E400900A. The Seraphim.
The Quarterly Review, September 1840, pp. 382–389.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 413–416.
Miss Elizabeth Barrett, who stands next in our list,* may justly claim to stand alone anywhere else, as well for her extraordinary acquaintance with ancient classic literature, as for the boldness [p. 383→] of her poetic attempts. In our judgment, however, her success has not been in proportion to her daring. Her early enthusiasm for Æschylus has sensibly aggravated the tendency to the overstrained and violent, which seems natural to her mind, and irretrievably precluded, we fear, that discipline of art and sense of beauty which a warmer study of Sophocles might probably have imparted. The αὐθαδία of her hero, Prometheus, communicates itself to Miss Barrett’s prefaces and notes; she is something too dogmatic in her criticism, and a world too positive in her philosophy. A little more reverence of expression upon all subjects would be more becoming, and not less energetic. The awful name of God is used throughout her volumes with such reckless repetition, that we really cannot describe the pain it gave us in perusal, although of course we notice it on the score of ill taste alone. And on the same ground, likewise, we mention and denounce the strange trick, for which Miss Barrett is conspicuous, but not singular, of converting the received monosyllables called, bowed, vowed, and the like, into dissyllables, bowëd, vowëd,—this not as the usage of solemn emphasis, and the exception, but familiarly and as the rule:—
And wailing like a kissëd child,
Kissëd soft against his will.
Kiss’d, or perhaps correctly kist, is what English children have for the last three centuries at least agreed to call the infliction in question, and Shakspeare and Milton, when they grew up, followed the custom. It is really scarcely credible how much the effect of Miss Barrett’s poems is injured by this single piece of mannerism alone. These two-dotted words star her pages as if they were written in German, and, to say the least of it, are a very poor compliment to the ears of her readers.
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*EBB was one of nine writers whose work was examined in an article entitled “Modern English Poetesses”; we include only the remarks pertaining to her.
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But enough of this, although less than this would have been short of justice.* We proceed with much more pleasure to give one or two specimens of Miss Barrett’s poetry in her pure and better style, and we make the selection from her minor miscellaneous poems. The following is comparatively free from the stiffness of most of her blank verse, and surely a powerful composition:—
Earth.
How beautiful is Earth! My starry thoughts
Look down on it from their unearthly sphere,
And sing symphonious—Beautiful is Earth!
The lights and shadows of her myriad hills;
The branching greenness of her myriad woods;
Her sky-affecting rocks; her zoning sea;
Her rushing, gleaming cataracts; her streams
That race below, the winged clouds on high;
Her pleasantness of vale and meadow!—
Hush!
Meseemeth through the leafy trees to ring
A chime of bells to falling waters tuned,
Whereat comes heathen Zephyrus, out of breath
With running up the hills, and shakes his hair
From off his gleesome forehead, bold and glad
With keeping blithe Dan Phœbus company;—
And throws him on the grass, though half afraid;
First glancing round, lest tempests should be nigh;
And lays close to the ground his ruddy lips,
And shapes their beauty into sound, and calls
On all the petall’d flowers that sit beneath
In hiding-places from the rain and snow,
To loosen the hard soil, and leave their cold
Sad idlesse, and betake them up to him.
They straightway hear his voice.—
A thought did come,
And press from out my soul the heathen dream.
Mine eyes were purged. Straightway did I bind
Round me the garment of my strength, and heard
Nature’s death-shrieking—the hereafter cry,
When He of the lion voice, the rainbow-crown’d,
Shall stand upon the mountains and the sea,
And swear by earth, by heaven’s throne, and Him
Who sitteth on the throne, there shall be time
No more, no more! Then veil’d Eternity
Shall straight unveil her awful countenance
Unto the reeling worlds, and take the place
Of seasons, years, and ages. Age and age
Shall be the time of the day. The wrinkled heaven
Shall yield her silent sun, made blind and white
With an exterminating light: the wind,
Unchained from the poles, nor having charge
Of cloud or ocean, with a sobbing wail
Shall rush among the stars, and swoon to death.
Yea, the shrunk earth, appearing livid pale,
Beneath the red-tongued flame, shall shudder by
From out her ancient place, and leave a void.
