E441101A. Poems (1844).
The Critic, 1 November 1844, pp. 148–152.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 369–373.
There are two sorts of mysticism in poetry; one produced by the soaring of the poet’s thoughts beyond the reach of the earth-bound faculties of the reader; the other the result of dimness and distraction in the perceptions of the writer, who mistakes vagueness for sublimity, and the chaos of a dream for a creation.
We are not quite assured to which of these to ascribe the mysticism of Miss Barrett. We are not certain that she always understands herself, and sure we are she cannot always be understood by others. When first she appeared upon the stage of literature, we ascribed the peculiarities in the structure both of her ideas and of her language to the affectation of youth seeking to attract notice by oddity, and, seeing beneath it the soul of genius, we believed that time and the world would rub off the dross and leave the pure gem for unalloyed admiration. But that hope has been disappointed. Two more volumes have proceeded from her pen, not thrown from it hastily as the recreation of an idle hour, but, as she tells us in her preface, laboriously wrought,—work done as work,—and therefore the “completest expression” of her being, and affording a gauge or measure of her mind, whose accuracy herself would not dispute. And here she is, uttering oracles as mystical as ever; and it is manifest now that she cannot help it; it is no affectation, but proceeds from the very conformation of her mind. She cannot think in any different shape, and her language follows the structure of her thoughts.
Still she has genius, which comes leaping and flashing out between these deformities, and sometimes half concealing them by the dazzling of its light. She is a Poet, and therefore to be approached with respect and heard with reverence. The very faults of genius are but “glory obscured,” and better than the best deeds of those in whom the spark divine is wanting. This premised, we proceed to examine the last utterances of the genius of Miss Elizabeth Barrett.
The reader is first introduced to a dramatic poem of considerable length called A Drama of Exile. The idea of this production is a fine one. It purposes to paint the new and strange experiences of fallen humanity, as it went forth from paradise into the wilderness, with a pe- [p. 149→] culiar reference to Eve’s allotted grief, “which,” she says, “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.” But we cannot say that the poet has accomplished her design. We had read the poem with attention, where poetry is best read, in the quiet fields on an autumn evening, and it has left no distinct impression upon the mind or memory—nothing of the sense of satisfaction which we feel on compassing some great whole, and viewing with the inward eye its beginning, middle, and end, complete in all their parts. Yet are there passages of fine poetry scattered about, and here and there some scenes truly dramatic; moreover, it exhibits power such as we do not remember in any lady’s poetry; there is masculine nerve and vigour in it, though the delicacy of the woman peeps out at times, especially in the scene where Eve, in shame and sorrow, prostrates herself before Adam, expecting, almost asking, punishment for her offence, but is lifted by him, embraced and forgiven. We extract the close of this touching passage:—
Eve. Is it thy voice?
Or some saluting angel’s—calling home
My feet into the garden?
Adam. O my God!
I, standing here between the glory and dark,—
The glory of thy wrath projected forth
From Eden’s wall; the dark of our distress,
Which settles a step off in that drear world—
Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen
Only creation’s sceptre,—thanking Thee
That rather Thou hast cast me out with her,
Than left me lorn of her in paradise;—
With angel looks and angel songs around,
To shew the absence of her eyes and voice,
And make society full desertness,
Without the uses of her comforting.
Eve. Or is it but a dream of thee, that speaks
Mine own love’s tongue?
Adam. Because with her, I stand
Upright, as far as can be in this fall,
And look away from heaven, which doth accuse me,
And look up from the earth which doth convict me,
Into her face; and crown my discrowned brow
Out of her love; and put the thought of her
Around me, for an Eden full of birds;
And lift her body up—thus—to my heart;
And with my lips upon her lips,—thus, thus,—
Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath,
Which cannot climb against the grave’s steep sides,
But overtops this grief!
Eve. I am renewed:
My eyes grow with the light which is in thine;
The silence of my heart is full of sound.
