Keats to Morris

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

ELIZABETH BARRETT was born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, in 1805. She received a thorough classical education, and began to write for publication very early. At the age of twentyone she published "An Essay on Mind, with other Poems," but the entire contents of that volume were discarded by her in the later collections of her works. In 1833 she published a translation of the "Prometheus" of Eschylus, together with some minor poems. She did not consider the translation a success, and some years later she replaced it with the one which now stands in her works. In 1838 she published "The Seraphim, and other Poems," in which appear the first traces of her genius.

In 1837 she met with two serious misfortunes, which made her an invalid for years, and cast a shade of sadness over her whole life: the first was the rupture of a blood-vessel in her lungs; the other, the drowning of her brother near Torquay, Devonshire, in plain sight from a balcony where she stood powerless to help him. In a darkened room in London, surrounded by her books, but often suffering extreme pain which precluded all study, she passed the next nine years. Miss Mitford, who made her acquaintance about 1836, and became a warm personal friend, thus describes her in "Recollections of a Literary Life:" "Such is the influence of her manners, her conversation, her temper, her thousand sweet and attaching qualities, that they who know her best are apt to lose. sight altogether of her learning and of her genius, and to think of her only as the most charming person that they have ever met. . . . Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the 'Prometheus' of Eschylus, the authoress of the Essay on Mind,' was old enough to be introduced into company."

During these nine years of seclusion she studied especially the Greek philosophers and poets, and the Old Testament, and wrote a series of essays on the Greek Christian poets, which were published in the London Athenæum. In 1844 she revised her poems for a collected edition, which appeared that year in two volumes. Being required to write something more, to make the second volume equal in bulk to the first, she produced "Lady Geraldine's Courtship" at one sitting of twelve hours. In connection with

this a pretty story is told, respecting her introduction to Robert Browning, but its authenticity has been disputed. The poem contains the stanza:

"Or at times a modern volume-Wordsworth's solemnthoughted idyl,

Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverieOr from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

It is said that the poet called to acknowledge the compliment in person, and by the blunder of a servant was shown into the darkened chamber where only Miss Barrett's most intimate friends were ever admitted, and that from this incident sprang the acquaintance which resulted in their marriage. The wedding took place in the autumn of 1846, and they went immediately to Italy, settling in Florence, which was their residence during the remainder of her life. The house they inhabited gave name to her next volume of poems, "Casa Guidi Windows," published in 1851.

Whatever may have been the outward circumstances of this most romantic and happy marriage, there is no question that the true history of her love is told in the so-called "Sonnets from the Portuguese," which, read consecutively as one poem, constitute her noblest and most perfect work. They were first printed in the second edition of her collected poems, 1850.

Their home in Florence has been thus described by a visitor: "Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte at which the boy Browning passed many an hour, the little dining-room, covered with tapestry, where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning-the large room, filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat; and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints, that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases, constructed of specimens of Florentine carving, selected by Mr. Browning, were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gaily bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's profile, a cast of Keats's

face and brow, taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon (Mrs. Browning's good friend and relative), little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewed with writingmaterials, books, and newspapers, was always by her side."

poleon III. in Italy." She died in Florence on the morning of June 29, 1861. The best-known portrait of her is that by Buchanan Read.

Between Mrs. Browning and any other poetess who has written in English there is no comparison. Exactly where she should be ranked among our poets, it is difficult to say. She had more invention than many, and more learning than most; but she seems never to have exercised upon her work that severity of self-criticism which is absolutely necessary to the highest artistic achievements. Almost every poem she wrote is too long, and might have been improved Her longest poem, Aurora Leigh," a narra- by compression; and almost every one, too, extive in blank verse, was published in 1856. It hibits instances of slip-shod versification too is said that it was nearly completed before her frequent to be excusable. But they will enjoy husband knew of its existence. Her last publi- a long popularity nevertheless; for the spirit cation was Poems before the Congress," 1860, that gives them vitality is human sympathy dereissued in this country under the title of "Na-veloped to the dimensions of genius.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery while I strove,
"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I
said. But, there,
The silver answer rang.
"Not Death, but
Love."

II.

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer, . . . singing
through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress-tree?
The chrism is on thine head-on mine, the dew-
And Death must dig the level where these agree.

