"You linger, yet the time is short;
Flee for your life; gird up your strength
To flee; the shadows stretched at length
Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;
Flee to the mountain, tarry not.
Is this a time for smile and sigh;
For songs among the secret trees
Where sudden blue-birds nest and sport?
The time is short, and yet you stay;
To-day, while it is called to-day,
Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;
To-day is short, to-morrow nigh:
Why will you die? why will you die!
. . . . .
How should I rest in Paradise,
Or sit on steps of Heaven alone?
If saints and angels spoke of love,
Should I not answer from my throne,
'Have pity upon me, ye, my friends,
For I have heard the sound thereof?'
Should I not turn with yearning eyes,
Turn earthward with a pitiful pang?
Oh! save me from a pang in heaven!
By all the gifts we took and gave,
Repent, repent, and be forgiven!"
The lines called Sound Sleep, p. 65, we like very well for very slight cause. It says nearly nothing with a pleasant flow of cadence that has the [{842}] charm of an oasis for the reader. Much better is No, Thank You, John! which strikes into a strain of plain sound sense that we could wish to see much more of. The style, as well as the sense, seems to shuffle off its affectations, and the last two stanzas especially are easy, natural, and neat.
A strange compound of good and bad is the singular one called
"TWICE.
I took my heart in my hand,
O my love, O my love!
I said, "Let me fall or stand,
Let me live or die;
But this once hear me speak,
O my love, O my love!
Yet a woman's words are weak;
You should speak, not I."
You took my heart in your hand,
With a friendly smile,
With a critical eye you scanned,
Then set it down
And said: "It is still unripe—
Better wait a while;
Wait while the skylarks pipe,
Till the corn grows brown."
As you set it down it broke—
Broke, but I did not wince;
I smiled at the speech you spoke,
At your judgment that I heard:
But I have not often smiled
Since then, nor questioned since,
Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,
Nor sung with the singing-bird.
I take my heart in hand,
O my God, O my God!
My broken heart in my hand:
Thou hast seen, judge thou.
My hope was written on sand,
O my God, O my God!
Now let thy judgment stand—
Yea, judge me now.
This, contemned of a man,
This, marred one heedless day,
This heart take thou to scan
Both within and without:
Refine with fire its gold,
Purge thou its dross away;
Yea, hold it in thy hold,
Whence none can pluck it out.
I take my heart in my hand—
I shall not die, but live—
Before thy face I stand,
I, for thou callest such;
All that I have I bring,
All that I am I give,
Smile thou, and I shall sing,
But shall not question much."
This poem, we confess, puzzles us a little to decide upon it. The imitation is palpable at a glance, but it is a very clever one: the first three stanzas above all catch the mannerism of their model to admiration. But the whole, is a copy, at best, of one of the archetype's inferior styles; and yet we fancy we can see, under all the false bedizening, something of poetry in the conception, though it is ill said, and only dimly translucent. There is art, too, in the parallelism of the first and last three verses. But we do not like the refrain in the fourth verse—somehow it jars. Perhaps the best we can say of it is, that Browning, in his mistier moments of convulsiveness, could write worse.
There is another imitation of Browning in this book, that is the most supremely absurd string of rugged platitudes imaginable—Wife to Husband, p. 61. The last verse is sample enough:
"Not a word for you,
Not a look or kiss
Good-by.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this,
I must die."
The metre generally throughout this book is in fact simply execrable. Miss Rossetti cannot write contentedly in any known or human measure. We do not think there are ten poems that are not in some new-fangled shape or shapelessness. With an overweening ambition, she has not the slightest faculty of rhythm. All she has done is to originate some of the most hideous metres that "shake the racked axle of art's rattling car." Attempting not only Browning's metrical dervish-dancings, but Tennyson's exquisite ramblings, she fails in both from an utter want of that fine ear that always guides the latter, and so often strikes out bold beauties in the former. Most of Miss Rossetti's new styles of word-mixture are much like the ingenious individual's invention for enabling right-handed people to write with the left hand—more or less clever ways of doing what she don't wish to do. What possible harmony, for instance, can any one find in this jumble, which, as per the printer, is meant for a "song:"
"There goes the swallow—
Could we but follow!
Hasty swallow, stay,
Point us out the way;
Look back, swallow, turn back, swallow, stop, swallow.
[{843}]
There went the swallow—
Too late to follow,
Lost our note of way,
Lost our chance to-day.
Good-by, swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.
After the swallow—
All sweet things follow;
All things go their way,
Only we must stay,
Must not follow; good-by, swallow, good swallow."
Where on earth is sound or sense in this? Not a suggestion of melody, not a fraction of a coherent idea. People must read such trash as they eat meringues à la crême: we never could comprehend either process.