Poems I Journey With 16

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. She was vehemently anti-slavery even though her father had earned much of his wealth from that much maligned, exploitative and cruel industry. She had married her husband Robert Browning in secret and went with him to live in Florence, having been disinherited by her father. Emily Dickinson was an avid fan of Barrett Browning and the latter’s work greatly influenced the American poet who admired her as a woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was further advanced by her stands against social injustice, including slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italian citizens by foreign rulers, and child labour.

Here, let me offer the reader of this blog two poems from Barrett Browning’s pen, “A Musical Instrument” published posthumously and her most frequently anthologized poem “How do I Love Thee?” Both poems speak eloquently for themselves and are rather ethereal and mystical in tone and sentiment. Barrett Browning was extremely spiritual and religious and a gifted linguist and scholar, all self-taught.  She knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew and translated many pieces from the early Fathers of the Church into English and read the Hebrew Bible. All her life she was sickly, but her delicate physical condition did not prevent either her intellectual or spiritual insights and visions.

A Musical Instrument

I.

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.

II.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

III.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,

While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed

To prove it fresh from the river.

IV.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

(How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

In holes, as he sate by the river.

V.

This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,

Laughed while he sate by the river,)

The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.'

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

VI.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

Came back to dream on the river.

VII.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, —

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Elizabeth's husband Robert Browning and their son Robert Junior, called Pen

How Do I Love Thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnet XLIII
from Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1845 (published 1850)