E450300B. Poems (1844).
The Metropolitan Magazine, March 1845, pp. 322–334.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 372–378.
Some of our readers will recollect, that in our Number for October last, we gave a short notice of these volumes,—those who have in the interim gained any knowledge of them, will thank us for proposing now to consider them more fully,—as the study of these revelations, even if it leave nothing more to learn, will lead to the earnest welcoming of any means which may bring them before the public. We have termed these poems, “Revelations;” the word occurred unsought, but perhaps a diligent search would not have found one more appropriate,—truly are they revelations of what is best, purest, noblest, in our fallen humanity,—we look up from them, recognizing with renewed force, that, even here, amid the soil of earth, we rank “but a little lower than the angels.” It is needless for Miss Barrett to assure us,—though we hail with gratitude any communication regarding itself, from such a nature,—“while my poems are full of faults—as I go forward, to my critics I confess, they have my heart and life in them,—they are not empty shells. Poetry has been a serious thing to me, as life itself; and life [h]as 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 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;”—humility with regard to actual attainment, blending throughout the work with that strain of dignified feeling with which the loftiest aims must inspire a mind with which they are one;—this being one of the cases in which what is “seen,” becomes “a part of sight.” Perhaps, then, as we claim for Miss Barrett, in its fullest sense, the title of poetess, we should devote a little space to the consideration of what the highest art capable of being practised by the human intelligence may include.
What is poetry? Question how often asked! and from the very depth and greatness of what dwells within its compass, ever imperfectly answered. Poetry, in the soul of man, is its fullest conception of the truth provided for its nutriment;—truth in its beauty, in its strength, in its elevation. Poetry in its visible form, must be the expression of the highest feeling blended with the highest thought, in terms most kindred to their nature. It exhibits the soul in its loftiest mental act,—and as the various faculties, the various objects these faculties concern, predominate, poetry—as the language in which the soul [p. 323→] speaks—must vary in its form with the order of development,—the tastes and perceptions,—the grade of existences,—of which it is the outward sign. Thus, poetry is descriptive, imaginative, ethical, intellectual, spiritual, in accordance with the order of beauty most clearly perceived by the individual mind whence it emanates. But, whatever may be the object selected to be transfused with the peculiar light of poetry, there must be in the producing mind, the etherial fire from which that light may kindle,—and it will shape, by the law of its own nature, its own individual form and manifestation,—that which burns and glows in the soul, will melt and fuse the media of language, so as to mould a fit channel for its flow. And thus have we varied metre, flexible cadence, appropriate r[h]ythm.
Yet poetry has life, fainter or stronger, in every soul of man; in many it lives but in their vivid perceptions of the beautiful,—in many, but as the impulsive language of passionate feeling; in some,—priests of their kind, it dwells, a manifested power,—ruling from the deep palaces of their spirits, the spirits of all other men,—a power of which words are the media,—high truth, the soul,—a power which finds in the beings of its race, the world, from which, like the sun, it quickens “all manner of seed, bearing precious fruit.” Poetry, then, has an appropriate form; thus Carlyle has said—“all deep things are long,” words which might be the motto to all that is great in action, as well as in thought; and our Milton (we delight to speak as of one Fatherland with him) defines poetry to be
Thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.
