E451100A. Poems (1844).
The British Quarterly Review, 1 November 1845, pp. 337–352.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 344–350.
The present, we are told, is an unpoetical age; and truly, when we give heed to the sounds that most frequently enter our wearied ears, and consider the chief pursuits and engagements of that aggregate humanity, which is rushing past us in breathless chase of what it holds to be the chief good, we are half inclined to believe the affirmation, and despairingly enunciate that this is the age of sense, as opposed to intellect, of understanding, rather than reason,—an age in which, with rude hands, we analyse and dissect what we once worshipped, heedless of our impotence to re-unite, and re-animate with the vivifying spirit, whose subtle nature has eluded our coarse search, the sundered fragments of the good, the strong, and the beautiful;—that it is an age of share-markets, and steam-whistles, and of travelling swifter than the wind; as though it were the great end of existence to annihilate space, while the time thus redeemed is not always employed, so far as we see, to any nobler purpose than it was some thirty years ago in a heavy stage. Life is so much all hurry and hot haste, that our “well of English”—deep, clear, and profound as are its crystal waters, being inadequate rightly to designate it, we are forced to ransack the new vocabulary of our Transatlantic brethren, expressly constructed for this high-pressure state of things; and it cannot be denied that the feverish excitements, vivid anxieties, and ceaseless turmoil that prevail are exceedingly unfavourable to the development of the poetic faculty. A priori, one would say that steam-engines and poetry must flourish in inverse proportions. Nor, perchance, would the conclusion be invalidated, even by a desperate attempt to extract sentiment out of a railway—such as we have seen—nor by Miss Barrett’s pressing locomotives into the service under the high sounding alias of “resonant steam eagles”—for which the thanks of all railway proprietors, more particularly in rural, picturesque districts, are her undoubted due.
And yet, with so much in its support, we can but yield a half assent to this assertion of the hard, prosaic character of the time, while our memory lingers over strains that, but a few short years ago, were wont to awake all the finer impulses of our nature, and which now, amidst the stern realities of more mature life, distil a yet richer influence,—are more lovely and more soothing. For, paradoxical as it may appear, those pleasures which have their source in the imagination, have not always the strongest attraction in our more imaginative days, but are often most prized, [p. 338→] most eagerly sought, when the flights of fancy have been tamed by the cares and sorrows which wait, in accumulating groups, on all who are treading that path whose termination is lost amidst the shadows of the future, and when all our own
bright hopes and hues of day,
Have faded into twilight gray,
eagerly do we seek to escape out of ourselves into the ideal world which the poet opens to us,—to exchange our gloomy horizon for his sunshine, the heavy vapours with which we are surrounded, for his pure, calm-breathing atmosphere! And contrast heightens the charm. While all the enjoyment that arises from appreciation of artistic skill, and a contemplation of sublime truth—and to teach this is one of the sublimest uses of poetry—is necessarily foreign to our light-hearted youth. Of course we speak not here of those dull beings, who, getting older and worse, can only enjoy their newspaper, or the latest accounts from the stock exchange,—whose prime object, that for which they sleep, eat, talk, work, live, and die, is, to keep doubling their capital, and who to attain that would willingly sell themselves to the Evil One—with the full intention of over-reaching him in the bargain, and than whom none would be more likely so to do—we speak not of these, but of people with souls, acutely, quiveringly sensible to all the impressions which can be made on that ethereal principle, with its mysterious tunicle—through whose medium perchance these impressions are transmitted—to enwrap the vivifying flame—and, if those old Greeks are to be believed, to enable it to play the ghost when separated from its material case—and who, thus exposed to greater suffering, from all its ordinary sources, have some amends for this exquisite susceptibility in the still greater capacity of enjoyment than their neighbours which it bestows on them. There are doubtless many of these who will join us in saying that what little liking for the world we set out with, it has “pleased Heaven to decrease on further acquaintance”; and to them we appeal for the truth of our assertion, that so much the more bounding is our love for nature, so much the more earnest our love for that transcript of pure-souled nature—be it material, or intellectual—poetry. Not your dark, gloomy, turbid, subjective verse, whose only value, if value it has, must be to display the morbid anatomy of the human heart, if haply any be skilled to cure the deadly evil which it demonstrates— but the poetry that refines, instructs, mollifies, and elevates the spirit; winning it to juster views of that which belongs to its particular existence, or the existences bound up with its own; and tranquillizing it by a store of soothing images from this beautiful earth, [p. 339→] which, surpassingly beautiful in itself, yet owes an added beauty to the artist, who with accomplished and reverent hand—for, who portrays nature, must be a worshipper—transfers its goodliness to his glowing canvass. While, with holier aim, other masters of the lyre embody the kindly affections and charities of life, till, “with gazing fed,” the cold heart shadows forth some faint impress of their graceful lineaments; or, with trembling hands awaken deep tones, that in mystic grandeur tell of verities awful in their being, and thrice awful in their revelation, whether on Sinai’s storm-crowned head, or amidst the darkness that enshrouded Calvary.
