There is some chiaro-oscuro about this. Under all the ghastliness of the conception, we detect here a deep, genuine, unhoping, intensely human yearning, that is all the better drawn for being thrown into the shadow. We do not know of a more graphic realization of death. Miss Rossetti seems to be lucky with her sonnets. We give the companion piece to this last—not so striking as the other, but full of heart's love, and ending with one of the few passages we recall which enter without profaning the penetralia of that highest love, which passionately prefers the welfare of the beloved one to its own natural cravings for fruition and fulfilment:
"REMEMBER.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you no more can hold me by the hand
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray,
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve;
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had.
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Another marked peculiarity often shadowed forth is our authoress's sharply defined idea that the dead lie simply quiescent, neither in joy nor sorrow. There are several miserable failures to express this state, and one success, so simple, so natural, and so pleasant in measure, that we quote it, though we have seen it cited before:
"When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dew-drops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows;
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain;
And dreaming through that twilight
That doth not rise not set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."
Such bold insight into so profound a subject says more for the soul of an author than a whole miss's paradise of prettinesses.
In singular contrast with this religious fervency and earnestness, the sincerity of which we see no reason to impeach, comes our gravest point of reprehension of this volume. We think it fairly chargeable with utterances—and reticences—of morally dangerous tendency; and this, too, mainly on a strange point for a poetess to be cavilled at—the rather delicate subject of our erring sisters. Now, we are of those who think the world, as to this matter, in a state little better than barbarism; that far from feeling the first instincts of Christian charity, we are shamefully like the cattle that gore the sick ox from the herd. The only utterly pitiless power in human life is our virtue, when brought face to face with this particular vice. We hunt the fallen down; hunt them to den and lair; hunt them to darkness, desperation, and death; hunt their bodies from earth, and their souls (if we can) from heaven, with the cold sword in one hand, and in the other the cross of him who came into the world to save, not saints, but sinners, and who said to one of these: "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more."
But there is also such a thing as misdirected mercifulness; a dangerous lenity, all the more to be guarded against for its wearing the garb of charity; and we think Miss Rossetti has leaned culpably far in this direction. Two poems are especially prominent examples—Cousin Kate, and Sister Maude. In each the heroine has sinned, and suffered the penalties of discovery, and in each she is given the upper hand, and made a candidate for sympathy, for very bad reasons. There is no word to intimate that there is anything so very dreadful about dishonor; that it may not be some one else's fault, or nobody's fault at all—a mere social accident. A few faint hinting touches there may be of conventional condemnation, but somehow Miss Rossetti's sinners, as sinners, invariably have the best of the argument and of the situation, while virtue is, put systematically in the wrong, and snubbed generally. The Goblin Market too, if we read it aright, is open to the same criticism. We understand it, namely, to symbolize the conflict of the better nature in us, with the prompting of the passions and senses. If so, what is the story translated from its emblematic form? One sister yields; the other by seeming to yield, saves her. Again there is not a syllable to show that the yielding was at all wrong in itself. A cautious human regard for consequences is the grand motive appealed to for withstanding temptation. Lizzie tells Laura, not that the goblin's bargain is an evil deed in the sight of God, but that Jennie waned and died of their toothsome poisons. She saves her by going just so far as she safely can. What, if anything, is the moral of all this? Not "resist the devil and he will flee from you," but "cheat the devil, and he won't catch you." Now, all these sayings and silences are gravely wrong and false to a writer's true functions. With all deference then, and fully feeling that we may mistake, or misconstrue, we sincerely submit that some of these poems go inexcusably beyond the bounds of that strict moral [{846}] right, which every writer who hopes ever to wield influence ought to keep steadily, and sacredly in view. We are emboldened to speak thus plainly, because we have some reason to believe that these things have grated on other sensibilities than our own, and that our stricture embodies a considerable portion of cultivated public opinion.
In conclusion, we repeat our first expressed opinion, that Miss Rossetti is not yet entitled to take a place among today's poets. The question remains, whether she ever will. We do not think this book of hers settles this question.
