Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  And now, that golden-haired, golden-crowned daughter of Leontius, for whom neither the much learning nor the much sorrow drove Hesperus from her sovran eyes . . . . let her pass on unblenched. Be it said of her, softly as she goes, by all gentle readers – “She is innocent, whether for centos or for apples! She wrote only such Christian Greek poems as Christians and poets might rejoice to read, but which perished with her beauty, as being of one seed with it.”

  Midway in the sixth century we encounter Paul Silentiarius, called so in virtue of the office held by him in the court of Justinian, and chiefly esteemed for his descriptive poem on the Byzantine church of St. Sophia, which, after the Arian conflagration, was rebuilt gorgeously by the emperor. This church was not dedicated to a female saint, according to the supposition of many persons, but to the second person of the Trinity, the ἁγια σοφια – holy wisdom; while the poem being recited in the imperial presence, and the poet’s gaze often forgetting to rise higher than the imperial smile, Paul Silentiarius dwelt less on the divine dedication and the spiritual uses of the place, than on the glory of the dedicator and the beauty of the structure. We hesitate, moreover, to grant to his poem the praise which has been freely granted to it by more capable critics, of its power to realize this beauty of structure to the eyes of the reader. It is highly elaborate and artistic; but the elaboration and art appear to us architectural far more than picturesque. There is no sequency, no congruity, no keeping, no light and shade. The description has reference to the working as well as to the work, to the materials as well as to the working. The eyes of the reader are suffered to approach the whole only in analysis, or rather in analysis analyzed. Every part, part by part, is recounted to him excellently well . . . . is brought close till he may touch it with his eyelashes; but when he seeks for the general effect, it is in pieces . . . . there is none of it. Byron shows him more in the passing words, –

  I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell

  Their glittering mass i’ the sun,

  than Silentiarius in all his poem. Yet the poem has abundant merit in diction and harmony; and besides higher noblenesses, the pauses are modulated with an artfulness not commonly attained by these later Greeks, and the ear exults in an unaccustomed rhythmetic pomp which the inward critical sense is inclined to murmur at, as an expletive verbosity.

  Whoever looketh with a mortal eye

  To heaven’s emblazoned forms, not steadfastly

  With unreverted neck can bear to measure

  That meadow-round of star-apparelled pleasure,

  But drops his eyelids to the verdant hill,

  Yearning to see the river run at will,

  With flowers on each side, – and the ripening corn,

  And grove thick set with trees, and flocks at morn

  Leaping against the dews, – and olives twined,

  And green vine-branches trailingly inclined, –

  And the blue calmness skimmed by dripping oar

  Along the Golden Horn.

  But if he bring

  His foot across this threshold, never more

  Would he withdraw it; fain, with wandering

  Moist eyes, and ever-turning head, to stay,

  Since all satiety is driven away

  Beyond the noble structure. Such a fane

  Of blameless beauty hath our Cæsar raised

  By God’s perfective grace, and not in vain!

  O emperor, these labours we have praised,

  Draw down the glorious Christ’s perpetual smile:

  For thou, the high-peaked Ossa didst not pile

  Upon Olympus’ head, nor Pelion throw

  Upon the neck of Ossa, opening so

  The æther to the steps of mortals! no!

  Having achieved a work more high than hope,

  Thou dost not need these mountains as a slope

  Whereby to scale the heaven! Wings take thee thither

  From purest piety to highest æther.

  The following passage, from the same “Description,” is hard to turn into English, through the accumulative riches of the epithets. Greek words atone for their vain-glorious redundancy by their beauty, but we cannot think so of these our own pebbles.

  Who will unclose me Homer’s sounding lips,

  And sing the marble mead that over-sweeps

  The mighty walls and pavements spread around,

  Of this tall temple, which the sun has crowned?

  The hammer with its iron tooth was loosed

  Into Carystus’ summit green, and bruised

  The Phrygian shoulder of the dædal stone; –

  This marble, coloured after roses fused

  In a white air, and that, with flowers thereon

  Both purple and silver, shining tenderly!

  And that which in the broad fair Nile sank low

  The barges to their edge, the porphyry’s glow

  Sown thick with little stars! and thou may’st see

  The green stone of Laconia glitter free!

