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By Root 16408 0

the supreme excellence of the poetess whose works we review, is made up of the multitudinous sums of a world of lofty merits. It is the multiplicity — it is the aggregation — which excites our most profound enthusiasm, and enforces ­our most earnest respect. But unless we had space to extract three fourths of the volumes, how could we convey this aggregation by specimens? We might quote, to be sure, an example of keen insight into our psychal nature, such as this:

I fell flooded with a Dark,

In the silence of a swoon —

When I rose, still cold and stark,

There was night, — I saw the moon:

And the stars, each in its place,

And the May-blooms on the grass,

Seemed to wonder what I was.

And I walked as if apart

From myself when I could stand —

And I pitied my own heart,

As if I held it in my hand

Somewhat coldly, — with a sense

Of fulfilled benevolence.

Or we might copy an instance of the purest and most imagination, such as this:

So, young muser, I sat listening

To my Fancy’s wildest word —

On a sudden, through the glistening

Leaves around, a little stirred,

Came a sound, a sense of music, which was rather felt than heard.

Softly, finely, it inwound me —

From the world it shut me in —

Like a fountain falling round me

Which with silver waters thin,

Holds a little marble Naiad sitting smilingly within.

Or, again, we might extract a specimen of wild Dantesque vigor, such as this — in combination with a pathos never excelled:

Ay! be silent — let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth —

Let them touch each others’ 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 inward souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!

Or, still again, we might give a passage embodying the most elevated sentiment, most tersely and musically thus expressed:

And since, Prince Albert, men have called thy spirit high and rare,

And true to truth, and brave for truth, as some at Augsburg were —

We charge thee by thy lofty thoughts and by thy poet mind.

Which not by glory or degree takes measure of mankind,

Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring

And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing! ­

These passages, we say, and a hundred similar ones, exemplifying particular excellences, might be displayed, and we should still fail, as lamentably as the skolastikos with his brick, in conveying an idea of the vast totality. By no individual stars can we present the constellatory radiance of the book. — To the book, then, with implicit confidence we appeal.

That Miss Barrett has done more, in poetry, than any woman, living or dead, will scarcely be questioned: — that she has surpassed all her poetical contemporaries of either sex (with a single exception) is our deliberate opinion — not idly entertained, we think, nor founded on any visionary basis. It may not be uninteresting, therefore, in closing this examination of her claims, to determine in what manner she holds poetical relation with these contemporaries, or with her immediate predecessors, and especially with the great exception Which we have alluded, — if at all.

If ever mortal “wreaked his thoughts upon expression” it was Shelley. If ever poet sang (as a bird sings) — impulsively — earnestly — with utter abandonment — to himself solely — and for the mere joy of his own song — that poet was the author of the Sensitive Plant. Of Art — beyond that which is the inalienable instinct of Genius — he either had little or disdained all. He really disdained that Rule which is the emation from Law, because his own soul was law in itself. His rhapsodies are but the rough notes — the stenographic memoranda of poems — memoranda which, because they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared not to be at the trouble of transcribing in full for mankind. In his whole life he wrought not thoroughly out a single conception. For this reason it is that he is the most fatiguing of poets.