Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
2522 (#82) ############################################
2522
HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL
PSYCHAURA
THE
He wind of an autumn midnight
Is moaning around my door -
The curtains wave at the window,
The carpet lifts on the floor.
There are sounds like startled footfalls
In the distant chambers now,
And the touching of airy fingers
Is busy on hand and brow.
'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling –
By the moody host unsought-
Through the chambers of memory wander
The invisible airs of thought.
For it bloweth where it listeth,
With a murmur loud or low;
Whence it cometh - whither it goeth -
None tell us, and none may know.
Now wearying round the portals
Of the vacant, desolate mind —
As the doors of a ruined mansion,
That creak in the cold night wind.
And anon an awful memory
Sweeps over it fierce and high-
Like the roar of a mountain forest
When the midnight gale goes by.
Then its voice subsides in wailing,
And, ere the dawning of day,
Murmuring fainter and fainter,
In the distance dies away.
SUSPIRIA NOCTIS
EADING, and reading -- little is the gain
R. Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves.
List rather to the melancholy rain,
Drop-dropping from the eaves.
Still the old tale - how hardly worth the telling!
Hark to the wind ! - again that mournful sound,
That all night long, around this lonely dwelling,
Moans like a dying hound.
## p. 2523 (#83) ############################################
2523
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(1809-1861)
is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of
Miss Mitford and her “dear young friend Miss Barrett,
when the -esses of "authoresses” and “poetesses” and “edi-
tresses” and “hermitesses” make the pages sibilant; when Books of
Beauty,' and Keepsakes, and the extraordinary methods of “Fin-
den's Tableaux” make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr.
Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford “to the giraffes and the Diorama,”
called for “Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads
Greek as I do French, who has published
some translations from Æschylus, and some
most striking poems,” « Our sweet Miss
Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is
to think of her. » Of her own life Mrs.
Browning writes:-“As to stories, my story
amounts to the knife-grinder's, with noth-
ing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a
cage would have as good a story; most of
my events and nearly all my intense pleas-
ure have passed in my thoughts. ”
She was born at Burn Hall, Durham,
on March 6th, 1809, and passed a happy MRS. BROWNING
childhood and youth in her father's coun-
try house at Hope End, Herefordshire. She was remarkably pre-
cocious, reading Homer in the original at eight years of age. She
said that in those days “the Greeks were her demigods. She
dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her black pony. ” I
wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier. But what
is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained
with me. ” At seventeen years of age she published the “Essay on
Mind,' and translated the Prometheus) of Æschylus.
later the family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account
of her continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months
at a time. The shock following on the death of her brother, who
was drowned before her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for
rest, completely shattered her physically. Now her life of seclusion in
her London home began. For years she lay upon a couch in a large,
comfortably darkened room, seeing only the immediate members
Some years
## p. 2524 (#84) ############################################
2524
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
of her family and a few privileged friends, and spending her days
in writing and study, “reading,” Miss Mitford says, “almost every
book worth reading in almost every language. ” Here Robert Brown-
ing met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of her
father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence
at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same
name. Their home became the centre of attraction to visitors in
Florence, and many of the finest minds in the literary and artistic
world were among their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them,
describes Mrs. Browning as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied
at all, at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender
fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity
of voice. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her
cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another
figure in the world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck
and make her face look whiter. ” She died in Florence on the 30th
of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed a tablet to her
memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.
The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to
explain her poetry. It is a life “without a catastrophe,” except per-
haps to her devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that
some of Mrs. Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was
so pampered and shielded from every outside touch, that all the
woes common to humanity grew for her into awful tragedies. Her
life was abnormal and unreal,- an unreality that passed more or less
into everything she did. Indeed, her resuscitation after meeting
Robert Browning would mount into a miracle, unless it were real-
ized that nothing in her former life had been quite as wofuļ as it
seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius,” even
Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter Sav-
age Landor said, “With the exception of Burns, he (Shelley) and
Keats were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other
poet since Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Brown-
ing comes next. ” This is very high praise from very high authority,
but none too high for Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true
lyric ring, that spontaneity of thought and expression which comes
when the singer forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful
under the stress of the moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's
work is buoyed up by her luxurious and overflowing imagination.
With all its imperfections of technique, its lapses of taste and faults
of expression, it always remains poetry, throbbing with passion and
emotion and rich in color and sound. She wrote because she must.
Her own assertions notwithstanding, one cannot think of Mrs. Brown-
ing as sitting down in cold blood to compose a poem according to
## p. 2527 (#85) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2527
Tennyson's own. ” The fine thought and haunting beauty of A
Musical Instrument,' with its matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.
