E441100D. Poems (1844).
Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, November 1844, pp. 720–725.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 363–368.
To men whose hands and heads are full of the business of life, yet who still have an eye for the verdure and the flowers that lie along its dusty pathways—who carry into manhood the early love of literature, which other pursuits have prevented from growing into a passion,—to such men, and they compose the mass of intelligent readers, it must be tantalizing to see announcement following announcement of new volumes of poetry, all commended to favour by intelligent criticism, interlaced by choice fragments, tempting them to seek the sources from which they are brought. It is not every man who has resolution enough to content himself with his Shakspeare or his Dante, or with one or two more of the mighty orbs of song, that have taken their places in the heavens of fame, there to shine on for ever. We must know how the world about us is shaping itself in the minds of the poetically gifted. It is not enough for us that all the chords of passion may have been struck by the minstrels of old—that fancy may, in their visions, seem to have showered all its luxuriance upon the forms of nature, leaving nothing for future writers to do. The forms of poetry change with the manners. New combinations evolve new emotions. What were formerly ideas in the minds of a gifted few become great living principles of action to the many. These demand a new expression; and, therefore, not only is new poetry written, but it is read; and this, although men in this busy Britain of ours have little time for reading poetry, even when its excellence has been established beyond dispute.
Not many of the numerous writers of verses of the present day but will probably outlive their own little fame. Yet there are few of them but do something for literature. To have given a valuable thought a concise and fit expression, to have portrayed one emotion clearly and powerfully, to have painted an aspect of nature in a few significant words, and by so doing to have deepened our feeling of its beauty; nay, even to have struck out here and there a new and happy epithet, is to have done something; and instances of such successes are not uncommon among the scores of graceful little volumes of poetical post wove, which men are still found enthusiastic enough to write, and booksellers rash enough to publish. But the search for these is a new labour of Hercules. No ordinary critical reservoir could contain a tithe of the poetry that seems to be welling out, with ever increasing fluency, from the British Aganippe. Doubtless some things escape observation, amid this superabundance, that are worthy of a better fate; while other “sprightly runnings” are caught up and paraded to a perplexed public as pure and precious lymph, that had much better be allowed to run in peace their natural course towards the great sea of oblivion. And yet, who shall say, what is to live—what to die? Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Hunt—all were sealed to oblivion by the voices of great prophets; yet do any bid more fair to be
Dear sons of memory, great heirs of fame?
Tennyson’s name, scarcely ten years ago, was the provocative of mirth. Who dares to curl the lip at him now? It would be rash to say that what has been actually done by the younger poets justifies the anticipation that they will develop powers equal to his: but it would be equally rash to say that their achievements exclude any such hope.
Of the many volumes of recent poetry, which compose a formidable pyramid upon our table, we have named the most noticeable at the head of this article. We shall deal with the ladies first; and they claim this from us, not by courtesy merely, but by their merits.
Miss Barrett has been for many years silently building up a reputation for herself, by verses which have conquered the obscurity of poet’s corners in newspapers and magazines. Her former volume of collected poetry has not fallen in our way; but it cannot, we should think, fail to contain much that is worthy of notice. The results of her matured efforts are comprised in these two volumes. In what spirit, and with what aims, she has written, she has told us in her graceful preface. “Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work: not as mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being; but as the completest expression of that being, to which I could attain: and as work I offer it to the public; feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration; but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done, should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.” It is only in an age in which, with literary men, things the most earnest are apt to be made the marks for jest, that such a deprecation as this could have been felt by a mind like Miss Barrett’s to be necessary. When was it, in the world’s history, that poetry was ever considered, except by minds narrowed merely to the world’s uses, as less than the most noble and perfect expression of human thought and emotion? The perusal of a few pages of Miss Barrett’s poetry will secure it against the suspicion of being only the product of a lively fancy and a dexterous hand. These are volumes which we take to our hearts at once, as the outpourings of a pure and noble spirit, disciplined by study, and by the greater discipline of sorrow, revealed in tones [p. 721→] which are musical by the greatness, depth, and music of the thoughts. Miss Barrett never sings without a cause, and her song is never less than a fit rhythmic expression of her emotion.
Miss Barrett’s life has been, as we can gather from many things in these volumes, a life of suffering and sorrow. A sadness, born of the prevailing sentiment of the incompleteness and insufficiency of life, pervades nearly all her writings—a dim low note of wail, to which thoughtful hearts must vibrate in unison. But although mournful, her sentiments are never morbid. What Professor Wilson has said of another writer’s is true of hers. “They are not querulous, yet full of lamentation. We see in them not a weak spirit quarrelling with fate, but a strong spirit subdued by a sense of the conditions upon which life has been given; conditions, against which it is vain to contend, to which it is hard to submit, but which may yet be borne by a well deriving strength from necessity, and in itself noble by nature.” With such characteristics Miss Barrett can never be widely popular. She writes only for the thoughtful, for those who have gone through a discipline of life akin to her own. Neither in her themes nor in her style is there any thing to take a strong hold upon the general mind; but among those, by whom she will be appreciated, she must be regarded with the warmest admiration.
