E440831B. Poems (1844).
John Bull, 31 August 1844, pp. 551–552.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 330–333.
These volumes are dedicated by Miss Barrett to her father, and there is something in the dedication so unlike what we are accustomed to find in similar effusions of filial tenderness or gratitude, that we cannot resist laying it before our readers:—
to my father.
When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world: nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours.
And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day—that you, who have shared with me, in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them every day—that you, who hold with me over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one Name—may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one smile—and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest affection.
Your E.B.B.
London, 50, Wimpole-street, 1844.
A preface follows, which is also written—we will not say in a style of premeditated affectation—but in one of studied singularity. Simplicity is everywhere sacrificed to the superficial glitter of phrases. The poet in Martinus Scribblerus could not bid his servant “shut the door,” but said—“swift on its axles turn the wooden guardians of my privacy.” So Miss Barrett does not publish the poems before us, but “trusts them into the current of publication.” Then we have the “nympholepsy of poetry,” “immemorable verses,” and sundry other like evidences of a taste for the tawdry in composition. “Poetry,” she says, “has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing, there has been no playing at skittles for me in either.” Again, “in the eyes of the living generation, the poet is at once a richer and a poorer man than he need to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles; and the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may apprehend fully.” There are readers and writers of the “living generation” who will call this fine writing, and sigh to think that “great ideas” should be thus covered over with “social incrustations,” but we are afraid it is little better than nonsense after all. It is the more provoking to see one like Miss Barrett fluttering away in such gaudy tinsel, because she is evidently capable of far better things, both from the impulses of her own genius and the advantages she possesses from a highly cultivated mind.
The “first poem of this collection,” she says (the “Drama of Exile”), “is the longest and most important work (to me!) which I have ever trusted into the current of publication.” We are sorry for it, because if she have built any bright hopes upon its success, we are afraid she has laid up for herself a sad disappointment. The subject is finely chosen; but it demands higher powers for its perfect development than she can command. We will give her own description of it:—
My subject was the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve’s allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her offence—appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical emotion in those first steps into the wilderness—in that first sense of desolation after wrath—in that first audible gathering of the recriminating “groan of the whole creation”—in that first darkening of the hills from the recoiling foot of angels—and in that first silence of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile, stroke upon stroke, the Idea of Exile—admitting Lucifer as an extreme Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss—that it might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the heavenly love and purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve unfallen or falling— and I, without, with my exiles—I also an exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary to my vow—till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face of the public.
A clear, strong, poetical conception may exist without the executive faculty. We can imagine what we cannot perform; “body forth the form of things” to which we cannot “give a local habitation and a name.” Miss Barrett has done so. Her sketch is full of an imagination of which there is scarcely any trace in the filling up. To add to her difficulties, too, she has selected the dramatic form of composition, and we have Adam and Eve, Gabriel and Lucifer, uttering long speeches, with choruses and semi-choruses by “Eden spirits,” (i.e. “spirits of the trees,” “river-spirits,” “bird-spirits,” “flower-spirits,” &c.) “Angels,” “Earth Spirits,” and “Phantoms.” What is the consequence? Miss Barrett cannot frame suitable thoughts and language either for angelic natures, or for beings in that tremendous state which awaited our first parents when they forfeited Paradise—(the deficiency of description would have been less striking)—and the consequence is, that she makes them, of necessity, talk like common mortals, except when she now and then strives to ascend to the height of her great theme, and then, we have bombast for inspiration, or a ludicrous assemblage of grotesque images for poetical combinations.
“A Drama of Exile” opens with a very undignified squabble between Lucifer and the Angel Gabriel, who are standing outside the gate of Paradise, which is “shut fast with clouds!” Gabriel bids the Evil One depart, and he answers pertly enough:—
Lucifer—And where’s the logic of “depart?”
Our lady Eve had half been satisfied
To obey her Maker if I had not learnt
To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream
Of guarding some monopoly in heaven
Instead of earth? Why I can dream with thee
To the length of thy wings.
This is poor enough; but it is as good as anything which the poem contains, while numerous passages might be selected in which we have nothing but a mere conglomeration of glittering verbiage. For example—
Gabriel—Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy bitter words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the skies,
Flushing the starry arteries!!
If this be poetry, we must go to Bedlam for poets. Again—
He [God] overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love.
Miss Barrett is a huge coiner of words, and inordinately fond of such as are rarely used, because there are better and simpler ones to express the same ideas.
