E600428A. Poems Before Congress.
The Nation (Dublin), 28 April 1860, p. 554.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 393–395.
Mrs. Browning is the first living poetess of England.—the head and crown of all women who have tried verse in the English tongue—the most powerful female writer that ever taught words to crystallise into rhythm which Europe at this instant can boast of. A new volume, therefore, from her pen, a new emanation of her genius, is opened with hope, eagerness, and pleasure. But her muse has changed since we met her last. She has become gloomy as a Vala of the old north—the Priestess of the battle–field. Her singing robes are trailed in blood. Living amidst the excitement of the Italian Revolution, she has caught its fever, and stands like Miriam, with her feet touching the red sea of blood while she clangs her cymbals in a hymn of triumph over the fallen Austrian, and the upspringing of Italian freedom.
But her sympathies flash even beyond the Appenines and the Alps. Her aspirations are for liberty—the rights of nations—the uprising of a down–trodden humanity, wherever such exists throughout the world. In her preface she says, in prose as vigorous as her verse:—“I dream of a day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England, having courage in the face of his countrymen to assert—‘This is good for your trade; this is necessary for your domination; but it will profit nothing to the general humanity—therefore away with it!’ When a British Minister dares speak so, then shall the nation be so glorious that her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud civil mouths shall come to her from without, as all worthy praise must, from the alliances she has fostered and from the populations she has saved.”
At times in these poems she is grand, sonorous, and her thoughts move to the old majestic music, solemn and beautiful as ever. But at times, also, she is fierce, terrible, scathing in her denunciations of the enemies of liberty and progress, as in the poem entitled “A Curse for a Nation,” which the English at once accepted as levelled against themselves; but whether meant for them or no, their application of it proves at least they thought it deserved. The poem opens with a prologue in which, by the voice of an angel, she has the burden laid upon her to pronounce this curse, and drive it home like lightning from the tops of Heaven:—
the curse.
Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a nation’s might,
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong,
On souls of others—for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.
Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom’s foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time,
On writhing bond slaves—for this crime,
This is the curse. Write.
Because ye prosper in God’s name,
With a claim
To honour in the old world’s sight,
Yet do the Fiend’s work perfectly
In strangling martyrs—for this lie,
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while kings conspire,
Round the people’s mouldering fire,
And, warm for your part
Shall never dare—O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death,
And only under your breath
Shall favour the cause.
This is the curse. Write.
When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge his elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayers in your ear said low
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe,
That’s driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.
When wise men give you their praise,
They shall pause in the heat of the phrase,
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush:—for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.
When fools cast taunts at your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o’er the wall;
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.
Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done;
Go, plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of God’s witnessing Universe,
With a curse of yours.
This is the curse. Write.
In a poem entitled “Italy and the World," she aspirates for the time when there shall be no more Jew, nor Greek, nor England, nor France, but “one confederate brotherhood, planting one flag only to mark the advance onward and upward of all humanity.” She calls upon Italy to “Arise with a shout, nation of Italy slain and buried,” and thus grandly rolls on the torrent of her song:—
Hill to hill and turret to turret,
Flashing the tricolor—newly created
Beautiful Italy, calm, unhurried,
Rise heroic and renovated—
Rise to the final restitution.
Earth shall bless you, O noble emenders
On egotist nations! Ye shall lead
The plough of the world, and sow new splendors
Into the furrow of things for seed,
Even the richer for what ye have given.
I cry aloud in my poet passion,
Viewing my England o’er Alp and Sea.
I loved her more in her ancient fashion;
She carries her rifles too thick for me
Who spares them so in the cause of a brother.
Beautiful Italy! golden amber,
Warm with the kisses of lover and traitor!
Thou who hast drawn us on to remember,
Draw us to hope now; let us be greater
By this new fortune, than that old story.
