Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/47

Rh from and repugnance to evil which, in my weaker Seraph, is expressed by fear, and in my stronger one by a more complex passion. . . . To recoil from evil is according to the stature of an angel; to subdue it is according to the infinitude of a God.

If the leading poem of her book failed to make the impression on her readers Miss Barrett desired, it was neither owing to her want of the requisite learning, nor the poetic power to deal with her abstruse theme, but rather that the public preferred to abstract spiritualities such poems as Miss Mitford described—"poems of human feeling and human action." With respect to the other shorter pieces in her book, the authoress claimed that though if her life were prolonged she would hope to write better verses hereafter, she could never feel more intensely than at that moment "the sublime uses of poetry and the solemn responsibilities of the poet." When it is considered that among the poems thus referred to were, besides those already spoken of, such examples of her genius as "Isabel's Child," "The Deserted Garden," "Cowper's Grave," and others equally representative of her various moods, and all now become permanent glories of our language and literature, the intensity of Elizabeth Barrett's feelings in their production will not be doubted for a moment by anyone having belief in "the sublime uses" of her art, and in "the solemn responsibilities" alluded to by their architect.