And this art, which has for its object the noblest the human mind can contemplate, should have aims in harmony with these: the nurture of the soul—the love of the spiritual and holy—the insight which may discern—the strength which may struggle towards them—the yearning towards the unseen and the eternal, in harmony with which man was formed, and in restored affinity to which can the capacities of his spirit alone find congenial exercise. And because—whatever was the state of unfallen man—gradual development,—strength won from difficulties,—success attained through long effort,—appears the condition of our imperfect humanity, the poet learns to give utterance to the thought within him by slow degrees,—by repeated measurement of the power of words,—by progressive training in the use of the implements of his art. Few, indeed, are they in whom the fire of poetry burns bright and quick enough from its first kindling, to permeate all the superstructure of thought, and to mould all its form by the gradual expansion of the life within; and they are not numerous, who, having “the vision and the faculty divine,” have learnt to work worthily with them—to enshrine the essence of poetic thought in the appreciable form of noble verse. Of these, we think Miss Barrett eminently one; nay, we claim for her the highest place mid the queens of harmonious thought who have ruled among us. We say this—and do not forget them—the names of Barbauld, Hemans, Landon, Baillie, are on our lips, but as they pass in bright review we feel that we do not lower the place they have won, in assigning one still more high to Miss Barrett. [p. 324→] In deep piety—in bold and original thought, in suggestive description,—in newness of simile, in earnest feeling, in genius,—the matrix of all these,—she seems to us “one bright particular star,” shining from a firmament of her own. Yet Miss Barrett’s lyre is one of many tones; at times she reminds us of the deep fanciful thoughts of Tennyson,—at times of the etherial music of Mrs. Hemans—of the high meditations of Wordsworth—of the strong clear portraitures of Joanna Baillie,—nay, of the sphere-elevated strains of Milton; but always there is, the animating soul of these varied cadences, a strain of thought, her own,—something difficult to define,—eminently individual,—worthy a noble definition. In endeavouring to give expression to this, it has seemed to us that her point of view is the farthest possible from being bounded by the externalities of things;—it comprehends their far causes, and the results to which they tend;—she is, in the highest sense, ideal,—and discerns through the visible form the law of which it is the exponent;—and of this she makes it the expounder—with a breadth of thought that must no longer be called masculine, and a delicacy of pencilling that we yet name distinctive of woman. We speak of her in Pollok’s words:—
She, from above descending,
Stooped to touch the loftiest thought.—
His noble figure shows her to us, as—
Not soiled and worn,
As though she from the earth had laboured up,
But, as some bird of heavenly plumage fair,
That down from higher regions came, and perched
Itself, to see what lay beneath.
We learn from the dedication to these poems, that their authoress has been trained amid suffering. We quote her own words, they are addressed to her father. “My desire is, that you, who are a witness how, if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day,—that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them every day,—that you, who hold with me over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope, by one name,—may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the exponents of a few years of an existence, which has been sustained and comforted by you, as well as given.” It is known from other sources that Miss Barrett has been for some years confined by delicate health, almost to one room and one couch. If such lonely teaching has evolved the pure lessons which speak through these volumes, truly, “out of the eater” has “come forth sweetness.” We can scarcely imagine a more noble model than this distinguished lady presents; cheering the hours of weariness by the high hope that in fathoming the energies of her own soul, she may pour light into those of her fellow-men. Touissaint L’Ouverture, in his ice-ceiled dungeon, rejoicing in the thought that he had opened the path to freedom for his race;—Milton, in his blindness, pouring forth the song which his countrymen have not “let die;”—far away, Prometheus, hiding from his view the chain and the agony, by the vision of man walking [p. 325→] in light and plenty,—rise spontaneously before us, as kindred conceptions.
These poems are above such sanction, yet there are some who may be affected by the knowledge that the greatest in the literary world of our day—Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mitford, Jamieson, Martineau—are among their declared admirers. And now, in proof of the judgment in which we, too, join, we shall adduce the volumes themselves; premising that our selections will present, not so much what we think the most beautiful in them, as the beauties which are not already familiar in the many quotations of our contemporaries; and that we shall point out on our way the faults that lie among the excellencies, and which are not hid by them.
We begin with the Drama of Exile, the subject of which is, the first pilgrimage of Adam and Eve into the wilderness after being driven from Paradise. We quote the first scene,—it is a nobler picture than Turner ever painted.
“Scene.—The outer side of the gate of Eden, shut fast with clouds, from the depth of which revolves the sword of fire, self-moved. A watch of innumerable angels, rank above rank, slopes up from around it to the zenith; and the glare cast from their brightness and from the sword, extends many miles into the wilderness. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance flying along the glare. The angel Gabriel and Lucifer are beside the gate.”