During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself
with great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political
poems of varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when
the occasion passed. But among those poems inspired by the strug-
gle for freedom, Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the Sonnets
from the Portuguese' and Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring
place for its high poetry, its musical, sonorous verse, and the sus-
tained intellectual vigor of composition. Her volume of Last
Poems' contains, among much inferior matter, some of her finest
and most touching work, as (A Musical Instrument,' The Forced
Recruit,' and Mother and Poet. Peter Bayne says of her in his
"Great English women':- In melodiousness and splendor of poetic
gift Mrs. Browning stands
first among women.
not have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the com-
prehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far
more essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspira-
tion, and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved,
and touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its
depths. She seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her
view of life's sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is
something like that which one might imagine a spirit's to be. ”
Whether political, or sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or
impossible, there is about all that Mrs. Browning has written an
enduring charm of picturesqueness, of romance, and of a pure enthu-
siasm for art. “Art for Art,” she cries,
She may
.
“And good for God, himself the essential Good !
We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,
Although our woman-hands should shake and fail. »
This was her achievement - her hands did not fail!
Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to
this slight study:- “You are wrong,” he said, “quite wrong — she
has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a
clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up
something,— he wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you
one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your
head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother
is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star - that's the dif-
ference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine. ”
## p. 2528 (#86) ############################################
2528
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
W**
HAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river ?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river,
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river ! )
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes as he sat by the river.
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed. ”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, ( great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
## p. 2529 (#87) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2529
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
MY HEART AND I
E
NOUGH! we're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason's knife,
As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we're tired, my heart and I.
You see we're tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colors could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune's end,
We loved too true to keep a friend:
At last we're tired, my heart and I.
How tired we feel, my heart and I!
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang gray and uncurled
About men's eyes indifferently;
Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet:
What do we here, my heart and I?
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
“Dear love, you're looking tired,” he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head:
'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.
V-159
## p. 2530 (#88) ############################################
2530
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.
Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?
In this abundant earth, no doubt,
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
And if, before the days grew rough,
We once were loved, used, — well enough
I think we've fared, my heart and I.
FROM (CATARINA TO CAMOENS)
ON
[Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he
recorded the sweetness of her eyes. ]
N THE door you will not enter
I have gazed too long: adieu!
Hope withdraws her peradventure );
Death is near me,- and not you !
Come, O lover,
Close and cover
These poor eyes you called, I ween,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! »
When I heard you sing that burden
In my vernal days and bowers,
Other praises disregarding,
I but hearkened that of yours,
Only saying
In heart-playing,
“Blessèd eyes mine eyes have been,
If the sweetest his have seen ! »
But all changes. At this vesper
Cold the sun shines down the door.
If you stood there, would you whisper,
“Love, I love you,” as before,-
Death pervading
Now and shading
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
As the sweetest ever seen ?
1
## p. 2531 (#89) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2531
Yes, I think, were you beside them,
Near the bed I die upon,
Though their beauty you denied them,
As you stood there looking down,
You would truly
Call them duly,
For the love's sake found therein,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
And if you looked down upon them,
And if they looked up to you,
All the light which has foregone them
Would be gathered back anew;
They would truly
Be as duly
Love-transformed to beauty's sheen,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
But, ah me! you only see me,
In your thoughts of loving man,
Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
Through the wavings of my fan;
And unweeting
Go repeating
In your revery serene,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
O my poet, O my prophet!
When you praised their sweetness so,
Did you think, in singing of it,
That it might be near to go?
Had you fancies
From their glances,
That the grave would quickly screen
«Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
No reply. The fountain's warble
In the courtyard sounds alone.
As the water to the marble
So my heart falls with a moan
From love-sighing
To this dying.
Death forerunneth Love to win
« Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
Will you come? When I'm departed
Where all sweetnesses are hid,
## p. 2532 (#90) ############################################
2532
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid,
Cry, O lover,
Love is over!
Cry, beneath the cypress green,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
When the Angelus is ringing,
Near the convent will you walk,
And recall the choral singing
Which brought angels down our talk ?
Spirit-shriven
I viewed heaven,
Till you smiled — "Is earth unclean,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen ?
When beneath the palace-lattice
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there that is
Not the old familiar one,
Will you oftly
Murmur softly,
“Here ye watched me morn and e'en,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
When the palace-ladies, sitting
Round your gittern, shall have said,
Poets, sing those verses written
For the lady who is dead,”
Will you tremble,
Yet dissemble,
Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen ” ?
