R551130A. Men and Women (Boston, 1856).
New-York Daily Tribune, 30 November 1855, pp. 2–3.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 304–308.
The soul of poetry in Robert Browning’s fine creations is concealed from impatient and uncongenial readers by his neglect of æsthetic conventionalisms in his choice of expression and illustration. He often disappoints even his admirers by some unexpected eccentricity of phrase, and their surprise gets the better of their homage. The love of his poetry does not come by nature, but is the fruit of repeated experiments. Indeed, many of his productions appear as crabbed and repulsive to the uninitiated as the flavor of olives to those who taste them for the first time. He is so wholly peculiar and idiosyncratic that one must almost have lived his life before completely entering into the spirit of his verse. Nor is the unique character of his poetry merely a matter of diction. Far from it. Every thought bears the stamp of the mint from which it has received its form. His fancies are not connected by the common links of association. You cannot look for the expression of his feelings in any worn channels. But the quaint and fantastic forms in which he so much delights are always freighted with a rich burden. Often it is a single thought which inspires a series of lines—for he loves to caress his own fancies with a fond affectionateness—he presents his golden wine to the light, enamored with the play of colors—and toys and trifles with a dainty conceit, as if he felt a parental enchantment in the presence of his rosy offspring. Browning is so completely Browning, that he can never become a popular poet. He demands too much concentration in his readers. In order to enjoy him fully, one must pass through a preparation, like that of learning a new language. But those who have gained the key to his magic treasures will revel enthusiastically in their new-found wealth. He is essentially the poet for poets. They will read him both for delight and for use. He belongs to that class of artists whose beauties are not the theme of commonplace applause, but whose pictures are cherished as studies in high culture. Browning’s massive ingots afford the material for a liberal supply of the current coin. His beautiful thoughts will enrich the general circulation, but not to a great extent until they have been re-cast by poets with less affluent resources than his own.
We will not detain our readers by a general account of the contents of this new volume. It consists of some fifty pieces, on a great variety of topics, although the passion of love forms the key-note to a large proportion. Less abstract than many of Browning’s former productions, it will meet a wider range of sympathies, though it cannot rush into a sudden popularity.
The following little poem is one of the most truly “human” in the volume, and will call tears to obdurate eyes by its exquisite pathetic touches, though it has all the fineness or rather the finesse of imagination without which Browning would not be himself.
evelyn hope.
Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass.
Little has yet been changed, I think;
The shutters are shut—no light may pass
Save two long rays thro’ the hinge’s chink.
Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name—
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares;
And now was quiet, now astir—
Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.
Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope?
What! your soul was pure and true;
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew;
And just because I was thrice as old,
And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was naught to each, must I be told?
We were fellow-mortals—naught beside?
No, indeed! for God above
Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love.
I claim you still, for my own love’s sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet;
Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few;
Much is to learn and much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.
But the time will come—at last it will—
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say,
In the lower earth—in the years long still—
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium’s red—
And what you would do with me, in fine,
In the new life come in the old one’s stead.
I have lived, I shall say, so much since then,
Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; [p. 3→]
Yet one thing—one—in my soul’s full scope,
Either I missed or itself missed me—
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!
I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;
My heart seemed full as it could hold—
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold,
So, hush! I will give you this leaf to keep;
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.
There, that is our secret! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember, and understand.
Any comment on this would be impertinent:
my star
All that I know
Of a certain star,
Is, it can throw
(Like the angel spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird—like a flower, hangs furled;
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
Here is large meaning in few words:
memorabilia.
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you?
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!
But you were living before that,
And you are living after,
And the memory I started at—
My starting moves your laughter!
I crossed a moor with a name of its own
And a use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone
’Mid the blank miles round about—
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A molted feather, an eagle-feather—
Well, I forget the rest.
The following moan of the heart-broken speaks for itself:
in a year
Never any more
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive—
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun.
I as little understand
Love’s decay.
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sang,
—Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all!
Up his cheek the color sprang,
Then he heard.
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed the air I breathed.
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
Touched the sweet:
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
“Speak, I love thee best!”
He exclaimed.
“Let thy love my own foretell,—”
I confessed:
“Clasp my heart on thine
Now unblamed,
Since upon thy soul as well
Hangeth mine!”
Was it wrong to own,
Being truth?
Why should all the giving prove
His alone?
I had wealth and ease,
Beauty, youth—
Since my lover gave me love,
I gave these.
That was all I meant,
—To be just,
And the passion I had raised
To content
Since he chose to change
Gold for dust,
If I gave him what he praised
Was it strange?
Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
—Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till all gone,
He should smile “She never seemed
Mine before.
“What—she felt the while,
Must I think?
Love’s so different with us men,”
He should smile.
“Doing for my sake—
White and pink!
Can’t we touch these bubbles then
But they break?”
Dear, the pang is brief.
Do thy part,
Have thy pleasure. How perplext
Grows belief!
Well, this cold clay clod
Was man’s heart.
Crumble it—and what comes next?
Is it God?
What a loving tribute is here from a poet’s heart:
popularity.
Stand still, true poet that you are,
I know you; let me try and draw you.
Some night you’ll fail us. When afar
You rise, remember one man saw you,
Knew you, and named a star.