Yet haply by that void the saints redeem’d
May sometimes stray; when memory of sin,
Ghost-like, shall rise upon their holy souls;
And on their lips shall lie the name of earth
In paleness and in silentness, until
Each looking on his brother, face to face,
And bursting into sudden happy tears,
(The only tears undried) shall murmur—“Christ!” [p. 385→]
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*Upon second thoughts, however, we will also notice another trick, equally caught, as it seems to us, from Mr. Tennyson’s writings—we mean the reiterated usage of very κατ᾽ ἔμφασιν. ‘The hair had fallen by its weight on either side the smile and lay very blackly on the arm,’ &c. &c. &c.—This is a mere affectation, and totally unidiomatic.
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The following poem is in a very different style, and, in our judgment, one of the best and most finished of Miss Barrett’s productions. Indeed it is a beautiful poem:—
Cowper’s Grave.
It is a place where poets crown’d
May feel the heart’s decaying—
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying—
Yet let the grief and humbleness,
As low as silence languish;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.
O poets! from a maniac’s tongue
Was pour’d the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan’d inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling.
And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story—
How discord on the music fell,
And darkness on the glory—
And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds
And wand’ring lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face,
Because so broken-hearted.
He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet’s high vocation,
And bow the meekest Christian down
In meeker adoration;
Nor ever shall he be in praise
By wise or good forsaken;
Named softly as the household name
Of one whom God hath taken!
With sadness that is calm, not gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,
On God, whose heaven hath won him.
Who suffer’d once the madness-cloud
Towards his love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along,
Where breath and bird could find him; [p. 386→]
And wrought within his shatter’d brain
Such quick poetic senses,
As hills have language for, and stars
Harmonious influences!
The pulse of dew upon the grass
His own did calmly number;
And silent shadow from the trees
Fell o’er him like a slumber.
The very world, by God’s constraint,
From falsehood’s chill removing,
Its women and its men became
Beside him true and loving!
And timid hares were drawn from woods
To share his home-caresses,
Uplooking in his human eyes,
With sylvan tendernesses.
But while in darkness he remain’d,
Unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without
The sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth,
Though frenzy desolated,—
Nor man nor nature satisfy
Whom only God created.
And the remainder is equally excellent.
Miss Barrett’s version of the “Prometheus” is a remarkable performance for a young lady; but it is not a good translation in and by itself. It is too frequently uncouth, without being faithful, and, under a pile of sounding words, lets the fire go out. Thus, to take a single instance within twenty-five lines from the beginning of the drama. Æschylus says:—
σταθευτὸς δ᾽ ἡλίου φοίβῃ φλογὶ
χροιᾶ ἀμείψεις ἄνθος.
That is, “and thou (Prometheus) toasted (slowly burnt) by the shining fire of the sun, shalt change the flower (beauty) of your colour (complexion).” Miss Barrett renders this simple passage thus:—
where ’stablished
’Neath the fierce sun thy brow’s white flower shall fade;
which, beside the mistake of σταθευτὸς, is really mere nonsense. Again, scarcely anything can be finer than the accelerated movement given to the speeches in the last sixty lines of the drama, beginning with,—
εἰδότι τοι μοὶ τάσδ᾽ ἀγγελίας
ὅδ᾽ ἐθώϋξεν, κ.τ.λ.
It is like the preparatory rapid of Niagara, which you see not till [p. 387→] you feel the whirl. The play goes off, like the great Titan himself, in a flash of fire, and skilfully compensates to the reader now, as it did once to the auditor, the slow narrative march of so much of that which has preceded. Miss Barrett has not attempted to reproduce this grand effect of the anapæstic systems of the Greek, for which, nevertheless, there are great facilities in English; and instead of the fullest and completest close in the whole range of the Greek drama, the English “Prometheus” comes to an end before you expect it.*
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*We have lately been favoured with the perusal of a very free version, or rather imitation of this great poem, from the manuscript of which we are permitted to make the following quotation; and we think our readers will agree with us that such poetry ought not always to remain unpublished:—
Chorus.—μηδὲν φοβηθῇς. φιλία γὰρ ἤδε τάξις
πτερύγων θοαϊς ἁμίλλαις
προσέβα, κ.τ.λ.—v. 128. &c.
