Mother and Poet

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61)

Turin, after News from Gaeta, 1861

DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!	5
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agoniz’d here,
—The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.	10
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you press’d,
And I proud, by that test.	15
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both Darlings; to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little, to sew by degrees
And ’broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to doat.	20
To teach them … It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.	25
And when their eyes flash’d … O my beautiful eyes!…
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God, how the house feels!	30
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moil’d
With my kisses,—of camp-life and glory, and how
They both lov’d me; and, soon coming home to be spoil’d,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.	35
Then was triumph at Turin: “Ancona was free!”
And someone came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheer’d in the street.	40
I bore it; friends sooth’d me; my grief look’d sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remain’d
To be leant on and walk’d with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strain’d
To the height he had gain’d.	45
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, “I was not to faint,—
One lov’d me for two—would be with me ere long:
And Viva l’ Italia!—he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.”	50
My Nanni would add, “he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turn’d off the balls,—was impress’d
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ’t was impossible, quite dispossess’d,
To live on for the rest.”	55
On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line,
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta:—Shot.
Tell his mother. Ah, ah, “his,” “their” mother,—not “mine,”
No voice says “My mother” again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?	60
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were to lately forgiven
Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconcil’d so
The Above and Below.	65
O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turn’d away,
And no last word to say!	70
Both boys dead? but that ’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
’T were imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?	75
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?	80
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead)—	85
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star prick’d by the last peak of snow:
My Italy’s THERE, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!	90
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this—and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.	95
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea,
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me   [This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poet and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]	100

The poem that I have chosen to analyse is “mother and poet” by Elisabeth Browning. The main idea that this poem reflects is a mother’s suffering because of the death of both her sons.

First of all, the whole text has one hundred verses. But I am going to analyse just the first five stanzas as sample that allows us to contextualise the poem in its historical period.

“Mother and poet” was written in 1861. It confines itself to the Victorian period, when an atmosphere of political tension was felt all over the world. The previous year to the writing of the poem, Garibaldi took Naples and the unification of Italy started, country where Elisabeth Browning was living at that time. Furthermore, in the same year 1861, coinciding with the writing of the poem, the American Civil War broke out. Elisabeth Browning was always interested in the social and political problems with which she was living, such as the Italian Risorgimento (dealt with in “Casa Guidi Windows”,1851); the issue of slavery in the United States (dealt with in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s point”,) or the sexual differences of the social code (dealt with in Lord Walter’s Wife”) (Mary Pollock).

“Mother and poet” was a part of the posthumous publication of her “Last Poems”, published by Robert Browning in 1862. According to Mary Pollock, this poem is: “a dramatic monologue spoken by Laura Savio, a poet of the Risorgimento who lost both her sons in military battles within a year” (Mary Pollock).

An innocent reading of the poem can provide us with the necessary information to know the big pain that the woman in the poem is suffering. The poet even refers to concrete sequences of time in her sons’ life, really intimate scenes such as the one in which she explains that this woman who is suffering now was a really good poetess, but even better she was bringing up her sons. These sons who hurted their mother’s breast with their milk-teeth when they were babies and that now are dead defending their country: “What art can a woman be good at? What art is she good at, but hurting her breast with the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain” (lines 11-13).

We can also appreciate the feelings of guilt fron the text that make the mother think that she could prevent her sons death and however she taught her sons the sense of the word country and the necessity of men to defend it till death: “I made them indeed speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt, that a country’s a thing men should die for at need. I prated of liberty, rights, and about the tyrant cast out” (lines 21-25).

According to Mary Pollock the reason for these anguished words is the fact that they are the result of a “meditation on the sometimes ironic relationship between motherhood and a woman’s participation in the polity: Laura Savio’s own hortatory poems contributed to the patriotic surge which sent her sons to their death.” (Mary Pollock).

The fact that, as I mentioned before, Elisabeth Browning’s “treatment of social injustice ( the slave trade in America, the labor of children in the mines and the mines of England and the restrictions placed upon women)” (Glenn Everett), made her to gain everyone’s respect in the 19^th century. “No female poet was held in higher esteem among cultured readers in both the United States and England than Elisabeth Barret Browning during the nineteenth century “ (Glen Everett).

As a conclusion, I would like to finish by saying that the poem “Mother and Poet”is a very implicated poem in the Victorian period that with the strength of its words is able to give voice to those mothers and poets that had no representation at that time.

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