R330400A. Pauline.
The Monthly Repository, April 1833, pp. 252–262.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 341–344.
The most deeply interesting adventures, the wildest vicissitudes, the most daring explorations, the mightiest magic, the fiercest conflicts, the brightest triumphs, and the most affecting catastrophes, are those of the spiritual world. Many a self-educated man could tell a history, as full as that of Robinson Crusoe, of ingenious expedients and contrivances, to supply the deficiency of his mental furniture and resources; and fascinating would be the narrative of the toil, the desperation, the inventions, and the perseverance of the solitary intellectual life. A poor gardener’s boy in the Highlands of Scotland, such as Stone the mathematician, had quite as much to do for himself mentally, as must have been done for his physical support had he been shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez. And would not the history of Lord Bacon’s rich and stately intellect, the showing how he built up its regal palace, and organized its powers, and conquered remote provinces to its dominion, and cultivated its various possessions, and overturned, first in himself and then for others, the ancient dynasties and despotisms beneath which reason had crouched, and founded a new order of things in the world of philosophy; would not this be as great a theme as the battles of Alexander, the conquest of Darius, the invasion of India, the scenes of the temple in the Lybian desert, and of the banqueting hall in Babylon, the founding of Alexandria, and the generation of a brood of kingdoms? The faculty of description may be as efficiently exercised in conveying the conception of a state of mind as in imparting that of a group of figures or a landscape. The abasement of a mighty spirit, brooding over the wreck of character produced by its own mistaken daring, may be invested with all the touching sublimity of the historical incident of Marius sitting amid the ruins of Carthage. The soul has its seasons, which may be sung with all their contrasted, yet connected phenomena, and with as many an episode to be naturally and gracefully interwoven, as the solar year. There is an art, not less felicitous than that which produces characters like a Creator, and links events together like a providence, and makes its combinations tend to the premeditated result like an overruling fate or destiny, in that which traces the growth of an individual mind, the influences upon it of things external, the powers unfolding themselves within it with all their harmonies and discords, the ties of association flowing hither and thither like the films of a spider’s web, yet strong as iron bands, its prevailing tendencies and frequent irregularities, with all that makes it a microcosm, if it be not rather the world of matter that is the microcosm, and that of mind, the true and essential universe alone worthy of observation and interest. Whoever may tell of [p. 253→] visiting Timbuctoo, and tracing the course of the Niger; whatever veracious histories may be put forth of kingdoms, ancient or modern, near or remote; how wondrous soever may be the legends which romancers indite of heroes who braved the terrors of magic, who slew the brave, and loved the beautiful, who now ascended thrones, and anon were cast into dungeons: in all the facts and fictions of outer being, which is but as outer darkness to the light within, never let the world be unheedful of those who have aught to tell concerning the human soul, so that they be but duly qualified by “metaphysical aid,” and make their revelations with the ascertained authority of philosophical observation or poetic inspiration. Rightly has Dr. Channing told us, in that noble exhortation to “honour all men,”* that “the great revelation which man now needs is a revelation of man to himself;” and that “the mystery within ourselves, the mystery of our spiritual, accountable, immortal nature, it behoves us to explore; happy are they who have begun to penetrate it.” With sorrow and shame we say it, that little is to be expected from professional theologians in this great service. Here and there amongst philosophers and poets, we find a true hierophant, one who knows what is in man, and makes it visible, so that we gaze fixedly, as if at the upraising of the veil of Isis. From whatever quarter the light may come, we hail it reverently and gladly. In this is the power of Channing’s own eloquent preachments, to which we have repeatedly done homage. This was the charm of those benignant speculations, in which Bailey showed the growth and rights of opinion. This is the soul of the luscious melodies of Tennyson, and of the loftier strains of Coleridge. And this must be found in every one whose brows are destined to wear the laurel, or be irradiated by the halo.
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*Discourse 4 of the volume recently imported.
