“Raise the majesties Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved, And front with level eyelids the To Come, And all the dark o’ the world. Rise, woman, rise To thy peculiar and best attitudes Of doing good and of enduring ill,— Of comforting for ill, and teaching good, And reconciling all that ill and good Unto the patience of a constant hope,— Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee, And by sin, death,—the ransom righteousness, The heavenly light, and compensative rest, Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth An angel of the woe thou didst achieve, Found acceptable to the world, instead Of others of that name, of whose bright steps Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied; Something thou hast to bear through womanhood, Peculiar suffering, answering to the sin;— Some pang paid down for each new human life, Some weariness in guarding such a life, Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason; feebleness Within thy heart, and cruelty without, And pressures of an alien tyranny With its dynastic reasons of larger bones And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love Shall chant itself its own beatitudes, After its own life working. A child’s kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong. Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.”
In seeking to ascertain the precise position which Mrs. Browning occupies in relation to other writers, critics of general common sense will select a class of favourites who have exerted a mighty sway over the strongly pulsing heart of common humanity. Some will place in this list Burns, Moore, and Scott. With others, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson will figure as chiefs. Now, in this selection, we venture to affirm Mrs. Browning has been often enrolled by men as well as by women; by some high upon the list, by others, of course, upon a lower level. There are not many good sonnets in English literature, but in this most difficult and elaborate form of composition Mrs. Browning was eminently successful. We could select half a dozen excellent sonnets from Mrs. Browning with more ease than from Shakespeare, or Milton, or any other writer save Wordsworth.