Avarice, which is not only infidelity but idolatry, either from covetous progeny or questuary education, had no root in his breast, who made good works the expression of his faith, and was big with desires unto public and lasting charities; and surely, where good wishes and charitable intentions exceed abilities, theorical beneficency may be more than a dream. They build not castles in the air who would build churches on earth; and though they leave no such structures here, may lay good foundations in heaven. In brief, his life and death were such that I could not blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been himself: almost, I say; for though we may wish the prosperous appurtenances of others, or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so intrinsical is every man unto himself that some doubt may be made whether any would exchange his being, or substantially become another man.

He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby observed under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not here to be found. And although he had no opinion of reputed felicities below, and apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such happiness, yet his sober contempt of the world wrought no Democratism or Cynicism, no laughing or snarling at it, as well understanding there are not felicities in this world to satisfy a serious mind; and therefore, to soften the stream of our lives, we are fain to take in the reputed contentions of this world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to make ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, or co-existimation: for strictly to separate from received and customary felicities, and to confine unto the rigor of realities, were to contract the consolation of our beings unto too uncomfortable circumscriptions.

Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those who destroy themselves; who, being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics had a notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof; that is, in such extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided, and wish what might be feared; and so made evils voluntary and to suit with their own desires, which took off the terror of them.

But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies, who, though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own executioners; and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill themselves.

His willingness to leave this world about that age when most men think they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many, though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen, backward with great struggling and reluctancy unto the grave. The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old world, when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better digested death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought it an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every age makes a step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those to come.

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be preferred before sinning immortality.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. Cautelous chastity and crafty sobriety were far from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few mementos unto you.



SOME RELATIONS WHOSE TRUTH WE FEAR

From 'Pseudoxia Epidemica'

Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose verities not only, but whose relations, honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They amit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villainy; for as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former; for the vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seducible spirits, and soliciting those unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them. In this kind we commend the wisdom and goodness of Galen, who would not leave unto the world too subtle a theory of poisons; unarming thereby the malice of venomous spirits, whose ignorance must be contented with sublimate and arsenic. For surely there are subtler venerations, such as will invisibly destroy, and like the basilisks of heaven. In things of this nature silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.



WILLIAM BROWNE

(1591-1643)

Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton, Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher. Although he shows skill and charm of style in various kinds of verse, his name rests chiefly upon his largest work, 'Britannia's Pastorals.' This is much wider in scope than the title suggests, if one follows the definition given by Pope in his 'Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.' He says:—"A Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrated, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion.... If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us: that Pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden Age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been when the best of men followed the employment.... We must therefore use some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful, and this consists in exposing the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its miseries."

In his 'Shepherd's Pipe,' a series of 'Eclogues' Browne follows this plan; but 'Britannia's Pastorals' contains rambling stories of Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet stand in exquisite woodland landscapes. When the story passes to the yellow sands and "froth-girt rocks," washed by the crisped and curling waves from "Neptune's silver, ever-shaking breast," or when it touches the mysteries of the ocean world, over which "Thetis drives her silver throne," the poet's fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels leap from tree to tree.

The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal urns. Every now and then, huntsmen in green dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by Drayton and Herrick.

Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the 'Pastorals,' and the famous 'Palinode on Man' is imbedded in the Third Book as follows:—

"I truly know How men are born and whither they shall go; I know that like to silkworms of one year, Or like a kind and wronged lover's tear, Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint, Or like the little sparkles of a flint, Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd, Or fireworks only made to be consum'd: I know that such is man, and all that trust In that weak piece of animated dust. The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed, The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead; The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done, And man as soon as these as quickly gone."

Little is known of Browne's life. He was a native of Tavistock, Devonshire; born, it is thought, in 1591, the son of Thomas Browne, who is supposed by Prince in his 'Worthies of Devon' to have belonged to a knightly family. According to Wood, who says "he had a great mind in a little body," he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, "about the beginning of the reign of James I." Leaving Oxford without a degree, he was admitted in 1612 to the Inner Temple, London, and a little later he is discovered at Oxford, engaged as private tutor to Robert Dormer, afterward Earl of Carnarvon. In 1624 he received his degree of Master of Arts from Oxford. He appears to have settled in Dorking, and after 1640 nothing more is heard of him. Wood thinks he died in 1645, but there is an entry in the Tavistock register, dated March 27th, 1643, and reading "William Browne was buried" on that day. That he was devoted to the streams, dales, and downs of his native Devonshire is shown in the Pastorals, where he sings:—

"Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot Whose equal all the world affordeth not! Show me who can, so many crystal rills, Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills; Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines; Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines."

And in another place he says:—

"And Tavy in my rhymes Challenge a due; let it thy glory be That famous Drake and I were born by thee."

The First Book of 'Britannia's Pastorals' was written before its author was twenty, and was published in 1631. The Second Book appeared in 1616, and both were reprinted in 1625. The Third Book was not published during Browne's life. The 'Shepherd's Pipe' was published in 1614, and 'The Inner Temple Masque,' written on the story of Ulysses and Circe, for representation in 1614, was first published in Thomas Davies's edition of Browne's works (3 vols., 1772). Two critical editions of value have been brought out in recent years: one by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1868-69); and the other by Gordon Goodwin and A.H. Bullen (1894).

"In the third song of the Second Book," says Mr. Bullen in his preface,—

"There is a description of a delightful grove, perfumed with 'odoriferous buds and herbs of price,' where fruits hang in gallant clusters from the trees, and birds tune their notes to the music of running water; so fair a pleasaunce

'that you are fain Where you last walked to turn and walk again.'

A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William Browne treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as though he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting (as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits."

Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him in her 'Vision of Poets,' where she says:—

"Drayton and Browne,—with smiles they drew From outward Nature, still kept new From their own inward nature true."

Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in 'Lycidas.' Browne acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.