And has this been denied us in this “unpoetic” age? Let Wordsworth, and Southey, and Coleridge, and James Montgomery, let Hemans, and Pollock, and Bowles, and Delta, and “V.”—whoever she may be, and who, if she had written but that one thrilling poem, “the Grave,” would at once have established her rank as one of the eldest born of Parnassus—let all these answer that question for themselves, and others who may well be content with such representatives. Refreshed by such a muster roll, for whose sake we can even forgive miles of railways, boring their impudent way through the rugged hill-side, and sharing through the plain, we may surely take heart of grace, and boldly pronounce it a libel on the age thus to designate it. But we verily fear that if we—we mean such as delight in all the bustle and hurry of the day that we have been finding fault with—if we have not killed our poets, we have at least frozen or silenced most of them, for we miss many of the old well-known names which were wont to gladden us. On Southey’s teeming verse, less fascinating, however, to us than his manly English prose, and Coleridge’s music-breathing rhythm—a dance of sweet sounds, the portals of the tomb have closed; and Hemans is no more—the beauty of whose verse was still surpassed by the beauty of her character; whose poetry, dreamy and indistinct at times in its tone, might be compared to a luxuriant valley covered with silver mist, through which glitter so enchantingly spire and turret, and graceful foliage, that you long for the breeze of morning to sweep away the dewy curtain; while for the woman—she was like the fresh rivulet of the vale that, as it winds along, half seen, half hidden by the clustering boughs that droop over its waters, makes the glade musical with its gentle, yet withal mournful voice,—the sweeter that it is mournful!
But in estimating the claims of our rising aspirants for the bay, we must bear in mind the increased difficulty of securing a poetical reputation now, as compared with the last century; when a few copies of milk and water verses—strong of the water—were enough to set up a man for life, and procure him a place among [p. 340→] the “British poets” after his death. No such chance in these days, when writing verses, and often very good ones too, is what almost any person of taste and education may accomplish. The practice of the mechanical part of the art is widely spread, so that the true poet, rare as ever, does not stand out as he once did, but may be overlooked, among the “mob of gentlemen,” ay, and gentlewomen too, “that write with ease.” Literature is more extensively diffused, if it be not so profound, and literary pursuits more common; so that he who will distinguish himself, must be as much in advance of the present average of intellect and cultivation, as the poetasters of the last generation were above the average dulness of their day. The poet must now raise himself, not above the dead level of worse than mediocrity, but above many whose pretensions will be so like his own, that it will at times require some discrimination to say which is the sterling metal, which the counterfeit.
