R491208A. Poems (1849).
The Literary World (New York), 8 December 1849, pp. 487–488.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 346–348.
These volumes are brought out with even more than the usual beauty of typography which marks the poetical publications of these gentlemen, and are conformable to the revised edition of his poems lately published by Mr. Browning, in which he has wisely omitted Sordello, and some of his other more youthful productions. Although Mr. Browning is comparatively little known in this country, he deserves to hold high rank among the younger English poets of the day. Indeed, we are not acquainted with the writings of any poet of the present generation except Tennyson, who exhibits more of the poetic faculty, or whose poems are so suggestive of thought. Occasionally obscure, involved, egotistical, and almost incomprehensible, he everywhere gives the impression of intellectual power, and establishes a complete mastery over his reader’s feelings. He everywhere shows that he possesses a mind of great originality, a strong and fervid imagination, a moderate fancy, a clear insight into character, and no ordinary skill in its delineation. But like many other poets of the day, he injures the effect of his undoubted poetical genius by infusing too much of the metaphysical element into his poems. Yet even here he exhibits powers of a very high order: and his superiority over many, if not most of his contemporaries, is as manifest here as in the more purely poetical parts. And though we may not exclaim in the enthusiastic language of Walter Savage Landor’s sonnet,—
Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse,
we have no hesitation in admitting his claim to a place among the few really great poets, whose works are likely to survive the mutations of time. The author of “Pippa Passes,” and “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” is no common man.
Mr. Browning’s poems are cast in a dramatic form, but they are dramatic poems rather than regular dramas. A few only can be considered as dramas, yet all have the dramatic element in a greater or less degree. They abound in striking metaphors and forcible images, which carry the mind back to the time of the elder dramatists. One of the best evidences of his power as a dramatic poet is found in his delineations of men and women, which are living, breathing realities, rather than so many lay figures, each marked by an individuality of its own, yet each true to nature, and without exaggeration or feebleness of conception. There is nothing like caricature about them, but every part of the character of each harmonizes with every other part of the character, in the same manner as we find in the actual world. Especially in his delineation of female character,—that most difficult part of the poet’s task,—do we find his creative powers exhibited to the best advantage. They are all conceived with the same clear, strong understanding of those most incomprehensible of all mysteries, a woman’s mind and heart; and though often merely sketched, we enter as thoroughly into their characters, their fears and hopes, their joys and sorrows, as if we had always known them. Take Pippa as an illustration. We only catch occasional glimpses of her as she passes singing along on her new year’s walk, yet she at once wins her way to every heart by her gentleness, and sweetness, and womanly charms. It is precisely the same with Luigi’s mother, Guendolin, Mildred, Polyxena, Colombe, and, in fact, with all of his female characters. They are true women, and not mere metaphysical abstractions, all brain and no heart or soul. His men, too, are finely discriminated, and show that the poet is himself a man of large acquirements and keen observation.
The first volume contains four dramatic poems or dramas. Of these Paracelsus is the longest and most obscure. It is designed to show the aspirations of a man who devotes himself wholly to the attainment of knowledge for its own sake, utterly disregarding love and all the other kindly affections of his nature, and the unsatisfying character of his attainments. Although not without passages of great beauty, it is decidedly inferior to Mr. Browning’s later productions. The following song by Paracelsus possesses much sweetness and grace:—
Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave,
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave—[p. 488→]
A gallant armament;
Each bark built out of a forest tree,
Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black-bull hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,
To bear the playful billows’ game;
So each good ship was rude to see,
Rude and bare to the outward view,
But each upbore a stately bent;
Where cedar pales in scented row
Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine:
And an awning drooped the mast below,
In fold on fold of the purple fine,
That neither noon-tide, nor star-shine,
Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,
Might pierce the regal tenement.
When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad
We set the sail and plied the oar;
But when the night-wind blew like breath,
For joy of one day’s voyage more,
We sang together on the wide sea,
Like men at peace on a peaceful shore;
Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,
Each helm made sure by the twilight star,
And in a sleep as calm as death.
We, the strangers from afar,
Lay stretched along, each weary crew
In a circle round its wondrous tent,
Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,
And with light and perfume, music too:
So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,
And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast!
One morn, the land appeared!—a speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky—
Avoid it, cried our pilot check
The shout, restrain the longing eye!
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;
So we broke the cedar pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,
And a statue bright was on every deck!
We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbor thus,
With pomp and pæan glorious.
An hundred shapes of lucid stone;
All day we built a shrine for each—
A shrine of rock for every one—
Nor paused we till in the westering sun
We sat together on the beach
To sing, because our task was done;
When lo! what shouts and merry songs!
What laughter all the distance stirs!
What raft comes loaded with its throngs
Of gentle islanders?