O fear not us!
A long, long way we come to visit thee;
To this extreme of earth,
On clipping pinions borne.
For the grating of fetters,
The voice of upbraiding,
The deep earthly groan
Of anguish half stifled;
The ear-piercing shriek
Of pain in its sharpness,
A concert, all tuneless, came ruffling the rose-buds,
Where sweetly we slumber’d the sultry hours;
So with pinions unsmooth’d, and tresses unbraided,
Our bright feet unsandall’d, we leap’d on the air;
Like the sound of a trumpet we shook the wide ether;
A moment we quiver’d—then glancing on high,
Ascended a sun-ray, light pillar of silver,
And seem’d the gay spangles that danced in the beam.
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“The Seraphim,” a dramatic lyric poem, represents the converse of two Seraphs, Ador and Zerah, the strong and the weak, whilst hovering, aloof from the rest of the Seraphic host, over Calvary during the Passion; a subject from which Milton would have shrunk, and which Miss Barrett would not have attempted, if she had more seriously considered its absolute unapproachableness. In the first place, there is not, in the proper critical sense, any human interest in such a subject; and in the next place, the awful narrative of the Evangelist exterminates all parallel or supplement. The least unsuccessful attempt upon the “guarded mount,” in our day, is to be found in some parts of Mr. Heraud’s “Descent into Hell,” a remarkable poem, and worthy of the studious perusal which indeed it requires. We give Miss Barrett, however, the full credit of a lofty purpose, and admit, moreover, that several particular passages in her poem are extremely fine; equally profound in thought, and striking in expression. But we prefer concluding our hasty notice of this lady’s writings with an [p. 388→] extract from her somewhat fantastic poem, “Isobel’s Child,” which may be considered a fair specimen of Miss Barrett’s general manner and power:—
’Tis aye a solemn thing to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps;
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The unrevealed mystery
Of its Adam’s taint and woe,
Which, when they revealed be,
Will not let it slumber so!
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death,
With that soft low quiet breath,
As if it felt the sun!
Knowing all things by their blooms,
Not their roots! Yea! sun and sky
Only by the warmth that comes
Out of each!—earth, only by
The pleasant hues that o’er it run!
And human love, by drops of sweet
White nourishment still hanging round
The little mouth so slumber-bound!
All which broken sentiency
Will gather, and unite, and climb,
To an immortality.
Good or evil, each sublime,
Through life and death to life again.
O little lids, now closed fast,
Must ye learn to drop at last
Over large and burning tears?
O warm quick body! must thou lie,
When is done the round of years,
Bare of all the joy and pain,
Dust in dust—thy place upgiving
To creeping worms in sentient living?
O small frail being! wilt thou stand
At God’s right hand,
Lifting up those sleeping eyes,
Dilated by sublimest destinies,
In endless waking? Thrones and Seraphim,
Through the long ranks of their solemnities,
Sunning thee with calm looks of heaven’s surprise—
Thy look alone on Him?
Or else, self-willed, to the Godless place—
(God keep thy will!)—feel thine own energies,
Cold, strong, objectless, like a dead man’s clasp,
The sleepless, deathless life within thee, grasp,—
While myriad faces, like one changeless face,
With woe, not love’s, shall glass thee everywhere,
And overcome thee with thine own despair? [p. 389→]
In a word, we consider Miss Barrett to be a woman of undoubted genius, and most unusual learning; but that she has indulged her inclination for themes of sublime mystery, not certainly without displaying great power, yet at the expense of that clearness, truth, and proportion, which are essential to beauty; and has most unfortunately fallen into the trammels of a school or manner of writing, which of all that ever existed—Lycophron, Lucan, and Gongora not forgotten—is the most open to the charge of being vitiis imitabile exemplar.
[John Gibson Lockhart]
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[Editors’ note: At the end of the article (p. 416), each of the nine poetesses was compared to a flower: “Miss Barrett must be Greek Valerian, or Ladder to Heaven; or, if she pleases, Wild Angelica.”
This review was reprinted in full in The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Vol. 41, February 1841, pp. 195–197.]
Reviewed:
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
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