With regard to the position that should be assigned to the lady whose claims are immediately before us, we will own that it is not without hesitation that we have been able to determine what should be her award—a place among our poets, or not. Her volumes, we may remark, have been subject to very extensive criticism; and this almost universal attention, whatever may have been the verdict given, could not but be flattering to any writer—censure, in the opinion of many, being better than neglect—as at least affording evidence that the work is not of a negative character. Had mere literary notoriety, or even applause, been the object of Miss Barrett’s solicitude, she must have had it to her heart’s content. But she has higher claims and views than these, and it gives us pleasure to do full justice to the purity and elevation of her motives and sentiments, and her ardent desire to benefit and raise her fellow-creatures; and that, by means alone equal to the task,—a high-minded, intellectual appreciation of Christian and eternal verities. Her learning—and of this we must forgive some needless display—has been offered on that altar which only can give value to our costliest sacrifices, and it is always delightful to meet this union of the strong mind and lowly heart. Her philosophy is the only one that in this day is entitled to the name—a religious one; and we can deeply sympathize with her strong conviction of what the admirable master of Rugby called “the religious duty of work”—a sentiment finely expressed in one of her sonnets—and her heart-felt apprehension of the responsibilities resting on those who seek to sway mankind through the subtle influence of verse. But all this would not much avail, unless we went further, and conceded her also poetic genius, which, after some demur, arising from causes which we shall presently touch upon, we do right willingly; though our [p. 341→] judgment is in all probability not chiefly founded on such of her pieces as she will most prize. Some of her shorter poems appear to us more uniform in their excellence than those of greater pretensions; and her sonnets, with few exceptions, are eminently beautiful. We would instance one which, to our minds, is almost perfect: it refers to a preceding one, on the words, “Christ turned, and looked upon Peter.”
I think that look of Christ might seem to say:—
“Thou, Peter! art thou then a common stone,
Which I at last must break my heart upon,
For all God’s charge to His high angels, may
Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday
Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
Quick to deny me ’neath the morning sun,—
And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray?—
The cock crows coldly.—Go, and manifest
A late contrition, but no bootless fear!
For when thy deathly need is bitterest,
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here—
My voice, to God and angels, shall attest,—
Because I know this man, let him be clear.”
The pathetic antithesis of the thought is here clothed in language worthy of it,—plain, powerful, melting; and, if we were Miss Barrett, we should be prouder of this one sonnet than of the whole of the “Drama.” There is a finish, a perfection about it, worthy of Wordsworth himself. It breathes tenderness, humanity,—yea, more!
But we alluded to the difficulty we had felt in assigning to Miss Barrett her rank as a writer; and this arose from the faults with which her volumes abound, so serious as almost to repel one from the compositions which they disfigure. And it is with real pain that we say, surely never was gold so disguised and overlaid with tinsel as hers,—never was real merit made to look so like what Carlyle would call a “sham.” She possesses genius, a cultivated mind, a truth-loving heart, quick powers of observation, and luxuriancy of fancy and expression; but that luxuriance too often verges—to say the least—on extravagance. Her thoughts, fine in themselves, are not clearly conceived, and are expressed in a wilderness of words in which it is sometimes difficult to pick up one distinct, intelligible idea. Her genius is erratic, and runs away with her; in short, what avails truth to nature, and poetic power, when the writer thinks proper to be unintelligible? Not that we would sweepingly assert this of all her productions; some are plain enough, in others we think we have a good guess at her meaning, as for instance, when she speaks of grinding “down men’s bones to a pale unanimity!” [p. 342→] (A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress.) It seems to us that the idea which Miss Barrett had in her head was the same which, to our prosaic mind, would have found its liveliest illustration in the verdict of a starved-out jury, whose “unanimity” they themselves, with faltering lips, announce, and whose “paleness” manifests itself to all beholders! This, we presume, is the idea—a coerced agreement—only on a larger scale, the starved jurors standing for mankind generally; but we cannot congratulate her on a felicitous expression of it. If her meaning be clear to herself, why should her readers be left in doubt? But this is the point, we fear it is not always so; but that she permits herself to think confusedly, and the natural result is, a confused, unintelligible way of expressing herself. And the case is rendered more hopeless by her attributing it, not as one would have expected, to her own feeble grasp of her subject, and defective power of expression, but—hear it, ye old, plain-speaking poets!—to her thoughts being too sublime and grand to be spoken out in clear, connected phrase; nay, so great, so overpowering does she consider them that she seriously—or at least, poetically, thinks, that if she were to do so, the effect would be most disastrous—fatal! Of course, with an apprehension of such consequences, no one could expect her to write otherwise than as she does. Our only chance is, in persuading her of her mistake, and this we can only hope to do by reminding her that thoughts quite as fine as any she thinks, or can think, have, from old Homer downwards, been poured forth in intelligible song; and we believe there is not a single case on record of its ever having proved prejudicial either to the health or comfort of the patient. It does not follow that to write even of things incomprehensible, we must write incomprehensibly. Let her turn to Milton, and see if he ever uses jargon to express sublimity. Nay, what can be more distinctly expressed than that line of his, which is one of the finest descriptions of the shadowy and indistinct in our language—
What seemed its head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on?
