E460100B. A Drama of Exile.
The Methodist Quarterly Review, January 1846, pp. 54–68.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 355–360.
There are many who regard the chief end of poetry to be amusement or recreation. They think it well enough, in the intermissions of life’s toil, to spend a few leisure moments in listening to the soft melody and the harmonious numbers of the poet’s song. Now this is a most false and lamentably low estimate of the design and use of poetry. It is true, there are songs of a nature peculiarly fitted for the hour of the soul’s repose from action; such as have magic power
To quiet the restless pulse of care.
But poetry has a higher object than this. It is the language of the soul’s loftiest aspirations and its deepest feelings. It has power to nerve the warrior’s heart to action in the great moral, as of old it did in the physical, strife; to support us when the agony of suffering is heaviest, and to cheer and elevate our spirits when life’s mysteries envelop us in their darkest gloom. Nor is its ideal false. We all need that heart-faith in the ideal to which poetry lends strong aid. Every pure ideal of the soul is but a more distant real. Our brightest imaginings of it cannot deceive us. If earth never realizes what it calls our dreams, yet shall they all have a sure fulfillment in that better land, the extent of whose glories “it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive.” No: the imagination is not “a fraud upon the reason;” but the winged messenger of the soul, that in its flight stretches far out over the ocean of mystery, and brings from beyond a promise and assurance, bright, though but a symbol, of the future.
Greatly has man suffered from the separation of æsthetics and theology. The true and the beautiful are one. “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” Let poetry join herself to Christianity, and then shall she receive a depth, a sublimity, and a truth she never knew before; while she lends her own loveliness and beauty to Christianity. It is one of the most encouraging signs of the age, to find how much more earnest our literature, and especially our poetry, is becoming. Our best poets no longer content themselves with the stirring songs of battles; the old legends of chivalry; the oft-told tale of “lady won in courtly bower”; or the mere description of the outward beauties of nature;—but take man as their theme, and from the daily struggles, joys, sorrows, and hopes of life derive their inspiration. Humanity is the poet’s sub- [p. 55→] ject. Christianity has gradually infused itself into our literature, and given it a deeper spiritualism.
At the very head of this class of spiritual poets we should place Elizabeth Barrett. There are no two qualities more manifest in her than intensity, and deep religious feeling. One of the most gifted of our American writers calls her the “strongest woman that has yet written.” We not only agree with this praise, but think intensity the fitter word to characterize her power; and esteem her without a rival in this quality among our living poets of either sex. The impress of Christianity is on almost every piece in the volumes before us; while the main poem is on a mighty theme, akin to that for which, in solemn prayer, Milton invoked the inspiration of the heavenly muse. It is most eminently true of Miss Barrett, as evinced in all her works, that
—Sion hill
Delights her most, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the oracle of God.
She is the most subjective and personal of our poets; and at the same time has been but recently known at all beyond the immediate circle of her friends. As she says herself, her poetry is “the completest expression of her being;” and it is therefore necessary to a full enjoyment of it, that we should know something of her history. Fortunately, in addition to what we can learn from her preface and from her poems, Mr. Horne, in his “Spirit of the Age,” has furnished us with the main facts of her life. And, certainly, had her poems no other interest, we should hope to enlist the reader’s sympathy for them, when we state that they are the productions of one, confined for years by a hopeless sickness to her solitary chamber, scarcely seen by any but her own family, and compelled often to pass days, and even weeks, in almost total darkness. Those who have themselves enjoyed, or perhaps still better, have imparted to some poor invalid the holy consolation and heroic cheer of Miss Martineau’s “Life in a Sick Room,” will be interested to know that the friend to whom the letters are addressed is one who was then her companion in affliction, and, unlike her, seems destined yet to pass long years in the vale of sorrow,—Miss Barrett. Yet from her sick-room she has sent forth her poems, written with no feebleness of spirit, but with a strength to which suffering seems to have lent a stimulus,—though she herself tells us, “If this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have dropped from exhausted hands before this day.” Of the variety and extent of her acquirements, authorities concur in saying that [p. 56→] she is one of the most learned and accomplished scholars among the writers of England; having a thorough knowledge of Greek, even to the mastering of the immortal Plato; a critical knowledge of the oriental languages, necessary to a thorough reading of the Bible in its original tongues; and at the same time “as wide and diffuse acquaintance with literature, that of the present day inclusive, as any living individual.” It is with such varied attainments and extensive culture, with the influence of suffering in developing her genius and character, sanctified by the deepest religious faith, that she has devoted herself with unwearied labor to those poetical productions which, at the same time, have consoled her in her own affliction and elevated her thoughts above the body’s sufferings; while they have secured her a loving memory and an affectionate gratitude among a circle of friends daily increasing in number, and established a poetic reputation which time will largely increase.
