E440909A. Poems (1844).
The Sun, 9 September 1844, p. 3.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 334–335.
In the course of a modest and gracefully-written preface to these volumes of poems, Miss Barrett remarks:—“If it must be said of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and irresponsible spirit. Poetry 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. I never mistook pleasure for the final course of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet.” There are abundant proofs throughout these volumes that the authoress has regarded the efforts of the fancy and the feeling in no light or superficial spirit; but has brought to the task of poetical composition, thought, earnestness, anxious solicitude, and a high and ennobling sense of the importance of the work she is engaged on. In her principal poem, however, headed a “Drama of Exile”—fine as some passages in it undoubtedly are—we think that she has formed rather too ambitious an estimate of her imaginative powers, and essayed a flight beyond her capacity. The region in which her genius expatiates to the greatest advantage is certainly not the sublime; she sustains herself in that lofty sphere with evident difficulty; and toils and strains to make her position good, in a manner that must convince even the most partial reader that she is far less at home on the summit, than on the lower slopes, of Parnassus. Her proper place is with the Landons, and the Hemanses, and not with the Byrons or the Wordsworths. The objection we have just urged applies solely to Miss Barrett’s ambitious “Drama of Exile;” in her other poems, where she adopts an humbler tone, nothing can be more decided than her success. Her pathos, in particular, is exquisite; and cold must be the heart, and limited the understanding, that can peruse, untouched, the “Lost Bower”—a poem conceived in the most genuine imaginative spirit, full of the purest and profoundest sentiment, and pervaded by a vein of thought that has surprised, not less than it has delighted us. We prefer, however, quoting, as being more suitable to our limits, a shorter poem, entitled “Catarina to Camoens, Dying in his Absence abroad, and referring to the Poem in which he had recorded the sweetness of her Eyes:”—
On the door you will not enter,
I have gazed too long—adieu!
Hope withdraws her peradventure—
Death is near me,—and not you!
Come, O lover,
Close and cover
These poor eyes, you called, I ween,
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
When I heard you sing that burden
In my vernal days and bowers,
Other praises disregarding,
I but hearkened that of yours,—
Only saying,
In heart-playing,
“Blessed eyes mine eyes have been,
If the sweetest, his have seen!”
But all changeth! At this vesper,
Cold the sun shines down the door!
If you stood there, would you whisper
“Love, I love you,” as before,—
Death pervading
Now, and shading
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
As the sweetest, ever seen?
Yes! I think, were you beside them,
Near the bed I die upon,—
Though their beauty you denied them,
As you stood there, looking down,
You would truly
Call them duly,
For the love’s sake found therein,—
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
And if you looked down upon them,
And if they looked up to you,
All the light which has foregone them
Would be gathered back anew!
They would truly
Be as duly
Love-transformed to Beauty’s sheen,—
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
But, ah me! you only see me
In your thoughts of loving man,
Smiling soft perhaps and dreamy
Through the wavings of my fan,—
And unweeting
Go repeating,
In your reverie serene,
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
While my spirit leans and reaches
From my body, still and pale,
Fain to hear what tender speech is
In your love, to help my bale—
O my poet,
Come and show it!
Come, of latest love, to glean
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
O my poet, O my prophet,
When you praised their sweetness so,
Did you think, in singing of it,
That it might be near to go?
Had you fancies
From their glances,
That the grave would quickly screen,
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?”
No reply! The fountain’s warble
In the court-yard sounds alone!
As the water to the marble
So my heart falls with a moan,
From love-sighing
To this dying!
Death forerunneth Love, to win
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
Will you come? when I’m departed
Where all sweetnesses are hid—
When thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid.
Cry, O lover,
Love is over!
Cry beneath the cypress green—
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
When the angelus is ringing,
Near the convent will you walk,
And recal the choral singing
Which brought angels down our talk?
Spirit-shriven
I viewed Heaven,
Till you smiled—“Is earth unclean,
Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?”
When beneath the palace-lattice,
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there—that is
Not the old familiar one,—
Will you oftly
Murmur softly,
“Here, ye watched me morn and e’en,
Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.”
When the palace ladies sitting
Round your gittern, shall have said,
“Poet, sing those verses, written
For the lady who is dead,”—
Will you tremble,
Yet dissemble,—
Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?”
Sweetest eyes! How sweet in flowings,
The repeated cadence is!
Though you sang a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it.
’Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise, intervene—
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!”
But the priest waits for the praying,
And the choir are on their knees,—
And the soul must pass away in
Strains more solemn high than these!
Miserere
For the weary—
Oh, no longer for Catrine,
“Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!”
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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