R330406A. Pauline.
The Athenæum, 6 April 1833, p. 216.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 345.
There is not a little true poetry in this very little book: here and there we have a touch of the mysterious, which we cannot admire; and now and then a want of true melody, which we can forgive; with perhaps more abruptness than what is necessary; all that, however, is as a grain of sand in a cup of pure water, compared to the nature, and passion, and fancy of the poem. We open the book at random; but fine things abound: there is no difficulty in finding passages to vindicate our praise:—
Autumn has come—like Spring returned to us,
Won from her girlishness—like one returned
A friend that was a lover—nor forgets
The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts
Of fading years; whose soft mouth quivers yet
With the old smile—but yet so changed and still!
And here am I the scoffer, who have probed
Life’s vanity, won by a word again
Into my old life—for one little word
Of this sweet friend, who lives in loving me,
Lives strangely on my thoughts, and looks, and words,
As fathoms down some nameless ocean thing
Its silent course of quietness and joy.
O dearest, if, indeed, I tell the past,
Mayst thou forget it as a sad sick dream;
Or if it linger—my lost soul too soon
Sinks to itself, and whispers, we shall be
But closer linked—two creatures whom the earth
Bears singly—with strange feelings, unrevealed
But to each other; or two lonely things
Created by some Power, whose reign is done,
Having no part in God, or his bright world,
I am to sing; whilst ebbing day dies soft,
As a lean scholar dies, worn o’er his book,
And in the heaven stars steal out one by one,
As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.
I must not think—lest this new impulse die
In which I trust. I have no confidence,
So I will sing on—fast as fancies come
Rudely—the verse being as the mood it paints.
Description and sentiment are everywhere beautifully mingled:—
Night, and one single ridge of narrow path
Between the sullen river and the woods
Waving and muttering—for the moonless night
Has shaped them into images of life,
Like the upraising of the giant-ghosts,
Looking on earth to know how their sons fare.
Thou art so close to me, the roughest swell
Of the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts; no—we will pass to morning—
Morning—the rocks, and vallies, and old woods.
How the sun brightens in the mist, and here,—
Half in the air, like creatures of the place,
Trusting the element—living on high boughs
That swing in the wind—look at the golden spray,
Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract,
Amid the broken rocks—shall we stay here
With the wild hawks? no, ere the hot noon come
Dive we down—safe: see this our new retreat
Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs,
Dark, tangled, old and green—still sloping down
To a small pool whose waters lie asleep
Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants,
And tall trees over-arch to keep us in,
Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts,
And in the dreamy water one small group
Of two or three strange trees are got together,
Wondering at all around—as strange beasts herd
Together far from their own land—all wildness—
No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all,
And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there;
The wild mice cross them dry-shod—deeper in—
Shut thy soft eyes—now look—still deeper in:
This is the very heart of the woods—all round,
Mountain-like, heaped above us; yet even here
One pond of water gleams—far off the river
Sweeps like a sea, barred out from land; but one—
One thin clear sheet has over-leaped and wound
Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies
Still, as but let by sufferance; the trees bend
O’er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl,
And thro’ their roots long creeping plants stretch out
Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling; farther on,
Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined
To narrow it; so, at length, a silver thread
It winds, all noiselessly, thro’ the deep wood,
Till thro’ a cleft way, thro’ the moss and stone,
It joins its parent-river with a shout.
The poem is dated Richmond, Oct. 22, 1832: it bears no name, and carries the stamp of no poet with whose works we are intimate. We hope the author’s next strains will be more cheerful, and as original as these: the day is past, we fear, for either fee or fame in the service of the muse; but to one who sings so naturally, poetry must be as easy as music is to a bird, and no doubt it has a solace all its own.
[Allan Cunningham]
Reviewed:
Pauline (RB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1833.
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