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The knowledge of mind is the first of sciences; the records of its formation and workings are the most important of histories; and it is eminently a subject for poetical exhibition. The annals of a poet’s mind are poetry. Nor has there ever been a genuine bard, who was not in himself more poetical than any of his productions. They are emanations of his essence. He himself is, or has been, all that he truly and touchingly, i.e. poetically, describes. Wordsworth, indeed, never carried a pedlar’s pack, nor did Byron ever command a pirate ship, or Coleridge shoot an albatross; but there were times and moods in which their thoughts intently realized, and identified themselves with the reflective Wanderer, the impetuous Corsair, and the ancient Mariner. They felt their feelings, thought their thoughts, burned with their passions, dreamed their dreams, and lived their lives, or died their deaths. In relation to his creations, the poet is the omnific spirit in whom they have their being. All their vitality must exist in his life. He only, in them, displays to us fragments of himself. The [p. 254→] poem, in which a great poet should reveal the whole of himself to mankind would be a study, a delight, and a power, for which there is yet no parallel; and around which the noblest creations of the noblest writers would range themselves as subsidiary luminaries.
These thoughts have been suggested by the work before us, which, though evidently a hasty and imperfect sketch, has truth and life in it, which gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with the power, the sensation of which has never yet failed us as a test of genius. Whoever the anonymous author may be, he is a poet. A pretender to science cannot always be safely judged of by a brief publication, for the knowledge of some facts does not imply the knowledge of other facts; but the claimant of poetic honours may generally be appreciated by a few pages, often by a few lines, for if they be poetry, he is a poet. We cannot judge of the house by the brick, but we can judge of the statue of Hercules by its foot. We felt certain of Tennyson, before we saw the book, by a few verses which had straggled into a newspaper; we are not less certain of the author of Pauline.
Pauline is the recipient of the confessions: the hero is as anonymous as the author, and this is no matter; for poet is the title both of the one and the other. The confessions have nothing in them which needs names: the external world is only reflected in them in its faintest shades; its influences are only described after they have penetrated into the intellect. We have never read any thing more purely confessional. The whole composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another. And yet the composition is not dreamy; there is on it a deep stamp of reality. Still less is it characterised by coldness. It has visions that we love to look upon, and tones that touch the inmost heart till it responds.
The poet’s confessions are introduced with an analysis of his spiritual constitution, in which he is described as having an intense consciousness of individuality, combined with a sense of power, a self-supremacy, and a “principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel all;” of this essential self, imagination is described as the characteristic quality; an imagination, steady and unfailing in its power. A “yearning after God,” or supreme and universal good, unconsciously cherished through the earlier stages of the history, keeps this mind from utterly dissipating itself; and, which seems to us the only point in which the coherence fails, there is added an unaptness for love, a mere perception of the beautiful, the perception being felt more precious than its object.
In the progress and developement of the being thus constituted, we first see a solitary boy, whose mind neither parent, teacher, nor friend seems to be in communion with, or influencing; untutored by any one, unattracted towards any one, shut up by himself in a [p. 255→] library, and spontaneously intent on those great classic writers of antiquity, who should be thus studied when studied by boys at all, instead of being vulgarized by the whippery of grammar schools.
They came to me in my first dawn of life,
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books,
All halo-girt with fancies of my own,
And I myself went with the tale—a god,
Wandering after beauty—or a giant,
Standing vast in the sunset—an old hunter,
Talking with gods—or a high-crested chief,
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos;—
I tell you, naught has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives.
I had not seen a work of lofty art,
Nor woman’s beauty, nor sweet nature’s face,
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea:
The deep groves, and white temples, and wet caves—
And nothing ever will surprise me now—
Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair.
But the ideal, though thus strongly infused into his being, did not wholly pervade, or permanently elevate it. A vague sense of power was generated, but the pressure of circumstances kept the spirit down; restraint humbled and corrupted the soul; and the mental and moral degradation which had commenced, would have proceeded rapidly and fatally, but that a purity of taste had been produced, which interposed to check the downward progress; and in music a ministry was found which was one of preservation, till the soul was ripened for higher aspirations.
As peace returned, I sought out some pursuit:
And song rose—no new impulse—but the one
With which all others best could be combined.