My star, God’s glow worm! Why extend
That loving hand of His which leads you,
Yet locks you safe from end to end
Of this dark world, unless He needs you—
Just saves your light to spend?
His clenched Hand shall unclose at last,
I know, and let out all the beauty.
My poet holds the future fast,
Accepts the coming ages’ duty,
Their present for this past.
That day, the earth’s feast-master’s brow
Shall clear to God the chalice raising;
“Others give best at first, but Thou
Forever set’st our table praising—
Keep’st the good wine till now.”
Meantime, I’ll draw you as you stand,
With few or none to watch and wonder.
I’ll say—a fisher (on the sand
By Tyre the Old) his ocean-plunder,
A netful, brought to land.
Who has not heard how Tyrian shells
Inclosed the blue, that dye of dyes
Whereof one drop worked miracles,
And colored like Astarte’s eyes
Raw silk the merchant sells?
And each bystander of them all
Could criticise, and quote tradition;
How depths of blue sublimed some pall,
To get which, pricked a king’s ambition;
Worth scepter, crown and ball.
Yet there’s the dye—in that rough mesh,
The sea has only just o’er-whispered!
Live whelks, the lip’s-beard dripping fresh,
As if they still the water’s lisp heard
Through foam the rock-weeds thresh.
Enough to furnish Solomon
Such hangings for his cedar-house,
That when gold-robed he took the throne
In that abyss of blue, the Spouse
Might swear his presence shone.
Most like the centre-spike of gold
Which burns deep in the blue-bell’s womb,
What time, with ardors manifold,
The bee goes singing to her groom,
Drunken and overbold.
Mere conches! not fit for warp or woof!
Till art comes—comes to pound and squeeze
And clarify,—refines to proof
The liquor filtered by degrees,
While the world stands aloof.
And there’s the extract, flasked and fine,
And priced, and saleable at last!
And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine
To paint the future from the past,
Put blue into their line.
Hobbs hints blue—straight he turtle eats.
Nobbs prints blue—claret crowns his cup.
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats—
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?
The mysticism of passion is a favorite theme with our poet. Here is a touch of it:
two in the campagna.
I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalised me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.
Help me to hold it: first it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,
Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,
Where one small orange cup amassed
From beetles—blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal—and last
Everywhere on the grassy slope
I traced it. Hold it fast!
The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air—
Rome’s ghost since her decease.
Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way
While Heaven looks from its towers.
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above.
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more—
Nor yours, nor mine—nor slave, nor free!
Where does the fault lie? what the core
Of the wound, since wound must be?
I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul’s springs—your part, my part
In life, for good and ill.
No. I yearn upward—touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul’s warmth—I pluck the rose
And loved it more than tongue can speak—
Then the good minute goes.
Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?
Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern—
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
The volume concludes with an address to the poet-wife of the poet, from which we take a large extract:
one word more.
to e. b. b.
There they are, my fifty men and women,
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together.
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil,
Else he only used to draw Madonnas;
These, the world might view—but One, the volume.
Who that one? you ask. Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow,
Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory;
Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving—
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,
Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s!
You and I would rather read that volume
(Taken to his beating bosom by it),
Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael;
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—
Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre—
Seen by us and all the world in circle.
You and I will never read that volume.
Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple,
Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.
Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
Cried, and the world with it, “Ours—the treasure!”
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
Dante once prepared to paint an angel;
Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.”
While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
(Peradventure with a pen corroded
Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering thro’ Florence)—
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,—
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
Says he: “Certain people of importance”
(Such he gave his daily, dreadful line to)
Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.
Says the poet, “Then I stopped my painting.”
You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno.
You and I will never see that picture,
While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he softened o’er his outlined angel,
In they broke, those “people of importance:”
We and Bice bear the loss forever.
What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture?
This: No artist lives and loves that longs not
Once, and only once, and for One only,
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—
Using nature that’s an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
None but would forego his proper dowry,—
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,—
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,
Once, and only once, and for One only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Save the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.
* * * * * *
I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems; I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other h[e]ights in other lives, God willing—
All the gifts from all the h[e]ights, your own, Love!
Yet a semblance of resource avails us—
Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time.
He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets.
He who blows thro’ bronze may breathe thro’ silver,
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once, as I do.
Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth—the speech a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s,
Carshook [sic], Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence—
Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with color,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly,—glad to finish.
What, there’s nothing in the moon note-worthy?
Nay—for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steerman—
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better?
Proves she like some portent of an ice-berg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
Proves she as the paved-work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved-work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved-work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
Only this is sure—the sight were other,
Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.
This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you—yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that’s the world’s side—there’s the wonder—
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you,
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
When I hush and bless myself with silence.
Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!
Are you now tempted, dear reader, to think “the gods have not made you poetical,” because you vainly endeavor to admire our offerings of gold, jewels, and precious stones from this shining treasure-house—remember that we demanded in the outset no instant enthusiasm for the unique poet. You may be persuaded that such a bold, vigorous, original thinker will reward your study, and as a first step, that is a great point gained. No one can come in contact with such a rich, vital nature without a sense of refreshment. But this is a guerdon granted only to earnest and loving devotion. Browning is truly vocal to the soul of humanity, but one must be imbued with the spirit of the poet before he can taste the subtle melodies of his song.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856.
___________________
