E620524A. Last Poems (New York).
Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), 24 May 1862, p. 1.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
Mrs. Browning’s last poems and her last photograph are lying on my table. In both I find indications of melancholy and decay. The picture was taken in Florence thirty days before her death. She stands in a drooping attitude, holding a fan. A profusion of curls, parted away from the wide forehead, falls down each side of her face—the lower part of which it conceals. In her eyes is a sick, sad look, which says “I am going.” There is an expression of self-pity, which comes from long-endured pain, that is very touching in the whole picture.
The poems, collected in a volume, were published in the Cornhill Magazine and the New York Independent. Theodore Tilton of the latter journal has written a “memorial” to accompany them. There are several mistakes in it, and from its style it ranks as an attempt at fine writing rather than an account of Mrs. Browning. Mr. Tilton gives us his own opinions on certain matters that do not pertain to poetry. He mentions that Mrs. Browning liked Mr. Lincoln’s Inaugural, with the exception of certain expressions—the expressions, he explains, were Mr. Lincoln’s voluntary an unnecessary offer to return fugitive slaves—an offer, he thinks, which will never be renewed. He informs us that Henry Ward Beecher is a prose-poet, and that Lady Waldermar’s Parting is a favorite with him. He also says that Wendell Phillips calls her letters above praise. It will be seen that other than literary criticism moves Mr. Tilton’s pen. That Mrs. Browning was a fine poet, we have only to read her to know. That she was a good woman, we have every reason to believe; but an attempt to deify her, sets us into an obstinate thinking that she was but human after all.
The political poems in this volume have an interest beyond the interest of the critic, and must be judged by a different standard than the artistic one. The other poems, such as Amy’s Cruelty, are purely ideal creations, and are very fine, setting aside her constant habit of verbal obscurity. I quote a verse from My Heart and I, which must have been dictated from under the shadows which were gathering about her:
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.
De Profundis—every verse of which has the refrain “My days go on”—is as sad as the death she was contemplating. Listen:
And cold before my Summer’s done,
And deaf in Nature’s general tune,
And fallen too low for special fear,
And here, with hope no longer here—
While the tears drop—my days go on.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), New York: James Miller, 1862.
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