The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1

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Browning Elizabeth Barrett. The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1

PREFATORY NOTE

Dedication

PREFACE

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A DRAMA OF EXILE

A DRAMA OF EXILE

THE SERAPHIM

THE SERAPHIM

PART THE FIRST

PART THE SECOND

EPILOGUE

PROMETHEUS BOUND

FROM THE GREEK OF ÆSCHYLUS

PROMETHEUS BOUND

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS

FROM BION

A VISION OF POETS

A VISION OF POETS

CONCLUSION

THE POET'S VOW

THE POET'S VOW

PART THE FIRST. SHOWING WHEREFORE THE VOW WAS MADE

PART THE SECOND. SHOWING TO WHOM THE VOW WAS DECLARED

PART THE THIRD. SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS KEPT

PART THE FOURTH. SHOWING HOW ROSALIND FARED BY THE KEEPING OF THE VOW

PART THE FIFTH. SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS BROKEN

THE WORDS OF ROSALIND'S SCROLL

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When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours.

And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day, – that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day, – that you, who hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one Name, – may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one smile, – and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest affection.

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It should have been observed in another place, – the fact, however, being sufficiently obvious throughout the drama, – that the time is from the evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a "mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically. Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that approach them are not only of the night.

The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the "Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a significance.

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