“Sweetest eyes! ) How sweet in flowings
The repeated cadence is!
Though you sang a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it
"Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise intervene,-
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
But — but now — yet unremoved
Up to heaven they glisten fast;
You may cast away, beloved,
In your future all my past:
## p. 2533 (#91) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2533
Such old phrases
May be praises
For some fairer bosom-queen-
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
Eyes of mine, what are ye doing ?
Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
If a tear be, on your showing,
Dropped for any hope of his!
Death has boldness
Besides coldness,
If unworthy tears demean
« Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine.
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,
Angels shield them,
Whatsoever eyes terrene
Be the sweetest his have seen.
THE SLEEP
«He giveth his beloved sleep. ) — Ps. cxxvii. 2
O"
F ALL the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward into souls afar
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this —
“He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
What would we give to our beloved ?
The hero's heart to be unmoved,
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows? -
He giveth his beloved sleep.
What do we give to our beloved ?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
He giveth his beloved sleep.
## p. 2534 (#92) ############################################
2534
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(c
Sleep soft, beloved! ” we sometimes say,
Who have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
He giveth his beloved sleep.
O earth, so full of dreary noises !
O men with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth his beloved sleep.
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth his beloved sleep.
Ay, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man
Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say,- and through the word
I think their happy smile is heard, -
“He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who giveth his beloved sleep.
And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, “Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
## p. 2535 (#93) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2535
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
I
Dº
O ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their
mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
II
Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so ?
The old man may weep for his To-morrow
Which is lost in Long-Ago;
The old tree is leafless in the forest;
The old year is ending in the frost;
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest;
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland ?
III
They look up with their pale and sunken faces;
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy.
«Your old earth,” they say, is very dreary;
Our young feet,” they say, are very weak;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary;
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,
## p. 2536 (#94) ############################################
2536
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old. ”
IV
« True,” say the children, it may happen
That we die before our time:
Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
Was no room for any work in the close clay,
From the sleep wherein lieth none will wake her,
Crying, “Get up, little Alice! it is day. '
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries.
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud by the kirk-chime.
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
« That we die before our time. ”
Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking
Death in life, as best to have.
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
But they answer, «Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine.
VI
“For oh! ” say the children, we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them, and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping;
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
## p. 2537 (#95) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2537
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow;
For all day we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark, underground;
Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
VII
« For all day the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,
Till our hearts turn, our heads with puises burning,
And the walls turn in their places.
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, –
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,
O ye wheels) (breaking out in a mad moaning),
'Stop! be silent for to-day! ) »
VIII
Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth;
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth;
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;
Let them prove their living souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
Still all day the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
IX
Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him, and pray;
So the blessed One who blesseth all the others
Will bless them another day.
They answer, “Who is God, that he should hear us
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred ?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word;
## p. 2538 (#96) ############################################
2538
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door.
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping any more?
X
“Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm,
'Our Father, looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words except Our Father';
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
(Our Father! ) If he heard us, he would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
"Come and rest with me, my child. '
XI
« But no! ” say the children, weeping faster,
«He is speechless as a stone;
And they tell us, of his image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to! ” say the children, -"up in heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving:
We look up for God; but tears have made us blind. ”
Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach ?
For God's possible is taught by his world's loving —
And the children doubt of each.
XII
And well may the children weep before you!
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun.
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm ;
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
## p. 2539 (#97) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2539
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly –
Let them weep! let them weep!
XIII
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see.
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
«How long,” they say, how long, () 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 upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath! ”
MOTHER AND POET
(On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed
at Ancona and Gaeta. ]
D*
EAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said:
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever instead.
What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain ?
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest,
And I proud by that test.
What art's for a woman ? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees,
And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to dote.
## p. 2540 (#98) ############################################
2540
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
.
To teach them.
It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
And when their eyes flashed . . O my beautiful eyes! . . .
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise [kneels.
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one
God, how the house feels!
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
(
There was triumph at Turin: 'Ancona was free ! »
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.
I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand :- "I was not to faint,
One loved me for two; would be with me ere long :
And Viva l'Italia he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint. ”
My Nanni would add, “he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest,
To live on for the rest. ”
On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta, — "Shot.
Tell his mother. ” Ah, ah! “his,” “their” mother, not «mine »:
No voice says, "My mother," again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot ?
1
## p. 2541 (#99) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2541
Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.
O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark
To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,-
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!
Both boys dead ? but that's out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son ?
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men;
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short;
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee;
(red:
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
(And I have my dead) –
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me! !