It would not suit our limits, and it would be an ungenial task, to give as many instances of this fault as the volumes before us would furnish; but one or two may be permitted, and we would especially animadvert upon the Song of the Morning Star to Lucifer, in the drama of the Exile, as one that absolutely outherods Herod, as a specimen of almost unadulterated nonsense. There is a melancholy cadence in its opening that prepossessed us.
Mine orbed image sinks,
Back from thee, back from thee, [p. 343→]
As thou art fallen, methinks,
Back from me.
But who shall express the unmitigated dismay with which we read on as follows:—
I loved thee with the fiery love of stars,
Who love by burning, and by loving move
Too near the throned Jehovah, not to love.
Ai, ai, Heosphoros!
* * *
Mine orbed heats drop cold,
Down from thee, down from thee;
As fell thy grace of old,
Down from me, down from me.
Ai, ai.
* * *
Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread,
Erect, irradiated,
Didst sting my wheel of glory,
On, on, before thee,
Along the God-light, by a quickening touch!—
Around, around the firmamental ocean—
Ha, ha!
I swam expanding with delirious fire,
Around, around, around in blind desire
To be drawn upward to the Infinite—
Ha! ha!
Until the motion flinging out the motion
To a keen whirl of passion and avidity,—
To a blind whirl of rapture and delight,—
I wound in girant orbits smooth and white,
With the intense rapidity!
Around, around,
I wound, and interwound,
While all the cyclic heavens about me spun!
Stars, planets, suns, and moons, dilated broad,
Then flashed together into a single sun,
And wound, and wound in one;
And as they wound, I wound—around, around,
In a great fire, I almost took for God.
Ha, ha, Heosphoros!
Enough, and more than enough. But would it not disturb the equanimity of the most humane critic, to read such nonsense as this, with its strange burden—burden, indeed!—of Ai, ai, Heosphoros? We had “lever,” as Chaucer says, she had stuck to her own tongue, and lamented over Lucifer in straight-forward English. What are ladies and country gentlemen to do? And is not the star entitled to damages against the slanderous poet who could lay such unmeaning wordiness to its charge, as if it were actually [p. 344→] dizzy with this thrice absurd tee-totum velocity with which it spins, and that almost makes us dizzy to read of,—and all for love? Poetry should at least be sense. Miss Barrett, we are sorry to say, does not always seem to think so, as there are too many passages in her poems which renew an oft-recurring trouble of our school days, when our vexed and puzzled spirit found vent in an exclamation most apposite to our present difficulty, we “can’t make sense of it!” For instance, a nightingale, representing the birds of Eden, says
I build my song of high, pure notes,—
Till I strike the arch of the Infinite;
And I bridge abysmal agonies,
With strong, clear calms of harmonies!
Wonderful bird! but still more wonderful reader, if he chance to make out what this means. What it is for human beings to “lie still on the knee of a mild mystery!” as Miss Barrett tells us we do; while steam engines—real or metaphorical, we can’t say which—rush on “’neath the heat of a thought sitting still in our eyes!” is to us a matter still more inexplicable,—it sounds as though coke were superfluous! But till this strange style which appears to be a pet sin, be exchanged for a purer, chaster one—the noble simplicity of the great masters—vainly, or nearly so, will she attempt to impart her own feeling of the beautiful and true to her readers; and, what we verily believe will more concern her—vainly will she look for the effect of just, ennobling sentiments, dimly visible through a mist of words. After reading some of Miss Barrett’s poems, we were struck with the transparent diction, even of some of our poetical writers that we had previously thought most wanting in perspicuity and precision. Her redundancy of compound epithets also we would remark, as being exceedingly disagreeable generally, as well as rather unmeaning in this particular case: e.g., “God-breath,” “heaven-life,” “child-mouth,” “soul-wings,” “fire-hearts,” &c. They require to be sparingly used, and with great judgment, or they detract from the simplicity of diction essential to true poetry. Abundant they may well be in the old, rich, fusible language, whence, we doubt not, Miss Barrett has acquired her love for them; but they do not so well suit our stiffly cast vernacular. Style will not bear transplanting; and your good Greek may be very bad English.
