E441207B. Poems (1844).
The League, 7 December 1844, pp. 171–172.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 378–380.
Among the singularly wild fictions of the Eastern Rabbis there is one of a prophetess, to whom an angel proffered the choice between health with the loss of inspired powers; or a continuance of physical weakness and suffering, compensated by a double outpouring of the divine spirit into her soul. The prophetess unhesitatingly rejected the offer of physical restoration: mind triumphed over matter; and her communings with Heaven more than atoned for her exclusion from the enjoyments of earth. It could not be said of her, Tristia vitæ solatur cantu—“she relieves sorrow by song;” for sufferings were to her no sorrow, but rather the appointed means by which the fleshly fetters that bind the soul to earth were relaxed; and she was thus enabled to hold high converse with disembodied and beatified spirits. As we read Miss Barrett’s poems we feel as if this singular legend had been realized in our own days, and as if the gifted and favoured prophetess wrote only to make her fellow-creatures partakers of her privileges. The talisman of Faith by which Thalaba, in “the wild and wondrous song” of one who has received but scant justice from his contemporaries, triumphed over the dread sorcerers of the Domdaniel, has sustained Miss Barrett in the conflict with a disproportionate share of the ills that flesh is heir to; and its soothing influence has enlarged her sympathies, extended the range of her affections, and given to her philanthropy the fervour of devotion: in everything she has written “Glory to God in the Highest!” is united to “Peace on earth, good will towards men;” we receive her volumes not as works to criticise, but as lessons of holy wisdom which it is our duty not less than our delight to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” We sometimes feel tempted to complain of strange words, uncouth rhymes, and archaic combinations of epithet; but there rises a suspicion that the imperfection is not in the authoress but in ourselves, as Pindar said of his odes, “They are speaking to the intelligent; they need interpreters to the multitude.”
We do not mean to say that Miss Barrett’s genius has any resemblance to that of Pindar; she is far more nearly allied to Æschylus in mental energy and daring imagination. The author of the “Prometheus” would have recognised the work of a kindred spirit in the “Drama of Exile,” and have hailed as worthy of the highest prize of ancient tragedy the choral ode of the spirits of Eden bidding farewell to Adam and Eve:—
Harken, oh harken! let your souls, behind you,
Lean, gently moved!
Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,
O lost, beloved!
Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels,
They press and pierce:
Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,—
Voice throbs in verse!
We are but orphaned Spirits left in Eden,
A time ago—
God gave us golden cups; and we were bidden
To feed you so!
But now our right hand hath no cup remaining,
No work to do;
The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining
The whole earth through;
And all those stains lie clearly round for showing
(Not interfused!)
That brighter colours were the world’s foregoing,
Than shall be used.
Harken, oh harken! ye shall harken surely,
For years and years,
The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely,
Of spirits’ tears!
The yearning to a beautiful, denied you,
Shall strain your powers:—
Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you,
Resumed from ours!
In all your music, our pathetic minor
Your ears shall cross;
And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner,
With sense of loss!
We shall be near, in all your poet-languors
And wild extremes;
What time ye vex the desert with vain angers,
Or light with dreams!
And when upon you, weary after roaming,
Death’s seal is put,
By the foregone ye shall discern the coming,
Through eyelids shut.
We prefer, however, to exhibit Miss Barrett as a philanthropist: there is an earnestness in her pleadings for the injured and the afflicted which goes directly to the heart because it comes directly from the heart. They are not to be envied who can read unmoved the following stanzas from “The Cry of the Children”:—
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 look 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!
[“]Is it good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time!”
