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The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1 cover

The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1

Chapter 46: Transcriber's Notes:
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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British LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

A collected volume of lyrical and dramatic poems exploring spiritual and domestic intimacies, blending meditations on exile and the Fall with personal dedication and elegiac reflection. The author adapts classical forms and biblical figures to probe guilt, repentance, and the consolations of love, often focusing on a woman's emotional perspective. Language alternates between concentrated lyric, long dramatic pieces modeled on Greek tragedy, and intimate dedications; recurring motifs include divine judgment, inner conscience, familial attachment, and the sanctifying power of hope. The tone varies from plaintive to austere, marked by dense imagery, moral interrogation, and rhetorical intensity.

"I left thee last, a child at heart,
 A woman scarce in years.
 I come to thee, a solemn corpse
 Which neither feels nor fears.
 I have no breath to use in sighs;
 They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes
 To seal them safe from tears.
"Look on me with thine own calm look:
 I meet it calm as thou.
 No look of thine can change this smile,
 Or break thy sinful vow:
 I tell thee that my poor scorned heart
 Is of thine earth—thine earth, a part:
 It cannot vex thee now.
"But out, alas! these words are writ
 By a living, loving one,
 Adown whose cheeks, the proofs of life
 The warm quick tears do run:
 Ah, let the unloving corpse control
 Thy scorn back from the loving soul
 Whose place of rest is won.
"I have prayed for thee with bursting sob
 When passion's course was free;
 I have prayed for thee with silent lips,
 In the anguish none could see:
 They whispered oft, 'She sleepeth soft'—
 But I only prayed for thee.
"Go to! I pray for thee no more:
 The corpse's tongue is still,
 Its folded fingers point to heaven,
 But point there stiff and chill:
 No farther wrong, no farther woe
 Hath license from the sin below
 Its tranquil heart to thrill.
"I charge thee, by the living's prayer,
 And the dead's silentness,
 To wring from out thy soul a cry
 Which God shall hear and bless!
 Lest Heaven's own palm droop in my hand,
 And pale among the saints I stand,
 A saint companionless."
V.
Bow lower down before the throne,
 Triumphant Rosalind!
 He boweth on thy corpse his face,
 And weepeth as the blind:
 'Twas a dread sight to see them so,
 For the senseless corpse rocked to and fro
 With the wail of his living mind.
VI.
But dreader sight, could such be seen,
 His inward mind did lie,
 Whose long-subjected humanness
 Gave out its lion-cry,
 And fiercely rent its tenement
 In a mortal agony.
VII.
I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail,
 'Twould haunt you in court and mart,
 And in merry feast until you set
 Your cup down to depart—
 That weeping wild of a reckless child
 From a proud man's broken heart.
VIII.
O broken heart, O broken vow,
 That wore so proud a feature!
 God, grasping as a thunderbolt
 The man's rejected nature,
 Smote him therewith i' the presence high
 Of his so worshipped earth and sky
 That looked on all indifferently—
 A wailing human creature.
IX.
A human creature found too weak
 To bear his human pain—
 (May Heaven's dear grace have spoken peace
 To his dying heart and brain!)
 For when they came at dawn of day
 To lift the lady's corpse away,
 Her bier was holding twain.
X.
They dug beneath the kirkyard grass,
 For born one dwelling deep;
 To which, when years had mossed the stone,
 Sir Roland brought his little son
 To watch the funeral heap:
 And when the happy boy would rather
 Turn upward his blithe eyes to see
 The wood-doves nodding from the tree,
 "Nay, boy, look downward," said his father,
 "Upon this human dust asleep.
 And hold it in thy constant ken
 That God's own unity compresses
 (One into one) the human many,
 And that his everlastingness is
 The bond which is not loosed by any:
 That thou and I this law must keep,
 If not in love, in sorrow then,—
 Though smiling not like other men,
 Still, like them we must weep."


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


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FOOTNOTES:

[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:— Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica, by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March 6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.

[B] Adam recognizes in Aquarius, the Water-bearer, and Sagittarius, the Archer, distinct types of the man bearing and the man combating,—the passive and active forms of human labour. I hope that the preceding zodiacal signs—transferred to the earthly shadow and representative purpose—of Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Capricornus, and Pisces, are sufficiently obvious to the reader.

[C] Her maternal instinct is excited by Gemini.

[D] "His angels he charged with folly."—Job iv. 18.




Transcriber's Notes:

The author's punctuations have been kept, except on page 221,a fullstop added to the end of the poem (thee for weeping.).

On page xx (Contents), page number "155" for Epilogue corrected to be "150."

All apparent printer's errors and variable spellings retained. This includes:

  • The use of both modern and archaic spellings of the same word, for example: "corpse" and "corse;" "like" and "liker;" "obtain" and "obtayne;"
  • The variable use of accent in the same word, for example: "Aphrodité" and "Aphroditè;" "Heré" and "Herè;" "wailèd" and "wailed;"
  • The use of phrases with and without hyphen, for example: "full-length" and "full length;" "God-light" and "Godlight;" "red-clay" and "red clay."