Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  The volume is “dedicated to the hopeful friends of humanity, by their servant, the author.” It consists of short poems in various metres, and with no connecting link beyond the association suggested in the reader’s mind, – descriptive, as the title indicates, of the different ages and conditions of men in the republic; and remarkable, as we have hinted, for their very defects. For the poems are defective precisely in that with which the verse-literature of the country overflows,–we mean grace and facility. They are not graceful, but they are strong. They give no proof of remarkable facility in composition; and we are tempted sometimes to think of the writer, that he is versed better in sympathy and aspiration, than in rhythms and rhymes. His verses are occasionally incorrect, and are frequently rugged and hard. His ear is not “tuned to fine uses,” and his hand refuses to flatter unduly the ear of his audience. But he writes not only “like a man,” but like a republican and an American. Under this rough bark is a heart of oak; and peradventure a noble vessel, if not a Dodonæan oracle, may presently be had out of it. The wood has a good grain, the timber is large of size; and, if gnarled and knotted, these are the conditions of strength, and perhaps the convulsions of growth: it is thus that strong trees grow, while slim grasses spring smoothly from the ground. And the thoughtful student of the literature of America will pause naturally and musingly, at sight of this little book, and mark it as something “new and strange,” considering the circumstances of the soil.

  Here is “THE CHILD,” with which Mr. Mathews’ illustrations of life begin, and in which the views of life are brighter, because higher, than those of Gray’s celebrated ode:–

  “Calm in thy cradle lie, thou little child,

  Thy white limbs smoothing in a patient sleep,

  Or gambolling when thou wakest at the peep

  Of the young day–as clear and undefiled

  As thou! around thy fresh and lowly bed,

  Look up and see how reverent men are gathered.

  “They watch the quiet of thy deep blue eye,–

  Where all the outward world is born anew,–

  Where habit, figure, form, complexion, hue,

  Rise up and live again in that pure sky;

  At every lifting of thine arms, they feel

  The ribbed and vasty bulk of empire shake,

  And from the fashion of thy features, take

  The hope and image of the commonweal.

  “See! through the white skin beats the ruddy tide!

  The pulses of thine heart, that come and go,

  Like the great circles of the ocean-flow,

  And dash a continent at either side.

  Thou wield’st a hopeful empire, large and fair,

  With sceptred strength: about thy brow is set

  A fresh glad crown, with dewy morning wet,

  And noonday lingers in thy flaxen hair!

  “Kingdom, authority, and power, to thee

  Belong; the hand that frees, the chain that thralls,

  Each attribute on various man that falls,

  Strides he the globe, or canvass-tents the sea:

  The sword, the staff, the judge’s cap of death,

  The ruler’s robe, the treasurer’s key of gold,

  All growths the world-wide scope of life may hold,

  Are form’d in thee, and people in thy breath.

  “Be stirr’d or still, as prompts thy beating heart!

  Out of thy slumbering calmness there shall climb

  Spirits serene and true against the time

  That trumpets men to an heroic part.

  And motion shall confirm thee, rough or mild,

  For the full sway that unto thee belongs,

  In the still house, or ‘mid the massy throngs

  Of life,–thou gentle and thou sovereign child.

  And thus he exhorts “THE CITIZEN”:–

  “Feel well, with the poised ballot in thine hand,

  Thine unmatched sovereignty of right and wrong.

  ‘Tis thine to bless or blast the waiting land,

  To shorten up its life, or make it long.

  “Who looks on thee, not hopeless should behold

  A self-deliver’d, self-supported man;

  True to his being’s mighty purpose, true

  To a wisdom-blessed, a God-given plan.

  “Nowhere within the great globe’s skyey round,

  Canst thou escape thy duty, grand and high;

  A man unbadged, unbonneted, unbound,

  Walk to the tropic, to the desert fly.

  A full-fraught Hope upon thy shoulder leans,

  And beats with thine the heart of half the world.

  Ever behind thee walks the shining Past,

  Before thee burns the star-stripe, high unfurl’d.”

  In “THE MERCHANT,” we have these high trading speculations:–

  “Undimm’d the man should through the trader shine,

  Nor show the soul disabled by the craft.

  Slight duties may not lessen but adorn–

  The cedar’s berries round the cedar’s shaft.

  The pettiest act will lift the doer up,

  The mightiest cast him swift and headlong down;

  If one forgets the spirit of his deed,

  The other wears it as a living crown.

  “A grace, be sure, in all true duty dwells;

  Humble or high, you always know it thus;

  For, beautiful in act, the foregone thought

  Confirms its truth, though seeming-ominous.

  Pure hands and just may therefore well be laid

  On duties daily as the air we breathe;

  And heaven, amid the thorns of harshest trade,

  The laurel of its gentlest love may wreathe.”

  “THE REFORMER” is addressed with no bland conservative argument; and the readers of Tait will think the following language strong and spirited enough: –

  Seize by its horns the shaggy past,

  Full of uncleanness.

  Yet the poet counsels patience and prudence–

  Wake not at midnight and proclaim it day,

  When lightning only flashes o’er the way!