Will she give us leave, while we are at this ungracious task of fault-finding, to say that her rhymes are distracting to any one with an ear? And this is really inexcusable, rhyming being one of the very lowest elements of the art,—anybody can tell whether [p. 345→] rhymes be legitimate or not, and we look for them as a thing of course; considering it no great merit that they are exact, but a great demerit if they are not so. What would have become of her, if she were as fastidious as ourselves, who, when suffering from a rhyming fit, have actually demurred to such a combination as sun, and upon? And though we are ready to admit this was hyper-fastidious; yet we would not often sanction such. There is a sort of hit or miss, slap-dash air, about Miss B.’s rhymes that would make one laugh, were it not so provoking to meet, either such carelessness, or obtuseness, as they evince. Long and long should we have mused, yea, possibly have bitten our pen to pieces (for this is sometimes resorted to by people in a brown study) in search of something better, before we had admitted “creature,” as a rhyme to “nature.” We remember once, when moving heaven and earth for a rhyme to “angel,” an impish sister at our side (by way of utter mockery of our distress, we presume) suggested playbill; and we can but admire to find our lady-poet solacing herself in sober sadness with rhymes no better than this, which provoked such a burst of laughter as greatly relieved our worried spirit. It is certainly much easier to run on in this slip-shod way; but it is that kind of easy writing which is terribly hard reading. “Poems,” and “flowings” we cannot recognise as rhymes, nor yet such a triplet as “coming,” “women,” and “foemen”! They are as bad as a discord in music,—which is precisely their nature. “Passion,” and “relation”—“rewarding,” and “garden”—“took,” “struck,” and “woke”—“clenching” and “branching”—with others like them, are simply execrable. Truly Miss Barrett is unrivalled and unrivalable in this item of her art—neither ear nor eye can endure it.
One word as to the theory respecting poetry and the poet, which Miss Barrett enunciates in her preface, and works out in the Vision of Poets; and of which a line that she quotes may stand as exponent,—“we learn in suffering what we teach in song.” This sentiment we never admired. It unduly lowers our estimate of the poetic faculty. Suffering, is of imperfection, and knowledge derived from such a source must necessarily partake of the same character. Had the poet only to do with the realities of this fallen world, such knowledge might be his highest inspiration; but we ascribe to him a loftier range,—an à priori knowledge drawn from a more sublime source than our groaning humanity,—a genuine inspiration—a knowledge differing less in kind than in degree from that which pure spirits drink in—acquired from a conversance with the ideal world, and for the obtaining of which we must borrow a formulary from the acute, metaphysical Augustine. In his, “to love, is to know,” we find the indication [p. 346→] of our system; which, unless we are greatly deceived, will be found to have the sanction of all true poets, ancient or modern. Is not this Wordsworth’s theory? And will he not, alike in theory and practice, bear us out, when we say that the essence of the poetic mind is, such a knowledge of the true, the beautiful, the good, as can alone spring from an understanding love of them? Worthy is the fruit of suffering, rightly understood, but there is yet the stain of earth upon it. Thence do we learn the resignation that has finally overtopped impatience, the wisdom that has wrestled with folly, and at length overcome it; and much knowledge of our own weak, wavering hearts; but are these the poet’s peculiar endowment? Is this, the anointing for his high office, difficultly to learn his lesson from every man’s schoolmaster,—experience, and then having learned more than his fellows, to utter it in song? Nay, nay,—the deep truths concerning man’s nature, and destiny, and hopes—the sublime philosophy of the poet—are not taught by suffering; neither does the possession of the poetic power, faculty, mind—call it what you will—necessarily imply, or produce it. In other words, we must absolutely deny this asserted “necessary relation of genius to suffering”; that is, we deny that the appreciating love of beauty,—moral, intellectual, natural,—that attuning of the spirit to the harmony of nature whence comes glorious music, that accordance of the whole intellectual being, with the fair works of the divinity, that moulding of the spirit to truth, eternal and immutable, which is of the essence of the poetic mind, should depend mainly or necessarily on suffering. Much gladness has the heart of the true poet!
