The new edition of the Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, contains besides many original pieces, her translation of the "Prometheus Bound," of Æschylus, never hitherto published, although, as she informs us, once privately circulated in another and less complete form. It bears no mark of a woman's hand: it is rugged, massive, and sublime, as befits the grand old fate drama which the genius of the Greek moulded out of the immortal agony of the beneficent Titan. From the new poems we select the following exquisite love sonnets, from a series scarcely inferior to those in which Shakspeare has given the history of his heart-life:
"I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up, ... those laurels on thine head,
O my beloved, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand further off, then! Go.
"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
"Beloved, my beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sat alone here in the snow,
And saw no foot-print, heard the silence sink
No moment at they voice; ... but link by link
Went courting all my chains, as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand.... Why, thus I drink
Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—nor ever call
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.
"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
And ever since it grew more clear and white;
How to world greetings ... quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear there plainer to my sight
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half-missed,
Half falling on the hair. O, beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third, upon my lips was folded down,
In perfect purple state! Since when, indeed,
I have been proud, and said, 'My love, my own.'"
The candidateship between Lord Palmerston and the historian Alison for the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, resulted in a majority for the latter, on the gross poll, of 69. As, however, of the "four nations" into which the students were distributed, each of the candidates had two, the election should have been decided by the vote of the present Rector, Mr. Macaulay; but he declines the duty, and would not go to the university during the contest.
The Official Gazette announces that "the Queen has been pleased to appoint Alfred Tennyson, Esq., to be Poet Laureate in ordinary to her Majesty, in the room of William Wordsworth, Esq., deceased." There have been poorer poets than Tennyson among the laureates; but this appointment does not and ought not to give much satisfaction. Mr. Tennyson had already a pension from the government, and was in no need of the salary of this office, as one or two others, and as we conceive, greater poets, are; and it had been hoped that the queen would appoint to the place the greatest poet of her own sex who has lived in England—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.