E461100A. Poems (1844).
The Eclectic Review, November 1846, pp. 573–585.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 375–380.
People have often asked, “What is poetry?” and have received replies more obscure than the inquiry—replies, that remind us of William Penn’s test of the wisdom to be gleaned from asking questions, “That, friend, is as the answers may be.” We shall not attempt any solution of the question, “What is poetry?” considered as a demand for definition. In that sense it has received one or two replies which the world will not easily see amended—and, as to present use, the faculty to apprehend a definition is not always a concomitant of the power to appreciate that to which it refers. But, to draw our remarks into a circle, by ending where they began; as Sir Walter Scott made it the test of a truthful painting, that it excited in its beholders emotions similar to those which the objects it sought to represent would call up, so we appeal to all thoughtful and feeling minds, by the emotions these volumes awaken, whether they be not poetry.
The varied opinions formed of Miss Barrett—the contrast between the degrees assigned to her on the scale of excellence, reminds one of what is said by John Foster, in his Journal, about truth,—that she may be likened to a beautiful statue seen by a crowd of spectators at many different angles and distances, and therefore appearing to each one differently to all the rest. In order to come near enough to what we would rightly behold, let us consider the aspect under which their author presents these poems to us; let us examine the preface; if it be true to its idea, that is a part which in no work should be overlooked, especially where, as in this case, it is the truthful voice of the writer—the very key to the objects and aims of the after pages. Listen, now, to what they are; of her expressed design in individual poems we may speak when we consider them. Now hear the views with which, as a poet, she speaks to the public:—
“If it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better,—and I feel as if I might do better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of poetry, that my ideal should fly before me; and if I cry out too hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses, let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full of faults, as I go forward to my critics and confess, [p. 574→] they have my heart and life in them,—they are not empty shelled. If it must be said of me, that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work—not as mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being, to which I could attain,—and as work I offer it to the public,—feeling its short-comings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration,—but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done, should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.”—p. xii.
We feel that this preface spreads an Ægis over its writer; criticism, at least, may not touch her. We are, indeed, deeply moved, as the image glides before us of the solitary poetess, the love of her glorious art rising above her weakness and her weariness, “as a flame, tempest swayed,”—forgetting completely the toil of the way in its inspiring end, as the Persian Prince, for that his heart was full of the lady of his love, overlooked that it was a path of gold he trampled, in bounding to her. Well may we resolve against our indolence when we remember Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. We think upon the peaceful people whom warriors left unconquered because they could not fight where there was no resistance; of Cœur de Lion saying, as he turned his weapon from the Knight of the Leopard, “I cannot strike one who neither trembles nor strives;” of virgins unharmed by lions in their hunger; of Una, safe in her wanderings; of all images that figure to us the might of gentleness, the greatness of humility, as we read this aspiration and appeal. We must say one word on the allusion they contain,—and which is repeated in several of the poems,—to a circumstance necessary to be considered in forming a right appreciation of them,—the impaired health of the writer. There are few entirely unqualified to estimate how a weakened frame restrains the flights of mind; how thoughts, amid which, at other times, she moves as in her home, seem then to elude her grasp, or to stifle her with their greatness; to be unwieldy when she would pour them into the mould of language, and intangible when she would array them as a defence. Then, our very earnestness of desire to alter the exact idea, seems to call up a cloud of words that mock us, and we can only make our conception visible by marking off, as it were, what does not belong to it, that so the dweller [p. 575→] within the boundary line may rise upon the thought of the reader. In carefully considering these poems, not abstractedly, but as a true reflection of the mind of their author, it appears to us, that their having been wrought through a mental strength somewhat borne down by bodily weariness, will explain, and win forbearance for those passages, which, compared with happier parts, seem laboured or perplexing. We do not forget that there are times when illness repays for long exhaustion, by intervals of power; when it seems to loosen instead of tightening the bonds of the flesh, and through the attenuation of the tenement, the spirit takes a wider range beyond it,—when the power to embody waits on the power to conceive,—when words are warmed through with the sunshine of feeling, and the felicities of language weave a transparent garb for the subtle thought. It is part of the law of compensation, and of such bright seasons these volumes afford proof; yet they may claim forbearance even while they command admiration, for the weight of indisposition is daily felt, and its periods of expansion are rare. We repeat, the strength of the mind is here far more striking than the weakness of the body; yet these volumes may be considered a remarkable psychological phenomenon as truly as Mozart’s “Requiem,” or Mrs. Hemans’s “Antique Greek Lament.” We cannot leave this subject without remarking the pure, vigorous, and cheerful tone of thought which distinguishes them. There is no repining; life, whether a sad or joyous season, is spoken of as given for exertion whose results end not with time,—nay, as being cheered by the toil that ennobles it, or, better still, as passed in peace through Him whose it is. If we are perplexed in choosing passages in proof, it is by their number, not their rareness. Perhaps we do not select the best evidence, but enough is found in this noble Sonnet on Work:—
What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil.