The conversation which follows between Gabriel and Lucifer—indeed, the conception of Lucifer, as it may be inferred from the part he takes in the various dialogues—we do not think worthy of Miss Barrett’s genius. For instance, in this first conversation, Gabriel, who might be supposed, from having kept his high dignity unsullied, to be in some measure note-worthy, four times commands Lucifer to depart, and the result is simply nothing, if we except a variety of malignant sarcasms hurled at Gabriel by the lost angel. Lucifer appears entirely unimpressed by his mandate, and at length quits the disputed ground because his exquisite sensibility, touching his own, his Morning Star, cannot endure the allusion made to it by the “Prince of the gate.” We confess we cannot amalgamate with our idea of the leader of the fallen angels, as received either from Milton or Holy Writ, the softness, the bitter moaning—as though a nerve were pierced—of Miss Barrett’s Lucifer, when in any way reminded of his “Morning Star, last beautiful, last heavenly, that he loved.” Even his agony in the last scene, when he “has called thrice to his Morning Star and had no answer,”—though beautiful in poetry, and striking in dramatic effect,—we cannot harmonize with the stern idea of him who hath said, “Evil, be thou my good;” or our perception of the dark nature which even Incarnate Love could but describe as “the murderer from the beginning.” We are sometimes aided in our appreciation of Miss Barrett’s views, by hints in her preface; but as nothing of her delineation of Lucifer is there mentioned, we must leave the subject, having stated our difficulty, not without some hope that as constant and high advance is her aim, she may either revise this portion of her favourite poem, or put it into a form more appreciable by other minds. We pass by the lyrics of the Eden spirits, as having been often quoted, and we must also omit the [p. 326→] eloquent upbraiding of the spirits of organic and inorganic nature, and the dread apparition of the zodiacal signs, symbolizing the creature-life of earth, for want of room,—merely remarking that these are truly vigorous and original conceptions,—and pass on to the emphatic blessing pronounced by Adam upon Eve at the command of Christ.
Adam. Mother of the world,
Take heart before this Presence. Rise, aspire
Unto the calms and magnanimities,
The lofty uses, and the noble ends,
The sanctified devotion and full work
To which thou art elect for evermore,
First woman, wife, and mother.
Eve. And first in sin.
Adam. And also the sole bearer of the Seed,
Whereby sin dieth! Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the to come,
And all the dark o’ the world._____________
______________Henceforward, woman, rise
To thy peculiar and best altitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope.
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin death; the ransom, righteousness,
The heavenly life, and compensative rest,
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve;
Found acceptable to the world instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood—
Peculiar suffering, answering to the sin;
Some pang paid down for each new human life;
Some weariness in guarding such a life;
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason. Feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without;
And pressures of an alien tyranny,
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But go to! thy love
Shall chaunt itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life-working. A child’s kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich;
An old man, helped by thee, shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head—Christ witnessing
With looks of prompting love—to keep thee clear
Of all reproach against the sin foregone,
From all the generations which succeed.
Thy hand, which plucked the apple, I clasp close;
Thy lips, which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close,— [p. 327→]
I bless thee in the name of Paradise,
And by the memory of Edenic joys
Forfeit and lost; by that lost cypress-tree,
Green at the gate, which thrilled as we came out;
And by the blessed nightingale which threw
Its melancholy music after us;
And by the flowers, whose spirit full of smells
Did follow softly, plucking us behind
Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers
And fourfold river-courses;—by all these
I bless thee to the contraries of these;
I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,
To the elemental change and turbulence,
And to the roar of the estranged beasts,
And to the solemn dignities of grief;
To each one of these ends, and to this end
Of death and the hereafter!
Eve. I accept
For me and for my daughters this high part,
Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work
Shall hold me in the place of garden rest;
And in the place of Eden’s lost delight.
Worthy endurance of permitted pain;
Whilst on my longest patience there shall wait
Death’s speechless angel, smiling in the east,
Whence cometh the cold wind. I bow myself
Humbly henceforward on the ill I did,
That humbleness may keep it in the shade.
Shall it be so? shall I smile saying so?