The Drama of Exile, and the Vision of Poets are the two most considerable poems in the collection before us; and with respect to the former—spite of the preface which deprecates such comparison—we must be permitted to say that it is scarcely possible for any one to tread ground, consecrated by, and to, Milton, without provoking—if not comparisons, yet, such recollections as must be very unfavourable to the intruder; and the result of our perusal of this Drama was an increased conviction that Adam and Eve were no longer an open subject. The seal of the master poet has been placed upon his perfect work, and woe to the profane hand that breaks it. There is a twofold danger in attempting it;—how can he whose mind is steeped in Milton’s ineffable grace, sweetness, delicacy, and tenderness,—his music, and strong, masculine sense, and overshadowed with his grandeur, avoid, on this one theme, some copying of his master; which rude and trembling as may be the lines, and crude the colours, shall yet tell of its original,—his exquisite outline, and divine tints? A general opinion like this, of course implies no particular condem- [p. 347→] nation of the Drama, which evinces considerable power, both as to conception of character, and handling of the subject; marred, however, by those peculiar defects on which we have expressed ourselves the more strongly as we are persuaded there is not the slightest necessity for their existence, but that it is entirely in the writer’s power to rise superior to them. The idea of the Drama is good,—“the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity as it went forth from paradise into the wilderness,”—and susceptible of much poetical treatment, of which, however, in the main we prefer her conception to her execution. We do not like the form into which she has cast it, as its varying rhythm serves but to develop those eccentricities of idea which had been restrained by the calm sobriety of blank verse. Those scenes in which the latter only is used are freest from her very offensive peculiarities of style. The purpose of the Drama is worked out by means of a kind of incantation scene, in which “phantasms” and “earth spirits” combine to make Adam and Eve, who have just left the garden of Eden, feel the full weight of woe they have brought both upon themselves, and nature, animate and inanimate; the dramatic part being relieved by choruses of angels and “Eden spirits.” It opens with a spirited dialogue between Gabriel and Lucifer, in which—as in Milton—the angel almost comes off second best, spite of his metaphysics, which Lucifer treats with the contempt which, to say truth, they deserve. The character of Lucifer is well conceived, though there is on the whole rather more of the Mephistophiles vein about him than seems quite consistent with the gloomy grandeur of the newly fallen prince-angel; still both the thought and language are vigorous and appropriate, marking well that stubbornness of will and purpose in re-affirming his first offence, which distinguish him from his miserable victims to whom mercy was extended.
Lucifer. I chose this ruin: I elected it
Of my will, not of service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient,
And overtop thy crown with my despair.
My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven;—
And spare to read us backward any more
Of your spent hallelujahs.
Gabriel. Spirit of scorn!
I might say of unreason! I might say,
That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives
With God’s relations set in time and space;
That who elects, assumes a something good
Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys
The law of a Life-maker.
Lucifer. Let it pass!
No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up [p. 348→]
And strike my bow against the crystalline
Roofing the creatures,—shall I say for that,
My stature is too high for me to stand,—
Henceforward I must sit?
There is no answering this, and we are half pleased to see the angel’s conceit, so well put down! Adam and Eve seem to us rather commonplace.
Absurd as is the introduction of the “Earth-zodiac,” the shadow of which is brought on the stage for no earthly reason that we can see, some of its signs are described in lines which we must give, for their life-like painting:
______ and then a crab
Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,
Like a slow blot that spreads, till all the ground,
Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself;
_____________ and a scorpion writhes
Its tail in ghastly slime, and stings the dark!
This way a goat leaps, with wild blank of beard;
And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,
Using the calm for waters, while their fins
Throb out slow rhythms along the shallow air!
We do not know that the slow gliding of fishes was ever better delineated. Miss Barrett is a close observer of nature, and her studies from it are accurate and expressive; though occasionally it strikes us she gives a little too much attention to minute details, instead of seizing the leading features of the landscape. And childishness is sometimes mistaken for simplicity, as in the song of the Flower-Spirits to Adam and Eve.
