But when the excitement of
composition
had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position.
subsided, I felt afraid of my position.
Elizabeth Browning - 1
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Title: The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
_IN SIX VOLUMES_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO. , 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1890
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S
POETICAL WORKS
VOL. I.
[Illustration: _Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett. _
_at the age of nine. _
_Engraved by G. Cooke from a Drawing by Charles Hayter. _
London: Published by Smith, Elder & C^o. 15. Waterloo Place. ]
PREFATORY NOTE.
In a recent "Memoir of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," by John H. Ingram,
it is observed that "such essays on her personal history as have
appeared, either in England or elsewhere, are replete with mistakes or
misstatements. " For these he proposes to substitute "a correct if short
memoir:" but, kindly and appreciative as may be Mr. Ingram's
performance, there occur not a few passages in it equally "mistaken and
misstated. "
1. "Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward Moulton Barrett, was born
in London on the 4th of March, 1809. " Elizabeth was born, March 6, 1806,
at Coxhoe Hall, county of Durham, the residence of her father. [A]
"Before she was eleven she composed an epic on 'Marathon. '" She was then
fourteen.
2. "It is said that Mr. Barrett was a man of intellect and culture, and
therefore able to direct his daughter's education, but be that so or
not, he obtained for her the tutorial assistance of the well-known Greek
scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd . . . who was also a writer of fluent verse: and
his influence and instruction doubtless confirmed Miss Barrett in her
poetical aspirations. " Mr. Boyd, early deprived of sight from
over-study, resided at Malvern, and cared for little else than Greek
literature, especially that of the "Fathers. " He was about or over
fifty, stooped a good deal, and was nearly bald. His daily habit was to
sit for hours before a table, treating it as a piano with his fingers,
and reciting Greek--his memory for which was such that, on a folio
column of his favourite St. Gregory being read to him, he would repeat
it without missing a syllable. Elizabeth, then residing in
Herefordshire, visited him frequently, partly from her own love of
Greek, and partly from a desire for the congenial society of one to whom
her attendance might be helpful. There was nothing in the least
"tutorial" in this relation--merely the natural feeling of a girl for a
blind and disabled scholar in whose pursuits she took interest. Her
knowledge of Greek was originally due to a preference for sharing with
her brother Edward in the instruction of his Scottish tutor Mr. M'Swiney
rather than in that of her own governess Mrs. Orme: and at such lessons
she constantly assisted until her brother's departure for the Charter
House--where he had Thackeray for a schoolfellow. In point of fact, she
was self-taught in almost every respect. Mr. Boyd was no writer of
"fluent verse," though he published an unimportant volume, and the
literary sympathies of the friends were exclusively bestowed on Greek.
3. "Edward, the eldest of the family," was Elizabeth's younger by nearly
two years. He and his companions perished, not "just off Teignmouth,"
but in Babbicombe Bay. The bodies drifted up channel, and were recovered
three days after.
4. "Her father's fortune was considerably augmented by his accession to
the property of his only brother Richard, for many years Speaker of the
House of Assembly at Jamaica. " Mr. Edward Moulton, by the will of his
grandfather, was directed to affix the name of Barrett to that of
Moulton, upon succeeding to the estates in Jamaica. Richard was his
cousin, and by his death Mr. Barrett did not acquire a shilling. His
only brother was Samuel, sometime M. P. for Richmond. He had also a
sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of
Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of
Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so
characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early
death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very
young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on
Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth
whose "fag" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was
sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage,
went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he
gave himself up assiduously to the usual duties and occupations of a
country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for
a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a
Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted
considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early
correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake
discontinued keeping deer in the park.
Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical
Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years
past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left
without notice by anybody.
R. B.
29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
_December 10, 1887. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:--
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward
Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica,
by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March
6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.
[Illustration: COXHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING. ]
Dedication
_TO MY FATHER_
_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see
to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off
when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you
who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection
implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither
of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to
speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough,
that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to
yours. _
_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry
had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted
hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things
bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who
hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one
Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the
exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and
comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I
used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal
dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your
beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one
smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by
associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest
affection. _
_Your_
_E. B. B. _
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.
The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have
been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my
"Seraphim" and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by
the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the
exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are
printed now for the first time.
