E420700B. An Essay on Mind; Prometheus Bound; and The Seraphim.
The North American Review, July 1842, pp. 201–218.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 373-379.
[Also reviewed in this article were Poetry for the People, and other Poems (1840) by Richard Monckton Milnes; The Poetical Works (Philadelphia, 1842) of John Sterling; and Miscellaneous Verses (1841) by Francis Hastings Doyle; these we omit.]
To win name and praise as a poet, is a task of more difficulty now than it once was. The stock of good poetry being constantly on the increase, the standard of taste is insensibly raised, and the fresh crops which are reaped, year after year, from Parnassian fields, are less and less eagerly sought for and hang more heavily upon the producer’s hands. One of the fathers of the church calls poetry, “the devil’s wine”; and, to push the image a little further, he who has already laid in a sufficient store of this sparkling juice of the brain, of the most approved brands, will feel no great curiosity to try the flavor of the new vintages. Poetry, which a hundred years ago would have secured to its writer a place in Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” and sundry paragraphs of grandiloquent and well-poised criticism, is now born, and “dies, and makes no sign.” Every year sends forth one or more volumes of poems, of decided though not of the highest merit, marked by originality and sometimes depth of thought, truth and dignity of sentiment, refinement of feeling, and scholarlike grace of style; but they find few buyers and few readers. They, who have a fancy to seek their favorites among the comparatively unknown and neglected, can find ample room for their eccentric benevolence, and, when summoned before the court of taste to give a reason for the poetical faith that is in them, and to show cause why they should not be written down more fantastic than wise, there will be no lack of arguments to sustain their choice, and they will be able to make out a defence, which will surprise if not convince those of the most orthodox persuasion in such matters. He, who is repelled by the poem that everybody reads, and questions the merit that has the bad eminence of popularity, can take to his heart the modest singer, who has never flaunted in the hot blaze of general favor, and the dewy freshness of whose verse has never been soiled by the breath of public applause; and can read with a feeling, akin to the pleasure of a first discoverer, poetry, which, though in print, is almost “as good as manuscript.”
The volumes, whose titles we have placed at the head of this article and which are now lying before us, have suggested [p. 202→] the above train of reflections. In turning over their leaves and recognising in all of them more or less of the essential elements of true poetry, we have thought with a sort of half-sigh, that their authors were born too late, and had fallen upon a generation somewhat cloyed with the delicate food of verse, and that their tones of music, though sweet and of the heart’s spontaneous birth, faintly struggled through the multitudinous hum of busy life and awoke but few and feeble echoes. Poetry is, to be sure, or ought to be, its own exceeding great reward, and to deserve the prize is as good as to win it; but fame is a cordial to whose invigorating qualities no one can be insensible, and it is hard, that he, who has gallantly gone through the heat and dust of the contest, should miss the laurel of success. In the mood of mind to which thoughts like these led us, it seemed to be a kindly office to bring the claims of these writers before our own public, so far as could be done through the medium of our journal, a hearing with which they have not heretofore been favored, with the single exception of Mr. Sterling, whose volume has been reprinted in Philadelphia. We have therefore made a liberal selection from the flowers of verse, which bloom through these volumes, with no more of our own prose than may serve as a thread to tie them together.
The first three volumes on our list are written by Miss Elizabeth B. Barrett, to whom we give the first place, as due alike to the prerogative of her sex, and to the amount of her contributions. In regard to this lady, it is not in our power to gratify that curiosity which is felt, naturally enough, by readers, to know some personal details of the writer whose works they read. We are ignorant of her lineage, her education, her tastes, and (last not least, where a lady is concerned,) her personal attractions. We know nothing more of her, than can be gathered from her poetry, except the solitary fact, which we have heard on good authority, that her first volume was published when the writer was but seventeen years old; and, as that bears the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five upon the title-page, a shrewd guess may be given as to her age at the present time.
The principal poem in this volume is an “Essay on Mind,” occupying some ninety pages. Viewing this as the production of a young lady of sixteen or seventeen, it is a remarkable, nay, an extraordinary performance, to which [p. 203→] the records of early genius can furnish very few parallels. It is a metaphysical and reflective poem, showing uncommon power of patient and discriminating thought, a wide range of reading, and a ripe judgment. The versification is easy and vigorous. It blends together, in a very happy combination, the forms of philosophic thought and the vivid hues of poetical fancy. It is especially remarkable for its freedom from any of those morbid elements, which are so apt to be attendant upon precocity of genius, especially in women. There is no exaggeration of personal feeling, no overwrought sensibility, no extravagance of thought and expression, and no sickly melancholy. It seems to be written by one whose mind had been healthily and naturally developed, and whose symmetry had not been impaired by rapid growth. To justify our commendations we quote two passages, one from the first, and the other from the second book.