The poem called “The Dance,” is founded on a graceful incident that occurred at Florence, while the French were encamped there. The French officers and the beauties of Florence met together one afternoon on the green meadow ground of the promenade. And there:—
Then the noblest lady present took upon her
To speak nobly from her carriage for the rest—
“Pray these officers from France to do us honour
By dancing with us straightway.” The request
Was gravely apprehended as addressed.
And the men of France, bareheaded, bowing lowly,
Led out each a proud signora to the space,
Which the startled crowd had rounded for them slowly;
Just a touch of still emotion in his face,
Not presuming, through the symbol, on the grace.
There was silence in the people; some lips trembled,
But none jested. Broke the music, at a glance;
And the daughters of our princes, thus assembled,
Stepped the measure with the gallant sons of France.
Hush! It might have been a Mass and not a dance.
And they danced there till the blue that overskied us
Swooned with passion, tho’ the footing seemed sedate;
And the mountains, heaving mighty hearts beside us,
Sighed a rapture in a shadow, to dilate
And touch the holy stone where Dante sate.
Then the sons of France, bareheaded, lowly bowing,
Led the ladies back where kinsmen of the South
Stood, received them: till, with burst of overflowing
Feeling—husbands, brothers, Florence’s male youth,
Turned and kissed the martial strangers mouth to mouth.
And a cry went up, a cry from all that people!—
You have heard a people cheering, you suppose,
For the member, mayor—with chorus from the steeple;
This was different, scarce as loud, perhaps, who knows—
For we saw wet eyes around us ere the close.
And we felt as if a nation, too long borne in
By hard wrongers, comprehending in such attitude
That God had spoken somewhere since the morning,
That men were somehow brothers by no platitude,
Cried exultant in great wonder and free gratitude.
The first poem in the book is a Triumphal Ode to Napoleon III., in which she describes how at his call the Italians rose one by one, like corpses into whom had come a living soul; and “each man stood with his face in the light of his own drawn sword,” to avenge his wrongs, and those of the dead under the earth, upon the Austrian slayer. They come forth—
Out of the dust, where they ground them,
Out of the holes, where they dogged them,
Out of the hulks, where they wound them
In iron, tortured, and flogged them;
Out of the streets where they chased them,
Taxed them, and then bayoneted them;
Out of the church, where they fereted [sic] them,
Rotted their souls, and debased them;
Then cursed them all at their prayers;
Out of cold lands not theirs,
Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them.
Back they come like a wind in vain,
Cramped up in the hills, that rears its head,
The stronger into the open plain;
Or like a restrained word of God,
Fulfilling itself by what seems to hinder.
This is powerful writing. An Ezekiel vision of resurrection fit to stir the dry bones in any country that lay asphyxiated by oppression, and make them live.
There is gentler inspiration in the poem of the “The Court Lady,” with the description of her visit to the Hospital of the wounded soldiers after the battle. It begins thus:—
Her hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark,
Her cheeks pale opal burnt, with a red and restless spark;
Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race,
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.
She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, “Bring
That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.
Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote,
Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.
“Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snows from the eaves.”
Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
While straight in her open carriage, she to the Hospital came.
Up she passed through the wards, and stood by a young man’s bed;
Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.
“Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou,” she cried,
And smiled like Italy on him; he dreamed in her face, and died.
Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined
One, with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.
Long she stood and gazed, and thrice she tried at the name,
But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.
Only a tear for Venice? She turned, as in passion and loss,
And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing the Cross.
So she continues her visits to each couch where lie the heroes of Italian Liberty, and consecrates each thrill of agony by a tear or prayer, and by the idea, symbolised by her own beauty and magnificence, that wherever there are brave hearts who have striven and suffered for Freedom, there is the true Court of a King.
But we have already given quotations enough to prove that Mrs Browning’s genius has not grown languid beneath the sky of Italy. If Revolution has lit her blood to fever heat, she can still write as divinely and humanly, though not perhaps as womanly as of yore.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
___________________