____We pluck at your raiment,
We stroke down your hair.—
The lament of her impersonations of organic and inorganic matter—who are introduced upbraiding the exiles with the blight fallen on them through their sin—contains some fine description of their primal state:
I bounded with my panthers; I rejoiced
In my young tumbling lions, rolled together!
My stag the river at his fetlocks poised,
Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather,
In the same ripple which the alligator
Left in his joyous troubling of the water.
[Alligator and water!]
O my wild wood-dogs, with your listening eyes!
My horses—my ground-eagles for swift-fleeing! [p. 349→]
My birds with viewless wings of harmonies—
My calm cold fishes of a silver being—
How happy were ye, living and possessing,
O fair half-souls, capacious of full blessing.
This is vigorous, sinewy writing; and there is a music in it to our ears like that of rough sea waves leaping upon the resonant beach. But, alas! further on, after scolding our parents at no allowance, upon Eve’s request—
Do not any more
Taunt us, or mock us,—let us die alone,
they reply in the following unexceptionable jargon, in which we have taken the liberty of marking the rhymes, for Miss Barrett’s benefit—
Agreed, allowed!
We gather out our natures like a cloud,
And thus fulfil their lightenings: thus and thus!
First Spirit. As the east wind blows bleakly in the Norland,—
As the snow wind beats blindly from the moorland,
As the simoom drives wild across the desert,—
As the thunder roars deep in the unmeasured,—
As the torrent tears an ocean-world to atoms,—
As the whirlpool grinds fathoms below fathoms,
Thus—and thus!
How, and what?—for we really cannot make it out.
The varied extracts that we have given may convey some idea of the singularly varied merits of this drama—the very good and very bad style which distinguishes it. It closes with a chorus of exultation over the redemption that is to be wrought out for man, and which is indicated to the exiles by a vision of Christ.
The “Vision of Poets” is a singular and highly-imaginative poem, designed to illustrate her theory of the poet, and has some stanzas of great vigour and beauty, particularly those descriptive of the elder poets.
Bold,
Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear,
Slant-startled eyes that seem to hear
The chariot rounding the last goal
is finely chiselled; for its terse energy is more like the work of the sculptor than that of the painter. The others are boldly drawn.
Lucretius, nobler than his mood,
Who dropped his plummet down the broad [p. 350→]
Deep universe, and said, “No God!”
Finding no bottom! he denied
Divinely the divine,
his face is stern,
As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he could not learn.
But we cannot make out what is meant by Goethe’s soul, falling, as she tells us, “from inner entity!” There is much, however, to prove her poet in this vision, but it is not without its tinge of her prevailing defects. She represents her true poets as drawing their inspiration from an angel—this would suit the doctrine we have broached—and, rather fantastically, through the medium of an organ, whose keys he presses, and with which their hearts are connected; though, by the bye, in the preceding page she tells us—
But where the heart of each should beat,
There seemed a wound instead of it,
From whence the blood dropped to their feet.
An unpleasant image, designed, we presume, to indicate how miserable your poet is! Her description of the “sham” brethren of the craft, who enter “cleaving the incense cloud” with which their betters were overshadowed, “with winking, unaccustomed eyes,” is racy and satirical; and we hope that those who have earned it will duly appreciate her pungency. But Miss Barrett cannot resist the temptation to spoil her poems with something either ludicrous or unintelligible. The subject of this vision is led by a fair apparition, and the journey is picturesquely told,—through forest, and over moor-land, by sundry disagreeable pools of water, which have, of course, their figurative meaning; and seldom have “world’s use, world’s love, and world’s cruelty,” found more apt and repulsive illustrations. At the first he is bid to “Drink,—be holy and cold!”—what is the affinity between the adjectives is not stated; but at the third he hesitates, very properly as we think, seeing it
Was whitely smeared in many a round
By a slow slime,
enough to repel the most inveterate water-drinker. At the fourth, which is worse still, we have an idea borrowed from Kirke White’s “She turned and trod on a bloated toad,”—“his foot slips in the slimy oil” of snakes, “and toads seem crawling on his hand.” He attempts a half remonstrance, but to no purpose;—drink he must, and we do not wonder to find the poor fellow swooning after such unsavoury doses. “World’s use and world’s cruelty” are certainly bad enough, but we see no necessity for [p. 351→] representing them by figures at once ludicrous and disgusting. We must, without suspecting the writer of any intentional irreverence, strongly censure the phrase—“Poet-God,” which occurs more than once in the poem.