Let Gibbon’s name be traced, in sorrow, here,—
Too great to spurn, too little to revere!
Who followed Reason, yet forgot her laws,
And found all causes, but the “First Great Cause”;
The paths of time, with guideless footsteps trod,
Blind to the light of Nature and of God.
Deaf to the voice, amid the past’s dread hour,
Which sounds His praise and chronicles His power!
In vain for him was Truth’s fair tablet spread,
When Prejudice, with jaundiced organs, read;
In vain for us the polished periods flow,
The fancy kindles, and the pages glow;
When, one bright hour and startling transport past,
The musing soul must turn,—to sigh at last.—p. 22.
* * * * *
Shun not the haunts of crowded cities, then,
Nor e’er, as man, forget to study men!
What though the tumult of the town intrude
On the deep silence and the lofty mood;
’T will make thy human sympathies rejoice,
To hear the music of a human voice,—
To watch strange vows by various reason wrought,
To claim the interchange of thought with thought;
To associate mind with mind, for mind’s own weal,
As steel is ever sharpened best by steel. [p. 204→]
To impassioned bards, the scenic world is dear,
But Nature’s glorious master-piece is here!
All poetry is beauty, but expressed
In inward essence, not in outward vest.
Hence lovely scenes, reflective poets find,
Awake their lovelier images in mind;
Nor doth the pictured earth the bard invite,
The lake of azure, or the heaven of light,
But that his swelling breast arouses there
Something less visible, and much more fair!
There is a music in the landscape round,
A silent voice, that speaks without a sound;—
A witching spirit, that reposing near
Breathes to the heart, but comes not to the ear!
These softly steal, his kindling soul t’ embrace,
And natural beauty gild with moral grace.
Think not, when Summer breezes tell their tale,
The poet’s thoughts are with the Summer gale,
Think not his Fancy builds her elfin dream
On painted floweret, or on sighing stream;
No single objects cause his raptured starts,
For mind is narrowed, not inspired, by parts;
But o’er the scene the poet’s spirit broods,
To warm the thoughts that form his noblest moods;
Peopling his solitude with faëry play,
And beckoning shapes that whisper him away,—
Where lilied fields, and hedgerow blossoms white,
And hill and glittering streams, are full in sight,—
The forests wave, the joyous sun beguiles,
And all the poetry of Nature smiles.—pp. 71–73.
This volume contains also several smaller poems, many of which are pleasing from the truth and beauty of feeling which they express, but no one is of high literary merit.
Eight years later, appeared a second slender volume, containing a translation of “Prometheus Bound,” and several miscellaneous poems. The version of the great work of Æschylus, a daring enterprise for a young lady, and one which could not have been attempted, without a degree of learning highly creditable to her industry and perseverance, is not a very successful one. The style is stiff and meagre, and the versification hard and ungraceful. The language wants flowing ease, and the rhythm of her lines does not satisfy the ear. We like her preface much better than the [p. 205→] work it introduces. That is written in vigorous and manly prose, and shows a power of independent thought, discriminating criticism, and a good deal of masculine learning, if the ladies will pardon us the expression; we mean by it, that kind of learning usually monopolized by gentlemen. The miscellaneous poems in this volume are of unequal merit. Some of them, particularly “The Tempest,” the longest one, are defaced by those peculiar faults of thought and expression, which become more striking in her later and more ambitious poems; a want of simplicity in the conceptions, and of precision in the style; an overwrought intensity in describing what is seen and felt, a love of what is mystical and obscure, a sort of wayward preference of dark to light, and an exaggerated tone of coloring, which seeks for something that shall be blacker than black, and whiter than white. A few extracts will explain what we mean.
Farewell the elemental war! farewell
The clashing of the shielded clouds,—the cry
Of scathèd echoes! I no longer knew
Silence from sound, but wandered far away
Into the deep Eleusis of my heart,
To learn its secret things.