  And all the Carian hill’s deep bosom brings,

  Streaked bow-wise, with a livid white and red, –

  And all the Lydian chasm keeps coverèd, –

  A hueless blossom with a ruddier one

  Soft mingled! all besides, the Libyan sun

  Warms with his golden splendour, till he make

  A golden yellow glory for his sake,

  Along the roots of the Maurusian height!

  And all the Celtic mountains give to sight

  From crystal clefts: black marbles dappled fair

  With milky distillations here and there!

  And all the onyx yields in metal-shine

  Of precious greenness! – all that land of thine,

  Ætolia, hath on even plains engendered

  But not on mountain-tops, – a marble rendered

  Here nigh to green, of tints which emeralds use,

  Here with a sombre purple in the hues!

  Some marbles are like new dropt snow, and some

  Alight with blackness! – Beauty’s rays have come,

  So congregate, beneath this holy dome!

  And thus the poet takes us away from the church and dashes our senses and admirations down these marble quarries! Yet it is right for us to admit the miracle of a poem made out of stones! and when he spoke of unclosing Homer’s lips on such a subject, he was probably thinking of Homer’s ships, and meant to intimate that one catalogue was as good for him as another.

  John Geometra arose in no propitious orient probably with the seventh century, although the time of his “elevation” appears to be uncertain within a hundred years.

  He riseth slowly, as his sullen car

  Had all the weights of sleep and death hung on it.

  Plato, refusing his divine fellowship to any one who was not a geometrician or who was a poet, might have kissed our Joannes, who was not divine, upon both cheeks, in virtue of his other name and in vice of his verses. He was the author of certain hymns to the Virgin Mary, as accumulative of epithets and admirations as ten of her litanies, inclusive of a pious compliment, which, however geometrically exact in its proportions, sounds strangely.

  O health to thee! new living car of the sky

  Afire on the wheels of four virtues at once!

  O health to thee! Seat, than the cherubs more high,

  More pure than the seraphs, more broad than the thrones.

  Towards the close of the last hymn, the exhausted poet empties back something of the ascription into his own lap, by a remarkable “mihi quoque.”

  O health to me, royal one! if there belong

  Any grace to my singing, that grace is from thee.

  O health to me, royal one! if in my song

  Thou hast pleasure . . . . oh, thine is the grace of the glee!

  We may mark the time of George Pisida, about thirty years deep in the seventh century. He has been confounded with the rhetorical archbishop of Nicomedia, but held the office of scævophylax, only lower th
an the highest, in the metropolitan church of St. Sophia, and was a poet, singing half in the church and half in the court, and considerably nearer to the feet of the Emperor Heraclius than can please us in any measure. Hoping all things, however, in our poetical charity, we are willing to hope even this, – that the man whom Heraclius carried about with him as a singing man when he went to fight the Persians, and who sang and recited accordingly, and provided notes of admiration for all the imperial notes of interrogation, and gave his admiring poems the appropriate and suggestive name of acroases – auscultations, – things intended to be heard, might nevertheless love Heraclius the fighting man, not slave-wise, or flatterer-wise, but man-wise or dog-wise, in good truth, and up to the brim of his praise; and so hoping, we do not dash the praise down as a libation to the infernal task-masters. Still it is an impotent conclusion to a free-hearted poet’s musing on the “Six days’ work,” to wish God’s creation under the sceptre of his particular friend! It looks as if the particular friend had an ear like Dionysius, and the poet – ah! the poet! – a mark as of a chain upon his brow in the shadow of his court laurel.

  We shall not revive the question agitated among his contemporaries, whether Euripides or George Pisida wrote the best iambics; but that our George knew the secret of beauty, and that, having noble thoughts, he could utter them nobly, is clear, despite of Heraclius. That he is, besides, unequal; often coldly perplexed when he means to be ingenious, only violent when he seeks to be inspired; that he premeditates ecstasies, and is inclined to the attitudes of the orators; in brief, that he not only and not seldom sleeps but snores – are facts as true of him as the praise is. His Hexámëron, to which we referred as his chief work, is rather a meditation or rhythmetical speech upon the finished creation, than a retrospection of the six days – and also there is more of Plato in it than of Moses. It has many fine things, and whole passages of no ordinary eloquence, though difficult to separate and select.