  Pauses and starts, and strivings toward an end,

  Are not a birth, although a god’s birth they portend.

  Be patient, therefore, like the old broad earth

  That bears the guilty up, and through the night

  Conducts them gently to the dawning light–

  Thy silent hours shall have as great a birth!

  The volume concludes with “THE POET,” as the great knot in whom all the ends of life are tied fast; while the ends of the world look to him for the just vocal expression of all that is suffered and acted beneath the sun.

  There sits not in the wildernesses’ edge,

  In the dusk lodges of the wintry north,

  Nor crouches in the rice-fields’ slimy sedge,

  Nor on the cold wide waters ventures forth,–

  Who waits not, in the pauses of his toil,

  With hope, that spirits in the air may sing!

  Who upwards turns not, at propitious times,

  Breathless, his silent features listening–

  In desert, and in lodge, on marsh, and main,

  To feed his hungry heart, and conquer pain.

  “To strike, or bear, to conquer, or to yield,

  Teach thou! O topmost crown of Duty, teach

  What Fancy whispers to the listening ear,

  At hours when tongue, nor taint of care, impeach,

  The fruitful calm of greatly silent hearts!

  When all the stars for happy thoughts are set,

  And in the secret chambers of the soul

  All blessed powers of joyful truth are met.

  Though calm and garlandless thou mayst appear,

  The world shall know thee for its crowned seer.

  “Mirth in an open eye may sit as well,

  As sadness in a close and sober face!

  In thy broad we
lcome, both may fitly dwell,

  Nor jostle either from its nestling-place.

  Tears, free as showers, to thee may come as blest,

  As smilings, of the happy sunshine borne;

  And cloaked up trouble, in his turn caressed,

  Be taught to look a little less forlorn!

  Thy heart-gates mighty, open either way,

  Come they to feast, or go they forth to pray.”

  However the reader may be inclined to be critical, (and perhaps he will be more inclined than the critic,) upon these extracts,–however he may be struck by the involutions and obscurities which to some extent disfigure them,–he will yet be free to admit, that the reverence for truth, the exultation in right, the good hope in human nature, which are the characteristics of this little book, and that the images of beauty which mingle with the expression of its lofty sentiment,–are not calculated, when taken together, to disturb the vision and prophecy of such among us as are looking at this hour towards America, as the future land of freemen in all senses, and of poets in the highest of all.

  Review of ‘Orion: An Epic Poem by R. H. Horne’

  First published in The Athenaeum, 1843

  ORION: AN EPIC POEM., AUTHOR OF “COSMO DE’ MEDICI,” &C.

  We are not of those whom Sir Philip Sidney classed quaintly as “poet-whippers,” – we are not of those who despair of the republic, – or commit monarchical treason by imagining a king’s death, – or sing dolefully their “De Profundis” over the poetical literature of their country and day. With one hand upon the heart of our poetry, we feel the living pulse; and use the mirror which sad critics, more “melancholy and gentlemanlike” than ourselves, have denied to the triumph and the vanity, to prove at least, and by the very cloud on it, the breath which goeth upwards from the living mouth, and will articulate presently. True it is that another sort of gentlemen – “the gentlemen parcel-poets” – have increased and multiplied in an inverse ratio to the glories of the art they practise . . . against. True, indeed, it is, that Mr. Carlyle’s “Sham” is especially observable in our poetical literature; and that the False has done its usual work in depreciating the True with the public. Men ask, like jesting Pilate, “What is truth? what is poetry?” and do not wait for an answer. But the answer will follow them; the answer will overtake them; leaping from one bare crag to another, it will be up with them before they reach home: there are piercing voices which the world must hear, be it ever so grey and deaf. That the world is too old for chivalry, we have been told; that it is too old for Spartan morals and Ægyptian short-hand, we can guess; that it will hereafter be too old for comfortable population and coal fires, for class prejudices, church establishments, wars, and corn laws, we may fear or hope, according to our degree of nervous susceptibility; but that it is or ever will be too old for Poetry, the nature of our humanity forbids, and the stars of God, not inaudibly, do deny. We scarcely need, at this hour of the day, to write treatises in proof of the immortality of the soul; but a “Phædon,” in favour of the nonmortality of soul’s song, may enter with a grace into our dialogues. In which, if we individually took a part, we should say, aft er a Socratic μα κυνα, (stroking passionately the ears of our dog till the sparks seemed to come,) that we believe in an infinite succession of divine lyrics, didactics, dramas, and epic poems, – είς τους αίωνας των αίωνων – the end of this world, and beyond it.

