Reviews

E620600C. Last Poems.

Macphail’s Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal and Literary Review, June 1862, pp. 281–289.

Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.

We accept this volume of the Last Poems, written by Mrs Browning, with gratitude and sadness; sadness that is scarcely willing to express itself in words. She was endeared to us by her writing, the generous and lion-hearted woman, whose thoughts were ever noble, whose indignant scorn was poured out unreservedly on whatever seemed to her degrading and tyrannical, but whose love for what is beautiful and pure was manifested no less powerfully. Hers was truly a winning sweetness of melody, though not seldom she chose a rugged and unmusical abruptness. Her strange, wild, unearthly fervour enabled her sometimes to soar to the highest range of poetic rapture, and sometimes, in tearfulness and humility, to crouch tremblingly at the foot of the Cross, and speak her sorrow and her hope, her anguish and her faith, in broken sobs and in prayer, that was directed to a more than human ear.

Her growth in knowledge of art and command of her resources, if not rapid, had been sure, and no one who compares her early efforts, “The Seraphim, and other Poems,” with her largest work of later years, “Aurora Leigh,” or with the “Last Poems,” which are now before us, will deny her credit for laborious perseverance in correcting many faults of taste, which are visible in her first writings. Unflagging was her growth in culture of the mind, absorbing into it all the varied knowledge of our day, yet never omitting to pay homage to the great sages of antiquity, by studying the master-pieces which they have bequeathed to us. In “Aurora Leigh,” we find much self-portraiture—it matters not whether conscious or unconscious—so that [p. 282→] we have in it a record of the intellect, ambition, and proud self-willed character of the girl—howsoever affectionate and confiding at heart; gradually developing into the large and richly-dowered nature of the woman, craving for love, though struggling against its claims; but, throughout, the veritable Poet. “Aurora Leigh,” a rich storehouse of such thoughts as have rarely been given to the world by one of the gentler sex, remains the chief work by which posterity will judge Mrs Browning. It may be conceded that occasionally she gave way to a vehemence of language that seemed and was unfeminine. Strength ceased to be strength, when no longer spontaneous, and resembled coarseness, but the few faults of this kind observable in her writings are atoned for by many triumphant outbursts of right feeling, that are winning sympathy in wish and effort from those awakened by her to justice and humanity; so that we would rather have her exactly as she chose to be, sooner than curb her into a mere model of propriety at the risk of silencing her nobler utterances. Such as she is—alas, to say as she was! it will be long before we meet another to equal her in genius and generous enthusiasm for the cause of the oppressed.

Three distinct groups are visible, of the poems in the present volume. First, come the Miscellaneous Poems, “Little Mattie,” “A False Step,” “Void in Law,” “Lord Walter’s Wife,” “Bianca among the Nightingales,” “My Kate,” “A Song for the Ragged Schools of London,” “May’s Love,” “Amy’s Cruelty,” “My Heart and I,” “the Best thing in the World,” “Where’s Agnes!” “De Profundis,” and “A Musical Instrument.” Second, and chief in quantity, follow fourteen poems connected with the Regeneration of Italy. Third, are added a number of Translations or Paraphrases, mostly from the Greek,—Theocritus, Apuleius, Hesiod, Homer, &c. The paraphrases on Heine, with which the volume closes, have a playfulness and graceful ease that delightfully leads us into the bye-paths of fancy and recollection of childhood or earliest manhood. With one flaw only to injure its effect, the false rhyme of “visit” and “in it,” the poem commencing “My child, we were two children,” has all the liveliness of an original:—

PARAPHRASES ON HEINE.

[The last Translation.]

Rome, 1860.

I.

Out of my own great woe

I make my little songs,

Which rustle their feathers in throngs

And beat on her heart even so.

They found the way, for their part,

Yet come again, and complain,

Complain, and are not fain

To say what they saw in her heart. [p. 283→]

II.

Art thou indeed so adverse?

Art thou so changed indeed?

Against the woman who wrongs me

I cry to the world in my need.

O recreant lips unthankful,

How could ye speak evil, say,

Of the man who so well has kissed you

On many a fortunate day?

III.

My child, we were two children,

Small, merry by childhood’s law;

We used to crawl to the hen-house

And hide ourselves in the straw.

We crowed like cocks, and whenever

The passers near us drew—

Cock-a-doodle! they thought

’Twas a real cock that crew.

The boxes about our courtyard

We carpeted to our mind,

And lived there both together—

Kept house in a noble kind.

The neighbour’s old cat often

Came to pay us a visit;

We made her a bow and courtsey,

Each with a compliment in it.

After her health we asked,

Our care and regard to evince—

(We have made the very same speeches

To many an old cat since).

We also sate and wisely

Discoursed, as old folks do,

Complaining how all went better

In those good times we knew;—

How love and truth and believing

Had left the world to itself,

And how so dear was the coffee,

And how so rare was the pelf.