It appears to us, that the poems least likely to meet with the sympathy, which the author’s affection for them would fain secure, are “The Drama of Exile,” and “The Vision of Poets.” The subject of the first of these “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.” We do not think that the execution has come up to the design here set forth. It seems very questionable, whether the subject is one which admits of being treated in a manner satisfactory to the imagination; which is more pleased to range over its grand shadowy outlines, than to be bound in to any fixed ideas, however noble, and however greatly or musically expressed. There are passages in the drama of great power and even grandeur; but they are isolated. Philosophy, in the very crude language of the modern school, meets us frequently in the mouths of archangels; and, though we may not be able to say what should be there, we are satisfied, at all events, that this should not. The lyrical passages, too, want brilliancy and clearness to justify their length.
In the “Vision of Poets,” again, Miss Barrett has endeavoured to indicate an important truth,—“the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the mission of the poet, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called ‘la patience angelique du génie;’ and of the obvious truth, above all, that, if knowledge is power, suffering should be acceptable as a part of knowledge,” a doctrine, needful to be ever borne in mind, to take from life some of the bitterness which otherwise is in it, and to regulate our fruitless cravings for a happiness, which is not to be attained. This poem, except for some blemishes of vague idea and occasionally mean expression, is in every way most beautiful. There are lines in it, so vivid in imagery and expression, that they take hold of the memory at once and for ever; and we would willingly have borrowed some of these, especially the characterisation of the “dead kings of melody,” but for the feeling, that partial extracts from a poem of this class convey a very inadequate impression of its excellence. Two suggestions we would offer for Miss Barrett’s consideration. The first is, that the speech of the pseudo-poet, especially in its two last stanzas, is in a tone too light and flippant to harmonise with the solemnity of the rest of the poem. The second is the application to deity of the epithet “Poet-God.” Why limit the idea of God, by an idea, which is only great and beautiful relatively to us? In one sense, the universe is a poem,—the grandest expression which we know of the supreme mind. But to apply to deity an epithet of limitation, which poet is, at least in the general apprehension, jars upon feelings, which none reverence more deeply than Miss Barrett.
We shall give one specimen of Miss Barrett’s Sonnets,— not perhaps the best, but one which may take its place not unworthily beside Wordsworth’s.—
tears.
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well—
That is light grieving! lighter, none befel,
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! What are tears? The babe weeps in its cot;
The mother singing: at her marriage bell
The bride weeps: and before the oracle
Of high faned hills, the poet hath forgot
That moisture on his cheeks. Commend the grace,
Mourners, who weep! albeit, as some have done,
Ye grope tear blinded, in a desert place,
And touch but tombs. Look up! Those tears will run
Soon in long rivers, down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun!
If Miss Barrett had written no other poem but “The Cry of the Children,” she must have been recognised as a poetess of a very high class. This poem is to the story of Factory children, what Hood’s “Song of the Shirt” is to that of the hapless shirtmakers. But to our minds it is as far superior to that most powerful poem, in grandeur and profound significance, as Beethoven is to the best of other harmonists. It is a poem not to be read without a choking voice. The cadence, lingering, broken, and full of wail, is one of the mos[t] perfect adaptations of sound to sense in literature. It is like the struggle and booming of an organ requiem; and the intensity of the feeling modulates expressions, which otherwise would appear quaint, into thrilling grandeur. The poem appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine about a year ago—and attracted, we believe, little notice at the time. But it is only necessary to point attention to it. Once read, it is not likely to be forgotten. [p. 722→]
The most attractive poems in these volumes are the Ballads. In this species of poetry Miss Barrett has already attained peculiar skill; and will, we feel assured, develop greater powers. She has struck out many new tones in the rhythmical scale; rich and recondite harmonies, full of originality, as they are of beauty. “The Lay of the Duchess May,” with the recurrence in each stanza of the words “Toll slowly,” till, as the tragedy of the story deepens, they seem to ring in the ears like a knell, is an instance of this. “The Romaunt of the Page,” a poem suffused with a tenderness and beauty most womanly, and “The Lay of the Brown Rosary,” afford numerous instances of the same power. Our favourite of these ballads is “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” It is supposed to be written by a poet from the Lady Geraldine’s mansion to his friend. We shall let the verses tell the story.
Dear my friend and fellow student, I would lean my spirit o’er you;
Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will!