* * * * *
Within me was a nameless thought; it closed
The Janus of my soul on echoing hinge,
And said “Peace!” with a voice like War’s.
* * * * *
Day came at last; her light showed gray and sad
As hatched by tempest, and could scarce prevail
Over the shaggy forest to imprint
Its outline on the sky,—expressionless,
Almost sans shadow as sans radiance;
An idiocy of light.
The following lines are part of an apostrophe to Death.
Thou, who art Life’s betrothed, and bearest her forth
To scare her with sad sights,—who hast thy joy
Where’er the peopled towns are dumb with plague,—
Where’er the battle and the vulture meet,—
Where’er the deep sea writhes like Laocoon
Beneath the serpent winds, and vessels split [p. 206→]
On secret rocks, and men go gurgling down,
Down, down, to lose their shriekings in the depth.
But enough of this ungenial employment of chronicling faults, and putting mistakes into a frame and hanging them up, that they may be the better seen. We gladly turn to the more amiable office of quoting what we may conscientiously commend. From a poem addressed “To a Poet’s Child,” we extract some pleasing stanzas, in which the tone of sentiment reveals, that she had already, like so many of her tuneful tribe, begun to feel the burden and the mystery of life, and to learn in sorrow what she taught in song.
’T is well! I would not doom thy years
Of golden prime, to only tears.
Fair girl! ’t were better that thine eyes
Should find a joy in summer skies.
As if their sun were on thy fate,
Be happy; strive not to be great;
And go not from thy kind apart,
With lofty soul and stricken heart.
Think not too deeply; shallow thought,
Like open rills, is ever sought
By light and flowers; while fountains deep
Amid the rocks and shadows sleep.
Feel not too warmly; lest thou be
Too like Cyrene’s waters free,
Which burn at night, when all around
In darkness and in chill is found.
Touch not the harp to win the wreath;
Its tone is fame, its echo death!
The wreath may like the laurel grow,
Yet turns to cypress on the brow!
And, as a flame springs clear and bright,
Yet leaveth ashes ’stead of light,
So genius (fatal gift) is doomed
To leave the heart it fired, consumed.
For thee, for thee, thou orphaned one,
I make an humble orison!
Love all the world; and ever dream
That all are true who truly seem. [p. 207→]
Forget! for, so, ’t will move thee not,
Or lightly move, to be forgot!
Be streams thy music; hills thy mirth;
Thy chiefest light, the household hearth.
So, when grief plays her natural part,
And visiteth thy quiet heart,
Shall all the clouds of grief be seen
To show a sky of hope between.
So, when thy beauty senseless lies,
No sculptured urn shall o’er thee rise;
But gentle eyes shall weep at will,
Such tears as hearts like thine distill. —pp. 119–121.
This volume contains a remarkable poem on “Life and Death,” from which we would gladly quote, but it is too long to extract entire, and any thing less than the whole would not give an adequate impression of it.
The third and last of Miss Barrett’s volumes was published in eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, and contains more of original poetry than both of the former ones. In comparing this volume with the first, we can perceive that in the thirteen years which separate them, her mind has gone through essential changes, which are not in all respects for the better. There is more fertility of invention, more luxuriance of fancy, more boldness and originality of thought, a more expanded poetical horizon, brighter visions of beauty, and tones of more impassioned music. The susceptible girl has ripened into the woman of deep feeling, tremulous sensibility, and a nature in which we see the sunlight of religion struggling through the dark clouds of native melancholy, and tinging their edges with hues of heavenly purple and gold. But in regard to good sense, pure taste, sound judgment, stern resolution to blot, and patient continuance in correction, there has been by no means a commensurate progress. Flaunting and unprofitable weeds shoot up side by side with flowers, whose colors and fragrance have been fed by the choicest dews of Castalia. The steadiness of her flight bears no proportion to the vigor of her wing. Her great defect is a certain lawless extravagance, which delights in the wild, the mystic, the wonderful; which blends into the same group the most discordant images, and hurries her into a dim cloud-land far remote from human sympathies, and where the eye aches in attempting to follow [p. 208→] her. There is a profusion of dazzling and glittering phraseology, as if a multitude of brave words had been hurled into the air and fallen confusedly upon the page. The firm earth seems to roll away from under our feet, and we are tossed upon a restless sea of fantastic imagery till the brain reels. In her wish to avoid what is prosaic, tame, and commonplace, she passes into the opposite extreme, and mistaking reverse of wrong for right, accumulates image upon image, and lavishes with too profuse a hand her poetical vocabulary, gilding refined gold, and painting the lily. She forgets, that, in the mental as well as the material world, the fairest region of poetical beauty and fertility is to be found equally distant from all extremes, and that the South pole is no less cold and icy than the North. Without undertaking to say what is the difference between poetry and prose, without assenting to or denying Coleridge’s distinction, that “prose is proper words in proper places, and poetry the best words in the best places,” it is unquestionably true, that they have many things in common; that, in both, precision of thought and simplicity of language are essential to success, and that he, who would write either with effect, must first know exactly what he wants to say, and then say it.