My life has not been that of those whose heaven
Was lampless, save where poesy shone out;
But as a clime, where glittering mountain-tops,
And glancing sea, and forests steeped in light,
Give back reflected the far-flashing sun;
For music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotions strange by it,
Not else to be revealed) is as a voice,
A low voice calling Fancy, as a friend,
To the green woods in the gay summer time.
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes,
Which have made painters pale; and they go on
While stars look at them, and winds call to them,
As they leave life’s path for the twilight world,
Where the dead gather. This was not at first,
For I scarce knew what I would do. I had
No wish to paint, no yearning—but I sang. [p. 256→]
Dissatisfied with his own acquirements and achievements, the young minstrel now seeks to know what has been done by the master spirits of the earth; he gazes on the works of mighty bards and sages; he looks unappalled, for he finds his own thoughts recorded, and his own powers exemplified; he turns from them to self-study and analysis; his sight is sharpened and his power excited by introspection; he feels the misgivings felt of old, and would make, or recognise the discovery desired of old: he too would solve the world’s enigma.
I dreamed not of restraint, but gazed
On all things: schemes and systems went and came,
And I was proud (being vainest of the weak),
In wandering o’er them, to seek out some one
To be my own: as one should wander o’er
The white way for a star.
He enters the world, and the bright theories which at first spread their lustre over the affairs of real life, are soon darkened and dissipated by his nearer observance. A corresponding change in himself follows.
And suddenly, without heart-wreck, I awoke
As from a dream—I said, ’twas beautiful,
Yet but a dream; and so adieu to it.
As some world-wanderer sees in a far meadow
Strange towers, and walled gardens, thick with trees,
Where singing goes on, and delicious mirth,
And laughing fairy creatures peeping over,
And on the morrow, when he comes to live
For ever by those springs, and trees, fruit-flushed
And fairy bowers—all his search is vain.
Well I remember * * * *
First went my hopes of perfecting mankind,
And faith in them—then freedom in itself,
And virtue in itself—and then my motives” ends,
And powers and loves; and human love went last.
I felt this no decay, because new powers
Rose as old feelings left—wit, mockery,
And happiness; for I had oft been sad,
Mistrusting my resolves: but now I cast
Hope joyously away—I laughed and said,
“No more of this”—I must not think; at length
I look’d again to see how all went on.
The consciousness of intellectual power when the moral faculties were thus chilled into heartlessness and selfishness, is splendidly pictured.
My powers were greater—as some temple seemed
My soul, where naught is changed, and incense rolls
Around the altar—only God is gone,
And some dark spirit sitteth in his seat! [p. 257→]
So I passed through the temple; and to me
Knelt troops of shadows; and they cried, “Hail, king!
We serve thee now, and thou shalt serve no more!
Call on us, prove us, let us worship thee!”
And I said, “Are ye strong—let fancy bear me
Far from the past.”—And I was borne away
As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind,
O’er deserts, towers, and forests, I being calm;
And I said, “I have nursed up energies,
They will prey on me.” And a band knelt low,
And cried, “Lord, we are here, and we will make
A way for thee—in thine appointed life
O look on us!” And I said, “Ye will worship
Me; but my heart must worship too.” They shouted,
“Thyself—thou art our king!” So I stood there
Smiling * * * * * *
This state, which every superior mind has probably been in, and which has endured through the whole existence of some extraordinary men—Voltaire for instance; is described through several pages, with its various incidents, fluctuations, and modifications, until the moral power shows its returning life by a feeling of irritable dissatisfaction, a longing after higher good, and a sense of capacity for its enjoyment. There is a groping about after something to rest upon; a vain attempt to cherish delusion and prejudice, rather than be left utterly loveless; and at length the soul throws itself upon religion, like a hunted bird dropping into its own nest.
O God! where does this tend—these struggling aims!
What would I have? what is this “sleep,” which seems
To bound all? can there be a “waking” point
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule—
It would be first in all things—it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled,—but that complete
Commanding for commanding sickens it.
The last point that I can trace is, rest beneath
Some better essence than itself—in weakness;
This is “myself”—not what I think should be,
And what is that I hunger for but God?
My God, my God! let me for once look on thee
As though naught else existed: we alone.
