E451200A. The Seraphim (1838) and Poems (1844).
The English Review, December 1845, pp. 263–273.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 351–355.
[Also reviewed in the article containing this review were works by RB (see p. 364) and Coventry Patmore. We include only those comments pertaining to EBB.]
Miss Barrett became known to the world, some years ago, as authoress of “The Seraphim, and other Poems;” this was sufficient to establish her poetic reputation, confirmed as it was by her more recent work, entitled a “Drama of Exile, and other Poems.” As Christian, poet, woman, scholar, this lady has done justice to each attribute; her thoughts are loftily pitched, and, for the most part, well sustained; her versification is varied and harmonious; her imagination powerful, if [p. 264→] not always well controlled; her arrangement generally artistic; and over and through all her works there is a classic spirit not a little uncommon in authors of her sex: her scholarship, solid and genuine, can defy the charge of female pedantry: that jealous cant of ignorant men is now, indeed, almost exploded; and women may not only cultivate high knowledge, but confess, and dare to show it, without disparagement to womanhood.*
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*We would wish to direct attention to an unpretending little volume by a lady, entitled, “The Heroine of a Week;” in which there are, nevertheless, evidences of a masculine strength, heightened and refined by womanly feeling and pious purpose.
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“The Seraphim” is a dialogue between two angels, on the subject of the Crucifixion. And here, on the very threshold, an important question arises, as to whether the author was justified in approaching such a theme. We boldly answer in the affirmative; and we believe that those who feel most deeply on the subject, will be the least disposed to question our decision. In proportion as the mind is accustomed to exercise itself on such matters, will the presumption of approaching them appear the less; it is not their height, but our lowliness, that renders them unfitted for us; and this lowliness is not the result of humility, but of self-degradation. “Angels desire to look into the heart of man,” and can we suppose it injurious to reciprocate? Nay, what is man himself, but a destined angel, in a probation state; and can it be unseemly to stand sometimes face to face with the associates of our future being? We do not quote Milton in defence of our author; he conquered her difficulty by evading it: his angels belong to a heroic, rather than to a devotional, order; they are, for the most part, mere heroes—warfaring, political, metaphysical heroes, sublimed into gigantic form: we prefer to quote the following apologetic lines from the epilogue, and with them we dismiss the question to the reader’s decision:—
Bright ministers of God and grace! * * *
Forgive me, that my lowly heart should dare
Shape images of unincarnate spirits,
And lay upon their burning lips a thought
Damp with the weeping that ruined earth inherits!
And while ye find in such hoarse music wrought
To copy your’s, a cadence all the while
Of sin and sorrow—only pitying smile!—
Ye know to pity well!
Ador and Zerah are two angels, sent down to earth to witness the Great Sacrifice. Their spirituality is complete; nothing of humanity, except what we hold in common with the angels, is discernible in their shadowy, bright being. The fineness [p. 265→] and completeness of this conception forms the chief beauty of the poem. We had prepared an abstract of the whole drama, but find it impossible to dissect without injury. We would rather give the author credit for what she has achieved, than criticise that wherein she failed: few minds could have conceived such a drama; fewer still have realized the conception so far—none, we think, could have fulfilled it. At all events, we shall spare our criticism for the sake of the subject; and only confess that we turn with some sensation of relief to the more human poems in the book. Had these been even a little more so, we should have liked them all the better. Yet they abound in passages of beauty, grace, and fervor; there is the same mournful strain pervading all, and the same devotional feeling: her harp is still the harp of Judah, and ever hangs upon the Babylonian willow.
The “Poet’s Vow” has many Tennysonian faults and graces; we cannot but regret that our author, so original in mind, should condescend to be a plagiarist in manner. The “Romaunt of Margret” is a most delicate and womanly poem: “the common, the quite common, the thing of an eternal yesterday,” is made to give out its poetry; and like the silkworm, to envelope itself in the beauty it unconsciously contained. As it proceeds, the song deepens into hymn-like solemnity, and, finally, to prayer, as naturally as the tree grows on to bear the flower which turns to fruit. “Isabel’s Child,” however, is our favorite in this volume, and to it we must confine our notice. Tender, thoughtful, and imaginative, the poem flows naturally on, developing with fine pathos the meaning of its text:—
So find we profit
In losing of our prayers.
The Lady Isabel has sent the nurse of her dying child to rest:—
Motionless she sate!
The hair had fall’n by its weight
On either side the smile, and lay
Very blackly on the arm
Where the baby nestled warm:—
Pale as baby carved in stone,
And seen by glimpses of the moon
In a dark cathedral aisle.