CIRCE'S CHARM

Song from the 'Inner Temple Masque'

Son of Erebus and night, Hie away; and aim thy flight Where consort none other fowl Than the bat and sullen owl; Where upon thy limber grass, Poppy and mandragoras, With like simples not a few, Hang forever drops of dew; Where flows Lethe without coil Softly like a stream of oil. Hie thee hither, gentle sleep: With this Greek no longer keep. Thrice I charge thee by my wand, Thrice with moly from my hand Do I touch Ulysses's eyes, And with the jaspis: then arise, Sagest Greek!

CIRCE.

Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.



THE HUNTED SQUIRREL

From 'Britannia's Pastorals'

Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood Ranging the hedges for his filbert food Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking, And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking; Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys To share with him come with so great a noise That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke, And for his life leap to a neighbor oak, Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes; Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes The boys run dabbling through thick and thin; One tears his hose, another breaks his shin; This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe; This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste; Another cries behind for being last: With sticks and stones and many a sounding holloa The little fool with no small sport they follow, Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray Gets to the woods and hides him in his dray.



AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS DO EXPECTING STAND

From 'Britannia's Pastorals'

As careful merchants do expecting stand, After long time and merry gales of wind, Upon the place where their brave ships must land, So wait I for the vessel of my mind.

Upon a great adventure is it bound, Whose safe return will valued be at more Than all the wealthy prizes which have crowned The golden wishes of an age before.

Out of the East jewels of worth she brings; The unvalued diamond of her sparkling eye Wants in the treasures of all Europe's kings; And were it mine, they nor their crowns should buy.

The sapphires ringed on her panting breast Run as rich veins of ore about the mold, And are in sickness with a pale possessed; So true for them I should disvalue gold.

The melting rubies on her cherry lip Are of such power to hold, that as one day Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to sip: And, fastened there, could never get away.

The sweets of Candy are no sweets to me Where hers I taste: nor the perfumes of price, Robbed from the happy shrubs of Araby, As her sweet breath so powerful to entice.

O hasten then! and if thou be not gone Unto that wicked traffic through the main, My powerful sigh shall quickly drive thee on, And then begin to draw thee back again.

If, in the mean, rude waves have it opprest, It shall suffice, I ventured at the best.



SONG OF THE SIRENS

From 'The Inner Temple Masque'

Steer hither, steer your winged pines, All beaten mariners! Here lie love's undiscovered mines, A prey to passengers: Perfumes far sweeter than the best Which make the Phoenix's urn and nest. Fear not your ships, Nor any to oppose you save our lips, But come on shore, Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.

For swelling waves our panting breasts, Where never storms arise, Exchange, and be awhile our guests: For stars, gaze on our eyes. The compass love shall hourly sing, And as he goes about the ring, We will not miss To tell each point he nameth with a kiss. Then come on shore, Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.



AN EPISTLE ON PARTING

From 'Epistles'

Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part; Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart: A heart so just, so loving, and so true, So full of sorrow and so full of you, That all I speak or write or pray or mean,— And, which is all I can, all that I dream,— Is not without a sigh, a thought of you, And as your beauties are, so are they true. Seven summers now are fully spent and gone, Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone; And should mine eyes as many hundreds see, Yet none but you should claim a right in me; A right so placed that time shall never hear Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear. When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you, Relate to none that I so well have loved you: For all that know your beauty and desert, Would swear he never loved that knew to part. Why part we then? That spring, which but this day Met some sweet river, in his bed can play, And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss, Who never know what separation is. The amorous vine with wanton interlaces Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces: Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves, And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves: Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit, Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.



SONNETS TO CAELIA

Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry, You took my hand to try if you could guess, By lines therein, if any wight there be Ordained to make me know some happiness: I wished that those characters could explain, Whom I will never wrong with hope to win; Or that by them a copy might be ta'en, By you alone what thoughts I have within. But since the hand of nature did not set (As providently loath to have it known) The means to find that hidden alphabet, Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone: By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair, If now you see her that doth love me, there.

Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest, And take a long leave of sweet poesy; Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west, Should hear no more my oaten melody. Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile Unperfect lie, and make no further known The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle, Till I have left some record of mine own. You are the subject now, and, writing you, I well may versify, not poetize: Here needs no fiction; for the graces true And virtues clip not with base flatteries. Here should I write what you deserve of praise; Others might wear, but I should win, the bays.

Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass Of Time is marked how long I have to stay, Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass, Perhaps from you for ever more away,— Think that no common love hath fired my breast, No base desire, but virtue truly known, Which I may love, and wish to have possessed, Were you the highest as fairest of any one. 'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames, Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin, That so much binds me yours, or makes your fame's, As the pure light and beauty shrined within: Yet outward parts I must affect of duty, As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.



HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL

(1820-1872)

This poet, prominent among those who gained their chief inspiration from the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East Hartford, Connecticut, October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but instead of the legal profession adopted that of a teacher, and made his home in Hartford, which was the residence of his uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut. Although Mr. Brownell soon became known as a writer of verse, both grave and humorous, it was not till the coming on of the Civil War that his muse found truest and noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he foresaw the coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of an ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater issues, and became the war-poet par excellence, the vigorous chronicler of great actions.

He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of master's-mate on board the Hartford, and attached the poet to him in the character of a private secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of Mobile Bay. After the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in European waters.

Although Brownell was best known to the country by his descriptive poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which appear in his volume of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to be considered a true poet does not rest upon these only. He was unequal in his performance and occasionally was betrayed by a grotesque humor into disregard of dignity and finish; but he had both the vision and the lyric grace of the builder of lasting verse.