And as creation crumbles, my soul’s spark
Expands till I can say, “Even from myself
I need thee, and I feel thee, and I love thee;
I do not plead my rapture in thy works
For love of thee—or that I feel as one
Who cannot die—but there is that in me
Which turns to thee, which loves, or which should love.”
Why have I girt myself with this hell-dress?
Why have I laboured to put out my life? [p. 258→]
Is it not in my nature to adore,
And e’en for all my reason do I not
Feel him, and thank him, and pray to him?—Now.
Can I forego the trust that he loves me?
Do I not feel a love which only one . . . . .
O thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed,
I have denied thee calmly—do I not
Pant when I read of thy consummate deeds,
And burn to see thy calm, pure truths out-flash
The brightest gleams of earth’s philosophy?
Do I not shake to hear aught question thee? ....
If I am erring save me, madden me,
Take from me powers, and pleasures—let me die
Ages, so I see thee: I am knit round
As with a charm, by sin and lust and pride,
Yet tho’ my wandering dreams have seen all shapes
Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee—
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee,
In the damp night by weeping Olivet,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less—
Or dying with thee on the lonely cross—
Or witnessing thy bursting from the tomb!
And now when he has run the whole toilsome yet giddy round and arrived at the goal, there arises, even though that goal be religion, or because it is religion, a yearning after human sympathies and affections, which would not have assorted with any state or moment of the previous experience; he could not have loved before; at one time it would have been only a fancy, a cold, and yet perhaps extravagant imagining; at another, a low and selfish passion. Some souls are purified by love, others are purified for love. Othello needed not Desdemona to listen to his tale of disastrous chances; they were only external perils, repaid by elevated station; but the mind that has gone through more than his vicissitudes, been in deeper dangers, and deadlier struggles, even when it rests at last in a far higher repose and dignity, yearns for some one who will “seriously incline” to listen to the “strange eventful history,” one who will sympathize and soothe, who will receive the confession, and give the absolution of heaven its best earthly ratification, that of a pure and loving heart. The poem is addressed to Pauline; with her it begins, and ends; and her presence is felt throughout, as that of a second conscience, wounded by evil, but never stern, and incorporate in a form of beauty, which blends and softens the strong contrasts of different portions of the poem, so that all might be murmured by the breath of affection.
The author cannot expect such a poem as this to be popular, to make “a hit,” to produce a “sensation.” The public are but slow in recognising the claims of Tennyson, whom in some respects he resembles; and the common eye scarcely yet discerns among the [p. 259→] laurel-crowned, the form of Shelley, who seems (how justly, we stop not now to discuss,) to have been the god of his early idolatry. Whatever inspiration may have been upon him from that deity, the mysticism of the original oracles has been happily avoided. And whatever resemblance he may bear to Tennyson, (a fellow worshipper probably at the same shrine) he owes nothing of the perhaps inferior melody of his verse to an employment of archaisms which it is difficult to defend from the charge of affectation. But he has not given himself the chance for popularity which Tennyson did, and which it is evident that he easily might have done. His poem stands alone, with none of those slight but taking accompaniments, songs that sing themselves, sketches that every body knows, light little lyrics, floating about like humming birds, around the trunk and foliage of the poem itself; and which would attract so many eyes, and delight so many ears, that will be slow to perceive the higher beauty of that composition, and to whom a sycamore is no sycamore, unless it be “musical with bees.” That his not having done so, is owing to no want of the picturesque faculty, the grace, the sentiment which give their charm to such minor effusions, can soon be shown by a few quotations taken as they rise in the volume. We shall intermix with these as they may happen to come, others of a higher class, to complete the exemplification already contained in our citations of the author’s powers.
The following is a pretty instance of that peculiarity of modern poetry, arising from its more philosophical character, by which the internal is brought to illustrate the external, and the feeling is made an image of the object.
Spring’s first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills—the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood; when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow—and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.
Shelley was the author’s adoration and inspiration when it was, or seemed to him, a solitary thing to feel that power, which he now believes to be expanding into dominion. The fervency, the remembrance, the half regret mingling with the exultation of the following passage are as true, as its leading image is beautiful.