* * * *
’T is aye a solemn thing to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps,
Wearing in its’ spirit-deeps
The unreveal’d mystery [p. 266→]
Of its Adam’s taint and woe.
Which when they reveal’d be
Will not let it slumber so!
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death.
She knows not of that shadow, as she watches
The babe on her knee,
Tho’ she shuddered to feel that it grew too chill,
And lay too heavily. * *
More soft, less solemn images
Drifted o’er that lady’s heart
Silently as snow!
She had seen eight days depart,
Hour by hour, on bended knees,
With pale-wrung hands and prayings low
And broken.—
And her prayers have been heard by Him who hears
Through seraph-songs the sound of tears.
* * * *
And more and more smiled Isabel
To see the baby sleep so well—
She knew not that she smiled!
Until the pleasant gradual thought
Which near her heart the smile enwrought
Soon strong enough her lips to reach,
Now soft and slow, itself did seem
To float along a blessed dream,
Beyond it, into speech!
Her speech is a reverie full of beautiful fancies and imaginings of what her restored child’s life may be. From this happy trance she is startled by the storm’s pausing—
And like a stroke the sudden silentness
Sudden and solemn fell. * *
The moonlight on the baby’s face
Falleth clear and cold!
The mother’s looks are falling there—
Because the beauty of the skies
Have not power long to hold
Our living human eyes!
We still revert to this dark place
And weep our nature into light!
A miraculous change passes over the face of the child—suddenly as it were matured—the mother starts to see—
Not the baby-looks that go
Unaimingly to and fro; [p. 267→]
But an earnest gazing deep,
Such as soul gives soul at length
When thro’ work and wail of years
It hath won a solemn strength
And mourneth as it wears!
* * * *
Oh! mother, mother! loose thy prayer!
Christ’s name hath made it strong!
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
With its loving cruelty
From floating my new soul along
The blessed heavenly air! * *
Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss
Oh dreary earthly love!
Loose thy prayer and let me go!
* * * *
The nurse wakes in the morning sun,
And starts to see beside her bed,
The lady with a grandeur spread
Like pathos o’er her face! as one
God-satisfied and earth undone!
The babe upon her arms was dead!
And the nurse could utter forth no cry,
She was awed by the calm in the mother’s eye.
“Wake, nurse!” the lady said:
“We are waking—he and I.” * *
I changed the cruel prayer I made,
And bowed my meekened face and prayed
That God would do his will! and thus
He did it nurse! He parted us.
We have done this poem great injury in quoting it by piecemeal, and we will not add to the wrong by any unkindly criticism. We would fain, nevertheless, suggest to our author the danger of using, not only a strange—but even an unexpected word to break the delicate spell of pathos that her spirit has bound us with. The more finely the harp is strung, the more sensitive the strings are of the slightest jar. In the following passage our ear is strained to catch the faint pure tones of sorrow, as we read the following first four lines:—
’Twas Lady Isabel that kept
The little baby; and it slept
Fast, warm, as if its mother’s smile,
Full of love’s unmeted weight,
And red as rose of Harpocrate
Dropt upon its eyelids.
No rose of York or Lancaster was ever more fatal to its [p. 268→] wearer than this unfortunate pedantic flower to this passage; it requires many a line of the mild, mournful, and musical verse that follows it, to restore the tone of feeling thus disturbed. Again, in the midst of the baby’s plaintive prayer we find—
A harp whose strings are golden all,
And turned to music spherical.
This, too, is fatal and discordant—the spell is shattered as if by a discharge of the case-shot to which the term is generally applied. If an artillery-man were to describe this ammunition as “shot of the spheres,” he would be more intelligible than the poet who thus transposes the epithets. To the charges of mysticism, mannerism, and affected phraseology (barbarous words, too expressive of the faults that they describe), the whole of this volume is more liable than our author’s more recent work. Few of the poems in the former have escaped from these obscurations—for such they are. Nevertheless, there is high poetry developed in some, and the germ of it in all. Nor must it be forgotten that our author has a meaning, an object, and the consciousness of a mission in all she writes: she not only clothes the common objects of our life with spiritual beauty, but ever refers that beauty to the heaven which is its home, and the goal to which her thoughts seem ever tending.
