This week’s choice marks National Poetry Day and it’s a poem about a poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon”.
No portrait this, with Academic air!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861)
This is the poet and his poetry.
Poem 406. On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon
Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud
Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind,
Then break against the rock, and show behind
The lowland valleys floating up to crowd
The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed
And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
And very meek with inspirations proud,
Takes here his rightful place as poet-priest
By the high altar, singing prayer and prayer
To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free
Our Haydon’s hand has flung out from the mist:
No portrait this, with Academic air!
This is the poet and his poetry.
This sonnet celebrates both Wordsworth and the painter Benjamin Haydon who painted the portrait of the Poet Laureate in 1842. Browning was evidently much struck by the painting, despite Dickens’ criticism of Haydon’s art as “quite marvellous in its badness”.
The painting shows Wordsworth standing with his arms crossed against a background of rocky peaks and dark skies. His head is tilted forward, his eyes are hooded and he appears to be brooding over something—perhaps a rhyme for daffodils.
Browning’s poem describes the painting beautifully—we see the heavy clouds behind him and it is all too easy to imagine them being whipped against the rocks by a whistling wind. We can see “the lowland valleys floating up” though their beauty is more conjectural than actual in the painting being little more than a dim suggestion in the distance.
Browning infers Wordsworth’s supposed thoughts from his attitude and appearance: she imagines him standing at the top of Helvellyn in the Lake District (the third highest point in England; Wordsworth and Coleridge both visited it), perhaps conceiving his next hymn to the natural world around him, praising the works of Providence.
Browning airs her praises in turn, describing Wordsworth as a “poet-priest…singing prayer and prayer to the higher Heavens”—the higher Heavens reminding us that Wordsworth’s vantage point is already pretty high up. She concludes by praising Haydon’s work which she says is “A noble vision” and rather than a classical portrait like the others in the Royal Academy, it is a representation of Wordsworth and his poetry.
I like this poem because in a few short lines it outlines the painting and describes one of the great poets of the age.
There is only one performance of the poem on YouTube and unfortunately it’s not very good.
This week, we have lost another great poet: Brian Patten, one of the Liverpool Poets, died on 29 September. He will be remembered for The Mersey Sound, an anthology he published with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, for his collections of verse for children, and for “So Many Different Lengths of Time” which I covered in June 2022, and which has become a popular poem quoted at funerals. Read more about Brian Patten (and some of his poems) on his website.