Sun-treader—life and light be thine for ever;
Thou art gone from us—years go by—and spring
Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful,
Yet thy songs come not—other bards arise,
But none like thee—they stand—thy majesties,
Like mighty works which tell some Spirit there
Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
Till, its long task completed, it hath risen [p. 260→]
And left us, never to return: and all
Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
But thou art still for me, as thou hast been
When I have stood with thee, as on a throne
With all thy dim creations gathered round
Like mountains,—and I felt of mould like them,
And creatures of my own were mixed with them,
Like things half-lived, catching and giving life.
But thou art still for me, who have adored,
Though single, panting but to hear thy name,
Which I believed a spell to me alone,
Scarce deeming thou wert as a star to men—
As one should worship long a sacred spring
Scarce worth a moth’s flitting, which long grasses cross,
And one small tree embowers droopingly,
Joying to see some wandering insect won,
To live in its few rushes—or some locust
To pasture on its boughs—or some wild bird
Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air,
And then should find it but the fountain-head,
Long lost, of some great river—washing towns
And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
But by its banks, untrod of human foot,
Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
In light as some thing lieth half of life
Before God’s foot—waiting a wondrous change
—Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
Like a sea’s arm as it goes rolling on,
Being the pulse of some great country—so
Wert thou to me—and art thou to the world.
And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret,
That I am not what I have been to thee.
Painful, and yet one of the few pains which are lovely, is the change described in the lines which follow, and the feeling with which it is combined.
And then know that this curse will come on us,
To see our idols perish—we may wither,
Nor marvel—we are clay; but our low fate
Should not extend to them, whom trustingly
We sent before into Time’s yawning gulf,
To face whate’er may lurk in darkness there—
To see the painters’ glory pass, and feel
Sweet music move us not as once, or worst,
To see decaying wits ere the frail body
Decays. Naught makes me trust in love so really,
As the delight of the contented lowness
With which I gaze on souls I’d keep for ever
In beauty—I’d be sad to equal them; [p. 261→]
I’d feed their fame e’en from my heart’s best blood,
Withering unseen, that they might flourish still.
Here is a picture,
Andromeda!
And she is with me—years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not—so beautiful
With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze;
And one red-beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and face and hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach,
By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone,—a thing
You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God
Will come in thunder from the stars to save her.
Our next quotation is towards the conclusion of the poem, where the recovering spirit meekly and trustingly invokes the tendings of affection for its perfect restoration.
The land which gave me thee shall be our home,
Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes
And snow-swathed mountains, and vast pines all girt
With ropes of snow—where nature lies all bare,
Suffering none to view her but a race
Most stinted and deformed—like the mute dwarfs
Which wait upon a naked Indian queen.
And there (the time being when the heavens are thick
With storms) I’ll sit with thee while thou dost sing
Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird
Who crieth as he flies for perfect joy,
Or telling me old stories of dead knights.
Or I will read old lays to thee—how she,
The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave
With power to love, and to be loved, and live.
Or we will go together, like twin gods
Of the infernal world, with scented lamp
Over the dead—to call and to awake—
Over the unshaped images which lie
Within my mind’s cave—only leaving all
That tells of the past doubts. So when spring comes,
And sunshine comes again like an old smile,
And the fresh waters, and awakened birds,
And budding woods await us—I shall be
Prepared, and we will go and think again,
And all old loves shall come to us—but changed
As some sweet thought which harsh words veiled before;
Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs,
Is a strange dream which death will dissipate;
And then when I am firm we’ll seek again
My own land, and again I will approach
My old designs, and calmly look on all [p. 262→]
The works of my past weakness, as one views
Some scene where danger met him long before.
Our limits compel us to pause. Our opinion will be readily inferred from the quantity which we have quoted from a publication of only seventy pages. The chief blemish is a note ascribed to Pauline, p. 55; and there are a few passages rather obscure, “but that’s not much.” In recognising a poet we cannot stand upon trifles, nor fret ourselves about such matters. Time enough for that afterwards, when larger works come before us. Archimedes in the bath had many particulars to settle about specific gravities, and Hiero’s crown, but he first gave a glorious leap and shouted Eureka!
[William Johnson Fox]
Reviewed:
Pauline (RB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1833.
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