We would gladly find some cheerful variety in her compositions, if it were only to give relief to each by contrast. Her very Eden is mournful, and its Tree of Life is a cypress: we turned with some hope to “The Young Queen,” but we found her in tears; we expected to find some joy in the “Exile’s Return,” but it is as doleful as his departure could possibly have been. There is, however, nothing personal in our author’s sorrowfulness, she appears mournful indeed, but,
Mournful of another’s crime,
She seems as if she stood by Eden’s door,
And griev’d for those who could return no more.
Sorrow, when not obtruded personally, should be sacred as the goddess Silence: we will not disturb the veil of Isis.
With a parting compliment to “Cowper’s Grave,” “The Soul’s Travelling,” and “The Doves,” we must now turn to Miss Barrett’s more recent and finished work.
The preface to these volumes is in itself a fine composition. Our author’s prose is harmonious and vigorous, and she eloquently defends herself against the charge of irreverence, in once more adopting a Divine subject as her theme. This, the chief poem of the series, is entitled a “Drama of Exile.” Its subject [p. 269→] is “the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness.” It is full of grace, beauty, and originality; also of brave faults, and pardonable failures. The character, or rather the characteristics of our first parents are ably, and in some places exquisitely drawn, and well contrasted; the voices of the Earth were a bold conception, and are well impersonated: Lucifer has scarcely enough of the fallen spirit, and Gabriel is too argumentative; but on the whole, this Drama is as able in execution as it was difficult and daring in conception.
The scene opens with a dialogue between Lucifer and Gabriel: the angel conjures the demon to depart from the place on which he has brought sorrow;—
Gab. Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
Luc. Angels are in the world, wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world, wherefore not I?
The curst are in the world, wherefore not I?
And now the voices of Eden’s spirits are heard, mournfully chanting their farewell, while the Exiles are seen hurrying from the fiery-sword glare to hide themselves in darkness. Eve beseeches Adam to put her away from him, that so he might obtain his pardon, and once more hold communion with the angels:—
She not being near to make them sad,
Or soil the rustling of their innocence.
The Exile utters, in reply, his first prayer of sorrow-stricken thankfulness, that he has been cast out of Eden with his Eve, rather than left there without her:—
With angel looks, and angel songs around,
To show the absence of her eyes and voice.
Like the woodman in the old fable, who preferred his own familiar axe to the golden or the silver one that he is tempted with, he feels that out of her love he can “Crown his discrowned brow.”
Eve encouraged by such love, admits the first gleam of hope; this is strengthened by a faint sound of angels’ song, that dies away as Lucifer enters. His victims, like Gabriel, conjure him to depart;—
Luc. Ay! ye talk the same,
All of you—spirits and clay—“go and depart!”
In heaven they said so—and at Eden’s gate,
And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.
None saith, “Stay with me, for thy face is fair!”
None saith, “Stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!” [p. 270→]
And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
Look on me, woman! am I beautiful?
* * * *
Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love!
I darken to the image. Beauty—Love!
(He fades away, while a low music sounds.)
This music becomes articulate, and the song of the Morning Star is heard bewailing the loss of its great angel.
The scene changes to a wild open country, darkened by approaching night: sounds and shapes of horror haunt the exiles, and Eve prays Him
Who didst permit the angels to go home,
And live no more with us, who are not pure;
Save us, too, from a loathly company.
These are accusing Spirits of the Earth, who, labouring under the curse of the Fall, reproach the fallen with their doom. Adam sternly reproves, but Eve deprecates his anger, as unsuited to offenders such as they:—
“Who rather should be humbler evermore,
Since self-made sadder. . . . . .
She speaks.
. . . . . . Sweet dreadful spirits!
I pray you, humbly, in the name of God,
Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth
From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more.
I cannot evermore as once
Behold the trances of the holy hills
Beneath the leaning stars; or watch the vales,
Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy;
Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between
Two grassy uplands, and the river-wells
Work out their bubbling lengths beneath the ground;
And all the birds sing, till, for joy of song,
They lift their trembling wings, as if to heave
The too-much weight of music from their heart.
* * * *
But oh! fair dreadful spirits—albeit this
Your accusation must confront my soul,
And your pathetic utterance and full gaze
Must evermore subdue me; be content—
Conquer me gently, as if pitying me,
Not to say loving. For was I not
At that last sunset seen in Paradise,
When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel faces, face by face, [p. 271→]
All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God,
Held them suspended—was I not that hour
The lady of the world, princess of life?
— — and I who lived
Beneath the wings of angels yesterday,
Wander to-day beneath the roofless world!