ANNUS MEMORABILIS

(CONGRESS, 1860-61)

Stand strong and calm as Fate! not a breath of scorn or hate— Of taunt for the base, or of menace for the strong— Since our fortunes must be sealed on that old and famous Field Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong. 'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom, The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no— Its roar is in the sky,—and they there be which cry, "Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow." Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!) This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill— 'Tis hell that storms at heaven—'tis the black and deadly Seven, Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damned will! How the Ether glooms and burns, as the tide of combat turns, And the smoke and dust above it whirl and float! It eddies and it streams—and, certes, oft it seems As the Sins had the Seraphs fairly by the throat. But we all have read (in that Legend grand and dread), How Michael and his host met the Serpent and his crew— Naught has reached us of the Fight—but if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore their place was found no more. God send the like on this our earth! Amen.

Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.

WORDS FOR THE 'HALLELUJAH CHORUS'

Old John Brown lies a-moldering in the grave, Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave— But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave, His soul is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.

He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord; He is sworn as a private in the ranks of the Lord,— He shall stand at Armageddon with his brave old sword, When Heaven is marching on.

He shall file in front where the lines of battle form, He shall face to front when the squares of battle form— Time with the column, and charge in the storm, Where men are marching on.

Ah, foul Tyrants! do ye hear him where he comes? Ah, black traitors! do ye know him as he comes, In thunder of the cannon and roll of the drums, As we go marching on?

Men may die, and molder in the dust— Men may die, and arise again from dust, Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of the Just, When Heaven is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.

COMING

(APRIL, 1861)

World, are thou 'ware of a storm? Hark to the ominous sound; How the far-off gales their battle form, And the great sea-swells feel ground!

It comes, the Typhoon of Death— Nearer and nearer it comes! The horizon thunder of cannon-breath And the roar of angry drums!

Hurtle, Terror sublime! Swoop o'er the Land to-day— So the mist of wrong and crime, The breath of our Evil Time Be swept, as by fire, away!



PSYCHAURA

The wind of an autumn midnight Is moaning around my door— The curtains wave at the window, The carpet lifts on the floor.

There are sounds like startled footfalls In the distant chambers now, And the touching of airy ringers Is busy on hand and brow.

'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling— By the moody host unsought— Through the chambers of memory wander The invisible airs of thought.

For it bloweth where it listeth, With a murmur loud or low; Whence it cometh—whither it goeth— None tell us, and none may know.

Now wearying round the portals Of the vacant, desolate mind— As the doors of a ruined mansion, That creak in the cold night wind.

And anon an awful memory Sweeps over it fierce and high— Like the roar of a mountain forest When the midnight gale goes by.

Then its voice subsides in wailing, And, ere the dawning of day, Murmuring fainter and fainter, In the distance dies away.

SUSPIRIA NOCTIS

Reading, and reading—little is the gain Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves. List rather to the melancholy rain, Drop—dropping from the eaves.

Still the old tale—how hardly worth the telling! Hark to the wind!—again that mournful sound, That all night long, around this lonely dwelling, Moans like a dying hound.



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

(1809-1861)

It is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of Miss Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the -esses of "authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and "hermitesses" make the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and 'Keepsakes,' and the extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux" make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do French, who has published some translations from AEschylus, and some most striking poems,"—"Our sweet Miss Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her own life Mrs. Browning writes:—"As to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good a story; most of my events and nearly all my intense pleasure have passed in my thoughts."



She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and passed a happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at Hope End, Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the original at eight years of age. She said that in those days "the Greeks were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier. But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me." At seventeen years of age she published the 'Essay on Mind,' and translated the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus. Some years later the family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months at a time. The shock following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely shattered her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London home began. For years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably darkened room, seeing only the immediate members of her family and a few privileged friends, and spending her days in writing and study, "reading," Miss Mitford says, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language." Here Robert Browning met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of her father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their home became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed a tablet to her memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.

The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to explain her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except perhaps to her devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that some of Mrs. Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was so pampered and shielded from every outside touch, that all the woes common to humanity grew for her into awful tragedies. Her life was abnormal and unreal,—an unreality that passed more or less into everything she did. Indeed, her resuscitation after meeting Robert Browning would mount into a miracle, unless it were realized that nothing in her former life had been quite as woful as it seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius," even Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter Savage Landor said, "With the exception of Burns, he [Shelley] and Keats were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other poet since Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Browning comes next." This is very high praise from very high authority, but none too high for Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true lyric ring, that spontaneity of thought and expression which comes when the singer forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful under the stress of the moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's work is buoyed up by her luxurious and overflowing imagination. With all its imperfections of technique, its lapses of taste and faults of expression, it always remains poetry, throbbing with passion and emotion and rich in color and sound. She wrote because she must. Her own assertions notwithstanding, one cannot think of Mrs. Browning as sitting down in cold blood to compose a poem according to fixed rules of art. This is the secret of her shortcomings, as it is also the source of her strength, and in her best work raises her high above those who, with more technical skill, have less of the true poet's divine fire and overflowing imagination.

So in the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' written at a time when her woman's nature was thrilled to its very depths by the love of her "most gracious singer of high poems," and put forth as translations from another writer and tongue—in these her imperfections drop away, and she soars to marvelous heights of song. Such a lyric outburst as this, which reveals with magnificent frankness the innermost secrets of an ardently loving woman's heart, is unequaled in literature. Here the woman-poet is strong and sane; here she is free from obscurity and mannerism, and from grotesque rhymes. She has stepped out from her life of visions and of morbid woes into a life of wholesome reality and of "sweet reasonableness." Their literary excellence is due also to the fact that in the sonnet Mrs. Browning was held to a rigid form, and was obliged to curb her imagination and restrain her tendency to diffuseness of expression. Mr. Saintsbury goes so far as to say that the sonnet beginning—

"If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only—"

does not fall far short of Shakespeare.

