dividual as Miss E. B. Barrett had ever really existed. Letters and notes, and exquisite English lyrics, and perhaps a few elegant Latin verses, and spirited translations from Eschylus, might all be discovered under that name; but this would not prove that such a lady had ever dwelt among us. Certain admirable and erudite prose articles on the Greek Christian Poets,' might likewise be ascertained by the exhumation of sundry private letters and documents, touching periodical literature, to have been from the hand of that same Valerian;' but neither the poetry, nor the prose, nor the delightfully gossipping notes to fair friends, nor the frank correspondence with scholars, such as Lady Jane Grey might have written to Roger Ascham-no, not even if the greatgrandson of some learned Jewish doctor could show a note in Hebrew (quite a likely thing really to be extant) with the same signature, darkly translated by four letters, nay, though he should display as a relic treasured in his family, the very pen, with its oblique Hebraic nib, that wrote it not any one, nor all of those things could be sufficient to demonstrate the fact, that such a lady had really adorned the present century. Confined entirely to her own apartment, and almost hermetically sealed, in consequence of an extremely delicate state of health, the poetess of whom we write is scarcely seen by any but her own family. But though thus separated from the world-and often, during many weeks at a time, in darkness almost equal to that of night, Miss Barrett has yet found means, by extraordinary inherent energies, to develope her inward nature; to give vent to the soul in a successful struggle with its destiny while on earth; and to attain and master more knowledge and accomplishments than are usually within the power of those of either sex who possess every adventitious opportunity, as well as health and industry. Six or seven years of this imprisonment she has now endured, not with vain repinings, though deeply conscious of the loss of external nature's beauty; but with resignation, with patience, with cheerfulness, and generous sympathies towards the world without ;with indefatigable 'work' by thought, by book, by the pen, and with devout faith, and adoration, and a high and hopeful waiting for the time when this mortal frame putteth on immortality.' Probably no living individual has a more extensive and diffuse acquaintance with literature-that of the present day inclusive-than Miss Barrett. Although she has read Plato, in the original, from beginning to end, and the Hebrew Bible The from Genesis to Malachi (nor suffered her course to be stopped by the Chaldean), yet there is probably not a single good romance, of the most romantic kind, in whose marvellous and impossible scenes she has not delighted, over the fortunes of whose immaculate or incredible heroes and heroines she has not wept; not a clever novel or fanciful sketch of our own day, over the brightest pages of which she has not smiled inwardly, or laughed outright, just as their authors themselves would have desired. prominent characteristics of these two poetesses may be designated as the struggles of woman towards happiness, and the struggles of a soul towards heaven. The one is oppressed with a sense of injustice, and feels the need of human love; the other is troubled with a sense of mortality, and aspires to identify herself with ethereal existences. The one has a certain tinge of morbid despondency taking the tone of complaint and the amplification of private griefs; the other too often displays an energetic morbidity on the subject of death, together with a certain predilection for terrors.' The imagination of Mrs. Norton is chiefly occupied with domestic feelings and images, and breathes melodious plaints or indignations over the desecrations of her sex's loveliness; that of Miss Barrett often wanders amidst the supernatural darkness of Calvary, sometimes with anguish and tears of blood, sometimes like one who echoes the songs of triumphal choirs. Both possess not only great mental energies, but that description of strength which springs from a fine nature, and manifests itself in productions which evidently originated in genuine impulses of feeling. The subjects they both choose appear spontaneous, and not resulting from study or imitation, though cast into careful moulds of art. Both are excellent artists: the one in dealing with subjects of domestic interest; the other in designs from sacred subjects, poems of religious tendency, or of the supernatural world. Mrs. Norton is beautifully clear and intelligible in her narrative and course of thought and feeling; Miss Barrett has great inventiveness, but not an equal power in construction. The one is all womanhood; the other all wings. The one writes from the dictates of a human heart in all the eloquence of beauty and individuality; the other like an inspired priestess-not without a most truthful heart, but a heart that is devoted to religion, and whose individuality is cast upward in the divine afflatus, and dissolved and carried off in the recipient breath of angelic ministrants." ADAM. EVE. A DRAMA OF EXILE. BY ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. PERSONS OF THE DRAMA. GABRIEL. LUCIFER. Angels. Eden Spirits. Earth Spirits and Phantasms. The Morning Star. CHRIST in a Vision. As earth was once,-first breathed among the stars, Articulate glory from the mouth divine,To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly, Touched like a lute-string,-and the sons of God Said AMEN, singing it. I know that this Is earth, not new created, but new cursed This, Eden's gate, not opened, but built up With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream? Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost That smote upon the forehead, Lucifer It holds, like mine immortal. Presently And overtop thy crown with my despair. My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to Heaven; And leave me to the earth, which is mine own In virtue of her misery, as I hers, And spare to read us backward any more Gabriel. Spirit of scorn! I might say, of unreason! I might say, That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives. With God's relations set in time and space; That who elects, assumes a something good Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys The law of a Life-maker... Let it pass! No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up And strike my brow against the crystalline Roofing the creatures,-shall I say for that, My stature is too high for me to stand,- Gabriel. And leave my earth to me. Gabriel. ven and earth So much as the first shell of,-toward the throne; When I fell back, down,-staring up as I fell, The lightnings holding open my scathed lids, And that thought of the infinite of God, Drawn from the finite, speeding my descent; When countless angel-faces, still and stern, Pressed out upon me from the level heavens, Adown the abysmal spaces; and I fell, Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind By the sight in your eyes;-'twas then I knew How ye could pity, my kind angelhood! Gabriel. Yet, thou discrowned one, by the truth in me Which God keeps in me, I would give away All,-save that truth, and His love over it, To lead thee home again into the light, And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars; When their rays tremble round them with much song, Sung in more gladness! star! Sing, my morning Through Hea- If I could drench thy golden locks with Might hold this charge of standing with a sword 'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well As the benignest angel of you all. Gabriel. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change. If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God This morning, for a moment, thou hadst known That only pity fitly can chastise, Lucifer. And my sword grew too heavy for my wrist, Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce And now I have named God. Yet, Gabriel, By the lie in me which I keep myself, Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise, What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts To that earth-angel or earth-demonwhich, Thou and I have not solved his problem yet Enough to argue,-that fallen Adam there, That red-clay and a breath! who must, forsooth, Live in a new apocalypse of sense, Of finally conducting him and his To suit thy bitter words. Glory and life A compensative splendor up the skies, Lucifer. With a change! So, let the vacant thrones, and gardens too, Fill as may please you!—and be pitiful, As ye translate that word, to the dethron'd And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands, That I, the rebel, the cast out and down, Am here, and will not go; while there, along The light to which ye flash the desert out, Flies your adopted Adam! your red clay In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this? Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work? Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks, I am not a fallen angel! Of all that coil, roared outward into space On thunder-edges, leave the earth to God. Lucifer. My wo is on the earth, to curse thereby. Gabriel. I charge thee by that mournful morning star Which trembleth.... Lucifer. Hush! I will not hear thee speak Of such things. Enough spoken. As the pine In norland forest, drops its weight of snows By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends, I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel! Watch out thy service; I assert my will. And peradventure in the after years, When thoughtful men bend slow their spacious brows Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere To ruffle their smooth manhood, and break up With lurid lights of intermittent hope Their human fear and wrong,-they may discern The heart of a lost angel in the earth. They dare not look in one another's face, Our voices feel along the Dread to find As if each were a cherub! Lucifer. Gabriel. Proving what? That He is God, And capable of saving. Lucifer, I charge thee by the solitude He kept Ere he created,-leave the earth to God! Lucifer. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin! Gabriel. I charge thee by the memory of Heaven Ere any sin was done,-leave earth to God! Lucifer. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon. Gabriel. I charge thee by the choral song we sang, When up against the white shore of our feet, The depths of the creation swelled and brake, And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower you, O lost, beloved! A softer voice. Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you, In all your music, our pathetic minor And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner, With sense of loss! We shall be near, in all your poet-languors And wild extremes; What time ye vex the desert with vain angers, Or light with dreams! And when upon you, weary after roaming, Death's seal is put, By the foregone ye shall discern the coming, Through eyelids shut. Spirits of the trees. Hark! the Eden trees are stirring, Which divine impulsion cleaves In the nightlight, and the noonlight, Never stirred by rain or breeze! Fare ye well, farewell! The sylvan sounds, no longer audible, Each footstep of your treading Treads out some murmur which ye heard Farewell! the trees of Eden . Where the green palms and red deer Fare ye well, farewell! The river-sounds, no longer audible, Each footstep of your treading Treads out some murmur which ye heard before: Farewell! the streams of Eden, I am the nearest nightingale I sit upon a cypress-bough, Close to the gate; and I fling my song Sings in the garden, sweet and true. In the song which I sing after you: The creature-sounds, no longer audible, Each footstep of your treading Treads out some cadence which ye heard before: Farewell! the birds of Eden, Flower-Spirits. The last of the throng! Of blossom and bloom; And grey heliotropes ! |