I LIFT my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine,
head

O my beloved, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand further off then! go.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

223

VI.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

VII.

THE face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee ancar.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away
For where thou art or shall be, there or here;
And this... this lute and song . . . loved
yesterday,

(The singing angels know) are only dear,

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AND therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart-
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now 'gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music-why advert
To these things? O Beloved, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,

Because thy name moves right in what they say. To live on still in love, and yet in vain, . .

VIII.

WHAT Can I give thee back, O liberal

And princely giver, who has brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold-but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have

run

The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

IX.

CAN it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to
live

For all thy adjurations? O my fears,

That this can scarce be right! We are not
peers,

So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love . . . which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.

XII.

...

INDEED this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost, . .
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were
crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak
Of love even, as a good thing of my own.
Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and
weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne-
And that I love (0 soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

XIII.

AND wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are
rough,

Between our faces, to cast light on each ?-
I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirit so far off
From myself.. me. . . that I should bring

thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief-
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

XIV.

Ir thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say

"I love her for her smile. . . her look. ... her way

Of speaking gently, . . . for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day-"
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee-and love, so
wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry-
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

XV.

ACCUSE me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;
For we two look two ways and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest, with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline-

Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine,
And to spread wing and fly in the outer air
Were most impossible failure, if I strove

To fail so. But I look on thee . . . on thee...
Beholding, besides love, the end of love,
Hearing oblivion beyond memory!
As one who sits and gazes from above,
Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

XVI.

AND yet, because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow
Too close against thine heart, henceforth to know
How it shook when alone. Why, conquering
May prove as lordly and complete a thing
In lifting upward as in crushing low!
And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword
To one who lifts him from the bloody earth-
Even so, Belovèd, I at last record,

Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,
I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

XVII.

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between His After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds, a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears. God's will devotes
Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? . . . or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing. . . of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing?.
Choose.

XVIII.

I NEVER gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say,
"Take it." My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee.
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more. It only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks, the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-

shears

Would take this first, but Love is justifiedTake it thou, . . . finding pure, from all those years,

The kiss my mother left here when she died.

XIX.

THE Soul's Rialto hath its merchandise;
I barter curl for curl upon that mart,
And from my poet's forehead to my heart,
Receive this lock which outweighs argosies-
As purely black, as erst, to Pindar's eyes,
The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart
The nine white Muse-brows. For this counter-
part,

Thy bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I surmise,
Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black!
I tie the shadow safe from gliding back,
Thus with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath,
And lay the gift where nothing hindereth,
Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack
No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.

XX.

BELOVED, My Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sate alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice, . . . but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains, as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible band . . . why, thus I
drink

Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech-nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll
The silver iterance !-only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

XXII.

WHEN Our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point-what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved-where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

225

A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust-their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come...
to be,

Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendors (better yet the same,
As river-water hollowed into fonts)

Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants-
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to
shame.

XXIII.

Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead,
Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine?
And would the sun for thee more coldly shine,
Because of grave-damps falling round my head?
I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read
Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine-
But... so much to thee? Can I pour thy wine
While my hands tremble? Then my soul instead
Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower range.
Then, love me, Love! look on me... breathe on
me!

As brighter ladies do not count it strange,
For love, to give up acres and degree,

I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange
My near sweet view of Heaven, for earth with
thee!

XXIV.

LET the world's sharpness like a clasping knife
Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting. Life to life--
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
And feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still
The Lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer;
Growing straight out of man's reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

XXV.

A HEAVY heart, Belovèd have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls... each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own
grace

Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
VOL. III.-15

XXVII.

My own beloved, who hast lifted me
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,
Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
Who camest to me when the world was gone,
And I who looked for only God found thee!
I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel,
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life-so I, with bosom swell,
Make witness, here, between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

XXVIII.

My letters! all dead paper, . . . mute and white!—
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the
string

And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,... he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand. . . a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!-this, . . . the paper's light...
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine-and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this... O Love, thy words have ill availed,
If what this said, I dared repeat at last!

XXIX.

I THINK of thee !-my thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there's naught to

see

Except the straggling green which hides the

wood.

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee,

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