“The Seraphim,” the longest poem in the volume, is a lyrical drama, in which an attempt is made to express the emotions which may be supposed to be awakened in seraphic natures by the spectacle of the Crucifixion; an awful theme, which would task the highest powers, and from which the highest powers would do well to recoil. After carefully reading this poem, aided by the comment and explanation which the author herself has given in her Preface, we can only say, and that too without going into an analysis of it, or giving copious extracts to justify our criticism, that it appears to us an unqualified failure. Not that it is a feeble or commonplace performance; on the contrary, it contains ample evidence of great poetical powers; but it is not a great poem, and fails entirely in producing (at least upon us) the effect which the author must have proposed to herself in writing it.
“The Poet’s Vow,” and the “Romaunt of Margret,” were written (as we are told in the Preface), the former, to enforce the truth, that the creature cannot be isolated from the creature; and the latter, that the creature cannot be sustained by the creature. These are certainly remarkable [p. 209→] poems, and show the shaping spirit of imagination, especially the former one, in a very high degree. No one can read them without feeling himself to be in the presence of an extraordinary mind. A very rich vein of pure poetry runs through them, and they reveal an affluence of imagery, which grows richer by what it spends. But they do not interest the human sympathies. They do not belong to that class of poetry, which is read and re-read till it twines itself spontaneously round the memory. A light like that of wintry moons plays round them, beautiful, but cold. They people the airy realms of the imagination with forms of visionary grace, but they do not touch the pulses of the heart. The warm breath of life does not animate their sculptured beauty.
From “Isobel’s Child,” a poem of singular originality of conception and impassioned depth of feeling, we extract a passage, suggested by an infant sleeping upon its mother’s arm, and marked by some of her characteristic excellences and defects.
’T is aye a solemn thing to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps,—
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The unrevealèd mystery
Of its Adam’s taint and woe,
Which, when they revealèd be,
Will not let it slumber so!
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death
With that low, soft, quiet breath,
As 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!
* * * * *
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 closèd fast!
Must ye learn to drop at last
Our large and burning tears?— [p. 210→]
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.—pp. 145–148.
From “The Island,” a poem which gives utterance to that vague longing for the wings of a dove to flee away and be at rest, which all poetic natures are conscious of at times, we extract some fanciful and feeling stanzas.
No sod in all that island hath
Been opened for the dead,—
No island wind hath borne a sound
Of sorrow utterèd,—
We cannot say by water clear
Or spreading tree,—“I suffered here.”
Our only “farewell” shall be breathed
Toward the setting light,
When every star by day concealed
Will make us welcome night:
Our only use of tears,—t’ express
The sense of too much happiness.
Our fancies shall their plumage take
From fairest island birds,
That shine and dart from earth to heaven!
And then, in turn, our words
Unconsciously shall take the dyes
Of those encolored fantasies. [p. 211→]
Yea! soon, no consonant unsmooth
Our smile-tuned lips shall reach,
But softer than Hellenic sounds
Shall glide into our speech,—
(What music did you ever find
So soft as voices glad and kind?)
And often, by the joy without
And in us overwrought,
We shall sit voicelessly, and read
Such poems in our thought
As Pindar might have writ, if he
Had tended sheep in Arcady!
Or Æschylus,—the pleasant fields
He died in, longer knowing,—
Or Homer, had he heard no tone
More loud than Meles’ flowing,—
Or poet Plato, had th’ undim
Unsetting Godlight broke on him.
Choose me the loftiest cave of all
To make a place for prayer;
And I will choose a praying voice
To pour our spirits there.
How silverly the echoes run,—
Thy will be done,—thy will be done!—pp. 192–195.