“The isles are just at hand,” they cried;
“Like cloudlets faint at even sleeping
Our temple gates are opened wide,
Our olive groves thick shade are keeping
For the lucid shapes you bring”—they cried.
Oh, then we awoke with sudden start
From our deep dream; we knew too late,
How bare the rock, how desolate,
To which we had flung our precious freight:
Yet we called out—“Depart!
Our gifts, once given, must here abide:
Our work is done; we have no heart
To mar our work, though vain”—we cried.
“Paracelsus” is followed by “Pippa Passes,” which, if inferior in power and grandness of design to “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” is the most genial and pleasing of all Mr. Browning’s poems. The story is simple and graceful. Pippa, a young Italian girl, is employed in the silk mills; and is only allowed one holiday in the year. As she rises in the morning, she bethinks herself how she shall best employ her brief hours of relaxation, and fancies she will be various persons whose names are familiar to her, but who are lifted far above her lowly station. She starts on a walk, and as she passes the residence of each of these persons,—into all of which the poet admits us,—she trolls forth a glad and joyous song, which strengthens the good intentions of the weak, brings consolation to the sorrowing, nerves the will of the vacillating, and draws down punishment on the guilty. Around this simple story, Mr. Browning has arranged a number of finely executed scenes, each of which is interrupted by Pippa’s song as she passes. Of these scenes, that between Ottima and Sebald, and the scene between Monsignor and his brother, are the most artistic. This is one of Pippa’s songs—
A king lived long ago,
In the morning of the world,
When earth was nigher heaven than now:
And the king’s locks curled
Disparting o’er a forehead full
As the milk white space ’twixt horn and horn
Of some sacrificial bull—
Only calm as a babe new-born:
For he was got to a sleepy mood,
So safe from all decrepitude,
From age with its bane, so sure gone by
(The Gods so loved him while he dreamed),
That, having lived thus long, there seemed
No need the king should ever die.
Among the rocks his city was:
Before his palace in the sun,
He sate to see his people pass,
And judge them every one
From its threshold of smooth stone.
Then hailed him many a valley-thief
Caught in the sheep-pens—robber chief,
Swarthy and shameless—beggar-cheat—
Spy-prowler—or rough pirate found
On the sea-sand left aground;
And sometimes clung about his feet.
With bleeding lip and burning cheek,
A woman, bitterest wrong to speak
Of one with sullen thickset brows:
And sometimes from the prison-house
The angry priests a pale wretch brought,
Who through some chink had pushed and pressed,
On knees and elbows, belly and breast,
Worm-like into the temple,—caught
At last there by the very God,
Who ever in the darkness strode
Backward and forward, keeping watch
O’er his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch!
And these, all and every one,
The king judged, sitting in the sun.
His councillors, on left and right,
Looked anxious up,—but no surprise
Disturbed the king’s old smiling eyes,
Where the very blue had turned to white.
’Tis said, a Python scared one day
The breathless city, till he came,
With forky tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old king sate to judge alway;
But when he saw the sweepy hair,
Girt with a crown of berries rare
Which the God will hardly give to wear
To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare
In the altar-smoke, by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites,—
Beholding this, he did not dare,
Approach that threshold in the sun,
Assault the old king smiling there.
Such grace had kings when the world begun.
“King Victor and King Charles,” and “Colombe’s Birthday,” are marked by considerable power and beauty, but they seem to us inferior to some of the other poems. The latter, however, is much the best of the two, and contains many fine scenes. The characters of Colombe and Valence are finely drawn; and around them the whole interest of the story centres.
The second volume opens with “A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.” And here it is, as we have before intimated, that we find the most certain evidence that Mr. Browning possesses the true poetic fire. This drama is one of the grandest poems of the last quarter of a century; and we have not for many years read any work of the imagination which has so penetrated our feelings, and so impressed us with its peculiar power. The plot is simple but striking, the incidents few but strongly marked, and the characters are sketched with a masterly hand. They stand out in bold relief, and seem to be instinct with life. Each of the six principal characters is a study in itself. Guendolen, in particular, is an admirable creation. If Mr. Browning had written nothing but this tragedy, we should still place him very high among poets.
Of the three remaining dramas, “Luria,” and “A Soul’s Tragedy” strike us the most favorably, and are but little inferior to Mr. Browning’s two greatest productions.
The volume ends with a number of shorter pieces styled dramatic lyrics. They are marked by our author’s peculiar beauties, and are even more than his longer poems pervaded by his quiet humor. Among them are the following charming little companion pieces:—
meeting at night.
i.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep.
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.
ii.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, a quick sharp scratch
And blue spirt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each.
parting at morning.
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim,—
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
Reviewed:
Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.
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