As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the
longest and most important work (to _me_! ) which I ever trusted into the
current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's
attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after
considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather
fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of
the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of
pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,
My exiled, my host!
Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a
Heaven's empire was lost.
Through the seams of her shaken foundations,
Smoke up in great joy!
With the smoke of your fierce exultations
Deform and destroy!
Smoke up with your lurid revenges,
And darken the face
Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes
From glory and grace.
We, in falling, while destiny strangles,
Pull down with us all.
Let them look to the rest of their angels!
Who's safe from a fall?
HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
The image of God.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,--
More curse has been hurled:
Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil;
Good reigns not alone:
_I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil,
Inherit a throne.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_Lucifer. _ Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable
Under thy keeping.
_Gabriel. _ Angel of the sin,
Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
A monumental melancholy gloom
Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good.
Go from us straightway!
_Lucifer. _ Wherefore?
_Gabriel. _ Lucifer,
Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
_Lucifer. _ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I?
The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I?
But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,
My exiled, my host!
Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a
Heaven's empire was lost.
Through the seams of her shaken foundations,
Smoke up in great joy!
With the smoke of your fierce exultations
Deform and destroy!
Smoke up with your lurid revenges,
And darken the face
Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes
From glory and grace.
We, in falling, while destiny strangles,
Pull down with us all.
Let them look to the rest of their angels!
Who's safe from a fall?
HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
The image of God.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,--
More curse has been hurled:
Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil;
Good reigns not alone:
_I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil,
Inherit a throne.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_Lucifer. _ Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable
Under thy keeping.
_Gabriel. _ Angel of the sin,
Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
A monumental melancholy gloom
Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good.
Go from us straightway!
_Lucifer. _ Wherefore?
_Gabriel. _ Lucifer,
Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
_Lucifer. _ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I?
The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I?
_Gabriel. _ Depart!
_Lucifer. _ And where's the logic of 'depart'?
Our lady Eve had half been satisfied
To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt
To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream
Of guarding some monopoly in heaven
Instead of earth? Why, I can dream with thee
To the length of thy wings.
_Gabriel. _ I do not dream.
This is not heaven, even in a dream, nor earth,
As earth was once, first breathed among the stars,
Articulate glory from the mouth divine,
To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly,
Touched like a lute-string, and the sons of God
Said AMEN, singing it. I know that this
Is earth not new created but new cursed--
This, Eden's gate not opened but built up
With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream?
Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost
By Lucifer the serpent; this the sword
(This sword alive with justice and with fire)
That smote, upon the forehead, Lucifer
The angel. Wherefore, angel, go--depart!
Enough is sinned and suffered.
_Lucifer. _ By no means.
Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on.
It holds fast still--it cracks not under curse;
It holds like mine immortal. Presently
We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green
Or greener certes, than its knowledge-tree.
We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,
More eminent for shadow: for the rest,
We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,
And temples, if it please you:--we'll have feasts
And funerals also, merrymakes and wars,
Till blood and wine shall mix and run along
Right o'er the edges. And, good Gabriel
(Ye like that word in heaven), _I_ too have strength--
Strength to behold Him and not worship Him,
Strength to fall from Him and not cry on Him,
Strength to be in the universe and yet
Neither God nor his servant. The red sign
Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,
Is God's sign that it bows not unto God,
The potter's mark upon his work, to show
It rings well to the striker. I and the earth
Can bear more curse.
_Gabriel. _ O miserable earth,
O ruined angel!
_Lucifer. _ Well, and if it be!
I CHOSE this ruin, I elected it
Of my will, not of service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient,
And overtop thy crown with my despair
My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven,
And leave me to the earth, which is mine own
In virtue of her ruin, as I hers
In virtue of my revolt! Turn thou from both
That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,
And spare to read us backward any more
Of the spent hallelujahs!
_Gabriel. _ Spirit of scorn,
I might say, of unreason! I might say,
That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives
With God's relations set in time and space;
That who elects, assumes a something good
Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys
The law of a Life-maker . . .
_Lucifer. _ Let it pass!
No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up
And strike my brow against the crystalline
Roofing the creatures,--shall I say, for that,
My stature is too high for me to stand,--
Henceforward I must sit? Sit _thou_!
_Gabriel. _ I kneel.
_Lucifer. _ A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,
And leave my earth to me!