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines,
And death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with His odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns
All thy tears over, like pure crystallines,
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labour, to their heart and hands,
From thy hands, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer.
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand,
And share its dew-drop with another near. [p. 576→]
We have been surprised occasionally to hear persons infer from isolated sentences, as that quotation in the preface, “we learn in suffering what we teach in song,” or those lines in the “Vision of Poets,” “Knowledge by suffering entereth, and life is perfected by death,” that Miss Barrett thinks mental power necessarily associated with pain,—that the vocation of a poet is one of much sadness. We think this might be sufficiently disproved by her poetic art having been her selected solace through all trial, (as she herself says in the dedication to her father, “if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day”); by the self-evidence that one who can so sing must find pleasure in the song; but at least she must be believed to think nobly of her vocation, who says in her poem on The dead Pan:—
What is true, and just, and honest,
What is lovely, what is pure—
All of praise that hath admonisht,
All of virtue shall endure;
These are themes for poet’s uses,
Stirring nobler than the Muses,
Ere Pan was dead.
Our space will permit but few remarks on the distinguishing characteristics of Miss Barrett’s poetry. We must, however, observe that it is the utterance of a devout heart. The proof of this is, not that religion is the constant theme of these volumes; on the contrary, they take an unusually wide range of topics,—but that human passions, daily scenes, common interests, are viewed from a point which the religious mind alone can occupy. If, as Dr. Arnold said, the law of Christ should rule in such wide harmony in Christian souls, that no strange discrepancy should be felt in passing from a sick room to the work of every day, we may welcome another name among the writers, whose most earthly page moves no feeling discordant with those of an hour of sacred meditation. Some poets, whose writings we can hardly refuse to call beautiful, make for themselves a moral atmosphere, in which the forms traced glow with radiance and power; they claim from us unhealthy sensibilities, and disquiet the mind, as if its sense of beauty harmonised with two opposing types. We rejoice that Miss Barrett contrasts with these, and that she does not dwell exclusively on religious themes;—there is abundant store of works for those who seek expressly religious edification. It has been well said that the mission of a Christian poet, in this age, is more to the world than to the Church,—rather to speak of earthly things in a religious spirit than to [p. 577→] explain sacred things to the devout; to show that godliness embraces all things rather than to mark the boundary of the inner court of the temple. Is it not part of the working of a general law, that in a day when Carlyle and others systematically speak of earthly energies by terms appertaining to powers that are not of the earth, we should have a Poet who paints the wide though passing interests of man in colours that harmonize with the light of the sanctuary? Miss Barrett’s topics roam through a wide field; she treads it with a firm step, and from the height surveys an extended territory, won only by the strong-minded. But her foot-prints have a woman’s delicacy of outline, however high they ascend. The union exhibited of clear and vigorous thought, of sense, which it were no compliment to call manly, with the fine feeling of beauty, the delicacy of apprehension which can pertain but to woman, we regard as one symptom among many less pleasing of this age. Having had first, in the Rosa Matilda or Della Cruscan school, the feminine fragility, and then, as if extremes evoked each other, the strong purpose without the grace of womanhood in Mary Woolstoncraft, we now behold the better parts of each united in—
“Perfect” women, “nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet” spirits “still, and bright
With something of an angel light”;
and are ready to say that if the wild weeds must precede “the bright consummate flower,” we accept of all rather than resign the last.
The volumes before us are the habitual voice of the spirit—the breathing of the life of thought; not the result of occasional and strained imagination,—not done on a sudden call to answer a fitful purpose,—but, as their author says, “they have her heart and life in them,”—“they are the completest expression of her being to which she could attain.” Perhaps this truth, this life-like emotion, is, with their variety of theme, the cause that every class of mind finds in them something which strikes its peculiar sympathies. In hearing these poems spoken of, we have found that almost every one of the shorter ones has intelligent admirers, who think it of unrivalled excellence,—others may be beautiful, but this superlative. Miss Barrett is sometimes accused of imitating Tennyson, but to our apprehension the contrast is far more striking than the resemblance. We have not time to point out instances in proof, but surely the likeness is, at most, but that of two who have studied in the same school; the tinge of colouring which, as in the case of the [p. 578→] many dramatists of the Elizabethean age, clings, amid a thousand strongly marked differences to the writers of the same period.