In part of this striking lyric Miss Barrett joins in the mistaken clamour which has been raised against the factory system; she never has visited one of those “hives of industry,” and has taken their description on trust. The errors into which she has fallen are almost ludicrous, for no part of what she depicts exists in spinning-mills. It would be easy to show that the children employed in factories are better off than the children of the same rank in any other department of industry, whether manufacturing or agricultural: they are better fed, better clothed, better educated, more lightly worked, and less dependent on the caprice of masters and employers. Juvenile labour may be bad, but it is nevertheless much better than juvenile vagrancy or juvenile depravity. We cannot pass heavy censure upon Miss Barrett for having been misled by the factory cry, for never since the days of the Popish plot were such pains taken to raise a prejudice of popular delusion as were expended in getting up a storm against the manufacturers of the north of England. The benevolence of Miss Barrett is not, however, generally tinged by that cant of sentimentalism which is one of the greatest evils of the present day. With noble courage she denounces the monster plagues of the human race—War and Monopoly—in strains that bear the sure marks of predestination to immortality. The poem to which we allude is entitled the “Cry of the Human;” we quote the opening stanzas—
“There is no God,” the foolish saith,—
But none, “There is no sorrow;”
And nature oft, the cry of faith,
In bitter need will borrow:
Eyes, which the preacher could not school,
By wayside graves are raised;
And lips say, “God be pitiful,”
Who ne’er said, “God be praised.”
Be pitiful, O God!
The tempest stretches from the steep
The shadow of its coming—
The beasts grow tame, and near us creep,
As help were in the human—
Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind,
We spirits tremble under!—
The hills have echoes; but we find
No answer for the thunder.
Be pitiful, O God!
The battle hurtles on the plains—
Earth feels new scythes upon her:
We reap our brothers for the wains,
And call the harvest .. honour—
Draw face to face, front line to line,
One image all inherit,—
Then kill, curse on, by that same sign,
Clay, clay,—and spirit, spirit.
Be pitiful, O God!
The plague runs festering through the town,—
And never a bell is tolling;
And corpses, jostled ’neath the moon,
Nod to the dead-cart’s rolling!
The young child calleth for the cup—
The strong man brings it weeping;
The mother from her babe looks up,
And shrieks away its sleeping.
Be pitiful, O God!
The plague of gold strikes far and near,—
And deep and strong it enters:
This purple chimar which we wear,
Makes madder than the centaur’s.
Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange:
We cheer the pale gold diggers—
Each soul is worth so much on ’Change,
And marked, like sheep, with figures.
Be pitiful, O God!
The curse of gold upon the land,
The lack of bread enforces—
The rail-cars snort from strand to strand,
Like more of Death’s White horses!
The rich preach “rights” and future days,
And hear no angel scoffing:
The poor die mute—with starving gaze—
On corn-ships in the offing.
Be pitiful, O God!
There is a music of divine melancholy in the following little piece, entitled “Sleeping and Watching,” relieved throughout by the hope that is full of [p. 172→] futurity, which wins its way to the soul, and finds its place in memory for ever—
Sleep on, baby, on the floor,
Tired of all the playing,—
Sleep with smile the sweeter for
That, you dropped away in!
On your curls’ full roundness, stand
Golden lights serenely—
One cheek, pushed out by the hand,
Folds the dimple inly:
Little head and little foot
Heavy laid for pleasure,
Underneath the lids half-shut,
Slants the shining azure;—
Open-souled in noonday sun,
So, you lie and slumber!
Nothing evil, having done,
Nothing can encumber.
I, who cannot sleep as well,
Shall I sigh to view you?
Or sigh further to foretel[l]
All that may undo you?
Nay, keep smiling, little child,
Ere the sorrow neareth,—
I will smile too! Patience mild
Pleasure’s token weareth.
Nay, keep sleeping, before loss;
I shall sleep though losing!
As by cradle, so by cross,
Sure is the reposing.
And God knows, who sees us twain,
Child at childish leisure,
I am near as tired of pain
As you seem of pleasure;—
Very soon too, by His grace
Gently wrapt around me,
Shall I show as calm a face,
Shall I sleep as soundly!
Differing in this, that you
Clasp your playthings sleeping,
While my hand shall drop the few
Given to my keeping;
Differing in this, that I
Sleeping, shall be colder,
And in waking presently,
Brighter to beholder!
Differing in this beside
(Sleeper, have you heard me?
Do you move, and open wide
Eyes of wonder toward me?)—
That while I, you, draw withal
From your slumber, solely,—
Me, from mine, an angel shall,
With reveillie holy!
We had marked many more passages for quotation, but our limited space sets bounds to our wishes. Enough has been extracted to commend the volumes to all lovers of genuine poetry, to all who sympathize with fervent devotion, and to all who rejoice to find a noble spirit advocating the claims of suffering humanity.
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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