## p. 2542 (#100) ###########################################
2542
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
A COURT LADY
H
Er hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark;
Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.
Never was lady of Milan nobler in naine and in race;
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.
Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife,
Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.
She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, Bring
That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.
“Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote;
Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.
“Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves. ”
Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.
In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end, --
« Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend. ”
Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed;
Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.
« Art thou a Lombard, my brother ? Happy art thou! ” she cried,
And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face — and died.
Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:
He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.
Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.
« Art thou a Romagnole ? ” Her eyes drove lightnings before her.
« Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord
Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.
"Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast
To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past. ”
Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's,
Young, and pathetic with dying,-a deep black hole in the curls.
"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain,
Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the slain ? )
## p. 2543 (#101) ###########################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2543
(
Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands:
Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as
she stands.
On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:
Kneeling: “O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all ?
“Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line;
But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine.
“Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossest,
But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the
rest. »
Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined
One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.
Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the name;
But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.
Only a tear for Venice? She turned as in passion and loss,
And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing
the cross.
Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,
Stern and strong in his death: “And dost thou suffer, my brother ? ”
Holding his hands in hers: “Out of the Piedmont lion
Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on. ”
Holding his cold rough hands: “Well, oh well have ye done
In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone. ”
Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring.
« That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King ! »
THE PROSPECT
ETHINKS we do as fretful children do,
M *Leaning their faces on the window-pane
To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
A mystic separation 'twixt those twain, -
The life beyond us and our souls in pain. -
We miss the prospect which we are called unto
## p. 2544 (#102) ###########################################
2544
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
That so, as life's appointment issueth,
Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.
DE PROFUNDIS
T"
HE face which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With daily love, is dimmed away -
And yet iny days go on, go on.
The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone,
And every morning with “Good day )
Make each day good, is hushed away —
And yet my days go on, go on.
The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day,
With steadfast love is caught away –
And yet my days go on, go on.
The world goes whispering to its own,
« This anguish pierces to the bone. ”
And tender friends go sighing round,
( What love can ever cure this wound ? »
My days go on, my days go on.
The past rolls forward on the sun
And makes all night. O dreams begun,
Not to be ended! Ended bliss !
And life, that will not end in this!
My days go on, iny days go on.
Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
As one alone, once not alone,
I sit and knock at Nature's door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
Whose desolated days go on.
## p. 2545 (#103) ###########################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2545
I knock and cry – L’ndone, undone!
Is there no help, no comfort — none ?
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
Where others drive their loaded wains ?
My vacant days go on, go on.
This Nature, though the snows be down,
Thinks kindly of the bird of June.
The little red hip on the tree
Is ripe for such. What is for me,
Whose days so winterly go on?
No bird am I to sing in June,
And dare not ask an equal boon.
Good nests and berries red are Nature's
To give away to better creatures -
And yet my days go on, go on.
I ask less kindness to be done -
Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon
(Too early worn and grimed) with sweet
Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,
Till days go out which now go on.
Only to lift the turf unmown
From off the earth where it has grown,
Some cubit-space, and say, Behold,
Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold,
Forgetting how the days go on. ”
A Voice reproves me thereupon,
More sweet than Nature's, when the drone
Of bees is sweetest, and more deep,
Than when the rivers overleap
The shuddering pines, and thunder on.
God's Voice, not Nature's - night and noon
He sits upon the great white throne,
And listens for the creature's praise.
What babble we of days and days ?
The Dayspring he, whose days go on!
He reigns above, he reigns alone:
Systems burn out and leave his throne:
Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall
Around him, changeless amid all
Ancient of days, whose days go on!
V -160
## p. 2546 (#104) ###########################################
2546
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
He reigns below, he reigns alone —
And having life in love forgone
Beneath the crown of sovran thorns,
He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns
Or rules with him, while days go on?
By anguish which made pale the sun,
I hear him charge his saints that none
Among the creatures anywhere
Blaspheme against him with despair,
However darkly days go on.
Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown:
No mortal grief deserves that crown.
O supreme Love, chief misery,
The sharp regalia are for Thee,
Whose days eternally go on!
For us,
whatever's undergone,
Thou knowest, willest what is done.
Grief may be joy misunderstood:
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on.
Whatever's lost, it first was won!
We will not struggle nor impugn.
Perhaps the cup was broken here
That Heaven's new wine might show more clear.
I praise Thee while my days go on.
I praise Thee while my days go on;
I love Thee while my days go on!
Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
With emptied arms and treasure lost,
I thank Thee while my days go on!
2522
HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL
PSYCHAURA
THE
He wind of an autumn midnight
Is moaning around my door -
The curtains wave at the window,
The carpet lifts on the floor.