The following is a portion of the “Chorus of Eden Spirits” who are supposed to be “chaunting from Paradise, while Adam and Eve fly across the sword-glare:”—
Bird-Spirit:—
I am the nearest nightingale
That singeth in Eden after you;
And I am singing loud and true,
And sweet—I do not fail!
I sit upon a cypress-bough,
Close to the gate; and I fling my song
Over the gate and through the mail
Of the warden angels marshalled strong—
Over the gate and after you!
And the warden angels let it pass,
Because the poor brown bird, alas!
Sings in the garden, sweet and true.
And I build my song of high pure notes,
Note over note, height over height,
Till I strike the arch of the Infinite;
And I bridge abysmal agonies
With strong, clear calms of harmonies—
And something abides, and something floats,
In the song which I sing after you:
Fare ye well, farewell!
The creature-sounds, no longer audible,
Expire at Eden’s door!
Each footstep of your treading
Treads out some cadence which ye heard before:
Farewell! the birds of Eden,
Ye shall hear nevermore.
Flower-Spirits:—
We linger, we linger,
The last of the throng!
Like the tones of a singer
Who loves his own song.
We are spirit-aromas
Of blossom and bloom;
We call your thoughts home, as
Ye breathe our perfume;
To the amaranth’s splendour
Afire on the slopes;
To the lilly-bells tender,
And grey heliotropes!
To the poppy-plains, keeping
Such dream-breath and blé,
That the angels there stepping
Grew whiter to see!
To the nook, set with moly,
Ye jested one day in,
Till your smile waxed too holy,
And left your lips praying!
To the rose in the bower-place,
That dripped o’er you sleeping;
To the asphodel flower place,
Ye walked ancle deep in!
We pluck at your raiment,
We stroke down your hair—
We faint in our lament,
And pine into air.
Fare ye well, farewell!
The Eden scents, no longer sensible,
Expire at Eden’s door!
Each footstep of your treading
Treads out some fragrance which ye knew before:
Farewell! the flowers of Eden,
Ye shall smell nevermore.
The minor poems of Miss Barrett are altogether as excellent (though occasionally disfigured by fustian) as this, her chief one, is faulty. If our space permitted, we could select several of these, which are full of beauty and tenderness, conceived and expressed in a true poetical spirit. We can only, however, find room for the two which follow:—
the lady’s yes.
“Yes!” I answered you last night;
“No!” this morning, Sir, I say!
Colours, seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day.
When the tabors played their best,
Lamps above, and laughs below—
Love me sounded like a jest,
Fit for Yes or fit for No!
Call me false, or call me free—
Vow, whatever light may shine,
No man on thy face shall see
Any grief for change on mine.
Yet the sin is on us both—
Time to dance is not to woo—
Wooer light makes fickle troth—
Scorn of me recoils on you!
Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
Bravely, as for life and death—
With a loyal gravity.
Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her, by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship’s flatteries.
By your truth she shall be true—
Ever true as wives of yore—
And her Yes, once said to you,
Shall be Yes for evermore.
sleeping and watching.
Sleep on, baby, on the floor,
Tired of all the playing,
Sleep with smile the sweeter for
That, you dropped away in!
On your curls’ full roundness, stand
Golden lights serenely—
One cheek, pushed out by the hand,
Folds the dimple inly!
Little head and little foot
Heavy laid for pleasure,
Underneath the lids half-shut, [p. 552→]
Slants the shining azure;
Open-souled in noonday sun,
So, you lie and slumber!
Nothing evil, having done,
Nothing can encumber.
I, who cannot sleep as well,
Shall I sigh to view you?
Or sigh further to foretell
All that may undo you?
Nay, keep smiling, little child,
Ere the sorrow neareth—
I will smile too! Patience mild
Pleasure’s token weareth.
Nay, keep sleeping, before loss;
I shall sleep though losing;
As by cradle, so by cross,
Sure is the reposing.
And God knows, who sees us twain,
Child at childish leisure,
I am near as tired of pain
As you seem of pleasure;
Very soon too, by His grace
Gently wrapt around me,
Shall I show as calm a face,
Shall I sleep as soundly!
Differing in this, that you
Clasp your playthings sleeping,
While my hand shall drop the few
Given to my keeping;
Differing in this, that I
Sleeping, shall be colder,
And in waking presently,
Brighter to beholder!
Differing in this beside
(Sleeper, have you heard me?
Do you move, and open wide
Eyes of wonder toward me?)—
That while I, you, draw withal
From your slumber, solely—
Me, from mine, an angel shall,
With reveillie holy!
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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