_Gabriel. _ Through heaven and earth
God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
As colour follows light. He overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,
His pity may do so, his angels must,
Whene'er he gives them charges.
_Lucifer. _ Verily,
I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,
Might hold this charge of standing with a sword
'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well
As the benignest angel of you all.
_Gabriel. _ Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.
If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God
This morning for a moment, thou hadst known
That only pity fitly can chastise:
Hate but avenges.
_Lucifer. _ As it is, I know
Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,
And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,
Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce
So much as the first shell of,--toward the throne;
When I fell back, down,--staring up as I fell,--
The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,
And that thought of the infinite of God,
Hurled after to precipitate descent;
When countless angel faces still and stern
Pressed out upon me from the level heavens
Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell
Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind
By the sight within your eyes,--'twas then I knew
How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!
_Gabriel. _ Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me
Which God keeps in me, I would give away
All--save that truth and his love keeping it,--
To lead thee home again into the light
And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,
When their rays tremble round them with much song
Sung in more gladness!
_Lucifer. _ Sing, my Morning Star!
Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!
If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,
What were it to this angel?
_Gabriel. _ What love is.
And now I have named God.
_Lucifer. _ Yet, Gabriel,
By the lie in me which I keep myself,
Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,
What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts
To that earth-angel or earth-demon--which,
Thou and I have not solved the problem yet
Enough to argue,--that fallen Adam there,--
That red-clay and a breath,--who must, forsooth,
Live in a new apocalypse of sense,
With beauty and music waving in his trees
And running in his rivers, to make glad
His soul made perfect? --is it not for hope,
A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,
Of finally conducting him and his
To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,
Which affront heaven with their vacuity?
_Gabriel. _ Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy empty words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the vast,
Flushing the starry arteries.
_Lucifer. _ What a change!
So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too
Fill as may please you! --and be pitiful,
As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
Am here and will not go; while there, along
The light to which ye flash the desert out,
Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
I am not a fallen angel!
_Gabriel. _ Dost thou know
Aught of those exiles?
_Lucifer. _ Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the marshalled cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face,--
As if each were a cherub!
_Gabriel. _ Dost thou know
Aught of their future?
_Lucifer. _ Only as much as this:
That evil will increase and multiply
Without a benediction.
Browning, Vol. I, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Title: The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Language: English
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THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
_IN SIX VOLUMES_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO. , 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1890
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S
POETICAL WORKS
VOL. I.
[Illustration: _Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett. _
_at the age of nine. _
_Engraved by G. Cooke from a Drawing by Charles Hayter. _
London: Published by Smith, Elder & C^o. 15. Waterloo Place. ]
PREFATORY NOTE.
In a recent "Memoir of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," by John H. Ingram,
it is observed that "such essays on her personal history as have
appeared, either in England or elsewhere, are replete with mistakes or
misstatements. " For these he proposes to substitute "a correct if short
memoir:" but, kindly and appreciative as may be Mr. Ingram's
performance, there occur not a few passages in it equally "mistaken and
misstated. "
1. "Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward Moulton Barrett, was born
in London on the 4th of March, 1809. " Elizabeth was born, March 6, 1806,
at Coxhoe Hall, county of Durham, the residence of her father. [A]
"Before she was eleven she composed an epic on 'Marathon. '" She was then
fourteen.
2. "It is said that Mr. Barrett was a man of intellect and culture, and
therefore able to direct his daughter's education, but be that so or
not, he obtained for her the tutorial assistance of the well-known Greek
scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd . . . who was also a writer of fluent verse: and
his influence and instruction doubtless confirmed Miss Barrett in her
poetical aspirations. " Mr. Boyd, early deprived of sight from
over-study, resided at Malvern, and cared for little else than Greek
literature, especially that of the "Fathers. " He was about or over
fifty, stooped a good deal, and was nearly bald. His daily habit was to
sit for hours before a table, treating it as a piano with his fingers,
and reciting Greek--his memory for which was such that, on a folio
column of his favourite St. Gregory being read to him, he would repeat
it without missing a syllable. Elizabeth, then residing in
Herefordshire, visited him frequently, partly from her own love of
Greek, and partly from a desire for the congenial society of one to whom
her attendance might be helpful. There was nothing in the least
"tutorial" in this relation--merely the natural feeling of a girl for a
blind and disabled scholar in whose pursuits she took interest. Her
knowledge of Greek was originally due to a preference for sharing with
her brother Edward in the instruction of his Scottish tutor Mr. M'Swiney
rather than in that of her own governess Mrs. Orme: and at such lessons
she constantly assisted until her brother's departure for the Charter
House--where he had Thackeray for a schoolfellow. In point of fact, she
was self-taught in almost every respect. Mr. Boyd was no writer of
"fluent verse," though he published an unimportant volume, and the
literary sympathies of the friends were exclusively bestowed on Greek.