We have been much pleased with the verses entitled “My Doves,” both for their many beautiful images and expressions, and for the tenderness and truth of sentiment which run through them.
My Doves.
“O Weisheit! Du red’st wie eine Taube!”—Goethe.
My little doves have left a nest
Upon an Indian tree,
Whose leaves fantastic take their rest
Or motion from the sea:
For, ever there, the sea winds go
With sunlit paces, to and fro.
The tropic flowers looked up to it,
The tropic stars looked down:
And there my little doves did sit,
With feathers softly brown,
And glittering eyes, that showed their right
To general Nature’s deep delight. [p. 212→]
And God them taught, at every close
Of water far, and wind
And lifted leaf, to interpose
Their chanting voices kind;
Interpreting that love must be
The meaning of the earth and sea.
Fit ministers! of living loves,
Theirs has the calmest sound,—
Their living voice the likest moves
To lifeless noises round,—
In such sweet monotone as clings
To music of insensate things!
My little doves were ta’en away
From that glad nest of theirs,
Across an ocean foaming aye,
And tempest-clouded airs,
My little doves!—who lately knew
The sky and wave, by warmth and blue.
And now within the city prison
In mist and chillness pent,
With sudden upward look they listen
For sounds of past content,—
For lapse of water, swell of breeze,
Or nut-fruit falling from the trees.
The stir without the glow of passion,—
The triumph of the mart,—
The gold and silver’s dreary clashing
With man’s metallic heart,—
The wheelèd pomp, the pauper tread,—
These only sounds are heard instead.
Yet still, as on my human hand
Their fearless heads they lean,
And almost seem to understand
What human musings mean,—
(With such a plaintive gaze their eyne
Are fastened upwardly to mine!)
Their chant is soft as on the nest,
Beneath the sunny sky;
For love that stirrèd in their breast
Remains undyingly,
And, ’neath the city’s shade, can keep
The well of music clear and deep. [p. 213→]
And love that keeps the music, fills
With pastoral memories!
All echoings from out the hills,
All droppings from the skies,
All flowings from the wave and wind,
Remembered in their chant I find.
So teach ye me the wisest part,
My little doves! to move
Along the city ways, with heart
Assured by holy love,
And vocal with such songs as own
A fountain to the world unknown.
’T was hard to sing by Babel’s stream,—
More hard, in Babel’s street!
But if the soulless creatures deem
Their music not unmeet
For sunless walls,—let us begin,
Who wear immortal wings within.
To me fair memories belong
Of scenes that erst did bless;
For no regret,—but present song,
And lasting thankfulness,—
And very soon to break away,
Like types, in purer things than they.
I will have hopes that cannot fade,
For flowers the valley yields,—
I will have humble thoughts instead
Of silent, dewy fields!
My spirit and my God shall be
My seaward hill, my boundless sea.—pp. 301–306.
The following poem has merit both of thought and expression, though a little overstated.
The Sleep.
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
Psalm cxxvii. ver. 2d.
Of all the thoughts of God, that are
Borne inward into souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,—
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this,—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.” [p. 214→]
What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart, to be unmoved,—
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,—
The senate’s shout to patriot vows,—
The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith, all undisproved,—
A little dust, to overweep,—
And bitter memories, to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake!
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
“Sleep soft, beloved,” we sometimes say,
But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams, that through the eyelids creep:
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber, when
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delvèd gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And “giveth His beloved sleep.”
His dews drop mutely on the hill;
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men toil and reap!
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
Yea! men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man,
In such a rest his heart to keep;
But angels say,—and through the word
I ween their blessed smile is heard,
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
For me, my heart that erst did go
More like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the juggler’s leap,—
Would now its weary vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who “giveth His beloved sleep.” [p. 215→]
And friends, dear friends,—when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one, most loving of you all,
Say “Not a tear must o’er her fall,—
He giveth His beloved sleep!”
We have seen a manuscript poem of Miss Barrett’s (whether it has ever been printed or not, we cannot say), which, on the whole, we prefer to any thing of hers which we have read in print. In spite of a few prettinesses, it is a poem of exquisite beauty, and as airy and delicate a creation of the fancy, as if Queen Mab herself had presided at the loom in which it was woven. It is a lavish and luxurious display of poetical wealth. Its entireness and completeness, the wonderful truth and keeping of the picture show that power of vivid conception, and of infusing her own soul into the body of her subject, and becoming a part of it, which are unerring marks of the true poet. We should think it had been written by
some gay creature of the elements,
That in the colors of the rainbow lives,
And plays in the plighted clouds.