Miss Barrett’s shorter poems we regret to be compelled to pass over hastily, as we like them better on the whole than her longer ones. Many of them, in both these volumes and the one which she gave to the world in 1835, are true poetry, and some are well written. The peculiar metre which she frequently adopts is not to our taste; in some instances it seems better suited to humorous than serious verse, particularly when combined with double rhymes, as in the lost Bower, which, nevertheless, has some good things in it. The Romaunt of the Page is spirited, and rings out like a trumpet-strain. The Rhyme of the Duchess May, (which is improved by leaving out the refrain, as we took the liberty of doing;) Caterina to Camoens; Crowned and Wedded; Crowned and Buried; a Portrait; the Dead Pan, (which we would mark with a note of especial admiration;) and the Cry of the Human, have the further praise—no slight one in Miss Barrett’s case—of being perfectly intelligible! In the Swan’s Nest there is something very sweet and natural in little Ellies making her discovery of “that swan’s nest among the reeds” the prize for her fancied lover. Of Lady Geraldine’s Courtship we like neither the moral nor composition; the versification wants sweetness and smoothness. It jolts one, like a rough road. The story of a high-born lady allowing a poet of humble birth to scold her into making love to him, is harshly and prosaically told. We would not recommend any real “Mr. Bertram,” however “rich in virtues,” and such unmarketable commodities, to make the experiment of storming at the first noble lady that he may honour with his preference for the chance of a similar result! Of the Cry of the Children it is needless for us to speak, save to add our tribute of praise to that which it has so deservedly earned. Its thrilling energy of thought is clothed in nervous language. A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress, had it not appeared under a lady’s name, might have been conjectured to have been written under the influence of opium!
We have, in our anxiety to do Miss Barrett justice, bestowed more thought on her volumes than we fear she will give us credit for, seeing we have deemed it right to speak very strongly in condemnation of certain of her peculiarities, which give such a character and colouring to her productions as cannot but militate against her literary reputation.
There is little in the praise which has been bestowed on Miss Barrett’s poems in which we cannot heartily join, and we might [p. 352→] have contented ourselves with citing agreeable passages and iterating that praise; but we have pursued a course more likely, we hope, to be profitable to this highly-gifted lady, and to the minds of the living and unborn on whom she has the power to confer benefit—and benefit of the highest order.
We ask no greater chasteness of thought and style than some of her own fine poems exhibit; but we would venture, in all good-will and kindly estimation, to entreat her to exercise a greater severity of self-criticism, and to study better models than she appears to have done; to pay some attention to her rhymes, and adopt a more harmonious versification; for unimportant as she will consider these in comparison of that of which they are but the accessories, they are not less essential than a well-tuned instrument to the finest musical composition, or its fit setting to a jewel; to expurgate two-thirds of her compound epithets; to chasten her imagination, to the entire exclusion of fantastic images and phrases; we would say to her—
Hold in thy fancy with the silken rein
Of judgment, lest the wild careering steeds
Thee and the chariot of thy sense o’erturn—
an accident which is often happening to her; never to admit into composition an idea which does not stand out clearly in her own mind, however high and mysterious may be its subject; and lastly, which we would principally rely on in her remedial course, never to write a line that would not be translatable into good intelligible prose. Then may we hope to see her occupy that position as a writer to which her abilities entitle her, but which she is scarcely likely to gain so long as bad taste, confused thinking, an imagination absolutely rampant in its unbridledness, and slovenly composition, can be appreciated either by critics or the public. She has that in her which “rings well to the striker;” and one would fain remove the rubbish which obscures the clear, distinct tone she might give out. Nor have we the slightest apprehension that the fears which she expresses of its doing her some bodily injury would be realized, if, taking our advice in good part, she should in future give us her finest thoughts in such explicit phrase, as even stupid people like ourselves might understand! We will guarantee her safety, if she will only try.
[Martha Jones]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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