alike of superabundant imagery and of harmonious verbosity, which has had the happiest results. She is one of the greatest sonnet writers in our language, worthy for this at all events to be ranked side by side with Milton and with Wordsworth.
Our own generation is probably inclined to give the poetess less than her due, and for obvious reasons. The art of versemaking has been carried to a point of technical perfection that she hardly dreamt of, and her laxity offends. Moreover, her innocent and heartfelt enthusiasms fall a little dully on the ear of a perverse and critical generation. We should call her naive, almost silly, where she has merely been artless and confiding. Her enthusiasm for Bulwer Lytton's weaker work and the traces of his influence on her earlier poems we cannot easily away with. There are passages in Aurora Leigh, particularly the passages describing the bad people, which might make an unkindly critic describe the authoress as a hysterical school-girl; and indeed it would not be easy to confute the critic, except by putting passage against passage, and showing how, with her, a lapse is always followed by a rise. What valuable and original elements her thought possesses have for the most part been absorbed long ago, have become common property, and are no longer recognisable as hers. The great struggle for Italian unity has inspired some of her best verses, and that struggle has already become very much a matter of ancient history. Yet in spite of all deductions that can be made-deductions, be it remembered, which are sometimes to be counted against the reader, and only sometimes against the poetess-she remains an attractive and delightful personage, and she has stamped enough of herself upon her poetry to give it an enduring charm. Her deep tenderness and genuineness of feeling, showing themselves in such poems as the Cry of the Children or Cowper's Grave, will never fail of their rightful power. She has touched all the chief human relationships, that of friend and friend, that of husband and wife, that of mother and child, with an exquisite insight and sensitiveness and delicacy, and her style, when she touches them, attains almost always that noble and severe simplicity which is so greatly to be preferred to her most luscious and copious versification. She has added a charm to motherhood only less than that added by Raffaelle himself, and the pleasant fate will be hers of being faithfully read by many a generation of youthful lovers.
I have been in the meadows all the day, And gathered there the nosegay that you see, Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May. But, now I look upon my flowers, decay Has met them in my hands more fatally Because more warmly clasped, and sobs are free To come instead of songs. What you say, Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go Back straightway to the fields and gather more? Another, sooth, may do it, but not I! My heart is very tired, my strength is low, My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within them till myself shall die.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Beat upward to God's throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death- Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe, Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: If it could weep, it could arise and go.
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. I.
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.'
Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door? Look up and see the casement broken in, The bats and owlets builders in the roof! My cricket chirps against thy mandolin. Hush! call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps as thou must sing-alone, aloof.
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.
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.
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!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise ; I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life !—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
FROM CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.'
Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street Live out, from end to end, full in the sun, With Austria's thousands; sword and bayonet, Horse, foot, artillery,-cannons rolling on
Like blind slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode
By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode, Like sculptured Fate serene and terrible. As some smooth river which has overflowed, Will slow and silent down its current wheel A loosened forest, all the pines erect,
So swept, in mute significance of storm,
The marshalled thousands; not an eye deflects To left or right, to catch a novel form
Of Florence city adorned by architect
And carver, or of Beauties live and warm
Scared at the casements,-all, straightforward eyes And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognizant of acts, not imageries.
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