With the exception of a few miscellaneous articles, translations, etc., in various periodicals, her first publication was entitled, “The Seraphim, and other Poems;” and was issued in 1838. Of this there has been no American edition. Her other work, which we propose to notice, was given to the American public,—for whom, she says, “I have felt a love and admiration as long as I have felt proud of being an Englishwoman, and almost as long as I have loved poetry itself,”—some little time in anticipation of its publication in England.
The “Drama of Exile” is a poem of about one hundred and twenty pages: the foundation being blank verse, interspersed with chants and choruses of irregular metres. The object of the work as stated by herself, is, “the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise: with a peculiar reference to Eve’s allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of being the organ of the fall, to her offense,—appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man.” The time occupied is the twilight after their expulsion from Eden; and the action of the drama is not too long for this space, when we consider that we have scientific reasons for believing twilight before the flood to have been longer than at present; besides, Miss Barrett’s poetic excuse, that she can “never, for her part, believe in an Eden without the longest of purple twilights.” The scene commences where Milton closes; when the guilty pair
—hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way. [p. 57→]
They are seen in the distance, flying along from the sword-glare which shut them for ever out of Paradise, and seeking the wilderness before them. Lucifer opens the poem with a taunt on Gabriel, the keeper of the gate. Gabriel bids him depart. Lucifer claims the earth for his; and exclaims,
Here’s a brave earth to sin and suffer on!
It holds fast still—it cracks not under curse:
It holds like mine immortal. Presently
We’ll sow it thick enough with graves as green
Or greener, certes, than its knowledge tree.
* * * * The red sign
Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,
Is God’s sign that it bows not unto God:
The potter’s mark upon his work, to show
It rings well to the striker. I and the earth
Can bear more curse.
Gabriel. O miserable earth!
O ruined angel!
Lucifer. Well! and if it be,
I chose this ruin: I elected it
Of my will, not of service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient.
The reply of Gabriel to the boasted independence of Satan, is, for its metaphysical acumen, (though Miss Barrett has generally chosen more to display feeling than logic,) worthy of Milton—we had almost said worthy of the personage who uses it.
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.
At length Gabriel asks Lucifer whether he knows aught of the future of mankind; he replies,
Only as much as this:
That evil will increase and multiply
Without a benediction.
Gabriel. Nothing more!
Lucifer. Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?
Gabriel. God is more.
Lucifer. Proving what?
Gabriel. That he is God,
And capable of saving. [p. 58→]
Unheeding this intimation of God’s gracious providence, Satan at length goes his way, leaving this terrible threat behind him:
—I assert my will.
And peradventure in the after years,
When thoughtful men bend slow their spacious brows
Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere
To ruffle their smooth manhood, and break up
With lurid lights of intermittent hope
Their human fear and wrong,—they may discern
The heart of a lost angel in the earth.
Now is heard the “chorus of Eden spirits;” and the “spirit of the trees,” the “river-spirits,” the “bird-spirits,” and the “flower-spirits,” chant their mournful, plaintive farewell, and the awful “never-more,” to the hearts of the exiles. This imbodiment of the feelings suggested to Adam and Eve by the thought of the joys of nature left for ever behind in Paradise, and its expression in the spirits’ voices is most exquisitely beautiful and pathetic; while it is full of poetic power.