O Seed! O King! O God! who shalt be Seed,
What shall I say? As Eden’s fountains swelled
Brightly betwixt their banks, so swells my soul
Betwixt thy love and power!_______________
As he of old knew Apelles by his line, we declare none but a woman could have written that blessing and that response. The delicacy and the fervour, the strength and the weakness, alike are woman’s. We regret that, close upon these beautiful passages, and others scarcely less worthy, which our allotted space forbids us to quote, occurs, if not one of Miss Barrett’s faults, at least one of her peculiarities open to doubt and question. We allude, not to the vision of Christ in itself, but to the sort of descriptive addresses to him of Adam and Eve; and, as it appears to us, to a want of dignity in the words ascribed to him. It is remarkable how little in the sacred narratives expressly describe him of whom they tell us. That “he grew in wisdom and stature;” that the aspect of his countenance encouraged the sick, the halt, the maimed, to come and be healed; that at times “he wept,” that at times “he was exceeding sorrowful,” we know; but the grandeur of such outlines rather contrasts with expressions like, “Thou standest mute in glory like the sun;” “How do thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls;” “As gazing through them toward the Father-throne, in a pathetical full Deity; serenely as the stars gaze through the air straight on each other;” “O pathetic Christ! thou standest mute in glory like the moon.” If, however, it may be said of Milton, that “the English language sank beneath him,” we think that Miss Barrett should have [p. 328→] the full benefit of the undeniable truth, that her themes are beyond the ordinary powers of language. And we regret, that from the difficulty of separating passages from their connection, of the proper length for insertion, in the Drama of Exile, we have scarcely in our notice of it done justice to its merits; we recommend it to the thoughtful perusal of our readers. We will, however, let Miss Barrett speak for herself, on the point of the introducing sacred names and persons. She says—
“The tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the spiritual creed..... There is a feeling abroad which appears to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion; that there should be no naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the daily bread of it in his hands; as if the name of God did not build a church by the very naming of it; as if the word God were not everywhere in his creation, and at every moment in his eternity, an appropriate word; as if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly. I appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the convictions of the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to believe of me, that I have done that in reverence from which, through reverence, he might have abstained.”
We proceed to the Sonnets; they are truly worthy of the lover of Milton and the friend of Wordsworth. Many of them, we feel, speak the individual experience of the poet.
the seraph and poet.
The seraph sings before the manifest
God-one, and in the burning of the seven,
And with the full life of consummate heaven
Heaving beneath him like a mother’s breast,
Warm with her first-born’s slumber in that nest!
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
Before the naughty world soon self-forgiven
For wronging him; and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so
Sing, seraph, with the glory! Heaven is high.
Sing, poet, with the sorrow! Earth is low.
The universe’s inward voices cry
“Amen!” to either song of joy or woe.
Sing, seraph, poet, sing on equally.
substitution.
When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly;
And silence against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you, like a strong disease and new;
What hope, what help, what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship’s sigh,
Not reason’s subtle count, not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew,
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales,
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chaunted,—nor the angels’ sweet all hails,
Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these.
Speak thou, availing Christ!—and fill the pause. [p. 329→]
perplexed music.
Experience, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand;
Whence harmonies we cannot understand,
Of God’s will in His worlds, the strain unfolds,
In sad, perplexed mirrors. Deathly colds
Fall on us, while we hear and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land,
With nightingales in visionary worlds.
We murmur—“Where is any certain tune,
Or measured music, in such notes as these?”—
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded! their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences;
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper—sweet.
the two sayings.
Two sayings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses, in the Church’s brow and breast;
And, by them we find rest in our unrest,
And heart-deep in salt tears, do yet entreat
God’s fellowship, as if on heavenly seat.
One is, “And Jesus wept,” whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face, that drops its best
And sweetest waters, on the record sweet.—
And one is, where the Christ denied and scorned,
“Looked upon Peter!” Oh! to render plain,
By help of having loved a little, and mourned,—
That look of sovran love and sovran pain,
Which He who could not sin, yet suffered, turned
On him, who could reject, but not sustain!
a thought for a lonely death-bed.
If God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone—with none beside thy bed,
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said,
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,—
Then pray alone—“O Christ, come tenderly!
By thy forsaken sonship,—and the red
Drear wine-press—and the wilderness outspread—
And the lone garden, where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,—by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine!
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel ’twixt my face and thine;
But stoop thyself to gather my life’s rose,
And smile away my mortal to divine.”
the prisoner.
I count the dismal time by months and years,
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breadth of all things summer-mute,
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears [p. 330→]
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres,
Or thoughts of heaven we weep at! Nature’s lute
Sounds on behind this door so closely shut,
A strange, wild music to the prisoner’s ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies, which it feels too fine;
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and shine,
Streams, forests, glades,—and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills, transfigured to divine.
insufficiency.
When I attain to utter forth in verse
Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
Along my pulses, yearning to be free,
And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse,
To the individual, true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony!
But like a dreary wind against a tree,
We are blown against for ever by the curse
Which breathes through nature. Oh, the world is weak—
The effluence of each is false to all;
And what we best conceive, we fail to speak.
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall!