  Whatever eyes seek God to view his Light,

  As far as they behold him close in night!

  Whoever searcheth with insatiate balls

  Th’ abysmal glare, or gazeth on Heaven’s walls

  Against the fire-disk of the sun, the same

  According to the vision he may claim,

  Is dazzled from his sense. What soul of flame

  Is called sufficient to view onward thus

  The way whereby the sun’s light came to us!

  O distant Presence in fixed motion! Known

  To all men, and inscrutable to one:

  Perceived – uncomprehended! unexplained

  To all the spirits, yet by each attained,

  Because its God-sight is thy work! O Presence,

  Whatever holy greatness of thine essence

  Lie virtue-hidden – thou hast given our eyes

  The vision of thy plastic energies; –

  Not shown in angels only (those create

  All fiery-hearted, in a mystic state

  Of bodiless body,) but if order be

  Of natures more sublime than they or we,

  In highest Heaven, or mediate æther, or

  This world now seen, or one that came before

  Or one to come, – quick in Thy purpose – there!

  Working in fire and water, earth and air –

  In every tuneful star, and tree, and bird –

  In all the swimming, creeping life unheard,

  In all green herbs, and chief of all, in ᴍᴀɴ.

  There are other poems of inferior length, ‘On the Persian War,’ in three books, or, alas, “auscultations” – ‘The Heracliad,’ again on the Persian War, and in two (of course) auscultations again, – ‘Against Severus,’ ‘On the Vanity of Life,’ ‘The War of the Huns,’ and others. From the ‘Vanity of Life,’ which has much beauty and force, we shall take a last specimen: –

  Some yearn to rule the state, to sit above,

  And touch the cares of hate as near as love –

  Some their own reason for tribunal take,

  And for all thrones the humblest prayers they make!

  Some love the orator’s vain-glorious art, –

  The wise love silence and the hush of heart, –

  Some to ambition’s spirit-curse are fain,

  That golden apple with a bloody stain;

  While some do battle in her face (more rife

  Of noble ends) and conquer strife with strife!

  And while your groaning tables gladden these,

  Satiety’s quick chariot to disease,

  Hunger the wise man helps, to water, bread,

  And light wings to the dreams about his head.

  The truth becomes presently obvious, that –

  The sage o’er all the world his sceptre waves,

  And earth is common ground to thrones and graves.

  John Damascenus, to whom we should not give by any private impulse of admiration, the title of Chrysorrhoas, accorded to him by his times, lived at Damascus, his native city, early in the eighth century, holding an unsheathed sword of controversy until the point drew down the lightning. He retired before the affront rather than the injury; and in company with his beloved friend and fellow poet, Cosmas of Jerusalem, (whose poetical remains the writer of these Remarks has vainly sought the sight of, and therefore can only, as by hearsay, ascribe some value to them,) hid the remnant of his life in the monastery of Saba, where Phocas of the twelfth century looked upon the tomb of either poet. John Damascenus wrote several acrostics on the chief festivals of the churches, which are not much better, although very much longer, than acrostics need be. When he writes out of his heart, without looking to the first letters of his verses, – as, indeed, in his anacreontic his eyes are too dim for iota-hunting, – he is another man, and almost a strong man; for the heart being sufficient to speak, we want no Delphic oracle – “Pan is NOT dead.” In our selection from the anacreontic hymn, the tears seem to trickle audibly – we welcome them as a Castalia, or, rather, “as Siloa’s brook,” flowing by an oracle more divine than any Grecian one: –

  From my lips in their defilement,

  From my heart in its beguilement,

  From my tongue which speaks not fair,

  From my soul stained everywhere,

  O my Jesus, take my prayer!

  Spurn me not for all it says, –

  Not for words and not for ways, –

  Not for shamelessness endued!

  Make me brave to speak my mood,

  O my Jesus, as I would!

  Or teach me, which I rather seek,

  What to do and what to speak.