'Aurora Leigh' gives rise to the old question, Is it advisable to turn a three-volume novel into verse? Yet Landor wrote about it:—"I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy—Mrs. Browning's (Aurora Leigh.) In many places there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare.... I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and beautiful illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs, of capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry as fine as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare inspiration to set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own, and often handled with as much spirit as freedom." Mrs. Browning herself declared it the most mature of her works, "and the one into which my highest convictions upon life and art have entered." Consider this:—

"For 'tis not in mere death that men die most: And after our first girding of the loins In youth's fine linen and fair broidery, To run up-hill and meet the rising sun, We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool, While others gird us with the violent bands Of social figments, feints, and formalisms, Reversing our straight nature, lifting up Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts, Head downwards on the cross-sticks of the world. Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross. God, set our feet low and our foreheads high, And teach us how a man was made to walk!"

Or this:—

"I've waked and slept through many nights and days Since then—but still that day will catch my breath Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed, In which the fibrous years have taken root So deeply, that they quiver to their tops Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day."

Again:—

"Passion is But something suffered after all— . . . . . While Art

Sets action on the top of suffering."

And this:—

"Nothing is small! No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere: . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."

Among Mrs. Browning's smaller poems, 'Crowned and Buried' is, notwithstanding serious defects of technique, one of the most virile things she has written; indeed, some of her finest lines are to be found in it. In 'The Cry of the Children' and in 'Cowper's Grave' the pathos is most true and deep. 'Lord Walter's Wife' is an even more courageous vindication of the feminine essence than 'Aurora Leigh'; and her 'Vision of Poets' is said to "vie in beauty with Tennyson's own." The fine thought and haunting beauty of 'A Musical Instrument,' with its matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.

During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself with great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political poems of varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when the occasion passed. But among those poems inspired by the struggle for freedom, 'Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' and 'Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring place for its high poetry, its musical, sonorous verse, and the sustained intellectual vigor of composition. Her volume of 'Last Poems' contains, among much inferior matter, some of her finest and most touching work, as 'A Musical Instrument,' 'The Forced Recruit,' and 'Mother and Poet,' Peter Bayne says of her in his 'Great Englishwomen':—"In melodiousness and splendor of poetic gift Mrs. Browning stands ... first among women. She may not have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the comprehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far more essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspiration, and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved, and touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its depths. She seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her view of life's sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is something like that which one might imagine a spirit's to be." Whether political, or sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or impossible, there is about all that Mrs. Browning has written an enduring charm of picturesqueness, of romance, and of a pure enthusiasm for art. "Art for Art," she cries,

"And good for God, himself the essential Good! We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect, Although our woman-hands should shake and fail."

This was her achievement—her hands did not fail!

Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to this slight study:—"You are wrong," he said, "quite wrong—she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something,—he wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star—that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine."

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep, cool bed of the river. The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river, And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan, (Laughed while he sat by the river,) "The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan, Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,— For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

MY HEART AND I

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I.

You see we're tired, my heart and I. We dealt with books, we trusted men, And in our own blood drenched the pen, As if such colors could not fly. We walked too straight for fortune's end, We loved too true to keep a friend: At last we're tired, my heart and I.

How tired we feel, my heart and I! We seem of no use in the world; Our fancies hang gray and uncurled About men's eyes indifferently; Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let You sleep; our tears are only wet: What do we here, my heart and I?

So tired, so tired, my heart and I! It was not thus in that old time When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime To watch the sunset from the sky. "Dear love, you're looking tired," he said; I, smiling at him, shook my head: 'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I! Though now none takes me on his arm To fold me close and kiss me warm Till each quick breath end in a sigh Of happy languor. Now, alone, We lean upon this graveyard stone, Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

Tired out we are, my heart and I. Suppose the world brought diadems To tempt us, crusted with loose gems Of powers and pleasures? Let it try. We scarcely care to look at even A pretty child, or God's blue heaven, We feel so tired, my heart and I.

Yet who complains? My heart and I? In this abundant earth, no doubt, Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if, before the days grew rough, We once were loved, used,—well enough I think we've fared, my heart and I.

FROM 'CATARINA TO CAMOENS'

[Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he recorded the sweetness of her eyes.]

On the door you will not enter I have gazed too long: adieu! Hope withdraws her "peradventure"; Death is near me,—and not you! Come, O lover, Close and cover These poor eyes you called, I ween, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

When I heard you sing that burden In my vernal days and bowers, Other praises disregarding, I but hearkened that of yours, Only saying In heart-playing, "Blessed eyes mine eyes have been, If the sweetest HIS have seen!"

But all changes. At this vesper Cold the sun shines down the door. If you stood there, would you whisper, "Love, I love you," as before,— Death pervading Now and shading Eyes you sang of, that yestreen, As the sweetest ever seen?

Yes, I think, were you beside them, Near the bed I die upon, Though their beauty you denied them, As you stood there looking down, You would truly Call them duly, For the love's sake found therein, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

And if you looked down upon them, And if they looked up to you, All the light which has foregone them Would be gathered back anew; They would truly Be as duly Love-transformed to beauty's sheen, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

But, ah me! you only see me, In your thoughts of loving man, Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy, Through the wavings of my fan; And unweeting Go repeating In your revery serene, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

O my poet, O my prophet! When you praised their sweetness so, Did you think, in singing of it, That it might be near to go? Had you fancies From their glances, That the grave would quickly screen "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

No reply. The fountain's warble In the courtyard sounds alone. As the water to the marble So my heart falls with a moan From love-sighing To this dying. Death forerunneth Love to win "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

Will you come? When I'm departed Where all sweetnesses are hid, Where thy voice, my tender-hearted, Will not lift up either lid, Cry, O lover, Love is over! Cry, beneath the cypress green, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

When the Angelus is ringing, Near the convent will you walk, And recall the choral singing Which brought angels down our talk? Spirit-shriven I viewed heaven, Till you smiled—"Is earth unclean, Sweetest eyes were ever seen?"

