E620513A. Last Poems.
The Orkney Herald, 13 May 1862, p. 4.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
“Last Poems!” There is a peculiar pathos in the title of this book. The light that never was on sea or shore—the solemn radiance, as of another world, rests upon the last musical utterances of the Poet, who will never more hail the advent of morn with jubilant songs, nor drop melodious tears at the shut of eve. Were men to be told, on some glad summer’s day, that the sun would set that evening no more to rise in rejoicing East, with what lingering looks of saddest regret would they watch the departing glory, watching and weeping in the dying light until the last flush of beauty had faded from the cloud-curtains as they closed drearily around the extinguished orb! Somewhat similar is the feeling of regretful sorrow experienced when a great poet dies, whose genius has enriched the world, and cast illumination into the depths of the human heart. A lovely light has disappeared which shall never shine again, and all that we possess is a relict radiance, and the memory of what once has been. It was at the beginning of last summer that Elizabeth Browning died in her adopted country, and amid the sanctities of her Italian home. Deep was the grief that the tidings brought to the many admirers of her genius and song; but it was well with her though the loss to the world was great, and we may think of her saying in her own words—
I seek no copy now of Life’s first half!
Leave there the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future’s epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!
Mrs Browning was pronounced by an eminent literary man to be the noblest of her sex, and since it is now possible, after the publication of this last volume, to form a comprehensive estimate of her powers and achievements, the best judges of poetry must, we think, be ready to concede that she was, in some respects, the noblest of modern poets. On the title-page of all her books there was written, in invisible ink, and emphatic “Care” to that class of persons known as general readers, who would find food more convenient to their taste in the shilling volumes of Railway Libraries. She did not indulge in the composition of “fugitive pieces,” penned with flying fingers so that those who ran might read and understand. Thought, strong and original, feeling, true and profound—these formed the staple qualities and characteristics of her poems. She reverenced the ideal of the art to which she had dedicated and consecrated all the strength of her mind, and all the riches of her heart. Poetry she regarded as the noblest expression of that which is noblest in man, and into rhythmic forms she strove to fashion the purest outcomes of her genius. She uplifted her harp with a devoutness akin in depth and intensity of feeling to that of the old Hebrew singers, and from its many cords, which were but the stretched strings of her heart, there rolled off, not fanciful preludes and airy measures, but grave sweet melodies and the resonant music of burdened thought. Take any of Mrs Browning’s Poems at random—even those that have been pronounced splendid failures—and though mannerisms of expression and spasmodic workings of imagination occasionally occur, apt to frighten and repel the timid reader, nevertheless we are forced to feel that the very weaknesses are indications of strength, and that the very struggles of thought are the spasms of power. Hostile criticism has taken undue advantage of these mannerisms and obscurities, and attempted through them to depreciate the genius of which they are only the perishable offshoots and natural imperfections. About all great minds there are peculiarities as well as powers that help to distinguish them from the common mass, and these peculiarities must inevitably find vent in expression. The sun shining full and clear in the cloudless blue is a splendid spectacle, but there is also a glorious beauty in the same sun shooting lines of far-streaming light through the waving draperies of morning mist.
The obscurity and painful effort that characterize some of Mrs Browning’s productions may be attributed in part to that mysterious anguish of soul which all true poets feel, but which she seems to have experienced in superlative degree. Whether owing to the original bent of her being, to some great grief felt in childhood that deepened like a river in its life-long course, or to the oppressive burden of the unintelligible world, there is, in most of her poems, a yearning pathos which shows that she has learned in suffering what she strives to utter and teach in song. She not only suffered intensely, but she believed that the continual endurance of internal anguish was necessary to the discipline and development of the poet. This idea forms the burden and inspiration of some of her finest productions. In her “Vision of Poets,” which abounds alike in graphic descriptions and in far reaches of thought, she taught that “ignorance of anguish is but ignorance,” that to “speak nobly comprehends to feel profoundly,” and that “saddest sighs swell sweetest sound.” The same truth is illustrated with great artistic beauty in the piece entitled “A Musical Instrument,” forming one of her “Last Poems.” It describes the making of a Poet, and tells how the great god Pan tore a reed from the cool bed of the river, and “drew the pith, like the heart of a man, steadily from the outside ring.” After notching the reed, the rural god dropped his mouth to a hole, and “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.
The suffering which, in Mrs Browning’s works, breaks into the bright consummate flower of song, is of a peculiar quality and kind, and might task the subtlest intellect adequately to describe. It is something altogether different from that agony of unrest which stung Byron into his grandest altitudes of inspiration, nor can it be compared with the wild wailing grief, melancholy as the sound of homeless waves, that found expression in many of Shelley’s most touching poems. The peculiarity of the profound sorrow which runs, like a low sweet bar of melody, through the finest of Mrs. Browning’s productions, might probably arise from the circumstance that she united to strong masculine features of mind and character the tenderest affections of a womanly heart. Her thoughts are steeped in feeling, and she has written her heart in her poems with a force and truth such as no woman ever equalled. Of the passionate ardour of Sappho’s songs we know only by report; but here we have the purest products of a woman’s mind and heart, both alike oppressed with the weight of that unintelligible grief which all great spirits feel and strive to unfold. The face of Mrs Browning, as represented in her portraits, may perhaps give the truest insight into the nature and peculiarity of her genius. Combined with features denoting earnestness and masculine vigour, there rests on her countenance a pathetic expression of yearning love and sorrow—the look, as it were, of one who strives to appear composedly calm while within there burns a pain that death alone can heal. It is the prevailing tone of sorrow bordering on anguish which imparts—by way of contrast it may be—such strange deep beauty to the descriptive touches that gleam out at intervals throughout the works of our poetess. To the sick man in his lonely chamber, how vivid seems the verdure of the fields and woodlands, and how lustrous the light of the rising and setting sun! We see the world of Nature, in these Poems, through a spiritual medium that swathes it in a diviner air, and invests with mysterious meaning alike the lilies of the field and the morning stars. Pleasant are the touches of Nature that abound, and refreshing as the “rippling greenery” of summer woods. How delightful the following verses from a Poem addressed to “My Doves,” which have left their nest upon an Indian tree, and been wafted “across an ocean rolling grey:”—
Soft falls their chant, as on the nest
Beneath the sunny zone;
For love that stirred it in their breast,
Has not a-weary grown,
And ’neath the city’s shade, can keep
The well of music clear and deep.