Hold me up—so! Because I comprehend
This human love, I shall not be afraid
Of any human death; and yet because
I know this strength of love, I seem to know
Death’s strength, by that same sign. Kiss on my lips,
To shut the door close on my rising soul,—
Lest it pass outwards in astonishment,
And leave thee lonely.
Adam. Yet thou liest, Eve,
Bent heavily on thyself across mine arm,
Thy face flat to the sky.
Eve. Ay! and the tears
Running, as it might seem, my life from me;
They run so fast and warm. Let me lie so,
And weep so,—as if in a dream or prayer,—
Unfastening, clasp by clasp, the hard, tight thought
Which clipped my heart, and shewed me evermore
Loathed of thy justice as I loathe the snake,
And as the pure ones loathe our sin. To-day,
All day, beloved, as we fled across
This desolating radiance, cast by swords
Not suns,—my lips prayed soundless to myself,
Rocking against each other—O Lord God!
(’Twas so I prayed) I ask Thee by my sin,
And by thy curse, and by thy blameless heavens,
Make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face,
And from the face of my beloved here,
For whom I am no helpmete, quick away
Into the new dark mystery of death!
I will lie still there; I will make no plaint;
I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word,—
Nor struggle to come back beneath the sun,
Where peradventure I might sin anew
Against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death,
Oh death, whate’er it be, is good enough
For such as I.—For Adam—there’s no voice,
Shall ever say again, in heaven or earth,
It is not good for him to be alone.
Adam. And was it good for such a prayer to pass,
My unkind Eve, betwixt our mutual lives?
If I am exiled, must I be bereaved?
Eve. ’Twas an ill prayer: it shall be prayed no more;
And God did use it for a foolishness,
Giving no answer. Now my heart has grown
Too high and strong for such a foolish prayer:
Love makes it strong: and since I was the first
In the transgression, with a steady foot
I will be first to tread from this sword-glare
Into the outer darkness of the waste,—
And thus I do it.
Adam. Thus I follow thee,
As erewhile in the sin.
This is poetry; but many portions of the drama, and especially the lyrics with which it abounds, are singularly obscure.
A few sonnets next invite attention, and Miss BARRETT has certainly mastered the difficulties of this species of poem; she makes each one the expression of a single sentiment, gradually expanded and brought to its climax in the last couplet. We must be content with two only, as specimens of her success in this accomplishment:—
grief.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless—
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air,
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death;
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath!
Touch it! the marble eyelids are not wet—
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
work.
What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil—
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines,
And Death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines,
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labour, to their heart and hands,
From thy hands, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand,
And share its dew-drop with another near.
The Romaunt of the Page and The Lay of the Brown Rosary are revivals of the old English ballad, to which Miss Barrett appears to be extremely partial; and certainly she has caught the spirit of that pleasing form of poetry, best shewn in a poem of considerable length, entitled Lady Geraldine’s Courtship, with which the first volume concludes. This ballad tells the tale of a young man of low birth falling in love with a lady of high degree, who first scorns his affection, and then, when the shock of her refusal has well nigh killed him, goes to his bedside, retracts, and accepts him. A great deal of poetry is strewn about this ballad. Here is
an evening sketch.
In that ancient hall of Wycombe, thronged the numerous guests invited,
And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet;
And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted
All the air about the windows, with elastic laughters sweet. [p. 150→]
For at eve, the open windows flung their light out on the terrace,
Which the floating orbs of curtains, did with gradual shadow sweep;
While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress,
Trembled downward through their snowy wings, at music in their sleep.
And there evermore was music, both of instrument and singing,
Till the finches of the shrubberies grew restless in the dark;
But the cedars stood up motionless, each in a moonlight ringing,
And the deer, half in the glimmer, strewed the hollows of the park.
the lady geraldine.
In the morning, horn of huntsman, hoof of steed, and laugh of rider,
Spread out cheery from the court-yard, till we lost them in the hills;
While herself and other ladies, and her suitors left beside her,
Went a-wandering up the gardens, through the laurels and abeles.
Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass—bareheaded—with the flowings
Of the virginal white vesture, gathered closely to her throat;
With the golden ringlets in her neck, just quickened by her going,
And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float,—
With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her,
And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies,—
As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me on to love her,
And to study the deep meaning of the smile hid in her eyes.
For her eyes alone smiled constantly: her lips had serious sweetness,
And her front was calm—the dimple rarely rippled on her cheek;
But her deep blue eyes smiled constantly,—as if they had by fitness
Won the secret of a happy dream, she did not care to speak.
The second volume opens with The Vision of Poets, more mystical even than the drama, the design of which was, as she describes it, “to indicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice.” There is too much truth in the remarks which follow:—
In the eyes of the living generation, the poet is at once a richer and a poorer man than he used 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. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called “la patience angélique du génie;” and of the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a significance.
The design is better than the execution; the latter is too fantastic even for poetry, and certainly without the explanation in the preface we should have been mightily puzzled to discover the drift of the 350 verses of which the first is a fair sample:—
A poet could not sleep aright,
For his soul kept up too much light
Under his eyelids for the night.
The Rhyme of the Duchess May is another ballad having a great deal more poetry in it than any thing we have yet lighted upon. Its metre is quaint, and the refrain gives it an air of solemnity and melancholy. The introduction will exhibit its peculiarities and its beauties.
In the belfry, one by one, went the ringers from the sun,—
Toll slowly!
And the oldest ringer said, “Ours is music for the Dead,
When the rebecks are all done.”
Six abeiles i’ the kirkyard grow, on the northside in a row,—
Toll slowly!
And the shadows of their tops, rock across the little slopes
Of the grassy graves below.
On the south side and the west, a small river runs in haste,—
Toll slowly!
And between the river flowing, and the fair green trees agrowing,
Do the dead lie at their rest.
On the east I sate that day, up against a willow grey:—
Toll slowly!
Through the rain of willow-branches, I could see the low hill-ranges,
And the river on its way.
There I sate beneath the tree, and the bell tolled solemnly,—
Toll slowly!
While the trees’ and rivers’ voices flowed between the solemn noises,—
Yet death seemed more loud to me.
There, I read this ancient rhyme, while the bell did all the time
Toll slowly!
And the solemn knell fell in with the tale of life and sin,
Like a rhythmic fate sublime.
Then, having narrated the legend, the poet thus concludes:—
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,—
Toll slowly!
And I read this ancient rhyme, in the kirkyard, while the chime
Slowly tolled for one at rest.
The abeles moved in the sun, and the river smooth did run,—
Toll slowly!
And the ancient rhyme rang strange, with its passion and its change,
Here, where all done lay undone.
And beneath a willow tree, I a little grave did see,—
Toll slowly!
Where was graved,—“Here undefiled, lieth Maud, a three-year child,
“Eighteen hundred forty-three.”
Then, O spirits—did I say—ye who rode so fast that day,—
Toll slowly!
Did star-wheels and angel-wings, with their holy winnowings,
Keep beside you all the way?
Though in passion ye would dash, with a blind and heavy crash,
Toll slowly!
Up against the thick-bossed shield of God’s judgment in the field,—
Though your heart and brain were rash,—
Now your will is all unwilled—now, your pulses are all stilled,—
Toll slowly!
Now, ye lie as meek and mild (whereso laid) as Maud the child,
Whose small grave to-day was filled.
Beating heart and burning brow, ye are very patient now,—
Toll slowly!
And the children might be bold to pluck the kingscups from your mould,
Ere a month had let them grow.
And you let the goldfinch sing, in the alder near, in spring,—
Toll slowly!
Let her build her nest and sit all the three weeks out on it,
Murmuring not at any thing.
In your patience ye are strong; cold and heat ye take not wrong:—
Toll slowly!
When the trumpet of the angel blows eternity’s evangel,
Time will seem to you not long.
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
Toll slowly!
And I said in underbreath,—all our life is mixed with death,—
And who knoweth which is best?
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,—
Toll slowly!
And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness,—
Round our restlessness, His rest.