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration, without let or thrall.
The ballads, which conclude the first volume, have been so often extracted, that we are silent about them; though we should like to linger over our especial favourite, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” If this say is like to dazzle young poets, the corrective is in the next. Seldom has there been a nobler assertion of the true aims and objects of the art,—a resolve to tread through the obstacles on this side of them, though their thorns tear the feet in that march,—a renunciation of the false rewards which are too low for noble achievement—than we find in the “Vision of Poets.” “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” must not have its earnest charm—which reminds us of the power to hold his listener of the ancient mariner—broken by dismemberment. We predict that he who begins this “Rhyme,” will not close its leaves till, with throbbing pulse and deepened eye, he has reached its last couplet. We extract a graceful little poem, “The Lady’s Yes.” It is singular as being the only one we have noticed in these volumes, except “The House of Clouds,” originally printed in the “Athenæum,” in which there is a spirit of playfulness. But playfulness is not to be looked for in a mind working through much physical exhaustion; and better than the charm it gives, is the elevated patience with which our authoress believes, not only that trials will have end, but that they contain blessing.
the lady’s yes.
“Yes!” I answered you last night;
“No!” this morning, Sir, I say!
Colours seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day. [p. 331→]
When the tabors played their best,
Lamps above, and laughs below—
Love me sounded like a jest,
Fit for Yes, or fit for No!
Call me false, or call me free,—
For, whatever light may shine,
No man on thy face shall see
Any grief for change in mine.
Yet the sin is on us both—
Time to dance is not to woo—
Wooer light makes fickle troth—
Scorn of me recoils on you!
Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
Bravely, as for life and death—
With a loyal gravity.
Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship’s flatteries.
By your truth she shall be true—
Ever true—as wives of yore—
And her Yes, once said to you,
Shall be Yes for evermore.
Those of our readers who remember “Victoria’s Tears,” a poem of Miss Barrett’s, first appearing in a London Newspaper, and often reprinted, will hail, on a kindred subject, Victoria’s Marriage. “Crowned and Wedded,” begins by carrying us back to the Coronation; it enumerates those then in presence there, till it arrives at
The dead—who lie in rows beneath the minster-floor,
There, verily an awful state maintaining evermore—
The kings and queens who having made that vow, and worn that crown,
Descended unto lower thrones, and darker, deep adown!
Dieu et mon droit—what is’t to them?—what meaning can it have?—
The King of kings, the rights of death,—God’s judgment and the grave.
And when betwixt the quick and dead, the young fair queen had vowed,
The living shouted—“May she live! Victoria, live!” aloud—
And as the loyal shouts went up, true spirits prayed between,
“The blessings happy monarchs have, be thine, O crowned Queen!”
But now before her people’s face she bendeth hers anew,
And calls them, while she vows, to be her witness thereunto.
She vowed to rule, and in that oath her childhood put away—
She doth maintain her womanhood in vowing love to-day.
O lovely lady! let her vow!—such lips become such vows,
And fairer goeth bridal-wreath than crown with vernal brows!
O lovely lady!—let her vow!—yea, let her vow to love!
And though she be no less a queen, with purples hung above,
The pageant of a court behind, the royal kin around,
And woven gold to catch her looks turned maidenly to ground;
Yet may the bride-veil hide from her a little of that state,
While loving hopes, for retinues, about her sweetness waits. [p. 332→]
She vows to love—who vowed to rule—the chosen at her side;
Let none say, “God preserve the queen,” but rather, “Bless the Bride!”
None blow the trump, none bend the knee, none violate the dream
Wherein no monarch, but a wife, she to herself may seem!
Or if ye say, “Preserve the Queen!” oh! breathe it inward, low,
She is a woman, and belov’d, and ’tis enough but so!
Count it enough, thou noble prince, who tak’st her by the hand,
And claimest for thy lady-love our Lady of the land!
And since, Prince Albert, men have call’d thy spirit high and rare,
And true to truth, and brave for truth, as some at Augsburg were,
We charge thee, by thy lofty thoughts and by thy poet-mind,
Which not by glory and degree takes measure of mankind,
Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring,
And hold her uncrown’d womanhood to be the royal thing!
And now, upon our Queen’s last vow, what blessings shall we pray?
None straiten’d to a shallow crown will suit our lips to-day.