Adam and Eve are now first introduced as pausing a moment in their flight as they reach the extremity of the sword-glare. Here Eve bitterly bewails her transgression, and especially reproaches herself as the cause of the curse to Adam. She beseeches him to put her straight away and seek God’s mercy thereby;—“thy wrath against the sinner giving proof of inward abrogation of the sin.” Adam replies, that he is “deepest in the guilt, if last in the transgression;” having also sinned against the “last best gift of God,” his Eve; and comforts her, declaring it is God’s will they should bear the curse together. Eve recovers her strength, and tells him,
Because I comprehend
This human love, I shall not be afraid
Of any human death.
Yet she now confesses that all day long in their desolate journey this prayer had trembled on her lips:
O Lord God!
(’Twas so I prayed) I ask Thee by my sin,
And by thy curse, and by thy blameless heavens,
Make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face,
And from the face of my beloved here,
For whom I am no helpmate, quick away
Into the new dark mystery of death!
I will lie still there; I will make no plaint;
I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word,
Nor struggle to come back beneath the sun, [p. 59→]
Where peradventure I might sin anew
Against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death,
O death, whate’er it be, is good enough
For such as I.—For Adam—there’s no voice,
Shall even say again, in heaven or earth,
It is not good for him to be alone.
Adam. And was it good for such a prayer to pass
My unkind Eve, betwixt our mutual lives?
If I am exiled, must I be bereaved?
Eve confesses that “’twas an ill prayer; it shall be prayed no more”; and taking courage, the woman’s heart within made strong by Adam’s love, she declares,
Since I was the first
In the transgression, with a steady foot
I will be first to tread from this sword-glare
Into the outer darkness of the waste;—
And thus I do it.
As they go on, a faint song of the “invisible angels,” the love-angels that ministered to them in Paradise, breathes a sad lament; but yet with tender pity assures them, that though “this pure door of opal God hath shut between us,” that still,
Yet across the doorway,
Past the silence reaching,
Farewells evermore may,
Blessing in the teaching,
Glide from us to you.
As the tones of the angels die away, Satan meets Adam and Eve. Most beautifully, with a single stroke of the pen, has Miss Barrett here delineated the trusting, confiding nature of woman, and her instinctive disposition, since she was first overcome, to ever cling closer to man in the hour of danger. Eve calls to Adam,
Adam! hold
My right hand strongly. It is Lucifer
And we have love to lose.
Lucifer proceeds to taunt them; his first salutation is,
Now may all fruits be pleasant to thy lips,
Beautiful Eve! The times have somewhat changed
Since thou and I had talk beneath a tree;
Albeit ye are not gods yet.
It is here that we are almost inclined to place the greatest power of the drama; in this picture of Satan coming to taunt the guilty [p. 60→] pair with the fruits of their obedience to him. Milton has been charged, and we cannot but think with some degree of truth, with giving too much grandeur, gloomy though it be, and too much nobility of character, to his Satan. The stern resolve, the unbending will, the high-wrought courage, do show too much of “the archangel still, though in ruins;” and with some temperaments might operate to lessen their abhorrence of his rebellion, in their admiration of his seeming heroism; and in spite of their wishes, their sympathy they may find at times half with him. But Miss Barrett’s portraiture of Satan is open to no such objection as this. The last shade of blackness is added to him when he comes after the curse, and not only exults over the ruin he has accomplished, but after taunting the holy angels of Paradise with his fancied success, he seeks out the wandering exiles, to insult those he has ruined;—to feast himself with the sight of their misery,—to mock at their sufferings,—to scorn their sorrows,—to laugh over their tears. We see here a personification of evil that cannot be darkened. For such a spirit, we can feel nothing but the most intense disgust; no sympathy or pity divides our feelings. Adam well exclaims,
Ay, mock me! Now I know more than I knew
Now I know thou art fallen below hope
Of final reascent.
