Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,-
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without,
And pressures of an alien tyranny
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to! Thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life-working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich;
A sick man help'd by thee, shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.
Eve.
For me and for my daughters this high part
Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work
Shall hold me in the place of garden rest,
And in the place of Eden's lost delight
Worthy endurance of permitted pain;
While on my longest patience there shall wait
Death's speechless angel, smiling in the east
Whence cometh the cold wind."
2 "That, too, is marvellous: in philosophy profound, in pathos genuine, in poetry per fect. There are few such examples of condensation in the language."-BAYNE's Essays.
And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings with cadence up the Blue.1
And poor, proud Byron,-sad as grave,
And salt as life: forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave."
SUPERIORITY OF THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE MATERIAL3
Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,
That birthday morning. 'Tis impossible
To get at men excepting through their souls,
However open their carnivorous jaws;
And poets get directlier at the soul
Than any of your economists:-for which,
You must not overlook the poet's work
When scheming for the world's necessities.
The soul's the way. Not even Christ himself
Can save man else than as He holds man's soul;
And therefore did He come into our flesh,
As some wise hunter creeping on his knees
With a torch, into the blackness of some cave,
To face and quell the beast there,-take the soul,
And so possess the whole man, body and soul.
But innermost
Of the inmost, most interior of the interne,
God claims his own, Divine humanity
Renewing nature,-or the piercingest verse,
Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keep
As much upon the outside of a man,
As the very bowl in which he dips his beard.
* Verily, I was wrong;
And verily, many thinkers of this age,
Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone,-
The great below clench'd by the great above;
Shade here authenticating substance there;
The body proving spirit, as the effect
The cause: we, meantime, being too grossly apt
To hold the natural, as dogs a bone
(Though reason and nature beat us in the face),
So obstinately, that we'll break our teeth
"It is little to say that these lines contain | who has never stained, by one foul image or a biography.
"This is very bold, and in almost any case might be pronounced towering presumption. But Mrs. Browning had a right to say it; she whose intellectual and imaginative powers are to the full as great as those of Byron, and
impure emotion, the gold and azure of her genius."-BAYNE's Essays.
3 It is not easy to make a selection from Aurora Leigh that, as an extract, will be interesting: to be properly appreciated, the work must be read as a whole.
Or ever we let go. For everywhere
We're too materialistic,-eating clay
(Like men of the west) instead of Adam's corn
And Noah's wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,
Until we're fill'd up to the throat with clay,
And grow the grimy color of the ground
On which we are feeding. Ay, materialist
The age's name is. God himself, with some,
Is apprehended as the bare result
Of what his hand materially has made,
Express'd in such an algebraic sign,
Call'd God; that is, to put it otherwise,
They add up nature to a naught of God
And cross the quotient. There are many, even,
Whose names are written in the Christian church
To no dishonor,-diet still on mud,
And splash the altars with it. You might think
The clay Christ laid upon their eyelids when,
Still blind, he call'd them to the use of sight,
Remain'd there to retard its exercise
With clogging incrustations.
Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto 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 senate's shout to patriot vows,-
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,
But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:
1 "The Sleep is one of those poems of Mrs. | Browning's in which not only the inmost thought and feeling are beautiful and simple, but in which no veil intervenes between these and general sympathy. In her smaller poems she seemed to be working fairly clear of what must be called her mannerism. In these she stands before us in no classic adornment,
clothed as with the perfect beauty of her own womanliness and truth. Had she been always so simple herself, her poems might be found on every cottage shelf."-BAYNE.
This admits that they are not "found on every cottage shelf;" that is, are not generally popular. Why not? Clearly because there is so much in them of the mystical and obscure.
For me, my heart, that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the jugglers 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 has gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep;
you all,
Let one, most loving of
Say, not a tear must o'er her fall,-
"He giveth His beloved sleep!"
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so
Who art not miss'd by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet!
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber, while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection, thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth,
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so,-if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where "dust to dust" the love from life disjoin'd,
And if, before those sepulchres unmoving,
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth). Crying, "Where are ye, O my loved and loving?" I know a Voice would sound, "Daughter, I AM. Can I suffice for HEAVEN, and not for earth?"
When some belovéd voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new,-
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count. Not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew.
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales,
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon! nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted,-nor the angels' sweet All hails,
Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these.
Speak THOU, availing Christ!-and fill this pause.
It is a place where poets crown'd
May feel the heart's decaying,-
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying:
Yet let the grief and humbleness
As low as silence languish;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.
O poets! from a maniac's tongue
Was pour'd the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace, -
And died while ye were smiling.
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