When beneath the palace-lattice You ride slow as you have done, And you see a face there that is Not the old familiar one, Will you oftly Murmur softly, "Here ye watched me morn and e'en, Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

When the palace-ladies, sitting Round your gittern, shall have said, "Poets, sing those verses written For the lady who is dead," Will you tremble, Yet dissemble, Or sing hoarse, with tears between, "Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

"Sweetest eyes!" How sweet in flowings The repeated cadence is! Though you sang a hundred poems, Still the best one would be this. I can hear it 'Twixt my spirit And the earth-noise intervene,— "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

But—but now—yet unremoved Up to heaven they glisten fast; You may cast away, beloved, In your future all my past: Such old phrases May be praises For some fairer bosom-queen— "Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

Eyes of mine, what are ye doing? Faithless, faithless, praised amiss If a tear be, on your showing, Dropped for any hope of HIS! Death has boldness Besides coldness, If unworthy tears demean "Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

I will look out to his future; I will bless it till it shine. Should he ever be a suitor Unto sweeter eyes than mine, Sunshine gild them, Angels shield them, Whatsoever eyes terrene Be the sweetest HIS have seen.

THE SLEEP

"He giveth his beloved sleep."—Ps. cxxvii. 2

OF ALL the thoughts of God that are Borne inward into souls afar Along the Psalmist's music deep, Now tell me if that any is, For gift or grace, surpassing this— "He giveth his beloved sleep."

What would we give to our beloved? The hero's heart to be unmoved. The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep, The patriot's voice to teach and rouse, The monarch's crown to light the brows?— He giveth his beloved sleep.

What do we give to our beloved? A little faith all undisproved, A little dust to overweep, And bitter memories to make The whole earth blasted for our sake. He giveth his beloved sleep.

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say, Who have no tune to charm away Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep; But never doleful dream again Shall break the happy slumber when He giveth his beloved sleep.

O earth, so full of dreary noises! O men with wailing in your voices! O delved gold the wailers heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God strikes a silence through you all, And giveth his beloved sleep.

His dews drop mutely on the hill, His cloud above it saileth still, Though on its slope men sow and reap; More softly than the dew is shed, Or cloud is floated overhead, He giveth his beloved sleep.

Ay, men may wonder while they scan A living, thinking, feeling man Confirmed in such a rest to keep; But angels say,—and through the word I think their happy smile is heard,— "He giveth his beloved sleep."

For me, my heart that erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, That sees through tears the mummers leap, Would now its wearied vision close, Would childlike on His love repose Who giveth his beloved sleep.

And friends, dear friends, when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, And round my bier ye come to weep, Let one most loving of you all Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall! He giveth his beloved sleep."

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

I

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west: But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

II

Do you question the young children in their sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his To-morrow Which is lost in Long-Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest; The old year is ending in the frost; The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest; The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers! Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

III

They look up with their pale and sunken faces; And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy. "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary; Our young feet," they say, "are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary; Our grave-rest is very far to seek. Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children; For the outside earth is cold, And we young ones stand without in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old."

IV

"True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time: Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen Like a snowball in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her: Was no room for any work in the close clay, From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries. Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes; And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime. It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time."

V

Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking Death in life, as best to have. They are binding up their hearts away from breaking With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city; Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do; Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty; Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through. But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine.

VI

"For oh!" say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them, and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping; We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow; For all day we drag our burden tiring, Through the coal-dark, underground; Or all day we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round.

VII

"For all-day the wheels are droning, turning; Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places. Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,— All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, 'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning), 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

VIII

Ay. be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth; Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth; Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals; Let them prove their living souls against the notion That they live in you, or tinder you, O wheels! Still all day the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark.

IX

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him, and pray; So the blessed One who blesseth all the others Will bless them another day. They answer, "Who is God, that he should hear us While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word; And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) Strangers speaking at the door. Is it likely God, with angels singing round him, Hears our weeping any more?

X

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember; And at midnight's hour of harm, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words except 'Our Father'; And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within his right hand, which is strong. 'Our Father!' If he heard us, he would surely (For they call him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.'

XI

"But no!" say the children, weeping faster, "He is speechless as a stone; And they tell us, of his image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to!" say the children,—"up in heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving: We look up for God; but tears have made us blind." Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by his world's loving— And the children doubt of each.

XII

And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; They sink in man's despair, without its calm; Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom; Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm; Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories cannot reap; Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly— Let them weep! let them weep!

XIII

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see. For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity. "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart,— Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path; But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath!"

MOTHER AND POET

[On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]

DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast, And are wanting a great song for Italy free, Let none look at me!

Yet I was a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said: But this woman, this, who is agonized here,— The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head Forever instead.

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain! What art is she good at, but hurting her breast With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain? Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest, And I proud by that test.

What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees, And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat; To dream and to dote.

To teach them.... It stings there! I made them indeed Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt, That a country's a thing men should die for at need. I prated of liberty, rights, and about The tyrant cast out.

And when their eyes flashed ... O my beautiful eyes! ... I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels. God, how the house feels!

At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled, In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough.

There was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!" And some one came out of the cheers in the street, With a face pale as stone, to say something to me. My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet, While they cheered in the street.

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained To the height he had gained.

And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong, Writ now but in one hand:—"I was not to faint,— One loved me for two; would be with me ere long: And Viva l'Italia he died for, our saint, Who forbids our complaint."

My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware Of a presence that turned off the balls,—was imprest It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest, To live on for the rest."

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta,—"Shot. Tell his mother." Ah, ah! "his," "their" mother, not "mine": No voice says, "My mother," again to me. What! You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven, They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe? I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so The Above and Below.

O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,— Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say!

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; And when Italy's made, for what end is it done, If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men; When the guns of Cavalli with final retort Have cut the game short;

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee; When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red: When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead)—

What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low And burn your lights faintly! My country is there. Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow: My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair, To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast You want a great song for your Italy free, Let none look at me!

A COURT LADY

Her hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark; Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race; Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.

Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife, Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.

She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, "Bring That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.

"Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote; Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.

"Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves, Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves."

Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame, While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.

In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end,— "Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend."

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed; Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.

"Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!" she cried, And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face—and died.

Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second: He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.

Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer. "Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes drove lightnings before her.

"Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.

"Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past."

Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying,—a deep black hole in the curls.

"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain, Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the slain?"

Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands: "Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as she stands."

On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball: Kneeling: "O more than my brother! how shall I thank thee for all?

"Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line; But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine.

"Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossest, But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest."

Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of mind.

Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the name; But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and came.

Only a tear for Venice? She turned as in passion and loss, And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing the cross.

Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another, Stern and strong in his death: "And dost thou suffer, my brother?"

Holding his hands in hers: "Out of the Piedmont lion Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on."

Holding his cold rough hands: "Well, oh well have ye done In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone."

Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring. "That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King!"

THE PROSPECT

Methinks we do as fretful children do, Leaning their faces on the window-pane To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain, And shut the sky and landscape from their view; And thus, alas! since God the maker drew A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,— The life beyond us and our souls in pain,— We miss the prospect which we are called unto By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong, O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath, And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong; That so, as life's appointment issueth, Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death.

DE PROFUNDIS

The face which, duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun, To mark all bright hours of the day With daily love, is dimmed away— And yet my days go on, go on.

The tongue which, like a stream, could run Smooth music from the roughest stone, And every morning with "Good day" Make each day good, is hushed away— And yet my days go on, go on.

The heart which, like a staff, was one For mine to lean and rest upon, The strongest on the longest day, With steadfast love is caught away— And yet my days go on, go on.

The world goes whispering to its own, "This anguish pierces to the bone." And tender friends go sighing round, "What love can ever cure this wound?" My days go on, my days go on.

The past rolls forward on the sun And makes all night. O dreams begun, Not to be ended! Ended bliss! And life, that will not end in this! My days go on, my days go on.

Breath freezes on my lips to moan: As one alone, once not alone, I sit and knock at Nature's door, Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor, Whose desolated days go on.

I knock and cry—Undone, undone! Is there no help, no comfort—none? No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains Where others drive their loaded wains? My vacant days go on, go on.

This Nature, though the snows be down, Thinks kindly of the bird of June. The little red hip on the tree Is ripe for such. What is for me, Whose days so winterly go on?

No bird am I to sing in June, And dare not ask an equal boon. Good nests and berries red are Nature's To give away to better creatures— And yet my days go on, go on.

I ask less kindness to be done— Only to loose these pilgrim-shoon (Too early worn and grimed) with sweet Cool deathly touch to these tired feet, Till days go out which now go on.

Only to lift the turf unmown From off the earth where it has grown, Some cubit-space, and say, "Behold, Creep in, poor Heart, beneath that fold, Forgetting how the days go on."

A Voice reproves me thereupon, More sweet than Nature's, when the drone Of bees is sweetest, and more deep, Than when the rivers overleap The shuddering pines, and thunder on.

God's Voice, not Nature's—night and noon He sits upon the great white throne, And listens for the creature's praise. What babble we of days and days? The Dayspring he, whose days go on!

He reigns above, he reigns alone: Systems burn out and leave his throne: Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall Around him, changeless amid all— Ancient of days, whose days go on!

He reigns below, he reigns alone— And having life in love forgone Beneath the crown of sovran thorns, He reigns the jealous God. Who mourns Or rules with HIM, while days go on?

By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear him charge his saints that none Among the creatures anywhere Blaspheme against him with despair, However darkly days go on.

Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown: No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief misery, The sharp regalia are for Thee, Whose days eternally go on!

For us, ... whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, willest what is done. Grief may be joy misunderstood: Only the Good discerns the good. I trust Thee while my days go on.

Whatever's lost, it first was won! We will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on.

I praise Thee while my days go on; I love Thee while my days go on! Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank Thee while my days go on!

And, having in thy life-depth thrown Being and suffering (which are one), As a child drops some pebble small Down some deep well, and hears it fall Smiling—so I! THY DAYS GO ON!

THE CRY OF THE HUMAN

"There is no God," the foolish saith, But none, "There is no sorrow;" And nature oft the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised; And lips say, "God be pitiful," Who ne'er said, "God be praised." Be pitiful, O God.

The tempest stretches from the steep The shadow of its coming; The beasts grow tame, and near us creep, As help were in the human: Yet while the cloud-wheels roll and grind, We spirits tremble under! The hills have echoes; but we find No answer for the thunder. Be pitiful, O God!

The battle hurtles on the plains— Earth feels new scythes upon her: We reap our brothers for the wains, And call the harvest—honor. Draw face to face, front line to line, One image all inherit: Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, Clay, clay,—and spirit, spirit. Be pitiful, O God!

We meet together at the feast— To private mirth betake us— We stare down in the winecup, lest Some vacant chair should shake us! We name delight, and pledge it round— "It shall be ours to-morrow!" God's seraphs! do your voices sound As sad in naming sorrow? Be pitiful, O God!

We sit together, with the skies, The steadfast skies, above us; We look into each other's eyes, "And how long will you love us?" The eyes grow dim with prophecy, The voices, low and breathless— "Till death us part!"—O words, to be Our best for love the deathless! Be pitiful, dear God!

We tremble by the harmless bed Of one loved and departed— Our tears drop on the lips that said Last night, "Be stronger-hearted!" O God,—to clasp those fingers close, And yet to feel so lonely!— To see a light upon such brows, Which is the daylight only! Be pitiful, O God!

The happy children come to us, And look up in our faces; They ask us—Was it thus, and thus, When we were in their places? We cannot speak—we see anew The hills we used to live in, And feel our mother's smile press through The kisses she is giving. Be pitiful, O God!

We pray together at the kirk, For mercy, mercy, solely— Hands weary with the evil work, We lift them to the Holy! The corpse is calm below our knee— Its spirit bright before Thee— Between them, worse than either, we Without the rest of glory! Be pitiful, O God!