Lucifer. Because?
Adam. Because
A spirit who expected to see God,
Though at the last point of a million years,
Could dare no mockery of a ruined man
Such as this Adam.
As Lucifer departs, there is heard the song of his “morning star.” The burden of the song is ever,
Ai, ai, Heosphoros!
The whole lament is full of pathos and sublimity; but we have not room for it. While the sad refrain is sounding over the fallen glory of Lucifer, the pair approach a wild country, over which the shadows of night begin to gather darkly. Eve’s heart grows chill with the gloom around, and she declares it better to return and “stand within the sword-glare till we die. ” Adam replies that they must not “pluck death from the Maker’s hand as erst we plucked the apple,” but patiently wait God’s will. Surrounded by the darkness, out of it shapes, and images, and awful phantasms appear to rise; and at length from the ground spring up two earth-spirits. They commence reproaching our first parents for the curse the [p. 61→] world bears on their account. This reproach is full of terrible power. One of the spirits represents the animals, and the other nature; and from them both there comes a “groan of the whole creation,” awful in its solemn accusation. It is a most forcible conception of the bitter feelings of remorse which Adam and Eve must have experienced, when they looked abroad on the world so lately filled with God’s best blessings everywhere, and saw all now cursed; and felt, bitterest of all, that it was for their sake. No fancy picture is this representation of the reproachful voice of the world; deeply must it have entered the soul of the exiles. Miss Barrett’s design here is highly poetical, for it has the poetry of truth; while its execution is powerful. Their wail gradually changes to bitter invective and threats. How eloquent is their voice—here is the eloquence of sorrow:
First Spirit. I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike
A sense of death to me, and undug graves!
The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling, like
The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:
The restless earthquakes rock against each other;—
The elements moan ’round me—“Mother, mother”—
And I wail!
Second Spirit. I wail, I wail! I shriek in the assault
Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!
My nightingales sang sweet without a fault,
My gentle leopards innocently bounded;
We were obedient—what is this convulses
Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?
And I wail!
Now changed into defiance, here is the eloquence of their scorn:
First Spirit. And we scorn you! * * *
And the elements shall boldly
All your dust to dust constrain;
Unresistedly and coldly,
I will smite you with my rain!
From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.
Second Spirit. And my little worm, appointed
To assume a royal part,
He shall reign, crowned and anointed
O’er the noble human heart.
No wonder the agony of such reproaches was terrible; and that Eve, feeling her “punishment greater than she could bear,” should, after in vain beseeching them to be gentler, exclaim,
I choose God’s thunder and his angels’ swords
To die by, Adam, rather than such words. [p. 62→]
But the violence of the earth-spirits at length rouses up the human passions of Adam, and he says to them,
Do ye scorn us? Back your scorn
Toward your faces gray and lorn
As the wind drives back the rain,
Thus I drive with passion strife.
* * * * *
By my free will that chose sin,
By mine agony within
Round the passage of the fire;
By the pinings which disclose
That my native soul is higher
Than what it chose,—
We are yet too high, O spirits, for your disdain.
Still the spirits claim their triumph:
We triumph—triumph greatly,
When ye lie beneath the sward!
There my lily shall grow stately,
Though ye answer not a word.
Adam at length charges them into silence:
Down to obedience—I am king of you!
But the spirits laugh him to scorn, and mock him yet more bitterly:
Ha, ha! Thou art king!
With a sin for a crown,
And a soul undone.—
At last, wearied and exhausted with these reproaches, and with the words of Lucifer, who, while the spirits were speaking, comes again and adds another pang to their suffering, scorning their “petty griefs,” Adam makes his appeal to God and his power. Eve appeals to his pity; and prays for a token of the promised seed; for now
My soul is bruised before the serpent’s head.
Soon Christ appears in a vision, and stills the rebellious voice of creation. He shows the earth-spirits man’s supremacy though fallen, and bids them serve him yet:
Be ye to man as angels be to God,
Servants in pleasure, singers of delight,
Suggesters to his soul of higher things
Than any of your highest. So at last,
He shall look round on you, with lids too straight
To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well.
* * * * *
Go serve him for such price. [p. 63→]
Christ then commands Adam “to bless the woman, for it is thine office.” Thus commissioned, Adam foretells to her the future, with its sufferings, its joys, and its promises; and exclaims,
—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 wo by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the wo 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 chant 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.
This is a most vivid and affecting picture of woman’s mission on earth. Though given here by Adam, none but a woman could have been its author;—from the deep experiences and the inmost records of her heart, alone, could it have proceeded. Eve’s reply is full of angelic, patient submission:
I accept
For me and my daughters this high part [p. 64→]
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;
While 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.
Christ is now gradually transfigured before them into humanity, and gives them the promise of his future coming as their Saviour, and of his suffering for their sake on earth. As he leaves them he gives a parting blessing for their support:
—Henceforth in my name
Take courage, O thou woman,—man, take hope!
Your graves shall be as smooth as Eden’s sward,
Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts;
And one step past them, a new Eden-gate
Shall open on a hinge of harmony,
And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall
No more, within that Eden, nor pass out
Any more from it. In which hope, move on,
First sinners and first mourners. Live and love,—
Doing both nobly, because lowlily;
Live and work, strongly,—because patiently!
The earth-spirits now, obeying the Saviour’s voice, renew to man their “homage-oath once broken,” and ask his forgiveness; promising instead of scorn and injury, gentleness, kindness, and solace:
Ye shall find us tender nurses
To your weariness of nature;
And our hands shall stroke the curses
Dreary furrows from the creature.
There is then a final vision of the last taming and conquering of the “wild horse of death,” by the Saviour; it is full of terrible strength and of glorious triumph: but we have no room for extracts.
Thus soothed by nature’s influences and harmony again, and sustained by the holy promises of Christ, the agony of sorrow is lifted from the exiles’ hearts; and with “sadness that is calm, not gloom,” they commence their life-pilgrimage. The chorus of the “invisible angels” attends them, and the last strain cheers them with sweet consolation: [p. 65→]
Listen how we love you—
Hope the uttermost—
Waiting for that curing
Which exalts the wounded,
Hear us sing above you—
Exiled, but not lost.
We have thus attempted to give an outline of this noble drama; a work which merits the high praise of being worthy of its relationship to “Paradise Lost.” Our sketch of it can no more convey an idea of its beauty as a whole, than would fragments of a beautiful statue of the fair proportions of the work; or, to borrow an illustration from Lowell, we might almost as well hope to convey an idea of the power of Niagara by exhibiting a specimen of its waters in a vial. We can only hope to have called attention to, and excited an interest in it.
Our most difficult task yet remains; and that is, to compress our notice of the remaining poems within the proper limits of this article. We can scarcely do more than merely indicate our favorites, giving a few extracts only; and even this selection is difficult enough;—for of many of Miss Barrett’s poems, we feel that to be true which is asserted of Shakspeare’s Plays; that the last read is always the best. But to proceed. We have already alluded to Miss Barrett’s strength: in no other writer have we ever seen this quality so beautifully and harmoniously united with womanly tenderness. The “Cry of the Children” well illustrates this. We hardly know which strikes us most forcibly; the power or the pathos of the poem. It is an attempt to give utterance to the sorrowful wail which comes up from the children’s hearts, who are employed in the dismal mines and factories of England. Sorrow never touches us more affectingly than when it speaks in the voice of childhood; and we feel that the thunders of God’s providence cannot long be far off, but will avenge the miseries of his “little children.” How terribly powerful and yet how tenderly pathetic is this:—
“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,—
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upwards, O our tyrants,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath!” [p. 66→]
“L.E.L.’s Last Question” is a beautiful poem founded on an expression in one of her last writings sent home:—“Do you think of me as I think of you?” The closing turn of the sentiment, by which the Saviour is represented as making this appeal to each one of us, is peculiarly touching. “Crowned and Buried” is a most magnificent picture of Napoleon’s grandeur in life, and of his grave in death; and at the same time is most just and discriminating in its view of his character.