The children’s games are over,

The rest is over with youth—

The world, the good games, the good times,

The belief, and the love, and the truth.

The concluding poem of the series has a melancholy interest, as being her “Last Translation;” the little touches of pathos in it have now gained a strange directness of personal application for at least one who survives:-

IV.

Thou lovest me not, thou lovest me not!

’Tis scarcely worth a sigh: [p. 284→]

Let me look in thy face, and no king in his place

Is a gladder man than I.

Thou hatest me well, thou hatest me well—

Thy little red mouth has told:

Let it reach me a kiss, and, however it is,

My child, I am well consoled.

V.

My own sweet Love, if thou in the grave,

The darksome grave, wilt be,

Then will I go down by the side, and crave

Love-room for thee and me.

I kiss and caress and press thee wild,

Thou still, thou cold, thou white!

I wail, I tremble, and weeping mild,

Turn to a corpse at the right.

The Dead stand up, the midnight calls,

They dance in airy swarms—

We two keep still where the grave-shade falls,

And I lie on in thine arms.

The Dead stand up, the Judgment-day

Bids such to weal or woe—

But nought shall trouble us where we stay

Embraced and embracing below.

VI.

The years they come and go,

The races drop in the grave,

Yet never the love doth so,

Which here in my heart I have.

Could I see thee but once, one day,

And sink down so on my knee,

And die in thy sight while I say,

‘Lady, I love but thee!’

The political poems, regarding Italy, will not be such general favourites as the rest, but have the stamp of Mrs Browning’s peculiar genius, and attest her sincere love for the cause of Freedom and Unity in that “woman country, wooed not wed,” concerning which Robert Browning also has spoken so lovingly. There is much to admire in her portrait of Garibaldi; brave, self-sacrificing warrior of the old heroic type; a man little fitted to cope with the astute diplomatists, who ill understood his rugged grandeur. “Parting Lovers,” and a “Forced Recruit,” are memorable and ably-finished poems. In the praises of Cavour we sympathise but little; the subtle, cool, and not very scrupulous statesman, whose conduct in regard to Nice is difficult to be palliated by any plea of expediency when at the sacrifice of honour. We better love to contemplate the simple strength of the soldier, who went back to his home at Caprera, unburdened by worldly honours, and perhaps with an embittered knowledge of having been insulted, wronged by the king whose cause he had aided so efficiently. And yet it was better so, better not to be repaid by men, [p. 285→] save in the way that men of selfish and sensual nature generally repay their benefactors. Garibaldi trusted his cause to a higher power. He had not wrought for the sake of winning personal applause or wealth, and needed not to complain when he beheld what was the requital of his patriotism. Nor did he complain. Italy, if neither Victor Emmanuel nor Cavour, knew his worth, and spoke gratitude by the love and valour of her bravest sons, who prepared to rally round him whensoever and wheresoever he might choose to raise again the standard of Freedom. And the end is not yet.

Tender and unaffected are several of the miscellaneous poems; some of the playful fancies of One who gave us “Ellie in the Meadow,” with her swan’s nest among the reeds. “The North and the South”—a grand burst of praise to Hans Andersen, such as none but a poet could give, and few save a poet be worthy to receive—formed the last song which this inspired singer gave to the world. “Little Mattie” seems a partial re-embodiment of the thought already more beautifully given by Robert Browning in his “Evelyn Hope,” (vide “Men and Women,” vol. 2.) “Amy’s Cruelty,” with “May’s Love,” have a distinctive grace, and the following is exquisite of its kind:—

FALSE STEP.

Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.

Pass! there’s a world full of men;

And women as fair as thou art

Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware,—

Malice, not one can impute;

And why should a heart have been there,

In the way of a fair woman’s foot?

It was not a stone that could trip,

Nor was it a thorn that could rend:

Put up thy proud underlip!

’Twas merely the heart of a friend.

And yet, peradventure, one day

Thou, sitting alone at the glass,

Remarking the bloom gone away,

Where the smile in its dimplement was,

And seeking around thee in vain

From hundreds who flattered before,

Such a word as, ‘Oh, not in the main

Do I hold thee less precious, but more!’ . . .

Thou’lt sigh, very like, on thy part,

‘Of all I have known or can know,

I wish I had only that Heart

I trod upon ages ago!’

Our especial favourite of all, and most near to perfection is

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river? [p. 286→]

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon flies on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,

While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed, as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

(How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

In holes, as he sate by the river.

‘This is the way,’ laughed the great god Pan,

(Laughed while he sate by the river,)

‘The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.’

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon fly

Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.

