Robert Browning*

Robert Browning (1812—1889) is seen today, not only as one of the major poets of the 19th century, but as a celebrated romantic figure. He and the poet (then known as) Elizabeth Barrett eloped against her father’s wishes, escaping to Italy, where her health concerns had a greater chance of recovery.

It is for Robert Browning that Elizabeth wrote the famous sequence Sonnets from the Portuguese (his affectionate nickname for her, because of her olive complexion). This collection includes her Sonnet #43 — one of the most famous love poems of all time.

Robert Browning is particularly known for his lengthy dramatic poems — influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and in turn influencing such poets as Thomas Hardy and T.S. Eliot.

God, Thou Art Love

If I forget,
Yet God remembers! If these hands of mine
Cease from their clinging, yet the hands divine
Hold me so firmly that I cannot fall;
And if sometimes I am too tired to call
For Him to help me, then He reads the prayer
Unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.

I dare not fear, since certainly I know
That I am in God’s keeping, shielded so
From all that else would harm, and in the hour
Of stern temptation strengthened by His power;
I tread no path in life to Him unknown;
I lift no burden, bear no pain, alone:
My soul a calm, sure hiding-place has found:
The everlasting arms my life surround.

God, Thou art love! I build my faith on that.
I know Thee who has kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy;
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Robert Browning: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning*

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806―1861) is one of the nineteenth century’s greatest poets. She was outspoken against many abuses of human rights ― including against slavery, and the reliance upon slave labour on her family’s Jamaican sugar plantations. She also boldly expressed her Christian faith, and spoke out against issues such as child labour, even though these were not popular with many readers.

Her 11,000-line epic poem Aurora Leigh (1856) ― which is described as a novel in blank verse ― tells the story of the young woman, Aurora, who aspires to be a poet. One important focus of the story is the difficulty for women to have artistic ambitions, due to the restrictive expectations of women’s roles, and limited opportunities for education. Browning saw it as the most mature of her works. The critic John Ruskin called Aurora Leigh the greatest long poem of the nineteenth century.

The opening setting for Aurora Leigh is Florence, where Elizabeth and her husband Robert Browning primarily lived from 1846 until her death.

From Aurora Leigh ― Book VII

And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And,–glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,–
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874―1942) is a Canadian author, particularly famous for her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, and its sequels. Much of her fiction is set in Prince Edward Island ― which has become a significant focus for the island’s tourism. She went on to publish 20 novels, hundreds of short stories, and more than 500 poems. As is often the case, as her fiction increased in popularity, her poetry writing decreased.

As a poet she was greatly influenced by the Romantics, and Lord Tennyson. Her most ambitious poem “The Watchman” is a dramatic monologue reminiscent of Robert Browning, which tells the story of a Roman soldier, Maximus, who witnessed the resurrection of Christ.

The following poem first appeared in The Christian Advocate on October 1st 1908, and is from The Watchman and Other Poems (1916). John Ferns, an English professor at McMaster University, wrote in 1986 about this poem, “Perhaps it is the Biblical subject of drought or the Christian idea of rebirth that provokes the increasing use of religious language as the poem proceeds.”

After Drought

Last night all through the darkling hours we heard
The voices of the rain,
And every languid pulse in nature stirred
Responsive to the strain;
The morning brought a breath of strong sweet air
From shadowy pinelands blown,
And over field and upland everywhere
A newborn greenness shone.

The saintly meadow lilies offer up
Their white hearts to the sun,
And every wildwood blossom lifts its cup
With incense overrun;
The brood whose voice was silent yestereve
Now sings its old refrain,
And all the world is grateful to receive
The blessing of the rain.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Olav H. Hauge

Olav H. Hauge (1908—1994) is a poet of Norway who also learned to speak English, German and French. He translated many foreign poets into Norwegian, including Tennyson, Yeats, Robert Browning, and Bertolt Brecht. Hauge translated into Norweigian the poetry of Robert Bly, who also translated Hauge’s work into English.

Hauge’s early poetry is quite traditional, but his later work demonstrates the influence of modernism, and Chinese poetry. He lived all his life in the western Norwegian village of Ulvik.

The following poem is from Luminous Spaces which was translated by Olav Grinde.

Always I Expect to Find

Always I expect to find
something that makes life worthwhile,
something worth winning,
which shall lift me up, strengthen
my will and brace my back.

Free me from this curse of doubt
so humbly I may bend my knee
to life’s eternal truth, let it
guide me right, give me goals
to reach for, faith and peace.

Blessed is the man who, drawn onward,
sees what is writ in the Lord’s hand.
Serpent becomes staff, the burning
bush is green again. Find your path
before your severed day is here!

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning*

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861) is one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. She suffered from ill health from her teens onward, beginning with a lung ailment when she was 14, and a spinal injury at 15. The prescribed laudanum and morphine she became reliant upon may have also contributed to her frail health.