We may surprise some by naming conciseness as one of Miss Barrett’s distinguishing excellencies. We mean by conciseness fulness of meaning, conveyed in few and simple words: and if brevity is the soul of wit, it is no less the soul of the highest eloquence, the most touching pathos. We think, however, that the more careful is the inspection of Miss Barrett’s writings, the more incontrovertible will this appear. These poems have two elements of conciseness, each in itself a great praise. First, their language is, as it were, twin with the thought; it is evidently constructed to express thought exactly as it exists in the mind of the writer,—to mark out and define the precise thing she means, in the precise aspect it wears to her,—not giving a vague and hazy outline of her design, but painting it out clear and individually so as to mark off the finest shade which distinguishes it from the most kindred thought. This is alike a result and cause of her originality,—“individuality is originality.”
Let any one who doubts whether Miss Barrett possesses this power, express in fewer words, leaving out no shade of meaning, the greater part of the “Dead Pan,” “Loved Once,” “Crowned and Buried,” &c.; or let him exert his power of compression on the “Fourfold Aspect,” any half-stanza of which might be the motto for a long discourse. Deep feeling, no less than high thought, has left its trace on these wonderful lines,—the heat and light, inseparable elements in the fire of genius. “All deep things,” says Carlyle, “are song.”
In the next place, Miss Barrett’s conciseness is caused by her skill in the use of symbols,—symbolic language being often the most condensed expression of thought. The analogies which her figurative language make apparent, perpetually give us the delight of surprise in the midst of familiarity. Unthought of resemblances are constantly developed from old figures,—
New, as if come from other spheres,
Yet welcome, as if loved for years.
It is of the similes in Coleridge’s prose writings, especially the “Friend,” more than of any other, that Miss Barrett’s have often reminded us. En passant, we may just mention a kindred power in another writer, which lately struck us. When employing an hour with the volume of our own George Herbert, we said internally, “What do these quaint but beautiful images recall to us?”—and after reading the Sabbath, the Elixir, Love Unknown, &c., (to which we appeal in favour of our judgment,) [p. 579→] we replied, “It is certainly of something kindred in spirit, though widely unlike in form, in Miss Barrett’s poems.”
We must just mention this lady’s excellence in sketching visible nature, and in painting human emotion. The former is perhaps the most remarkable, when we remember that for years she never put her foot on the green sward. How strongly and truly must the aspect of external nature have impressed her, to enable her to describe many of its more recondite and less noticeable graces, as she does! We have scarcely room for an example, which we choose for its brevity:—
What a day it was, that day!
Hills and vales did openly
Seem to heave and throb away,
At the sight of the great sky:
And the silence, as it stood
In the glory’s golden flood,
Audibly did bud—and bud!
Through the winding hedgerows green,
How we wandered, I and you—
With the bowery tops shut in,
And the gates that showed the view!
How we talked there! Thrushes soft
Sang our pauses out, or oft
Bleatings took them from the croft.
Another of Miss Barrett’s characteristics, is a spirit of generalization;—law, in the Platonic sense, ruling in her mind, and leading her to show that the causes which originate small and daily results, are the same which work among the large phenomena of the universe—or to draw a wide moral from a slight and passing circumstance—or to symbolize universal conditions of existence, or principles of action, by minute accidents: as in the meaning of the marble silence sleeping, in “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”; in the Sonnets on the “Seraph and Poet”; “Past and Future”; “Irreparableness”; “Tears”; “Perplexed Music”; “Patience taught by Nature”; or, as when in the “Romance of the Page,” she makes us hear in the wood, by the slaughtered page, the convent bell tolling for the dead Abbess:—
Dirge for abbess laid in shroud,
Sweepeth over the shroudless dead,
Page or lady, as we said,
With the dews upon her head,
All as sad, if not as loud!
Ingemisco, ingemisco!
Is ever a lament begun
By any mourner under sun,
Which, ere it endeth, suits but one? [p. 580→]
Miss Barrett’s genius appears to us as incontrovertible in her slighter as in her greater productions—as the merest fragment of diamond which reflects a sunbeam is as truly a precious gem, as the “sea of light” on the brow of a sultan. But if called on for our weightiest proof of her genius, we should probably select her personification of Lucifer, in the Drama of Exile; though we admit the portrayment is of somewhat unequal merit, and,—but here the fault may lie in our own apprehension,—not in perfect keeping; at least his yearning lament for his Morning Star—his grief, even to tears, for his dethronement and her desertion, seem to us not in perfect keeping with the splendid passage we quote. We should premise that the “Drama of Exile” is the longest poem in the volumes, and represents, as its author says, “the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness, with a peculiar reference to Eve’s allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her offence, appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical emotion in those first steps into the wilderness—in that first sense of desolation after wrath—in that first audible gathering of the recriminating ‘groan of the whole creation’—in that first darkening of the hills from the recoiling feet of angels—and in that first silence of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile, stroke upon stroke, the Idea of Exile—admitting Lucifer as an extreme Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss, that it might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the heavenly love and purity.” The belief of Lucifer that his original beauty is not all departed, lingering as an echo of its reality, making more visible the depth of evil which closes out all love and beauty from him, seems to us very fine; but it is useless to attempt an analysis of this personation, we leave it to the perception of our readers:—
Adam. Perhaps a fallen angel. Who shall say!
Lucifer. Who told thee, Adam?
Adam. Thou! The prodigy
Of thy vast brows and melancholy eyes,
Which comprehend the heights of some great fall.
I think that thou hast one day worn a crown
Under the eyes of God.
Lucifer. And why of God?
Adam. It were no crown else! Verily, I think
Thou’rt fallen far. I had not yesterday
Said it so surely; but I know to-day
Grief by grief, sin by sin. [p. 581→]
Lucifer. A crown by a crown.
Adam. Ay, mock me! now I know more than I knew.
Now I know thou art fallen below hope
Of final re-ascent.
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. * * *
* * *
Eve. Speak no more with him,
Beloved; it is not good to speak with him.
* * * Being bereft,
We would be alone. Go!
Lucifer. Ah! ye talk the same
All of you—spirits and clay—go, and depart!
* * *
And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?
Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness.
Lucifer. Nothing more?
Eve. I think no more.
Lucifer. False heart, thou thinkest more!
Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,
Unwillingly but fully, that I stand
Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves
Were fashioned very good at best, so we
Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word
Which thrilled around us; God himself being moved,
When that august work of a perfect shape,
His dignities of sovran angel-hood,
Swept out into the universe; divine
With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,
And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.
Whereof I was, in motion and in form,
A part not poorest. And yet—yet, perhaps,
This beauty which I speak of is not here,
As God’s voice is not here; nor even my crown—
I do not know. What is this thought or thing
Which I call beauty? Is it thought or thing?
Is it a thought accepted for a thing?
Or both? or neither? A pretext—a word?
Its meaning flutters in me like a flame
Under my own breath; my perceptions reel
For evermore around it, and fall off,
As if it were too holy.
Eve. Which it is.
Adam. The essence of all beauty I call love.
The attribute, the evidence, and end, [p. 582
The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love. As form, when colourless,
Is nothing to the eye; that pine-tree there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank;
So, without love, is beauty undiscerned
In man or angel. Angel! Rather ask
What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,
And what collateral love moves on with thee;
Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.
* * *
Lucifer. I scorn you that ye wail.
* * * Yet one cry
I, too, would drive up, like a column erect,
Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven;
A monument of anguish, to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints,
Expressed from feeble woes!
Earth-Spirits! I wail, I wail!
Lucifer. For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses
That I, struck out from nature in a blot,
The outcast and the mildew of things good,
* * *
Was made by God like others. *
* * Ha! ye think,
White angels in your niches, I repent;
And would tread down my own offences, back
To service at the footstool! That’s read wrong:
I cry, as the beast did, that I may cry—
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep
Against the sides of this prodigious pit,
I cry—cry! dashing out the hands of wail,
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere;
And to attest it in the ecstacy
And exaltation of a woe sustained
Because provoked and chosen.
* * * *
My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul;
And He find no redemption, nor the wing
Of seraph move your way. And yet rejoice!
Rejoice! because ye had not set in you
This hate, which shall pursue you; this fire-hate,
Which glares without, because it burns within;
Which kills from ashes; this potential hate,
Wherein I, angel, in antagonism
To God and His reflex beatitudes,
Moan ever in the central universe,
With the great woe of striving against love;
And gasp for space amid the infinite,
And toss for rest amid the desertness. [p. 583→]
Self-orphaned by my will, and self-elect
To kingship of resistant agony
Toward the good round me; hating good and love,
And willing to hate good and to hate love,
And willing to will on so evermore;
Scorning the past, and damning the to-come.
Go, and rejoice! I curse you! [Lucifer vanishes.
The effect of this is injured by the impossibility of extracting the whole passage; yet here is not wholly lost the climax—the accumulation of scorn and woe, which reminds one of power of the same kind in the “Prometheus Bound” of Æschylus. We can give but one more extract from the “Drama of Exile,”—it is part of the address of Christ, when he appears in vision to reinstate Adam and Eve in their sovereignty over earth and its agencies:—
* * Ponder it!
This regent and sublime humanity,
Though fallen, exceeds you. This shall film your sun;
Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud;
Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas;
Lay flat your forests; master, with a look,
Your lion at his fasting, and fetch down
Your eagle flying. * *
* * Therefore, over you,
Accept this sceptre; therefore be content
To minister with voluntary grace,
And melancholy pardon, every rite
And service in you to this sceptred hand.
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;
And bless you when he prays his secret prayers,
And praise you when he sings his open songs,
For the clear song-note he has learnt in you,
Of purifying sweetness; and extend
Across your head his golden fantasies,
Which glorify you into soul from sense!
Go, serve him, for such price. That not in vain;
Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve. I place
My word here for an oath—mine oath for act
To be hereafter. In the name of which
Perfect redemption and perpetual grace
I bless you, through the hope and through the peace
Which are mine, to the love which is myself. [p. 584→]
We must now say a few words on Miss Barrett’s alleged faults. In the first place, a passage here and there,—as the conclusion of the song of the Nightingale, in the Drama of Exile, and part of that of the Morning Star, in the same poem, is pronounced perfectly unintelligible. We think it not unlikely that in future editions the author may make the ideas intended to be expressed, more perspicuous; in the mean time they are not to our apprehension, meaningless. Perhaps the excuse which Foster made for Coleridge, and which in the Friend, and the Biographia Literaria Coleridge makes for himself, is in some degree applicable to them; that there are ideas which dwell beyond the region assigned to language, and to which therefore language can furnish no full expression,—broken steps, the lamp which guides from one to another, being borne by the reader himself. Another complaint is directed against the occasional use of Greek words, which, in English composition is held inadmissible, or such as ought to be introduced rarely, and only on very special occasions. This rule is a sound one, and we are inclined to give judgment against our author for its violation. There is also fault found with her use of a few adjectives as if they included the meaning of both adjective and substantive, as “Human”—in the title of one of Miss Barrett’s most generally acceptable poems, “The Cry of the Human.” We presume this arises from her wish to give the most condensed form to a comprehensive idea;—where her power does not answer to her will, we can imagine her in her resolve for progressive excellence, regarding this and other difficulties, in the spirit of Penn’s reply to his threateners with imprisonment, “Friend, thy strength shall never equal my patience.”
Perhaps, however, the loudest complaint concerns the rhymes. We acknowledge that though some are of unsurpassed sweetness, they do not always pass muster either to eye or ear. One of the most faulty in this respect,—amusingly faulty we have heard it called,—“The Wine of Cyprus,”—has however, a magnificent and flowing rhythm, that seems to smile defiance at strictures; and bears us on, like a breeze over the billows,—though there are mingled with it touches of deep pathos, as if some way-mark of past suffering rose above the wave.
We hope again to meet Miss Barrett, when her aspirations for advance in her art have been more than realised; and when she has won a yet higher place among the imperishable names of her country. It is now more than two years since the volumes before us were published. Doubtless the time will come when that period for exertion, and we rejoice to learn, of amended health, will be nobly accounted for. If in our present parting we may venture to express a wish as to the [p. 585→] future direction of her powers; it would be that some thrilling incidents of our History might be treated by one, so capable of “stirring the soul as by the sound of a trumpet”; and that whatever she may decide on this point,—she would present to the public more of her thoughts in the form of prose, a vehicle possessing facilities at least different to those of verse, and perhaps better than even verse adapted to some modes of lofty thought. We think this wish must be echoed by every one who can appreciate the graces of her exquisite preface,—which like her verse, presents a form of beauty undiscerned before.
It has occasionally happened to us to feel surprise at the temerity of critics, in composedly parcelling out blame to every quality of authors, the coast line of whose intellect, the entire extent of their own, would not fathom. How many spirited reviews would suffer total change if re-fashioned on the Platonic maxim,—“understand a man’s ignorance before you attempt to judge his understanding!” But the effort to do justice to an author, sometimes involves presumption,—and in many cases we feel, that the mind, which from the height of its aspiration, looks down on all attained success, must yet perceive the lines of beauty it has designed with more exquisite appreciation than its critic. We shall, however, be not ill-satisfied if we succeed in suggesting these poems as a realm of thought, to those who may penetrate more deeply into its riches, than ourselves; and in any case, may know the joy of the humble,—reverence for the high,—for
There is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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