There are sounds like startled footfalls
In the distant chambers now,
And the touching of airy fingers
Is busy on hand and brow.
'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling –
By the moody host unsought-
Through the chambers of memory wander
The invisible airs of thought.
For it bloweth where it listeth,
With a murmur loud or low;
Whence it cometh - whither it goeth -
None tell us, and none may know.
Now wearying round the portals
Of the vacant, desolate mind —
As the doors of a ruined mansion,
That creak in the cold night wind.
And anon an awful memory
Sweeps over it fierce and high-
Like the roar of a mountain forest
When the midnight gale goes by.
Then its voice subsides in wailing,
And, ere the dawning of day,
Murmuring fainter and fainter,
In the distance dies away.
SUSPIRIA NOCTIS
EADING, and reading -- little is the gain
R. Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves.
List rather to the melancholy rain,
Drop-dropping from the eaves.
Still the old tale - how hardly worth the telling!
Hark to the wind ! - again that mournful sound,
That all night long, around this lonely dwelling,
Moans like a dying hound.
## p. 2523 (#83) ############################################
2523
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(1809-1861)
is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of
Miss Mitford and her “dear young friend Miss Barrett,
when the -esses of "authoresses” and “poetesses” and “edi-
tresses” and “hermitesses” make the pages sibilant; when Books of
Beauty,' and Keepsakes, and the extraordinary methods of “Fin-
den's Tableaux” make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr.
Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford “to the giraffes and the Diorama,”
called for “Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads
Greek as I do French, who has published
some translations from Æschylus, and some
most striking poems,” « Our sweet Miss
Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is
to think of her. » Of her own life Mrs.
Browning writes:-“As to stories, my story
amounts to the knife-grinder's, with noth-
ing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a
cage would have as good a story; most of
my events and nearly all my intense pleas-
ure have passed in my thoughts. ”
She was born at Burn Hall, Durham,
on March 6th, 1809, and passed a happy MRS. BROWNING
childhood and youth in her father's coun-
try house at Hope End, Herefordshire. She was remarkably pre-
cocious, reading Homer in the original at eight years of age. She
said that in those days “the Greeks were her demigods. She
dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her black pony. ” I
wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier. But what
is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained
with me. ” At seventeen years of age she published the “Essay on
Mind,' and translated the Prometheus) of Æschylus.
later the family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account
of her continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months
at a time. The shock following on the death of her brother, who
was drowned before her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for
rest, completely shattered her physically. Now her life of seclusion in
her London home began. For years she lay upon a couch in a large,
comfortably darkened room, seeing only the immediate members
Some years
## p. 2524 (#84) ############################################
2524
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
of her family and a few privileged friends, and spending her days
in writing and study, “reading,” Miss Mitford says, “almost every
book worth reading in almost every language. ” Here Robert Brown-
ing met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of her
father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence
at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same
name. Their home became the centre of attraction to visitors in
Florence, and many of the finest minds in the literary and artistic
world were among their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them,
describes Mrs. Browning as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied
at all, at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender
fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity
of voice. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her
cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another
figure in the world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck
and make her face look whiter. ” She died in Florence on the 30th
of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed a tablet to her
memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.
The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to
explain her poetry. It is a life “without a catastrophe,” except per-
haps to her devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that
some of Mrs. Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was
so pampered and shielded from every outside touch, that all the
woes common to humanity grew for her into awful tragedies. Her
life was abnormal and unreal,- an unreality that passed more or less
into everything she did. Indeed, her resuscitation after meeting
Robert Browning would mount into a miracle, unless it were real-
ized that nothing in her former life had been quite as wofuļ as it
seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius,” even
Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter Sav-
age Landor said, “With the exception of Burns, he (Shelley) and
Keats were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other
poet since Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Brown-
ing comes next. ” This is very high praise from very high authority,
but none too high for Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true
lyric ring, that spontaneity of thought and expression which comes
when the singer forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful
under the stress of the moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's
work is buoyed up by her luxurious and overflowing imagination.
With all its imperfections of technique, its lapses of taste and faults
of expression, it always remains poetry, throbbing with passion and
emotion and rich in color and sound. She wrote because she must.
Her own assertions notwithstanding, one cannot think of Mrs. Brown-
ing as sitting down in cold blood to compose a poem according to
## p. 2527 (#85) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2527
Tennyson's own. ” The fine thought and haunting beauty of A
Musical Instrument,' with its matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.