The remainder of the volume is occupied with a number of poems, of various merit, but all exhibiting the two faults of prolixity and obscurity. Simplicity of thought and structure is essential to the lyric. But Miss Barrett’s lyrics are more like essays or sermons, and every verse requires of the reader a pause, for the purpose of reflection, and for interpreting its meaning. Hence it is that Miss Barrett does not appear to so much advantage in these minor poems; and, indeed, were she to be judged [p. 151→] by them alone, she would run no small risk of a condemnatory verdict. The best of the collection are, A Child Asleep, The Cry of the Children, and The Dead Pan. But these are too long to permit us to extract them entire, much as they would grace the columns of The Critic. We can only venture upon parts of them.
a child asleep.
How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood’s mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures, to make room for more—
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.
Vision unto vision calleth,
While the young child dreameth on.
Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth
With the glory thou hast won!
Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer sun.
We should see the spirits ringing
Round thee,—were the clouds away!
’Tis the child-heart draws them, singing
In the silent-seeming clay—
Singing!—Stars that seem the mutest, go in music all the way.
Haply it is angel’s duty,
During slumber, shade by shade,
To fine down this childish beauty
To the thing it must be made,
Ere the world shall bring it praises, or the tomb shall see it fade.
Softly, softly! make no noises!
Now he lieth dead and dumb—
Now he hears the angels’ voices
Folding silence in the room—
Now he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they come.
Speak not! he is consecrated—
Breathe no breath across his eyes.
Lifted up and separated
On the hand of God he lies,
In a sweetness beyond touching,—held in cloistral sanctities.
Could ye bless him—father—mother?
Bless the dimple in his cheek?
Dare ye look at one another,
And the benediction speak?
Would ye not break out in weeping, and confess yourselves too weak?
He is harmless—ye are sinful,—
Ye are troubled—he, at ease!
From his slumber, virtue winful
Floweth outward with increase—
Dare not bless him! but be blessed by his peace—and go in peace.
If there is beauty in this, there is power in the next:—
the cry of the children.
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,—
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!—
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?—
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago—
The old tree is leafless in the forest—
The old year is ending in the frost—
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest—
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy—
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary;”
“Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,—
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!
“True,” say the young children, “it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her—
Was no room for any work in the close clay:
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day.’
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries!—
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes,—
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time!”
Alas, the wretched children! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have!
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city—
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do—
Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty—
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!
But they answer, “Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine!
“For oh,” say the children, “we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap—
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping—
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark, underground—
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
“For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,—
Their wind comes in our faces,—
Till our hearts turn,—our heads, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places—
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall—
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning, all the day, and we with all!—
And all day, the iron wheels are droning;
And sometimes we could pray,
‘O ye wheels’ (breaking out in a mad moaning),
‘Stop! be silent for to-day!’”
Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth—
Let them touch each other’s hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals—
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!—
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
As if Fate in each were stark;
And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
There is more than mere poetry in this, and we have been tempted to take so much of it for the sake of the subject that we have left no room for aught from the Dead Pan, but the reader must seek it in the volume.
We have already remarked that Miss Barrett is no holiday poet, no album scribbler, no amateur verse maker, but a labourer at her vocation, setting to it as to earnest and serious work, which undoubtedly it is. The spirit in which she writes cannot be too warmly praised, nor too earnestly recommended to all who purpose authorship, whether in prose or in poetry. In her preface she observes:— [p. 152→]
I would fain do better—and I feel as if I might do better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of poetry, that my ideal should fly before me: and if I cry out too hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses, let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full of faults—as I go forward to my critics and confess—they have my heart and life in them—they are not empty shells. 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 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 short-comings 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.
With such a sense of her calling, and such natural gifts to cultivate, Miss Barrett can scarcely fail to secure the place at which she aims; but she must strive after more simplicity of thought and of expression than she has yet achieved, or she will not stir the hearts of men as it is the high mission of poetry to stir them. As yet she does not find admirers beyond the range of the study, and surely she has a larger ambition than that.
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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