The Press.
London, England, 1855-11-17 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 17, 1855.

RZSPECTABILITY.
•
Dear, bad the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim " I know you both,
Have recognised your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you—live in peace !"
How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,
The world, and what it fears?
How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,
Society's true ornament,—
Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?
I know the world proscribes not love ;
Allows my finger to caress
Your lip's zontour and downiness
Provided it supply a glove.
The world's good word !—the Institute !
Guizot receives Montalembert !
Eh? down the court three lampions flare—
Put forward your best foot !
Those last lines are suspicious. We will not
say that the poem does not contain profound
meaning, that Mr. Browning's admirers may not
discern innumerable beauties in it, but we
will be bound to say that the annals of Bedlam
could supply volumes of matter of very
similar kind—proofs of the poetic inspiration
of its inmates.
Let us try again. Here is a longer and more
ambitious piece :

WOMEN AND ROSES.

I DREAM of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?
Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
'Mating the women faded fur ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow the women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day.
Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties unborn. And all, to one cadence,
They circle their rose on my rose tree.
Dear rose, thy term is reached,
Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached:
Bees pass it unimpeached.
Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb,
You great shapes of the antique time!
How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?
Oh! to possess, and be possessed !
Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast!
But once of love, the poesy, the passion,
Drink once and die!—ln vain, the same fashion,
They circle their rose on my rose tree.
Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed;
Thy cup is ruby-rimmed,
Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed.
Deep as drops from a statue's plinth
The bee sucked in by the hyacinth,
So will I bury me while burning,
Quench like him at a plunge my yearning,
Eyes in your eyes, lips on your l►ps !
Fold me fast where the cincture slips,
Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure !
Girdle me once! But no—in their old measure
They circle their rose on my rose tree.
Dear rose without a thorn,
Thy bud's the babe unborn :
Filet streak of a new morn.
Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear!
What's far conquers what is near.
Roses will bloom nor want beholders,
Sprung from the dust where our own flesh moulders
What shall arrive with the cycle's change?
A novel grace and a beauty strange.
I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her,
Shaped her to his mind !—Alas! in like manner
They circle their rose on my rose tree.
f any of our readers admire this piece, and fancy
they can understand it, we recommend them
to purchase Mr. Browning's volumes at once.
The right books will then get into the bands of
the right readers. The sample is a favorable one
of Mr. Browning's poetic powers; in fact, the
verses are about as unintelligible (Mr. Brown-
ing's great claim to distinction) as any in the
whole collection.
Those poems in which there is some
glimmer of meaning are very little more
satisfactory than those of which nothing can
be made. Early in the first volume there is a
piece headed "Evelyn Hope." Beautiful
Evelyn Hope died at sixteen. She had
scarcely heard the name of the gentleman
who moralises over.her. But he claims her
for big own :
Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope ?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stare met in your horoscope,
Node you of aviriti fire, and dor—,

THE PRESS.

And just because I was thrice as old,
Aud our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was nought to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, nought beside ?

There seems little natural connection be-
tween this girl of sixteen, made of " spirit,
" fire, and dew," and the gentleman of forty
eight who claims her. He has no doubt, how-
ever, of receiving her iu the end :
No, indeed ! for God above
Is great to grant as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love—
I claim you still fur my own love's sake I
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse, nut a few—
Much is to learn and much to forget
Era the time be come fur taking you.
But the time will come—at last it will,
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say,
In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium's red—
And what you would do with me, in fine,
In the new life come in the old one's stead.
So he gives her a leaf to keep as a pledge of
their engagement, and concludes :
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.
There, that is our secret ! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember, and understand.
It would be useless to analyse further, or
quote more. The dramatic fragments in the
collection are best. That one headed "In a
Balcony," though it has the faults of the
spasmodic school, is not without a certain
kind of indicative passion.
As for the extravagance of expression to be
found here, it passes all that we have been
accustomed to meet with even in tho undisci-
plined raggedness of modern verse. A church
in Florence has
Its face set full for the sun to shave.
And one poem ends with the emphatic
question,
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?
Affectation is the monster vice of our modern
poets. It greatly disfigures the song of
Tennyson, but Mr. Browning's poems are
affectation and nothing else. To be sure, the
defence which has been set up for " Maud,"
may be set up for " Men and Women." If
there be men of hysterical temperament, why
should we not have a hysterical poem ; and if
there be men of affected intellect, why not
have affected verse ? For no other reason
than this, that the aim of poetry should be to
elevate or refine the mind, never to dwarf or
debase it.