During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself
with great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political
poems of varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when
the occasion passed. But among those poems inspired by the strug-
gle for freedom, Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the Sonnets
from the Portuguese' and Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring
place for its high poetry, its musical, sonorous verse, and the sus-
tained intellectual vigor of composition. Her volume of Last
Poems' contains, among much inferior matter, some of her finest
and most touching work, as (A Musical Instrument,' The Forced
Recruit,' and Mother and Poet. Peter Bayne says of her in his
"Great English women':- In melodiousness and splendor of poetic
gift Mrs. Browning stands
first among women.
not have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the com-
prehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far
more essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspira-
tion, and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved,
and touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its
depths. She seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her
view of life's sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is
something like that which one might imagine a spirit's to be. ”
Whether political, or sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or
impossible, there is about all that Mrs. Browning has written an
enduring charm of picturesqueness, of romance, and of a pure enthu-
siasm for art. “Art for Art,” she cries,
She may
.
“And good for God, himself the essential Good !
We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,
Although our woman-hands should shake and fail. »
This was her achievement - her hands did not fail!
Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to
this slight study:- “You are wrong,” he said, “quite wrong — she
has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a
clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up
something,— he wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you
one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your
head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother
is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star - that's the dif-
ference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine. ”
## p. 2528 (#86) ############################################
2528
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
W**
HAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river ?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river,
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river ! )
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes as he sat by the river.
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed. ”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, ( great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
## p. 2529 (#87) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2529
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
MY HEART AND I
E
NOUGH! we're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason's knife,
As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we're tired, my heart and I.
You see we're tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colors could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune's end,
We loved too true to keep a friend:
At last we're tired, my heart and I.
How tired we feel, my heart and I!
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang gray and uncurled
About men's eyes indifferently;
Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet:
What do we here, my heart and I?
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
“Dear love, you're looking tired,” he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head:
'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.
V-159
## p. 2530 (#88) ############################################
2530
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.
Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?
In this abundant earth, no doubt,
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
And if, before the days grew rough,
We once were loved, used, — well enough
I think we've fared, my heart and I.
FROM (CATARINA TO CAMOENS)
ON
[Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he
recorded the sweetness of her eyes. ]
N THE door you will not enter
I have gazed too long: adieu!
Hope withdraws her peradventure );
Death is near me,- and not you !
Come, O lover,
Close and cover
These poor eyes you called, I ween,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! »
When I heard you sing that burden
In my vernal days and bowers,
Other praises disregarding,
I but hearkened that of yours,
Only saying
In heart-playing,
“Blessèd eyes mine eyes have been,
If the sweetest his have seen ! »
But all changes. At this vesper
Cold the sun shines down the door.
If you stood there, would you whisper,
“Love, I love you,” as before,-
Death pervading
Now and shading
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
As the sweetest ever seen ?
1
## p. 2531 (#89) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2531
Yes, I think, were you beside them,
Near the bed I die upon,
Though their beauty you denied them,
As you stood there looking down,
You would truly
Call them duly,
For the love's sake found therein,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
And if you looked down upon them,
And if they looked up to you,
All the light which has foregone them
Would be gathered back anew;
They would truly
Be as duly
Love-transformed to beauty's sheen,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
But, ah me! you only see me,
In your thoughts of loving man,
Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
Through the wavings of my fan;
And unweeting
Go repeating
In your revery serene,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
O my poet, O my prophet!
When you praised their sweetness so,
Did you think, in singing of it,
That it might be near to go?
Had you fancies
From their glances,
That the grave would quickly screen
«Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
No reply. The fountain's warble
In the courtyard sounds alone.
As the water to the marble
So my heart falls with a moan
From love-sighing
To this dying.
Death forerunneth Love to win
« Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
Will you come? When I'm departed
Where all sweetnesses are hid,
## p. 2532 (#90) ############################################
2532
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid,
Cry, O lover,
Love is over!
Cry, beneath the cypress green,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
When the Angelus is ringing,
Near the convent will you walk,
And recall the choral singing
Which brought angels down our talk ?
Spirit-shriven
I viewed heaven,
Till you smiled — "Is earth unclean,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen ?
When beneath the palace-lattice
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there that is
Not the old familiar one,
Will you oftly
Murmur softly,
“Here ye watched me morn and e'en,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
When the palace-ladies, sitting
Round your gittern, shall have said,
Poets, sing those verses written
For the lady who is dead,”
Will you tremble,
Yet dissemble,
Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen ” ?
“Sweetest eyes! ) How sweet in flowings
The repeated cadence is!