The moral here expressed had before now appeared in the teaching of Mrs Browning’s poems. In “Aurora Leigh,” especially, it meets us, as the undertone of sadness, swelling ever on, often unregardedly, but making itself known at times; speaking the tragedy of a human life, a withering heart beneath the singing-robes, an aching brow over-shadowed by the laurel-wreath, the glory of fame achieved, but not peace, not happiness: the reed that was chosen by the god for utterance of the holiest mysteries, growing nevermore “as a reed with the reeds of the river.” In such ways we learn [p. 287→]

How hard it is for women to sit still,

On winter nights, by solitary fires,

And hear the nations praising them far off.

It meets us once more—this remembrance of “the cost and pain,”—in the poem entitled

MY HEART AND I.

Enough! we’re tired, my heart and I.

We sit beside the headstone thus,

And wish that name were carved for us.

The moss reprints more tenderly

The hard types of the mason’s knife,

As heaven’s sweet life renews earth’s life

With which we’re tired, my heart and I.

You see we’re tired, my heart and I.

We dealt with books, we trusted men,

And in our blood we drenched the pen,

As if such colours could not fly.

We walked too straight for fortune’s end,

We loved too true to keep a friend;

At last we’re tired, my heart and I.

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!

It was not thus in that old time

When Ralph sat with me ’neath the lime

To watch the sunset from the sky.

“Dear love, you’re looking tired,” he said;

I, smiling at him, shook my head:

’Tis now we’re tired, my heart and I.

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

Tired out we are, my heart and I,

Suppose the world brought diadems

To tempt us, crusted with loose gems

Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.

We scarcely care to look at even

A pretty child, or God’s blue heaven,

We feel so tired, my heart and I.

Yet who complains? My heart and I?

In this abundant earth, no doubt,

Is little room for things worn out.

Disdain them, break them, throw them by!—

And if before the days grew rough

We once were loved, used,—well enough,

I think, we’ve fared, my heart and I.

“Bianca among the Nightingales” has a fascination in its powerful delineation of a woman’s passionate love,—a despairing outcry of agony. There is something terrible in its conclusion; so vivid is the impression of anguish, rising almost into a shriek of madness. Of “Lord Walter’s Wife,” what can be said, save that it is a vigorous and painful transcript of a nature that we love not to gaze on too [p. 288→] near? a Potiphar’s Wife of modern times, dangerous, deadly. Such women there are, doubtless, (and Mrs Browning had hinted a sketch of one such, Lady Waldemar, in “Aurora Leigh,”) whose influence blights the lives of all on whom they cast their baneful spell. “Non ragioniam di lor,’ ma guarda e passa!”

“Void in Law” has a plaintiveness that recals to mind the beautiful poem of “Bertha in the Lane”—a tale that earlier won many admirers for Mrs Browning. The translations from the Greek are generally smooth beyond what might have been expected. A place in memory will be secured by the “De Profundis;” an extract can ill-convey an idea of its best qualities, but here are a few stanzas:—

DE PROFUNDIS.

… I knock and cry,—undone, undone!

Is there no help, no comfort—none?

No gleaning in the wide wheat plains,

Where others drive their loaded wains?

My vacant days go on, go on.

I ask less kindness to be done,—

Only to loose these Pilgrim shoon,

(Too early worn and grimed) with sweet

Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,

Till days go out which now go on.

Only to lift the turf unmown

From off the earth where it hath grown,

Some cubit-space, and say, “Behold,

Creep in, poor heart, beneath that fold,

Forgetting how the days go on.”

What harm would that do? Green anon

The sward would quicken, overshone

By skies as blue: and crickets might

Have leave to chirp there, day and night

While my new rest went on, went on.

From gracious Nature have I won

Such liberal bounty? may I run

So, lizard-like, within her side,

And there be safe, who now am tried

By days that painfully go on?

A Voice reproves me thereupon,

More sweet than Nature’s when the drone

Of bees is sweetest, and more deep

Than when the rivers overleap

The shuddering pines, and thunder on.

God’s Voice, not Nature’s! Night and noon

He sits upon the great white throne

And listens for the creatures’ praise.

What babble we of days and days:

The Day-spring He, whose days go on. [p. 289→]

He reigns above, He reigns alone;

Systems burn out and leave His throne:

Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall

Around Him, changeless amid all,—

Ancient of Days, whose days go on. …

It is the same theme as Tennyson had chosen and finely-wrought in his “Two Voices.” All of Mrs Browning’s complaints are lifted up from the grief which kills, by the divine faith which sees the iris above the cloud and the rain.

We have said enough to prove that it is our belief this volume possesses a value for all lovers of true poetry, even independent of the melancholy interest attached to it as the “Last Poems” of one who was deservedly loved and honoured as (we believe) the noblest of female poets that Britain has produced; not perfect in art, yet richly endowed. On her tomb we lay the humble offering of affectionate remembrance, knowing how much there was in her that might have risen to loftier growth had not the summons come to bear her hence. Peace to her. Peace and love.

Reviewed:

Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.

___________________