3. "Edward, the eldest of the family," was Elizabeth's younger by nearly
two years. He and his companions perished, not "just off Teignmouth,"
but in Babbicombe Bay. The bodies drifted up channel, and were recovered
three days after.
4. "Her father's fortune was considerably augmented by his accession to
the property of his only brother Richard, for many years Speaker of the
House of Assembly at Jamaica. " Mr. Edward Moulton, by the will of his
grandfather, was directed to affix the name of Barrett to that of
Moulton, upon succeeding to the estates in Jamaica. Richard was his
cousin, and by his death Mr. Barrett did not acquire a shilling. His
only brother was Samuel, sometime M. P. for Richmond. He had also a
sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of
Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of
Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so
characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early
death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very
young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on
Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth
whose "fag" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was
sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage,
went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he
gave himself up assiduously to the usual duties and occupations of a
country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for
a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a
Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted
considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early
correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake
discontinued keeping deer in the park.
Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical
Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years
past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left
without notice by anybody.
R. B.
29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
_December 10, 1887. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:--
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward
Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica,
by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March
6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.
[Illustration: COXHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING. ]
Dedication
_TO MY FATHER_
_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see
to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off
when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you
who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection
implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither
of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to
speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough,
that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to
yours. _
_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry
had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted
hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things
bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who
hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one
Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the
exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and
comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I
used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal
dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your
beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one
smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by
associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest
affection. _
_Your_
_E. B. B. _
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.
The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have
been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my
"Seraphim" and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by
the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the
exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are
printed now for the first time.
As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the
longest and most important work (to _me_! ) which I ever trusted into the
current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's
attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after
considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather
fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of
the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of
pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,
My exiled, my host!
Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a
Heaven's empire was lost.
Through the seams of her shaken foundations,
Smoke up in great joy!
With the smoke of your fierce exultations
Deform and destroy!
Smoke up with your lurid revenges,
And darken the face
Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes
From glory and grace.
We, in falling, while destiny strangles,
Pull down with us all.
Let them look to the rest of their angels!
Who's safe from a fall?
HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
The image of God.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,--
More curse has been hurled:
Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil;
Good reigns not alone:
_I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil,
Inherit a throne.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_Lucifer. _ Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable
Under thy keeping.
_Gabriel. _ Angel of the sin,
Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
A monumental melancholy gloom
Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good.
Go from us straightway!
_Lucifer. _ Wherefore?
_Gabriel. _ Lucifer,
Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
_Lucifer. _ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I?
The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I?
But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,
My exiled, my host!
Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a
Heaven's empire was lost.
Through the seams of her shaken foundations,
Smoke up in great joy!
With the smoke of your fierce exultations
Deform and destroy!
Smoke up with your lurid revenges,
And darken the face
Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes
From glory and grace.
We, in falling, while destiny strangles,
Pull down with us all.
Let them look to the rest of their angels!
Who's safe from a fall?
HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
The image of God.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,--
More curse has been hurled:
Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil;
Good reigns not alone:
_I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil,
Inherit a throne.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_Lucifer. _ Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable
Under thy keeping.
_Gabriel. _ Angel of the sin,
Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
A monumental melancholy gloom
Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good.
Go from us straightway!
_Lucifer. _ Wherefore?
_Gabriel. _ Lucifer,
Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
_Lucifer. _ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I?
The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I?
_Gabriel. _ Depart!
_Lucifer. _ And where's the logic of 'depart'?
Our lady Eve had half been satisfied
To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt
To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream
Of guarding some monopoly in heaven
Instead of earth? Why, I can dream with thee
To the length of thy wings.
_Gabriel. _ I do not dream.