  I have sinned more than she,

  Who learning where to meet with Thee,

  And bringing myrrh, the highest priced,

  Anointed bravely from her knee,

  Thy blessed feet accordingly –

  My God, my Lord, my Christ! –

  As Thou saidest not “Depart,”

  To that suppliant from her heart,

  Scorn me not, O Word, that art

  The gentlest one of all words said!

  But give thy feet to me instead,

  That tenderly I may them kiss

  And clasp them close, and never miss

  With over-dropping tears as free

  And precious as that myrrh could be,

  T’anoint them bravely from my knee!

  Wash me with my tears: draw nigh me,

  That their salt may purify me:

  THOU remit my sins who knowest

  All the sinning, to the lowest –

  Knowest all my wounds, and seest

  All the stripes Thyself decreest;

  Yea, but knowest all my faith,

  Seest all my force to death, –

  Hearest all my wailings low,

  That mine evil should be so!

  Nothing hidden but appears

  In thy knowledge, O Divine,

  O Creator, Saviour mine –

  Not a drop of falling tears,

/>   Not a breath of inward moan,

  Not a heart-beat . . . . which is gone! –

  After this deep pathos of Christianity, we dare not say a word – we dare not even praise it as poetry – our heart is stirred, and not “idly.” The only sound which can fitly succeed the cry of the contrite soul, is that of Divine condonation or of angelic rejoicing. Let us who are sorrowful still, be silent too.

  PART IV.

  ALTHOUGH doubts, as broad as four hundred years separate the earliest and latest period talked of in the age of Simeon Metaphrastes by those “viri illustrissimi” the classical critics, we may set him down, without much peril to himself or us, at the close of the tenth century, or very early in the eleventh. He is chiefly known for his ‘Lives of the Saints,’ which have been lifted up as a mark both for honour and dishonour; which Psellus hints at as a favourite literature of the angels, which Leo Allatius exalts as chafing the temper of the heretics, and respecting which we, in an exemplary serenity, shall straightway accede to one-half of the opinion of Bellarmine – that the work speaketh not as things actually happened, but as they might have happened – “non ut res gestæ fuerant, sed ut geri potuerant.” Our half of this weighty opinion is the first clause – we demur upon “ut geri potuerant,” – and we need not go farther than the former to win a light of commentary for the term “metaphrases,” applied to the saintly biographies in otherwise a doubtful sense, and worn obliquely upon the sleeve of the biographer Metaphrastes, in no doubtful token of his skill in metamorphosing things as they were into things as they might have been. And Simeon having received from Constantinople the honour of his birth within her walls, and returning to her the better honour of the distinctions and usefulness of his life, – so writeth Psellus, his encomiast, with a graceful turn of thought, – expired in an “odour of sanctity” befitting the biographer of all the saints, – breathing out from his breathless remains such an incense of celestial sweetness, that if it had not been for the mal-adroitness of certain unfragrant persons whose desecration of the next tomb acted instantly as a stopper, the whole earth might at this day be metaphrased to our nostrils, as steeped in an attar-gul of Eden or Ede! – we might be dwelling in a phœnix nest at this day. Through the mal-adroitness, however, in question, there is lost to us every sweeter influence from the life and death of Simeon Metaphrastes than may result from the lives and deaths of his saints, and from other works of his, whether commentaries, orations, or poems; and we cannot add that the aroma from his writings bears any proportion in value to the fragrance from his sepulchre. Little of his poetry has reached us, and we are satisfied with the limit. There were three Simeons, who did precede our Simeon, as the world knoweth, and whose titles were Stylitæ or Columnarii, because it pleased them in their saintly volition to take the highest place and live out their natural lives supernaturally, each upon the top of a column. Peradventure the columns which our Simeon refused to live upon, conspired against his poetry: peradventure it is on their account that we find ourselves between two alphabetic acrostics, written solemnly by his hand, and take up one wherein every alternate line begins with a letter of the alphabet; its companion in the couplet being left to run behind it, out of livery and sometimes out of breath. Will the public care to look upon such a curiosity? Will our verse writers care to understand what harm may be done by a conspiration of columns – gods and men quite on one side? And will candid readers care to confess at last, that there is an earnestness in the poem, acrostic as it is, – a leaning to beauty’s side, – which is above the acrosticism? Let us try: –