  No degree, however, of sanguine expectation could prevent us from being a little startled by this new announcement of “Orion, an epic poem, in three books, price one farthing!” In the first place, we had lost the habit of epic poems; they have gone out of fashion like the toga; and for a generation which reads and writes running, to draw a long epic breath seemed tending to prodigy. If, in the apprehension of many, the Drama is dead, the Epopoeia is buried; and there is something ghastly in the stir of an epic poem, – it is as if the Black Prince’s armour moved of itself, and rode away from the Tower on one of Her Majesty’s cream-coloured horses. Nor is this the whole of the marvel. For, in the second place, that an epic poem in three books should be sold for a farthing, is likely to remain a singularity through all possible vicissitudes of anise and cummin. We began by an absolute Pyrrhonism on the existence of any poem whatever; and having seen, tasted, and handled the hundred and thirty-seven pages, of which the poem doth consist, we end in a state of dreamy surprise as to what the author and the publisher can mean by it. Perhaps – if Sphinx will let us guess – a mere antithesis? – perhaps, a royal generosity? – perhaps, a practical sarcasm on the generous patronage of poets accorded by the public? “An epic poem in three books for one farthing!”

  At last, the scepticism hangs by us. The poem, although a true poem, is scarcely a true epic; and we cannot recognize it as belonging to that class. The essence of the epopoeia is action. Event evolving itself from action may pass as a description of the epos; whereas, in “Orion,” the action is subsidiary to the philosophy, and the whole consists of a philosophical problem worked out by typical or allegorical figures. Mr. Horne is known by his dramas: to strike the epic end of the gamut was worthy of a comprehensive ambition. “Yet, once more, O ye laurels.” But he has missed the epic; and we cannot, while we admire the poem, miscall it. If epical in anywise, it is a spiritual epic, (and that may be the right name for it,) bearing the same relation to the common epic, as Homer’s είδωλον of a hero does to the heroic body, and putting soul’s experience in the place of life’s experience. The subject appears to be the growth of a poet’s mind; and the design, to show how – the interruption making surer the ascent, the obstacle developing the power, the very error increasing the ultimate triumph, – such a soul graduates upwardly, with a completed work, into the clear height and daylight above all. The poet casts his abstract ideas in the old classical forms, so that the poem is very “Heathen Greek” in its nomenclature, while the signification is rather Christian than classical: according to his own words, in the prefatory note, it has been his “object to create new associations, founded upon those of the antique age, which are the most purely poetical and suggestive.” He opens his fable in Chios, and takes for his hero Orion, the builder, (meaning the artistic mind), who is a giant, simple, rude, sincere, occupied with the elements of life, and consorting with other giants; Biastor, the forceful; Rhexergon, the breaker down; Akinetos, the unmoved; all opposed in actual nature to the builder, but his “wood friends,” on the authority of the poet, by accidental association. It is morning in Chios, and Orion, hunting on the hills, is approached by Artemis, with no friendly gesture: –

  Her bow, with points drawn back,

  A golden hue on her white rounded breast

  Reflecting, while the arrow’s ample barb

  Gleams o’er her hand, and at his heart is aimed.

  She relents, however: –

  The goddess paused, and dropt her arrow’s point –

  Raised it again – and then again relaxed

  Her tension, and, while slow the shaft came gliding

  Over the centre of the bow, beside

  Her hand, and gently drooped, so did the knee

  Of that heroic shape do reverence

  Before the goddess.

  She looked with favour upon the “heroic shape,” and he loved her.

  And he was blest

  In her divine smile, and his life began

  A new and higher period, nor the haunts

  Of those his giant brethren ever sought,

  But shunned them and their way, and slept alone

  Upon a verdant rock, while o’er him floated

  The clear moon, causing music in his brain,

  Until the skylark rose. He felt ‘twas love. (I.i)

  But Orion’s association with Artemis (perhaps speculative imagination) is imperfect, and soon broken. She is high and pure, and his nature, though improved, is not spiritualized enough for such exclusive intercourse. False, therefore, to Artemis, he loves Merope, – falling from imagi
nation into human passion, – upon which the crescent goddess revenges her wrong, by striking him with blindness, and Merope deserts him; and he sits alone by Akinetos, the great unmoved, who preaches to him the impotence of all aspiration and all work, and the sufficiency of his blindness. Rising above this moody influence and his own desolation, he has recourse to Eos, the goddess of the morning and of religious cheerful practical philosophy, and she restores his sight and hope, inspiring him with an undying love towards herself.

  “Eos! blest goddess of the morning, hear

  The blind Orion praying on thy hill,

  And in thine odorous breath his spirit steep,

  That he, the soft gold of thy gleaming hand

  Passing across his heavy lids, sealed down

  With weight of many nights, and night-like days,

  May feel as keenly as a new-born child,

  And, through it, learn as purely to behold

  The face of nature. Oh, restore my sight!”

  His prayer paused tremulous. O’er his brow he felt

  A balmy beam, that with its warmth conveyed

  Divine suffusion and deep sense of peace

  Throughout his being; and amidst a pile,

  Far in the distance, gleaming like the bloom

  Of almond trees seen through long floating halls

  Of pale ethereal blue and virgin gold,

  A Goddess, smiling like a new-blown flower,

  Orion saw! And as he gazed he wept:

  The tears ran mingling with the morning dews

  Down his thick locks. (III.i)

  We are tempted onward, but must break off, in order to secure the description of the palace of this gracious benefactress: –

  Level with the summit of that eastern mount,