Lucifer rises among the complaining spirits, and taunts the exiles with their puny griefs, dwarfed as they are
By the dread extremes
Of what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,
It is a step’s fall—the whole ground beneath
Strewn woolly-soft with promise—if ye have sinned
Your prayers tread high as angels—if ye grieve
Your power to die, disproves the right to grieve.
The Arch-demon’s bitter taunts are changed for the voices of unborn generations, who chant their future destinies—not all of sorrow. Finally, Christ appears in a vision, and reveals the atonement by which Eve and her descendants may hope for a higher destiny than that of Eden. At his command, Adam blesses the partner of his sin and suffering, in a prayer full of beauty, expressed in noble, simple, unexaggerated language.
We have taken such extracts as might serve to convey an idea of the outline of the drama, rather than selected passages, as we might easily have done, for their peculiar beauty. Enough has probably been given, even in this garbled state, to show the character and tone of the poetry. Among the songs of the Spirits, there are many passages that resemble Shelley’s in power, and, must we add!—in obscurity: they are always musical, however, and ingeniously rhymed. But read the following verse:—
Your bold speeches, our Behemoth,
With his thunderous jaws shall wield!
Your high fancies shall our Mammoth,
Breathe sublimely up the shield,
Of St. Michael, at God’s throne, who waits to speed him,
Till the heaven’s smooth-grooved thunder
Spinning back, shall leave them clear;
And the angels, smiling, wonder
With dropt looks from sphere to sphere,
Shall cry, “Ho! heirs of Adam, ye exceed him!”
This utterly passes our comprehension, and we doubt whether it was quite clear to Lucifer himself. Again we ask, why should this gifted lady cloud the clear sunshine of her intellect with such obscurities? A few pages further, we find Adam speaking in simple noble tones that Milton might have adopted. Her cha- [p. 272→] racter of the great patriarch is well conceived—he remains uncrushed, though deeply stricken, by the curse: penitent and humble towards Him he has offended, he bears himself loftily towards the fallen spirits, and even Lucifer himself. To the inferior creatures he is lordly, exhibiting the true instinct of command. The character of Eve is more beautiful, but not so true: she is a noble Eve, but not the Eve of the Fall; she is too calm, experienced, and dispassionate; she should be naïve in her sense of sin and sorrow, and full of unconquered impulse. Chastening may rapidly mature the mind, but scarcely could accomplish such a task in the few hours here assigned to it. On the whole, this drama, more complicated than the “Seraphim,” has likewise more merits and more faults. On the latter, we have no wish to dwell; the former are quite sufficient to vindicate our author’s claim to high rank among the poets of her country.
We regret that so little space is left us to notice the other poems in this volume. Among these there are some Sonnets, more remarkable for their pervading thoughts, than for the art and high polish so essential to their excellence. We confess to being somewhat intolerant of this Procrustean form of poetry, notwithstanding the able advocacy that has been exercised in its defence:—
Scorn not the Sonnet, Critic! you have frowned
Mindless of its just honours: with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wounds;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound:
With it Camöens soothed an exile’s grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle thro’ dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas! too few.
The great poet who wrote this, and those of whom he wrote it, may wield their very manacles with power, but we have no wish to see our author’s aerial muse dancing in such chains. We must add, however, that even in these Sonnets she evinces much of that command of versification, so well displayed in the chorusses of her dramas, and in “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.”
The “Romaunt of the Page,” and the “Lay of the Brown Rosary,” contain some of the best ballad-writing we have met with for many a day; to these we may add the “Rhyme of the [p. 273→] Duchess May.” Of the “Vision of Poets,” we can only repeat what we said of the “Poet’s Vow,” some pages back; but “Bertha in the Lane,” and “Catarina to Camöens,” deserve all the cordial approbation we so unwillingly withhold from the former. They are exquisitely sweet, simple, and pathetic; in addition to which, “Bertha” has a naïve mournfulness, and “Catarina” a musicalness, to which art or ear do not often attain: the last is one of the best “reading-aloud” poems we are acquainted with. We cannot conclude without a tribute of admiration to the “Dead Pan”—a fine subject for a classic Muse, well conceived, and finely executed.
And now we must leave Miss Barrett for Robert Browning. We do so with somewhat of the sensation experienced in issuing from a cathedral to the open air: the one, consecrated all over, its atmosphere incense—its sounds, chants—its solemn glooms only lighted through the painted effigies of saint or angel:—the other, nature’s own wide temple,—fresh, genial, invigorating, and free.
[Eliot Warburton]
Reviewed:
The Seraphim, and Other Poems (EBB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1838.
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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