Reviews

R400400A.  Sordello.

The Metropolitan Magazine, April 1840, pp. 108–109.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 417.

If it were possible to understand the meaning of the writer of this poem, we should be delighted to impart the information to our readers. It is full of hard words and mysterious sentences, but what they allude to, it would puzzle a conjuror to tell. In this dilemma, what can we do better than let Mr. Browning speak for himself? [p. 109→]

—Meantime, just meditate my madrigal

O’ the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe!

What, dullard? We and you in smothery chafe,

Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin

The Horrid, getting neither out nor in,

A hungry sun above us, sands among

Our throats, each dromedary lolls a tongue,

Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap,

And you, ’twixt tales of Potiphar’s mishap,

And sonnets on the earliest ass that spoke,

Remark you wonder any one needs choak

With founts about! Potsherd him Gibeonites,

While awkwardly enough your Moses smites

The rock, though he forego the Promised Land,

Thereby, have Satan claim his carcass, and

Dance, forsooth, Metaphysic Poet .... ah

Mark ye the dim first oozings?

This is a fair specimen of the poem throughout. We had rather write sonnets on the latest, as well as the earliest speaking ass, than be doomed to read such unintelligible oozings of nonsense.

Reviewed:

Sordello (RB), London: Moxon, 1840.

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