Though you sang a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it
"Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise intervene,-
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
But — but now — yet unremoved
Up to heaven they glisten fast;
You may cast away, beloved,
In your future all my past:
## p. 2533 (#91) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2533
Such old phrases
May be praises
For some fairer bosom-queen-
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen! ”
Eyes of mine, what are ye doing ?
Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
If a tear be, on your showing,
Dropped for any hope of his!
Death has boldness
Besides coldness,
If unworthy tears demean
« Sweetest eyes were ever seen. ”
I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine.
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,
Angels shield them,
Whatsoever eyes terrene
Be the sweetest his have seen.
THE SLEEP
«He giveth his beloved sleep. ) — Ps. cxxvii. 2
O"
F ALL the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward into souls afar
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this —
“He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
What would we give to our beloved ?
The hero's heart to be unmoved,
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows? -
He giveth his beloved sleep.
What do we give to our beloved ?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
He giveth his beloved sleep.
## p. 2534 (#92) ############################################
2534
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(c
Sleep soft, beloved! ” we sometimes say,
Who have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
He giveth his beloved sleep.
O earth, so full of dreary noises !
O men with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth his beloved sleep.
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth his beloved sleep.
Ay, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man
Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say,- and through the word
I think their happy smile is heard, -
“He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who giveth his beloved sleep.
And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, “Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth his beloved sleep. ”
## p. 2535 (#93) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2535
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
I
Dº
O ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their
mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
II
Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so ?
The old man may weep for his To-morrow
Which is lost in Long-Ago;
The old tree is leafless in the forest;
The old year is ending in the frost;
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest;
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland ?
III
They look up with their pale and sunken faces;
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy.
«Your old earth,” they say, is very dreary;
Our young feet,” they say, are very weak;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary;
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,
## p. 2536 (#94) ############################################
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ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old. ”
IV
« True,” say the children, it may happen
That we die before our time:
Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
Was no room for any work in the close clay,
From the sleep wherein lieth none will wake her,
Crying, “Get up, little Alice! it is day. '
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries.
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud by the kirk-chime.
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
« That we die before our time. ”
Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking
Death in life, as best to have.
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
But they answer, «Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine.
VI
“For oh! ” say the children, we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them, and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping;
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
## p. 2537 (#95) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2537
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow;
For all day we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark, underground;
Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
VII
« For all day the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,
Till our hearts turn, our heads with puises burning,
And the walls turn in their places.
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, –
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,
O ye wheels) (breaking out in a mad moaning),
'Stop! be silent for to-day! ) »
VIII
Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth;
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth;
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;
Let them prove their living souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
Still all day the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
IX
Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him, and pray;
So the blessed One who blesseth all the others
Will bless them another day.
They answer, “Who is God, that he should hear us
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred ?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word;
## p. 2538 (#96) ############################################
2538
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door.
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping any more?
X
“Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm,
'Our Father, looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words except Our Father';
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
(Our Father! ) If he heard us, he would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
"Come and rest with me, my child. '
XI
« But no! ” say the children, weeping faster,
«He is speechless as a stone;
And they tell us, of his image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to! ” say the children, -"up in heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving:
We look up for God; but tears have made us blind. ”
Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach ?
For God's possible is taught by his world's loving —
And the children doubt of each.
XII
And well may the children weep before you!
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun.
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm ;
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
## p. 2539 (#97) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2539
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly –
Let them weep! let them weep!
XIII
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see.
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
«How long,” they say, how long, () 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 upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath! ”
MOTHER AND POET
(On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed
at Ancona and Gaeta. ]
D*
EAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said:
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever instead.
What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain ?
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest,
And I proud by that test.
What art's for a woman ? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees,
And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to dote.
## p. 2540 (#98) ############################################
2540
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
.
To teach them.
It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
And when their eyes flashed . . O my beautiful eyes! . . .
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise [kneels.
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one
God, how the house feels!
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
(
There was triumph at Turin: 'Ancona was free ! »
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.
I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand :- "I was not to faint,
One loved me for two; would be with me ere long :
And Viva l'Italia he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint. ”
My Nanni would add, “he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest,
To live on for the rest. ”
On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta, — "Shot.
Tell his mother. ” Ah, ah! “his,” “their” mother, not «mine »:
No voice says, "My mother," again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot ?
1
## p. 2541 (#99) ############################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2541
Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.
O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark
To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,-
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!
Both boys dead ? but that's out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son ?
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men;
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short;
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee;
(red:
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
(And I have my dead) –
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me! !
## p. 2542 (#100) ###########################################
2542
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
A COURT LADY
H
Er hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark;
Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.