And soon all vision waxeth dull— Men whisper, "He is dying;" We cry no more, "Be pitiful!"— We have no strength for crying: No strength, no need! Then, Soul of mine, Look up and triumph rather— Lo! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son adjures the Father— BE PITIFUL, O GOD!



ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST

Little Ellie sits alone 'Mid the beeches of a meadow, By a stream-side on the grass; And the trees are showering down Doubles of their leaves in shadow, On her shining hair and face.

She has thrown her bonnet by; And her feet she has been dipping In the shallow water's flow— Now she holds them nakedly In her hands, all sleek and dripping, While she rocketh to and fro.

Little Ellie sits alone, And the smile she softly uses Fills the silence like a speech; While she thinks what shall be done, And the sweetest pleasure chooses, For her future within reach.

Little Ellie in her smile Chooseth—"I will have a lover, Riding on a steed of steeds! He shall love me without guile; And to him I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds.

"And the steed shall be red-roan. And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath. And the lute he plays upon Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his sword strikes men to death.

"And the steed it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure, And the mane shall swim the wind: And the hoofs along the sod Shall flash onward and keep measure, Till the shepherds look behind.

"But my lover will not prize All the glory that he rides in, When he gazes in my face. He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes Build the shrine my soul abides in; And I kneel here for thy grace.'

"Then, ay, then—he shall kneel low, With the red-roan steed anear him, Which shall seem to understand— Till I answer, 'Rise and go! For the world must love and fear him Whom I gift with heart and hand.'

"Then he will arise so pale, I shall feel my own lips tremble With a yes I must not say— Nathless maiden-brave, 'Fare well,' I will utter, and dissemble— 'Light to-morrow with to-day.'

"Then he'll ride among the hills To the wide world past the river, There to put away all wrong: To make straight distorted wills, And to empty the broad quiver Which the wicked bear along.

"Three times shall a young foot-page Swim the stream and climb the mountain And kneel down beside my feet— 'Lo! my master sends this gage, Lady, for thy pity's counting! What wilt thou exchange for it?'

"And the first time I will send A white rosebud for a guerdon, And the second time, a glove: But the third time—I may bend From my pride, and answer—'Pardon— If he come to take my love.'

"Then the young foot-page will run— Then my lover will ride faster, Till he kneeleth at my knee: 'I am a duke's eldest son! Thousand serfs do call me master,— But, O Love, I love but thee!

"He will kiss me on the mouth Then; and lead me as a lover Through the crowds that praise his deeds; And when soul-tied by one troth, Unto him I will discover That swan's nest among the reeds."

Little Ellie, with her smile Not yet ended, rose up gayly, Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe— And went homeward, round a mile, Just to see, as she did daily, What more eggs were with the two.

Pushing through the elm-tree copse Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads— Past the boughs she stoops—and stops! Lo! the wild swan had deserted— And a rat had gnawed the reeds.

Ellie went home sad and slow: If she found the lover ever, With his red-roan steed of steeds, Sooth I know not! but I know She could never show him—never, That swan's nest among the reeds!



THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD

WHAT'S the best thing in the world? June-rose by May-dew impearled; Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-decked and curled Till its pride is over-plain; Light, that never makes you wink; Memory, that gives no pain; Love, when so you're loved again. What's the best thing in the world?— Something out of it, I think.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another as they strike athwart 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 play 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.

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.

What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast 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.

If 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.

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh list!" When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here plainer to my sight Than that first kiss. The second passed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, Half falling on the hair. Oh, beyond meed! That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown With sanctifying sweetness did precede. The third upon my lips was folded down In perfect purple state; since when, indeed, I have been proud, and said "My love, my own!"

I LIVED with visions for my company, Instead of men and women, years ago, And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know 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 hallowed 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.

BELOVED, my beloved, when I think That thou wast in the world a year ago, What time I sat 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 hand—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.

BECAUSE thou hast the power and own'st the grace To look through and behind this mask of me, (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains!) and behold my soul's true face, The dim and weary witness of life's race; Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for his place In the new heavens; because nor sin nor woe, Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go, Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,— Nothing repels thee.—Dearest, teach me so To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!

I THANK all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all Who paused a little near the prison-wall, To hear my music in its louder parts, Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's Or temple's occupation, beyond call. But thou, who in my voice's sink and fall, When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot, To hearken what I said between my tears, Instruct me how to thank thee!—Oh, to shoot My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures! with Life that disappears!

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 every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. 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.



A FALSE STEP

Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart. Pass! there's a world full of men; And women as fair as thou art Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware,— Malice, not one can impute; And why should a heart have been there In the way of a fair woman's foot?

It was not a stone that could trip, Nor was it a thorn that could rend: Put up thy proud underlip! 'Twas merely the heart of a friend.

And yet peradventure one day Thou, sitting alone at the glass, Remarking the bloom gone away, Where the smile in its dimplement was,

And seeking around thee in vain From hundreds who flattered before, Such a word as,—"Oh, not in the main Do I hold thee less precious,—but more!"

Thou'lt sigh, very like, on thy part:— "Of all I have known or can know, I wish I had only that Heart I trod upon, ages ago!"

A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD

They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God. And why?

And if you dig down in the mines You never see him in the gold, Though, from him, all that's glory shines.

God is so good, he wears a fold Of heaven and earth across his face— Like secrets kept, for love, untold.

But still I feel that his embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place:

As if my tender mother laid On my shut lids her kisses' pressure, Half-waking me at night; and said "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"

CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON

I think we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint To muse upon eternity's constraint Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope Must widen early, is it well to droop For a few days consumed in loss and taint? O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,— And like a cheerful traveler, take the road, Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod To meet the flints?—At least it may be said, "Because the way is short, I thank thee, God!"



