E510616A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Morning Advertiser, 16 June 1851, p. 3.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 17.
The quaint title of Mrs. Browning’s poem requires a sentence of explanation to those who may not have the book before them. The authoress, during the eventful year 1848—when the battle of liberty seemed almost won in Italy, so soon to be whelmed in disastrous reverses—inhabited the “Casa Guidi” in beautiful Florence. There, in the Tuscan capital, from “the windows” of her dwelling, the poetess saw the birth and going forth of that fine enthusiasm, which shook the thrones of oppressors with alarm; therefrom she witnessed the return of the dispirited vanquished, and the triumphal entry of the grim warriors of Austria,—once again the conquerors of Italian freedom and nationality.
Can we doubt with what feelings a fine, generous, poetic soul like that of the gifted lady who has penned this volume, must have viewed this struggle? No! Mrs. Browning pours forth her fervid, impulsive strains in joy at the first hopes, and in wailings over the fall of Italian freedom.
Take the following description of the bringing back of the Grand Duke by the Austrian legions:—
From Casa Guidi windows, gazing, then,
I saw and witness how the Duke came back.
The regular tramp of horse and tread of men
Did smite the silence like an anvil black
And sparkless. With her side eyes at full strain,
Our Tuscan nurse exclaimed ‘Alack, alack,
Signora! these shall be the Austrians.’ ‘Nay,
Hush, hush,’ I answered, ‘do not wake the child.’
.....
Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street
Live out, from end to end, full in the sun,
With Austria’s thousands. Sword and bayonet,
Horse, foot, artillery—cannons rolling on,
Like blind, slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat
Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode
By a single man, dust-white from head to heel,
Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode,
Calm as a sculptured Fate, and terrible!
As some smooth river which hath overflowed,
Doth slow and silent down its current wheel
A loosened forest, all the pines erect—
So, swept, in mute significance of storm,
The marshalled thousands—not an eye deflect
To left or right, to catch a novel form
Of the famed city adorned by architect
And carver, nor of beauties live and warm
Scared at the casements,—all, straightforward eyes
And faces, held as stedfast as their swords,
And cognizant of acts not imageries.
The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards!
Ye asked for mimes; these bring you tragedies—
For purple; these shall wear it as your lords.
Ye played like children: die like innocents!
Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch; the crack
Of the actual bolt your pastime circumvents.
Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack
To follow any voice from Gilboa’s tents,***
Here’s Samuel! and so—Grand dukes come back!”
We think the reader will agree with us, even from this slight specimen, that, apart from its heroic sentiments and lofty principles, the poem before us is a work of a high order of beauty. Its nerve and vigour are truly English—its texture and pattern Italian. True that this leads Mrs. Browning into a few fantastic embellishments in rhythm and phrase, yet to some these little conceits will be as beauties; especially to those who admire the Tennysonian fashion, and its imitators of the mystic and Euphuic school.
In her preface Mrs. Browning explains the cause of the division of her poem into two parts:—“The first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851. The discrepancy of the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she escaped the epidemic ‘falling sickness’ of enthusiasm for Pio Nino, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects.”
The first part, then, treats of the period when the people of Italy were full of good auguries and high hopes; the second takes up the story of Tuscany, when the Duke had foresworn his promises of a constitution, and fled before his outraged people, and ends with the return of the Duke, under shadow of the double–headed eagle, part of the description of which may be read in the lines above quoted.
Notwithstanding the present prostrate state of the beautiful peninsula, with true poetic prescience the authoress looks hopefully into the dim future.
O trusted, broken prophecy,
O richest fortune, sourly crost,
Born for the future, to the future lost!
“Nay, not lost to the future, in this case,” exclaims she. “The future of Italy shall not be disinherited.”
One of the finest passages of this beautiful book,—bright with sunlight of genius, and musical with poetic hymnings,—is where the patriotic heroism of Charles Albert is limned; his wavering touched on; and his death, in exile, after the effort wherein—
Shaking Austria’s yoke,
He shattered his own hand and heart,
recorded.
We must, ere we leave the windows of Casa Guidi, embellish our columns with one fine outburst of the spirit of vaticination. The poetess thus apostrophizes her child, “a young Florentine:”—
The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor:
Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,
Not two years old, and let me see thee more!
It grows along thy amber curls, to shine
Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before,
And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,
And from my soul, which fronts the future so,
With unabashed and unabated gaze,
Teach me to hope for what the angels know,
When they smile clear as thou dost.
......
Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet!—thou, to whom
The earliest world-day light that ever flowed
Through Casa Guidi windows chanced to come!
Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair,
And be God’s witness,— that the elemental
New springs of life are gushing everywhere,
To cleanse the water courses, and prevent all
Concrete obstructions which infest the air!
—That earth’s alive, and gentle or ungentle
Motions within her signify but growth:
The ground swells greenest o’er the labouring moles.
Howe’er, the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,
Young children, lifted high on parent souls,
Look round them with a smile upon the mouth,
And take for music every bell that tolls.
Who said we should be better if like these?
And we... despond we for the future, though
Posterity is smiling at our knees,
Convicting us of folly? Let us go—
We will trust God. The blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into
With pillared marbles rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane’s complete.
This world has no perdition, if some loss.
.....
Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, sweet,
The self-same cherub-faces which emboss
The rail, lean inward to the mercy-seat!
Albeit poetry is not now ascendant in popularity, such glorious imaginings, thus exquisitely expressed, can never want an acceptance in every attuned ear, and an echo in every true heart.
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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