Never was lady of Milan nobler in naine and in race;
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.
Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife,
Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.
She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, Bring
That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.
“Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote;
Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.
“Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves. ”
Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.
In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end, --
« Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend. ”
Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed;
Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.
« Art thou a Lombard, my brother ? Happy art thou! ” she cried,
And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face — and died.
Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:
He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.
Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.
« Art thou a Romagnole ? ” Her eyes drove lightnings before her.
« Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord
Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.
"Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast
To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past. ”
Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's,
Young, and pathetic with dying,-a deep black hole in the curls.
"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain,
Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the slain ? )
## p. 2543 (#101) ###########################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2543
(
Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands:
Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as
she stands.
On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:
Kneeling: “O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all ?
“Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line;
But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine.
“Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossest,
But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the
rest. »
Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined
One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.
Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the name;
But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.
Only a tear for Venice? She turned as in passion and loss,
And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing
the cross.
Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,
Stern and strong in his death: “And dost thou suffer, my brother ? ”
Holding his hands in hers: “Out of the Piedmont lion
Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on. ”
Holding his cold rough hands: “Well, oh well have ye done
In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone. ”
Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring.
« That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King ! »
THE PROSPECT
ETHINKS we do as fretful children do,
M *Leaning their faces on the window-pane
To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
A mystic separation 'twixt those twain, -
The life beyond us and our souls in pain. -
We miss the prospect which we are called unto
## p. 2544 (#102) ###########################################
2544
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
That so, as life's appointment issueth,
Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.
DE PROFUNDIS
T"
HE face which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With daily love, is dimmed away -
And yet iny days go on, go on.
The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone,
And every morning with “Good day )
Make each day good, is hushed away —
And yet my days go on, go on.
The heart which, like a staff, was one
For mine to lean and rest upon,
The strongest on the longest day,
With steadfast love is caught away –
And yet my days go on, go on.
The world goes whispering to its own,
« This anguish pierces to the bone. ”
And tender friends go sighing round,
( What love can ever cure this wound ? »
My days go on, my days go on.
The past rolls forward on the sun
And makes all night. O dreams begun,
Not to be ended! Ended bliss !
And life, that will not end in this!
My days go on, iny days go on.
Breath freezes on my lips to moan:
As one alone, once not alone,
I sit and knock at Nature's door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
Whose desolated days go on.
## p. 2545 (#103) ###########################################
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
2545
I knock and cry – L’ndone, undone!
Is there no help, no comfort — none ?
No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
Where others drive their loaded wains ?
My vacant days go on, go on.
This Nature, though the snows be down,
Thinks kindly of the bird of June.
The little red hip on the tree
Is ripe for such. What is for me,
Whose days so winterly go on?
No bird am I to sing in June,
And dare not ask an equal boon.
Good nests and berries red are Nature's
To give away to better creatures -
And yet my days go on, go on.
I ask less kindness to be done -
Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon
(Too early worn and grimed) with sweet
Cool deathly touch to these tired feet,
Till days go out which now go on.
Only to lift the turf unmown
From off the earth where it has grown,
Some cubit-space, and say, Behold,
Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold,
Forgetting how the days go on. ”
A Voice reproves me thereupon,
More sweet than Nature's, when the drone
Of bees is sweetest, and more deep,
Than when the rivers overleap
The shuddering pines, and thunder on.
God's Voice, not Nature's - night and noon
He sits upon the great white throne,
And listens for the creature's praise.
What babble we of days and days ?
The Dayspring he, whose days go on!
He reigns above, he reigns alone:
Systems burn out and leave his throne:
Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall
Around him, changeless amid all
Ancient of days, whose days go on!
V -160
## p. 2546 (#104) ###########################################
2546
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
He reigns below, he reigns alone —
And having life in love forgone
Beneath the crown of sovran thorns,
He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns
Or rules with him, while days go on?
By anguish which made pale the sun,
I hear him charge his saints that none
Among the creatures anywhere
Blaspheme against him with despair,
However darkly days go on.
Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown:
No mortal grief deserves that crown.
O supreme Love, chief misery,
The sharp regalia are for Thee,
Whose days eternally go on!
For us,
whatever's undergone,
Thou knowest, willest what is done.
Grief may be joy misunderstood:
Only the Good discerns the good.
I trust Thee while my days go on.
Whatever's lost, it first was won!
We will not struggle nor impugn.
Perhaps the cup was broken here
That Heaven's new wine might show more clear.
I praise Thee while my days go on.
I praise Thee while my days go on;
I love Thee while my days go on!
Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost,
With emptied arms and treasure lost,
I thank Thee while my days go on!