I am humbled, who was humble! Friend, I bow my head before you!
You should lead me to my peasants! But their faces are too still.
There’s a lady—an earl’s daughter; she is proud and she is noble;
And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the perfumed air,
And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble,
And the shadow of a monarch’s crown is softened in her hair.
There be none of England’s daughters, who can show a prouder presence;
Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain:
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was I that I should love her—save for feeling of the pain?
I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement,
In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings.
Yet I could not choose but love her—I was born to poet uses—
To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair!
Nymphs of old Parnassus mountain, we are wont to call the Muses,
And in silver-footed climbing poets pass from mount to star.
And they praised me in her presence;—“Will your book appear this summer?”
Then returning to each other—“Yes, our plans are for the moors;”
Then with whisper dropped behind me—“There he is, the latest comer!
Oh, she only likes his verses! What is over, she endures.”
I grew colder, I grew colder, as I stood up there among them,—
Till as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow;
When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, overrung them,
And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.
I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit,
Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear before them all—
“Have you such superfluous honour, sir, that, able to confer it,
You will come down, Mr. Bertram, as my guest to Wycombe Hall?”
Here she paused,—she had been paler at the first word of her speaking;
But because a silence followed it, blushed scarlet as for shame;
Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly—“I am seeking
More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim.”
She presses the invitation in words, that must have made a poet’s heart thrill.
Then, she smiled around right childly, then she gazed around right queenly;
And I bowed—I could not answer! Alternated light and gloom;
While, as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely,
She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately from the room.
Oh the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me,
With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind!
Oh the cursed woods of Sussex! Oh the cruel love that bound me,
Up against the boles of cedars, to be shamèd where I pined!
Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! where the hunter’s dart has found me,
When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind!
How the poet’s passion deepened,—how the Lady Geraldine drew him on to love her,
And to study the deep meaning of the smile hid in her eyes,
we have no room to show. But we must give some features of her fascination.
Oh, to see and hear her singing! Scarce I know which is divinest—
For her looks sing too—she modulates her gestures on the tone;
And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,
’Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on.
In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly;
And she has a grace in being gay, which mourners even approve;
For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly,
As to justify the foliage, and the waving flowers above. [p. 723→]
She was patient with my talking; and I loved her—loved her certes,
As I loved all heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands!
As I loved pure inspirations—loved the graces, loved the virtues,—
In a Love content with writing his own name on desert sands.
Or at least I thought so purely!—thought no idiot Hope was raising
Any crown to crown Love’s silence—silent Love, that sat alone—
Out, alas! the stag is like me—he that tries to go on grazing,
With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.
Inadvertently the poet overhears the Lady’s refusal of an earl; whose portrait, by the way, is sketched with masterly precision.—
What he said again, I know not. It is likely that his trouble,
Worked his pride up to the surface, for she answered in slow scorn—
“And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry shall be noble,
Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born.”
There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever,
And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang, full-statured in an hour!
Know you, what it is when anguish, with apocalyptic never,
To a Pythian height dilates you,—and despair sublimes to power?
In this mood he passes to her presence—
I plucked up her social fictions bloody-rooted, though leaf-verdant,—
Trod them down with words of shaming,—all the purples and the gold,
And the “landed stakes” and Lordships—all that spirits pure and ardent
Are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold.
Of his passionate appeal the following extracts must suffice.
“What right have you, madam, gazing in your shining mirror daily,
Getting so, by heart, your beauty, which all others must adore,—
While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gaily,
You will wed no man that’s only good to God—and nothing more?
“Why, what right have you, made fair by that same God—the sweetest woman,
Of all women He has fashioned—with your lovely spirit face,
Which would seem too near to vanish, if its smile were not so human,
And your words of holy sweetness, turning common words to grace;
“What right can you have, God’s other works to scorn, despise, revile them,
In the gross as mere men, broadly—not as noble men, forsooth,—
But as Parias of the outer world, forbidden to assail them,
In the hope of living—dying,—near the sweetness of your mouth?
“Have you any answer, Madam? If my spirit were less earthy—
If its instruments were gifted with more vibrant silver strings,
I would kneel down, where I stand, and say; ‘Behold me. I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee! I am worthy as a king.’
“As it is; your ermined pride, I swear, shall feel this stain upon her,
That I, poor, weak, tost with passion, scorned by me and you again,
Love you, Madam, dare to love you, to my grief and your dishonour,
To my endless desolation, and your impotent disdain!”
More mad words, like these, mere madness! Friend, I need not write them fuller,
And I hear my hot soul dropping on the lines in showers of tears—
Oh, a woman! friend, a woman! Why, a beast had scarce been duller,
Than roar bestial loud complaints against the shining of the spheres.