Behold! they must be free as love—they must be broad as free—
Even to the borders of heaven’s light, and earth’s humanity.
Long live she! send up loyal shouts, and true hearts pray between,
“The blessings happy peasants have, be thine, O crowned Queen.”
We believe these lines will be mused over by many a happy young wife, with him who calls her his lady-love, by their own fire-side, throughout our broad England; for their truth speaks to every heart, from its highest circle to its lowest. We turn very regretfully from the next poem, “Crowned and Buried,”—Napoleon—which is full of noble thoughts. We can only quote two stanzas, and they are but a fair specimen.
Napoleon! sages with high foreheads drooped,
Did use it for a problem; children small
Leaped up to greet it as at manhood’s call;
Priests blessed it from their altars overstooped
By meek-eyed Christs,—and widows with a moan
Spake it, when question’d why they sat alone.
That name consumed the silence of the snows
In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid!
The mimic eagles dared what Nature’s did,
And over-rush’d her mountainous repose
In search of eyries; and the Egyptian river
Mingled the same word with its grand “for ever.”
We had marked many other passages for insertion; part at least of “The Lost Bower,” real fact typifying the soul’s experience—the history of the life; “Loved Once,” a noble Pindaric ode, but, unlike Pindar’s, comprehensible by the simple as well as by the initiated; “Caterina to Camöens, on her Death-bed,” unrivalled in the deep tenderness of its self-renouncement—the sentiment, as it were, set to the soft music of the verse. We can only give a few verses from “A Portrait” of the loveliest little maiden we have seen on such canvas.
I will paint her as I see her!
Ten times have the lilies blown
Since she look’d upon the sun. [p. 333→]
And her face is lily-clear—
Lily-shaped, and drooped in duty,
To the law of its own beauty.
Oval cheeks encoloured faintly,
Which a trail of golden hair
Keeps from fading off to air.
And a forehead fair and saintly,
Which two blue eyes undershine,
Like meek prayers before a shrine.
And her voice, it murmurs lowly,
As a silver stream may run,
Which yet feels, you feel, the sun.
And her smile, it seems half holy,
As if drawn from thoughts more far
Than our common jestings are.
And if any poet knew her,
He would sing of her in falls
Used in lovely madrigals.
And if any painter drew her,
He would paint her unaware
With a halo round her hair.
And if reader read the poem,
He would whisper—“You have done a
Consecrated little Una.”
And a dreamer (did you show him
The same picture) would exclaim—
“’Tis my angel with a name.”
And all hearts do pray, “God love her!”
Ay, and certes, in good sooth,
We may all be sure He doth.
We had purposed saying a few words on some errors of diction; rhymes which speak neither to the eye nor ear; strange new words not to be found in any dictionary—“made out of the carver’s brain;” interpolations of Greek expressions in Greek, of which ladies, less versed than Miss Barrett in the Classics, may complain. We might also have remarked on occasional obscurities of style, not always to be accounted for by the mystery of the theme; and of small aberrations from truth in descriptions of natural objects. We might have said, that as nightingales do not sing on “wolds” but in valleys in fact, they ought to have done so in vision; that the linden-tree, the eglantine, the columbime, and hop, have never chanced by us, as in “The Lost Bower,” to be found in conjunction. But it were unreasonable to expect that one shut out so long from the face of nature should never err in her minute portraiture; the wonder is, that the fair image has been guarded so truthfully by Love and Memory; and, as there are unnumerable beauties we must reluctantly pass, we will not do more than indicate the [p. 334→] faults, slight in comparison. We hope ere long to greet Miss Barrett again, and would suggest to her how large a plot of unclaimed ground lies for our poets among the annals of our country. We know not why “Ancient England” should call forth less noble lays than “Ancient Rome.”
We rejoice to hear that Miss Barrett’s health is improving; and as we rank among those who think that bodily health is an aid to mental vigour, we gladly anticipate the high flight which Miss Barrett may take when her spirit has shook the dust of its long travel from its wings—then may England exult in her noblest poetess. There are some authors who have to wait long and wearily for the notice of the public; there are others who are popular, universally read on their first appearance, but never read after. For Miss Barrett we hold a bright augury, which her past and present experience sees in course of fulfilment, that she will unite what is best in either lot—that she will be, as she deserved to be, esteemed and admired at once and throughout future generations.
[Charles Grant]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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