ROBERT BROWNING

(1812-1889)

BY E.L. BURLINGAME

Robert Browning was born at Camberwell on May 7th, 1812, the son and grandson of men who held clerkships in the Bank of England—the one for more than forty and the other for full fifty years. His surroundings were apparently typical of English moderate prosperity, and neither they, nor his good but undistinguished family traditions, furnish any basis for the theorizing of biographers, except indeed in a single point. His grandmother was a West Indian Creole, and though only of the first generation to be born away from England, seems, from the restless and adventurous life led by her brother, to have belonged to a family of the opposite type from her husband's. Whether this crossing of the imaginative, Westward-Ho strain of the English blood with the home-keeping type has to do with the production of such intensely vitalized temperaments as Robert Browning's, is the only question suggested by his ancestry. It is noticeable that his father wished to go to a university, then to become an artist—- both ambitions repressed by the grandfather; and that he took up his bank official's career unwillingly. He seems to have been anything but a man of routine; to have had keen and wide interests outside of his work; to have been a great reader and book collector, even an exceptional scholar in certain directions; and to have kept till old age a remarkable vivacity, with unbroken health—altogether a personality thoroughly sympathetic with that of his son, to whom this may well have been the final touch of a prosperity calculated to shake all traditional ideas of a poet's youth.

Browning's education was exceptional, for an English boy's. He left school at fourteen, and after that was taught by tutors at home, except that at eighteen he took a Greek course at the London University. His training seems to have been unusually thorough for these conditions, though largely self-directed; it may be supposed that his father kept a sympathetic and intelligent guidance, wisely not too obvious. But in the main it is clear that from a very early age, Browning had deliberately and distinctly in view the idea of making literature the pursuit of his life, and that he troubled himself seriously with nothing that did not help to that end; while into everything that did he seems to have thrown himself with precocious intensity. Individual anecdotes of his precocity are told by his biographers; but they are flat beside the general fact of the depth and character of his studies, and superfluous of the man who had written 'Pauline' at twenty-one and 'Paracelsus' at twenty-two. At eighteen he knew himself as a poet, and encountered no opposition in his chosen career from his father, whose "kindness we must seek," as Mrs. Sutherland Orr says, "not only in this first, almost inevitable assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailing readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus,' 'Sordello,' and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought him no return." An aunt, Mrs. Silverthorne, paid the costs of the earlier 'Pauline.'

From this time of his earliest published work ('Pauline' was issued without his name in 1833) that part of the story of his life known to the public, in spite of two or three more or less elaborate biographies, is mainly the history of his writings and the record of his different residences, supplemented by less than the usual number of personal anecdotes, to which neither circumstance nor temperament contributed material. He had nothing of the attitude of the recluse, like Tennyson; but while healthily social and a man of the world about him, he was not one of whom people tell "reminiscences" of consequence, and he was in no sense a public personality. Little of his correspondence has appeared in print; and it seems probable that he will be fortunate, to an even greater degree than Thackeray, in living in his works and escaping the "ripping up" of the personal chronicler.

He traveled occasionally in the next few years, and in 1838 and again in 1844 visited Italy. In that year, or early in 1845, he became engaged to Miss Elizabeth Barrett, their acquaintance beginning through a friend,—her cousin,—and through letters from Browning expressing admiration for her poems. Miss Barrett had then been for some years an invalid from an accident, and an enforced recluse; but in September 1846 they were married without the knowledge of her father, and almost immediately afterward (she leaving her sick room to join him) went to Paris and then to Italy, where they lived first in Genoa and afterward in Florence, which with occasional absences was their home for fourteen years. Mrs. Browning died there, at Casa Guidi, in June 1861. Browning left Florence some time afterward, and in spite of his later visits to Italy, never returned there. He lived again in London in the winter, but most of his summers were spent in France, and especially in Brittany. About 1878 he formed the habit of going to Venice for the autumn, which continued with rare exceptions to the end of his life. There in 1888 his son, recently married, had made his home; and there on the 12th of December, 1889, Robert Browning died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year.



'Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession,' Browning's first published poem, was a psychological self-analysis, perfectly characteristic of the time of life at which he wrote it,—very young, full of excesses of mood, of real exultation, and somewhat less real depression—the "confession" of a poet of twenty-one, intensely interested in the ever-new discovery of his own nature, its possibilities, and its relations. It rings very true, and has no decadent touch in it:—

"I am made up of an intensest life ... a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all—"

this is the note that stays in the reader's mind. But the poem is psychologically rather than poetically noteworthy—except as all beginnings are so; and Browning's statement in a note in his collected poems that he "acknowledged and retained it with extreme repugnance," shows how fully he recognized this.

In 'Paracelsus,' his next long poem, published some two years later, the strength of his later work is first definitely felt. Taking for theme the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,—compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,—Browning makes of it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an element without which power was impotent.

"Yet, constituted thus and thus endowed, I failed; I gazed on power till I grew blind. Power—I could not take my eyes from that; That only I thought should be preserved, increased.

* * * * *

I learned my own deep error: love's undoing Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, And what proportion love should hold with power In his right constitution; love preceding Power, and with much power always much more love."

'Paracelsus' is the work of a man still far from maturity; but it is Browning's first use of a type of poem in which his powers were to find one of their chief manifestations—a psychological history, told with so slight an aid from "an external machinery of incidents" (to use his own phrase), or from conventional dramatic arrangement, as to constitute a form virtually new.

This was to be notably the method of 'Sordello,' which appeared in 1840. In a note written twenty-three years later to his friend Milsand, and prefixed as a dedication to 'Sordello' in his collected works, he defined the form and its reason most exactly:—"The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires, and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study." This poem, with its "historical decoration" or "background" from the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles in Italy, carries out this design in a fashion that defies description or characterization. With its inexhaustible wealth of psychological suggestion, its interwoven discussion of the most complex problems of life and thought, its metaphysical speculation, it may well give pause to the reader who makes his first approach to Browning through it, and send him back,—if he begins, as is likely, with the feeling of one challenged to an intellectual task,—baffled by the intricacy of its ways and without a comprehension of what it contains or leads to. Mr. Augustine Birrell says of it:—