But at last there came a pause. I stood all vibrating with thunder,
Which my soul had used. The silence drew her face up like a call.
Could you guess what word she uttered? She looked up, as if in wonder,
With tears beaded on her lashes, and said, “Bertram!” it was all.
The gentle reproach of that one word overwhelms him.
So I fell, struck down before her! Do you blame me, friend, for weakness?
’Twas my strength of passion slew me! fell before her like a stone;
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness;
When the light came, I was lying in this chamber, and alone.
Bertram has finished the burning record of his passion, and is lying back in his chair, with lips quivering with his grief.
So! how still the lady standeth! ’tis a dream, a dream of mercies!
’Twixt the purple lattice-curtains, how she standeth still and pale!
’Tis a vision, sure of mercies, sent to soften his self curses:
Sent to sweep a patient quiet, o’er the tossing of his wail.
With a murmurous stir, uncertain, in the air, the purple curtain,
Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale brows,
While the gliding of the river sends a rippling noise for ever
Through the open casement whitened by the moonlight’s slant repose.
He accosts her as a vision, the “dream of Geraldine!” [p. 724→]
Ever, evermore the while, in a slow silence she kept smiling,
And approached him slowly, slowly, in a gliding measured pace,
With her two white hands extended, as if praying one offended,
And a look of supplication, gazing earnest in his face.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
“Dost thou, Bertram, truly love me? Is no woman far above me
Found more worthy of thy poet heart, than such an one as I?”
Ever, evermore the while, in a slow silence she kept smiling,
While the shining tears ran faster down the blushing of her cheeks;
Then with both her hands enfolding both of his, she softly told him,
“Bertram, if I say I love thee, … ’tis the vision only speaks.”
Softened, quickened to adore her, on her knee he fell before her,
And she whispered low in triumph. “It shall be as I have sworn!
Very rich he is in virtues, very noble, noble certes;
And I shall not blush in knowing that men call him lowly born!”
This is a noble ballad in every way. The masculine energy and grasp of passion of it surprise us at first, especially in a writer in whom gentleness is so conspicuous a feature. But where genius is, the qualities of strength and gentleness go always hand in hand. Were the poem cleared of some obscurities of sentiment, and conventional expression, characteristic of a class of writers, known as the Syncretic School, into which Miss Barrett is apt to fall, and were some pains taken to amend the halting cadence of certain lines, it would be fit to rank, at distance certainly, but that not immoderate, with Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall.”
We have only room for one other extract, which we select, not because of its superiority to many others in these volumes, but because in the most womanly tenderness and subtlety of its feeling, it presents a fine contrast to the ballad just quoted.
CATARINA TO CAMOËNS;
dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he 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 call’d, 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 hearken’d 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, yonder e’en,
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 look’d up to you,
All the light which has forgone them,
Would be gather’d 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.”
. . . . . . .
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 fore-runneth 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 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 watch’d 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 sing a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.—
I can hear it,
’Twixt my spirit [p. 725→]
And the earth noise intervene,—
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
. . . . . . .
Keep my riband, take and keep it,
I have loosed it from my hair,*
Feeling, while you overweep it,
Not alone in your despair;
Since with saintly
Watch, unfaintly,
Out of heaven shall o’er you lean
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
But—but now—yet unremovèd,
Up to heaven they glisten fast,
You may cast away, Belovèd,
In your future all my past;
Such old phrases
May be praises
For some fairer bosom queen—
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
Faithless, faithless, praised amiss,
If a tear be of your showing
Dropt for any hope of his.
Death hath boldness
Besides coldness,
If unworthy tears demean
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
I will look out to his future—
I will bless it till it shine:
Should he ever be a suitor,
Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,
Angels shield them,
Whatsoever eyes terrene
Be the sweetest His have seen!
________
*She left him the riband from her hair.
________
Who can read without emotion a picture of womanly devotion, and self-abnegation like this?
Highly as we admire these volumes, we regard them more as the earnest of what Miss Barrett may yet do, than as the complete attainment of her powers. Her faults we do not think it necessary almost to suggest. They are those which a vigorous and advancing mind like hers soon discerns and cures for itself. They lie chiefly in the use of language deficient in simplicity, and occasionally jarring upon true taste; and in the effort to express, rhythmically, ideas which had better be left to prose. The intellect occasionally overwhelms the imagination. These are but venial blemishes, not to be thought of, amid the gratitude with which volumes ought to be received, of such refined thought and high poetical power, and in which so beautiful a mind is revealed.
[Editors’ note: the article continues with comments on poems by Frances Anne Butler, Coventry Patmore, William Thom of Inverury and Robert Nicoll; these we omit.]
[Christian Johnstone]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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