins high enough to keep them safe above the wind; which to us is the merest nonsense. Professor Wilson used to write his poems in prose, and afterwards versify them: perhaps some of our young poets would talk better sense if they follow his example.
We regret to say, also, that these last poems of a gifted and lamented authoress are deformed by the strange and startling coarseness which was one of her most unpleasing occasional characteristics.
She lied and stole,
And spat into my love’s pure pyx
The rank saliva of her soul.—Page 21.
And there is a broadness and strength of expression in speaking on certain subjects, which borders closely on indelicacy, and is especially displeasing in a poetess. Yet, in these poems, Mrs. Browning’s genius is as apparent as ever. We have always admired, since its first appearance in the Cornhill Magazine, the poem entitled, “A Musical [p. 557→] Instrument.” There, by an analogy finely conceived and powerfully sustained, is taught the truth that only through suffering can the poet learn “that which he teaches in song;” and, moreover, that a chief element in the suffering consists in this, that he who has once been thus raised above his fellows can no more enjoy the luxury of being a “mere man among men:”
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,
For the reed which grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Several of the poems are on subjects connected with Italy, on whose behalf Mrs. Browning’s sympathies were strongly enlisted during her long residence there. The finest of these is the “Austrian Recruit.” That on Garibaldi, though beautiful and even noble in conception, is unwieldy and ungainly in expression.
But the finest poem is her “Song for the Ragged Schools of London.” That poem is the voice of the enlightened philanthropy of to-day: but it is the voice of that philanthropy, when her keenest sympathies are excited, and when the noblest enthusiasm is filling her heart.
Appended to these last poems are several paraphrases, so called; which are really translations. They are all of them exquisitely musical. If Anacreon himself had been an Englishman, he could hardly have written airier verse than the “Ode to the Swallow.”
In the management of one fine and famous subject, the interview between Hector and Andromache, in the sixth book of the Iliad, the poetess has succeeded admirably. She has proved herself capable of appreciating perhaps the most exquisite passage in all the range of the old classic poets; and her success has justified her bold attempt to grapple with the difficulties arising from its very perfection. The rendering is on the whole remarkably close; and the poetical form—the rhythm and the phrase—is very happy and effective. One thing only we must blame: the introduction at the most tender point of the passage of the epithet “sweet,” for which there is no shade of warrant in the original, and which ill befits the mouth of the κορυθαίολος ῞κτωρ.
All lovers of true poetry will treasure this book as the last they shall receive from Mrs. Browning. But if it cannot detract from, it will not enhance, her former fame.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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