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 the 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.
Here is tenderness, simplicity, and musical beauty, and probably some of the readers of Mrs Browning may feel tempted to exclaim, O si sic omnia! “The Lost Bower,” again, is a rare poetic gem, enriched not only with beautiful description, but glowing also with symbolic light, like the oracular ornaments on priestly robes. Wandering at her own sweet will in childhood, and threading the mazes of an intertangled woodland, the poetess lighted unawares upon a Bower of Beauty—a fairy marvel of Nature formed of ivy, and eglantine, and the large-leaved columbine.
Rose-trees, either side the door, were
Growing lithe and growing tall,
Each one set a summer warder
For the keeping of the hall,—
With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nodding at the wall.
As I entered—mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot;
And a green elastic cushion,
Clasped within the linden’s root,
Took me in a chair of silence, very rare and absolute.
There she heard the nightingale sing as never nightingale sang before, and in the trance of joy and wonder she felt around her mystic Presences of Power. Next morning she set out again in search of that fairy Bower, but she found it nevermore—it had vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream. This loss, slight as it might seem, was painful in the experience of a child, and prefigured for her “other loss of better good.”
I have lost—oh many a pleasure—
Many a hope, and many a power—
Studious health and merry leisure—
The first dew on the first flower!
But the first of all my losses, was the losing of the Bower.
The Poem finely illustrates the mournful truth that the losses of childhood are but prefigurations of the severer deprivations that await the years of maturity. There is a joyous Eden—a Garden of delights from which all men are driven into the wilderness of the world, and seek as they list they can never find that Eden again on this side the grave. Even in the meridian of life, and before the shadows of evening stretch long and broad upon the plain, there are few hearts that do not mourn the departure of early joys, and the evanishment of a beauty that charmed the soul. Nature is still around us, and starts into lovely forms, as at the touch of Ithuriel’s spear, when the summer months return; but the glory is less bright than we knew it before, and the islands no longer make their old melody in the midst of the seas. The fresh feelings of the heart have withered like the blooms of buried flowers, and the change within dims the light and the joy of the outer world.
The variety of creative genius manifested in Mrs Browning’s works is something remarkable. She possesses a strength equal to her tenderness—a nervous vigour such as has seldom been surpassed. The “Rhyme of the Duchess May” is a triumph of poetic power. The description of the Castle of Linteged, standing in shade with the red sun at its back, while lance and spearhead bristle above in fiery light, forms a picture which it would task the powers of some mighty painter to reproduce with equal vividness and effect. What statueque strength, too, in that scene on the battlements when Sir Guy and his bride, on the red-roan steel of might, are in the act of topppling over into the horrid gulph below! Was ever the agony of a horse in “stark despair” depicted with more terrible power!—
And he hangs, he rocks between—
And his nostrils curdle in—
And he shivers head and hoof—
And the flakes of foam fall off:
And his face grows fierce and thin!
And a look of human woe
From his staring eyes did go,—
And a sharp cry uttered he,
In a foretold agony
Of the headlong death below.
Any analysis of Mrs Browning’s genius would be sadly incomplete did we forget to note the “hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,” with which she is largely dowered. Filled with a high sense of the nobility of the Poet’s mission, and reverencing greatness of soul in every sphere and garb, she scorches with withering scorn the insincerity of mock-bards, and is unsparing in her wrathful denunciations of all social fictions. In her “Vision of Poets,” and in the presence of the sceptred Shades of the Kings of Song, she castigates poetasters with refreshing vigour and lofty disdain. “Aurora Leigh”—the longest, and, in some respects, the least satisfactory of all her poems—is, nevertheless, a noble protest against the evils and inequalities of our social condition, and the corruptions of modern society. The Poem has a broad philosophic basis; but Mrs Browning failed by attempting overmuch, without due consideration of the melancholy truth that our social fictions are granitic facts. The bridal of the Ideal and Actual may possibly take place when the Pantisocracy of the Poets is established beyound the Mountains of the Moon. In “Casa Guidi, Windows,” written in her Florentine home, and in her “Last Poems,” written also in Italy, Mrs Browning lashes with fierce force the Italian despots, and breathes noble aspirations for the freedom of her adopted country. Were Jessie White Mario a poet as well as a lecturer, we could imagine her inditing similar fiery strains, full of hate and scorn, in detestation of the tyrants who have deflowered the fair land of Italy. Mrs. Browning’s political verse, like Ebenezer Elliott’s “Corn-Law Rhymes,” is fuller of strongly-expressed and eloquent invective than of poetry. The spirit of love was the truest inspiration of her song: scorn seemed to wither and blast the poetic bloom of her heart.
This brave-hearted woman has gone from among us; her noble life-work is finished; her last strain on earth is sung. But she has now recovered the beautiful Bower lost in childhood, and in vision we may see her holding in her hand a more melodious lyre, and wearing a greener garland “with morning dews impearled.”
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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