I do not praise this man; the man was flawed
For Adam—much more, Christ!—* *
* * * But since he had
The genius to be loved, why let him have
The justice to be honored in his grave.
As a specimen of intensity of feeling we know nothing to surpass the following from the “Cry of the Human.” Before such love as this, even the most hallowed phrases of earthly affection seem cold and lifeless. After reading what follows, one may well feel that the solemnity of our marriage service can never again impress us as it was wont with its promise of life-long faithfulness.
We sit together, with the skies,
The steadfast skies, above us:
We look into each other’s eyes,—
“And how long will you love us:”—
The eyes grew dim with prophecy,
The voices, low and breathless—
“Till death us part”—O words, to be
Our best for love the deathless!
Be pitiful, dear God!
After all, however, we think our copy of Miss Barrett will testify that the Sonnets are our favorites, by exhibiting marks of most frequent reading. We would especially advise all readers to begin with these, rather than undertake the “Drama” at first. They are the most personal of all her poetry. Though deeply tinged with the coloring of her suffering life, they are full of Christian consolation and heroism. It has been well said of a poet whose admirers claim for him the highest place among his contemporaries, Alfred Tennyson, that “he comes out of himself to sing a poem, and goes back again: or rather sends his song out from his shadow under the leaf, as other nightingales do; and refuses to be expansive to his public, opening his heart on the hinges of music.” In this characteristic, which we think belongs to no true poet, Miss Barrett is precisely his opposite; and in these Sonnets, particularly, [p. 67→] she has indeed given us her “heart and life in them.” They could never have been written except by one made strong through suffering by the sanctifying influences of exalted, ardent, Christian faith. Their mere titles will afford some idea of their nature:—“Grief,” “Tears,” “Substitution,” “Comfort,” “The Look,” (Christ’s on Peter,) “Futurity,” “The Soul’s Expression,” “A Thought for a Lonely Death-Bed,” etc. Our choice of the few of these we can give here as specimens has wavered and vacillated so much, nearly as much as a mother’s would if called to select from her children, that we almost let chance determine.
tears
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well—
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell,
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! What are tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing: at her marriage bell,
The bride weeps: and before the oracle
Of high-faned hills, the poet hath forgot
That moisture on his cheeks. Commend the grace,
Mourners, who weep! Albeit, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded, in a desert place,
And touch but tombs,—look up! Those tears will run
Soon, in long rivers, down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
comfort.
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet—
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber—while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection—thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing! As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother’s mouth;
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
Lowell well says, “That first voice that is heard after the reading of good poetry comes ordinarily from the shallowest heart in the company.” Such poetry as the above we cannot praise. It stirs “thoughts that lie too deep.” [p. 68→]
We have aimed not so much to eulogize Miss Barrett, as to let her speak for herself. We have also purposely forborne to notice any faults of style or otherwise, because we are a firm believer in the propriety of Coleridge’s maxim:—“Never admit the faults of a work to persons incapable of appreciating its beauties:” and as we think the public yet insensible to the merits of these poems, we deem it not only the most pleasant, but the most appropriate work of the critic to call attention to their beauties. If we have succeeded in introducing her to the heart of one loving friend, who will give her the same warm homage of grateful tears she has already won from others; better still, if we have introduced her to a sister in suffering, who may from her receive consolation, and learn better the holy lessons of the sick-room; we shall have been more than abundantly repaid.
We hope the publishers will feel themselves justified in soon giving us an American edition of the “Seraphim,” also; for, although on the whole these volumes exhibit greater maturity of poetic power than the earlier work, yet there are in it a few pieces that can hardly be surpassed.
[R.C.] P[itman].
Reviewed:
A Drama of Exile, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: Henry G. Langley, 1845.
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