Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/155

Rh day it will be difficult to discover readers who can he moved to any great amount of enthusiasm by the author's passionate and evident sincerity. She claimed for it only that it portrayed the intensity of "her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country," and that the sincerity with which the feeling was manifested indicated "her own good faith and freedom from partisanship." She also considered the discrepancy which the public would see between the two parts of the poem—"the first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851"—a sufficient guarantee to her readers of the fidelity of her contemporary impressions. The causes which gave rise to her singing are no longer operative; her prophecy of Italy's future has been fulfilled, and her poem, as of all political poems, can now only be of value for, and only judged by, its poetic worth. Unfortunately, when judged by the only standard now possible to gauge it by, Casa Guidi Windows cannot be regarded as one of its author's successes, any metrical music it contains being but too frequently chiefly conspicuous by the harshness of the long passages of prose by which it is overwhelmed. Probably the sweetest lines in the work are those with which the poem opens:—