Her family was very supportive of her writing — collecting one of the largest collections of juvenilia relating to any English writer — but was later so over-protective of her that she and Robert Browning had to elope to become married.

She dedicated herself to an educated expression of Christian faith, learning Hebrew while still in her teens, and later turning to Greek. She also read Milton's Paradise Lost, and Dante's Inferno while still young. Barrett Browning passionately believed that Christianity was naturally suited to being explored through poetry — that the highest poetry was essentially religious. She said in an 1842 letter to her friend Mary Russell Mitford, “The failure of religious poets turns less upon their being religious, than on their not being poets. Christ’s religion is essentially poetry — poetry glorified.”

A Thought For A Lonely Death-Bed

If God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,—
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly!
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press,—by the wilderness out-spread,—
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow, —by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine!
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel 'twixt my face and thine,
But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
And smile away my mortal to Divine!'

Sonnet 22

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: first post, second post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Francis Thompson*

Francis Thompson (1859—1907) was uninspired as a medical student, and neglected his studies. During an illness he became addicted to opium, and started living on the streets of London. At this time he applied to Oxford University, but was turned down due to his addiction. His fortunes began to turn for the better, however, when his first poems appeared in the periodical Merrie England. That’s when Robert Browning took notice of them. At the Premonstratensian Monastery in Storrington, Sussex, he was able to become free of opium.

In 1893 his book Poems was highly praised by Coventry Patmore in the Fortnightly Review. Much of Thompson’s best work relates to his Christian faith, particularly his best known poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”

To A Snowflake

What heart could have thought you? —
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapor? —
"God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapor,
To lust of His mind —
Thou could'st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost."

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Francis Thompson: first post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Robert Browning*

Robert Browning (1812—1889) is as much celebrated for his romance with poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning as he is for his poetry. His first published book Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession was denounced by John Stuart Mill as being dominated by the poet’s personal emotions and self-consciousness; this critique may be responsible for Browning subsequently veiling himself from his readers in his dramatic monologues.

He was raised in an evangelical home, but briefly became an atheist after having immersed himself in the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley. This was short-lived, however, and after his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning his Christian faith grew steadily deeper — although, like much of his private life, was not declared in a personal way in his poetry.

His extensive piece Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day is an examination of different attitudes towards Christianity, and is one of his most significant contributions from his married years (1846 to 1861). Robert and Elizabeth lived primarily in Florence. Her grave is in the English Cemetery there, and his is in Westminster Abbey.

from Christmas-Eve - X

Earth breaks up, time drops away,
In flows heaven, with its new day
Of endless life, when He who trod,
Very man and very God,
This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
Dying the death whose signs remain
Up yonder on the accursed tree,—
Shall come again, no more to be
Of captivity the thrall,
But the one God, All in all,
King of kings, Lord of lords,
As His servant John received the words,
“I died, and live for evermore!”

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Robert Browning: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning*

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861) is one of the nineteenth century's most influential poets. She was so admired by Emily Dickinson that she had a framed picture of the English poet in her bedroom.

Elizabeth Barrett suffered a spinal injury while saddling a pony, when she was 15 years old; that, along with a lung ailment, eventually made her an invalid. "Books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like bees about the grass," she said years later. In her teens she taught herself Hebrew so she could read the Old Testament, and later began learning Greek.

Her father was overly protective of her, and disapproved of her romance with Robert Browning. In 1846 the couple eloped and moved to Italy, where her health improved significantly. They soon settled in Florence, where they lived until her death 15 years later. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sarcophagus is in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence.

A Child's Thought of God

They say that God lives very high;
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God; and why?
And if you dig down in the mines,
You never see Him in the gold,
Though from Him all that’s glory shines.
God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face,
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place;
As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,
Half waking me at night, and said,
“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: first post, third post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861—1907) is a British writer, who also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos (a character in the George MacDonald novel Phantastes). During her lifetime she was best known for such novels as The King With Two Faces (1897). Today she is more remembered for her verse.

She was raised in a home that encouraged the arts, and which was visited by such writers as Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. She is the great-grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge taught literature and grammar for twelve years at Working Women's College, seeing it as her Christian duty to help the poor.

Good Friday In My Heart

GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘Lov’st thou Me?’
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

John Donne*

John Donne (1572―1631) has now been established as one of the English language’s greatest poets; this was not always the case. In his own day, he was better known as a preacher — serving as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. During his lifetime his verse circulated in manuscript form among those who valued it. Immediately after his death it was published in several editions, but soon fell out of fashion to be all but forgotten for centuries. During these years some poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Browning, were solitary voices in praise of John Donne. It wasn’t until the 1920s that admirers including William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot succeeded in drawing the attention of the literary world to Donne's poetry.

The following poem is the third from “La Corona” from Donne’s Holy Sonnets.

Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves his well-beloved imprisonment,
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come;
But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th'Inn no room?
Yet lay him in this stall, and from the orient,
Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent
Th'effect of Herod's jealous general doom;
See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how he
Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?
Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,
With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Donne: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart (1722—1771) distinguished himself through his poetry while attending Cambridge University. Later, however — when he worked in London, writing for periodicals and popular theatre — he led a reckless life: drinking excessively, spending money he didn’t have, and inviting friends home for dinner when there wasn’t enough for the family to eat.

In 1756 he was seized by a “religious mania”. Samuel Johnson described it by saying, “My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place.” He refers to this himself in his poem “Hymn to the Supreme Being, on Recovery from a Dangerous Fit of Illness”. He continued, however, to grow unstable. For the next seven years, he was shut away from his wife and children, in St. Luke’s Hospital, and in a private madhouse. During this time “he began to write a bold new sort of poetry: vivid, concise, abrupt, syntactically daring.” (The Norton Anthology of English Literature.) Even after release, he was incapable of handling his finances.

Today, Christopher Smart is best known for the poetry he began while in confinement. The first, A Song To David (1763), considered his masterpiece, was unappreciated in its day, although later praised by both Browning and Yeats for its spiritual vision. Another extensive work Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb) wasn’t even published until 1939. One quirky segment, that has drawn recent interest, begins:
-----For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
-----For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving
----------him...
Smart’s support of the belief that all creation honours God by following its nature is pushed, here, beyond logical application.

The Nativity Of Our Lord And Saviour Jesus Christ

Where is this stupendous stranger,
Swains of Solyma, advise?
Lead me to my Master’s manger,
Show me where my Saviour lies.

O Most Mighty! O MOST HOLY!
Far beyond the seraph’s thought,
Art thou then so mean and lowly
As unheeded prophets taught?

O the magnitude of meekness!
Worth from worth immortal sprung;
O the strength of infant weakness,
If eternal is so young!

If so young and thus eternal,
Michael tune the shepherd’s reed,
Where the scenes are ever vernal,
And the loves be Love indeed!

See the God blasphem’d and doubted
In the schools of Greece and Rome;
See the pow’rs of darkness routed,
Taken at their utmost gloom.

Nature’s decorations glisten
Far above their usual trim;
Birds on box and laurels listen,
As so near the cherubs hymn.

Boreas now no longer winters
On the desolated coast;
Oaks no more are riv’n in splinters
By the whirlwind and his host.

Spinks and ouzels sing sublimely,
“We too have a Saviour born”;
Whiter blossoms burst untimely
On the blest Mosaic thorn.

God all-bounteous, all-creative,
Whom no ills from good dissuade,
Is incarnate, and a native
Of the very world He made.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was a prominent English Victorian poet. She had been a prodigy who, while still young, became enthusiastic for the study of classic literature and devoted to Christian faith. At about age 20, she began battling long-term illness which troubled her for the rest of her life.

Even though her domineering father’s income came partly from slave labour on Jamaican plantations, she was opposed to slavery — and wrote poems against it. When abolition came, in the 1830s, it undermined the family’s wealth. She also wrote The Cry of the Children (1842) which condemned child labour, and helped promote reform.

Her popular 1844 book, Poems, prompted Robert Browning to write a letter of admiration. By 1845 he had come to visit her, where she lived as an invalid in her father’s home. This began, perhaps, the most famous literary romance of all time. By 1846 the Brownings secretly married and eloped to Italy, where her health greatly improved; her father never forgave her, even though their marriage was happy.

Her famous sequence — Sonnets from the Portuguese — records the stages of her love for Robert Browning; the most famous of these is the following sonnet:

Sonnet #43

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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a 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.

The Meaning of the Look

I think that look of Christ might seem to say—
`Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone
Which I at last must break my heart upon
For all God`s charge to his high angels may
Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday
Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
Quick to deny me `neath the morning sun?
And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray?
The cock crows coldly.—GO, and manifest
A late contrition, but no bootless fear!
For when thy final need is dreariest,
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;
My voice to God and angels shall attest,
Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.`

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: second post, third post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812–1889) is one of the major figures of 19th century poetry. Ironically, prior to the death of his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he was not well known, and was overshadowed by her. In his youth he had become an atheist, but later he rejected atheism to embrace Christianity. He clearly views this world as the place where imperfect souls are prepared for the perfection of heaven. His views only come through over the distance because his poems are “dramatic monologues” from the perspective of his characters; this makes it hard to know Browning himself.

In one poem — in the form of a letter from an incredulous Arab physician, named Karshish — we read of this man meeting with Lazarus. Karshish writes to a colleague the story of the man Christ raised. (Read the poem here)
He considers Lazarus to be mad, since “This grown man eyes the world now like a child” and believes that the one who raised him is “God himself / Creator and sustainer of the world”.

Some have accused Browning of being overly optimistic, but as The Norton Anthology of English Literature puts it: “Browning’s optimism was not blind. Few writers, in fact, seem to have been more aware of the existence of evil.” With this in mind we can read the following poem more in context.

Pippa’s Song

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Robert Browning: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca