AN ENGLISH POETESS.

Evening Star, Issue 16990, 12 March 1919, Page 3

AN ENGLISH POETESS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—ln this rushing, bustling world there comes a time when a little mental repose is helpful, and we find solace and comfort in the friends of humanity, the poets, because they see the mysteries which circle under the outwarcT shell and skin of dailv life. The anniversary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's birth having occurred this month (this illustrious woman was born on March 6. 1809), it would seem fitting and reasonable to call .to mind an English poetess whose name can never be forgotten bv all reformers and lovers of literature, for she rendered signal service to the cause of humanity with her great poem 'The Cry of the Children.' We owe that poem as 'the result of the finding of a Royal Commissioner inquiring into the employment of children in mines and manufactories. It is full of pathos and truth, and was described by a critic, as. "a masterpiece full of nervous, unflinching energy, a horror sublime in its simplicity." Acain, anyone who has studiously read her 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship ' must observe that in swing and go it is not unlike Tennyson's ' Locksley Hall'; and when bracketing the names of Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning it is like dini ing with the gods, and we think of the | grand line of poets our nation has produced. Although a poetess of renown, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was essentially "the woman of women," and once wrote to a friend : " Tlease to recollect that when I talk of women I do not speak of them, as many men do. according to a. separate, peculiar, and womanly standard, but according to the common standard of human nature." In her poem 'Aurora Leigh ' we get a true insight of woman's perspective as she perceives it. Just a word of her lovo sonnets: Do they not stand out on the sky line of literature as genius at its finest and best? We honor her name in the poetic annals of our race, conscious, too, of James Russell Lowell's lines : Where are most sorrow there the poet's sphere is ; To feed the soul with patience, To heal its desolations With words of unshorn truth. With love that never wearies. —T am, etc., Elliott Standfiki.d. March 10.