It is as full of the sights and sounds of the upper deep, as Ariel’s song in the “Tempest” is of those of the lower. Every thing seems to have suffered a cloud change. It naturally suggests a comparison with Shelley’s fine lines “To a Cloud,” but is altogether more to our taste.
The House of Clouds.
I would build a cloudy house,
For my thoughts to live in,
When for earth too fancy-loose,
And too low for heaven;
I sleep and talk my dream aloud,—
I build it fair to see,—
I build it of the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
Cloud-walls of the morning’s gray,
Faced with amber column,—
Crowned with crimson cupola,
From a sunset solemn,— [p. 216→]
Casements from the valley fetch,
May-mists glimmering!—
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.
Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and eke brightening,
Of a riven thunder-cloud,
Veinèd with the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain
For the door within,
Turning with a sound like rain
As you enter in.
Enter a broad hall thereby,
Walled with cloudy whiteness,—
’T is a blue place in the sky,
Wind-worked into brightness.
Whence corridors, and stair degrees,
So brightly wind away,
That children wish, upon their knees,
They walkèd where they pray.
Be my chamber tapestried
With the showers of summer,
Close and silent,—glorified,
When the sunbeams come there.—
Wandering harpers,—harping on
Every drop as such,
Drawing colors for a tune,
Measured to the touch.—
Bring a shadow green and still,
From the chestnut forest,—
Bring a purple from the hill,
When the heat is sorest,—
Spread them wide from wall to wall,
Carpet-wove around,—
And thereupon the foot shall fall,
In light instead of sound.
Bring the gray cloud from the east,
Where the lark was singing,
Something of the song, at least,
Unlost in the bringing,—
And that shall be a morning chair,
For poet-dreams,—when with them
No verse-constraint, the floating air
Their only, lovely rhythm. [p. 217→]
Bring the red cloud from the sun,—
While he sinketh, catch it,—
That shall be a couch,—with one
Sidelong star to watch it,—
Prepared for poet’s finest thought
At curfew hour to lean,—
When things invisible are brought
More near him than the seen.
Poet’s thought,—not poet’s sigh,
Alas! they come together!
The cloudy walls divide and fly,
As if in April weather,—
Stair, corridor, and column proud,
My chamber bright to see,—
All pass! except that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
Let them,—wipe such visionings
From the Fancy’s cartel!
Love secures some fairest things,
And dowers with his immortal!
Moons, suns may darken,—heaven be bowed,—
But here unchanged shall be,—
Here, in my soul,—that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
We have spoken before of Miss Barrett’s learning, which is extensive and curious. She has evidently read many strange books, such as cross the path of few men, and still fewer women. She is the writer of a series of papers recently published in the “London Athenæum,” on the Greek Christian poets, with translations, which are remarkable, not only for their recondite learning, but for the half sportive and half solemn way in which she treats her subject. Her prose is nearly as characteristic and peculiar as her poetry. We should be glad to make some extracts from it, as well as from the poetical translations, but we have left ourselves no room.
We take leave of Miss Barrett with an expression of sincere admiration for her genius, her learning, and the tone of moral and religious feeling, which elevates and sanctifies her poetry. If we have spoken plainly of her faults, it is because she can bear it. She has great gifts, and can do better things than she has yet done, if she will chastise the lawless [p. 218→] extravagance of her genius, beget in the whirlwind of her inspiration a temperance that shall give it smoothness, and let in the light of day upon those mazy and mystic labyrinths of thought in which she delights to lose herself and bewilders her readers. Her faults are excesses and not defects, overflowings and not short-comings, the wild fertility of a too luxuriant, and not the hunger-bitten poverty of a meagre soil. Let her remember, that lawlessness is but another name for feebleness; that extravagance is not power; that to be obscure is not to be profound; to be mystical is not to be sublime; and that genius, in its highest flight of ecstasy, “with all its robes and singing garlands about it,” must be guided and controlled by a law as unslumbering and unerring as that which brings back the comet to its perihelion from the far depths of infinite space.
[George Stillman Hillard]
Reviewed:
An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (EBB), London: James Duncan, 1826.
Prometheus Bound (EBB), London: A.J. Valpy, 1833.
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
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