This is not heaven, even in a dream, nor earth,
As earth was once, first breathed among the stars,
Articulate glory from the mouth divine,
To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly,
Touched like a lute-string, and the sons of God
Said AMEN, singing it. I know that this
Is earth not new created but new cursed--
This, Eden's gate not opened but built up
With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream?
Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost
By Lucifer the serpent; this the sword
(This sword alive with justice and with fire)
That smote, upon the forehead, Lucifer
The angel. Wherefore, angel, go--depart!
Enough is sinned and suffered.
_Lucifer. _ By no means.
Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on.
It holds fast still--it cracks not under curse;
It holds like mine immortal. Presently
We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green
Or greener certes, than its knowledge-tree.
We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,
More eminent for shadow: for the rest,
We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,
And temples, if it please you:--we'll have feasts
And funerals also, merrymakes and wars,
Till blood and wine shall mix and run along
Right o'er the edges. And, good Gabriel
(Ye like that word in heaven), _I_ too have strength--
Strength to behold Him and not worship Him,
Strength to fall from Him and not cry on Him,
Strength to be in the universe and yet
Neither God nor his servant. The red sign
Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,
Is God's sign that it bows not unto God,
The potter's mark upon his work, to show
It rings well to the striker. I and the earth
Can bear more curse.
_Gabriel. _ O miserable earth,
O ruined angel!
_Lucifer. _ Well, and if it be!
I CHOSE this ruin, I elected it
Of my will, not of service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient,
And overtop thy crown with my despair
My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven,
And leave me to the earth, which is mine own
In virtue of her ruin, as I hers
In virtue of my revolt! Turn thou from both
That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,
And spare to read us backward any more
Of the spent hallelujahs!
_Gabriel. _ Spirit of scorn,
I might say, of unreason! I might say,
That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives
With God's relations set in time and space;
That who elects, assumes a something good
Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys
The law of a Life-maker . . .
_Lucifer. _ Let it pass!
No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up
And strike my brow against the crystalline
Roofing the creatures,--shall I say, for that,
My stature is too high for me to stand,--
Henceforward I must sit? Sit _thou_!
_Gabriel. _ I kneel.
_Lucifer. _ A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,
And leave my earth to me!
_Gabriel. _ Through heaven and earth
God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
As colour follows light. He overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,
His pity may do so, his angels must,
Whene'er he gives them charges.
_Lucifer. _ Verily,
I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,
Might hold this charge of standing with a sword
'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well
As the benignest angel of you all.
_Gabriel. _ Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.
If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God
This morning for a moment, thou hadst known
That only pity fitly can chastise:
Hate but avenges.
_Lucifer. _ As it is, I know
Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,
And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,
Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce
So much as the first shell of,--toward the throne;
When I fell back, down,--staring up as I fell,--
The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,
And that thought of the infinite of God,
Hurled after to precipitate descent;
When countless angel faces still and stern
Pressed out upon me from the level heavens
Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell
Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind
By the sight within your eyes,--'twas then I knew
How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!
_Gabriel. _ Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me
Which God keeps in me, I would give away
All--save that truth and his love keeping it,--
To lead thee home again into the light
And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,
When their rays tremble round them with much song
Sung in more gladness!
_Lucifer. _ Sing, my Morning Star!
Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!
If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,
What were it to this angel?
_Gabriel. _ What love is.
And now I have named God.
_Lucifer. _ Yet, Gabriel,
By the lie in me which I keep myself,
Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,
What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts
To that earth-angel or earth-demon--which,
Thou and I have not solved the problem yet
Enough to argue,--that fallen Adam there,--
That red-clay and a breath,--who must, forsooth,
Live in a new apocalypse of sense,
With beauty and music waving in his trees
And running in his rivers, to make glad
His soul made perfect? --is it not for hope,
A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,
Of finally conducting him and his
To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,
Which affront heaven with their vacuity?
_Gabriel. _ Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy empty words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the vast,
Flushing the starry arteries.
_Lucifer. _ What a change!
So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too
Fill as may please you! --and be pitiful,
As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
Am here and will not go; while there, along
The light to which ye flash the desert out,
Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
I am not a fallen angel!
_Gabriel. _ Dost thou know
Aught of those exiles?
_Lucifer. _ Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the marshalled cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face,--
As if each were a cherub!
_Gabriel. _ Dost thou know
Aught of their future?
_Lucifer. _ Only as much as this:
That evil will increase and multiply
Without a benediction.
