R330414A. Pauline.
The Atlas, 14 April 1833, p. 221.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 345–346.
In this little poem, a poetical spirit struggles against some mechanical difficulties that often give to the lines a prosaic character. The metrical construction is occasionally faulty, and the language is often plain where the image with which the poet is labouring is mystical. The adaptation of style to thought is the great art of all ambitious attempts in poetry. The lofty must be loftily used—the grand must be treated with grandeur—it would not do to describe Sardanapalus’ procession to his palace after the fashion of a city wife, or to tell of the guilt of Prometheus in the parlance of the old Bailey.
Pauline is metaphysical throughout, or is intended to be so. The author is in the confessional, and acknowledges to his mistress the strange thoughts and fancies with which his past life has been crowded. This is not always accomplished with becoming dignity. He does not always speak of his agonies in language worthy of one who evidently understood them so well; he sometimes runs slip-shod through his afflictions. But there are many passages in the piece of considerable beauty, and a few of such positive excellence that we augur very favourably of the genius that produced them. Here is a specimen—it is an apostrophe to a great poet now gone by.
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
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,
Tho’ 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 it 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.
There is evidence enough of the true spirit in these lines, and indications enough of the faults to which we have alluded. The poem has created in us just so much interest as will induce us to look with some curiosity to the author’s next essay.
Reviewed:
Pauline (RB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1833.
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