First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 18632, 1868, 1888. Our text is 1855. B. inscribed lines 1–2 of the poem as the first entry in an album he gave to Mary Buchanan, daughter of the poet Robert Buchanan, in 1876 (Collections, E121). The Massachusetts Historical Society has a copy of the last stanza in B.’s hand (Collections, E120), almost certainly written out as an autograph, although for whom is not known. It is on a small sheet of notepaper, signed but not dated; it has no verbal variants, but the punctuation variants suggest that it was written out after the revisions for 1868 but before those for 1888. It does not, however, correspond to any printed text: for example, it contains a reading from 1870 at l. 50, but at l. 54 agrees with 1855–63.
There is no direct evidence of the date of composition, but phrases similar to revisions B. was making in Pippa Passes for his 1849 Poems (see ll. 7–8n., 15n., 18–20n.) may indicate a relatively early date, between 1848 and 1850. A similar date is suggested by EBB.’s interest in the question of the survival of love into the next life, which she discusses frequently in her letters dating from the late 1840s in the context of her interest in Swedenborgianism. There were a number of Swedenborgians in the Brownings’ circle, e.g. Charles Augustus Tulk (see Lovers’ Quarrel 1n. [p. 377]), who expressed his desire to rejoin his wife in the ‘new world’ in a conversation reported by EBB. in a letter of 10–11 May 1848: ‘ “Tell me,” he asked … “if Mr. Browning were to go from you, wouldn’t you desire to rejoin him?—I want to go to my wife—There’s no other tie in life like that tie. What exists between parent & child, is comparatively nothing— merely temporal—Conjugal love is the one eternal bond which God has set his seal on.” Swedenborg saw in the vision that true husbands and wives were seen as one body in the spiritual life,—the two making one angel’ (EBB to Arabella i 176; see also Two in the Campagna [p. 556], and An Epistle [p. 507]). The speaker’s understanding of the afterlife in Evelyn Hope may be couched in Swedenborgian terms; see ll. 29–32n. and l. 35n. An alternative source is suggested by ll. 39–40, where the phrase ‘new life’, together with the suggestion that the speaker will be in Evelyn Hope’s hands, and not vice versa, recalls Dante’s Vita Nuova, the early death of Beatrice which seals Dante’s devotion to her, and Beatrice’s role as Dante’s guide in the Paradiso. In a letter to Julia Wedgwood of 19 Aug. 1864 B. cited a passage from Dante’s Convivio which he applied to his own relationship to EBB.: ‘ “Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where that Lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured” ’ (RB & JW 64); a verse translation of the same passage appears in La Saisiaz (1878) 213–15.
In ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ (1846) Edgar Allan Poe writes: ‘When it most closely allies itself to beauty: the death … of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover.’ Both B. and EBB. were admirers of Poe’s work; see Mesmerism (III 475). The poem contains some verbal resemblances to the opening stanza of the second part of the poem ‘Flowers’ (1833) by B.’s friend Alfred Domett: ‘Sweet is the dazzling whiteness / Of the Maiden’s brow; / Sweet is the azure brightness / Of her meek eyes’ glow; / Her lip’s geranium-red—the flush / Of her modest, mantling blush’ (cp. ll. 16, 38). For B.’s friendship with Domett during the 1830s and 1840s, see headnote to Waring (pp. 185–6). The mention of the geranium may be significant; although the precision of the ‘language of flowers’ in Victorian England has been overestimated, most flower books identified the scarlet geranium as an emblem of folly or stupidity; see J. J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées (1847), and Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers (1995), pp. 178–9. On the use of flower symbolism, and especially of analogies between women and flowers, in nineteenth-century poetry see headnote to Women and Roses (III 235).
The topic of love between persons of unequal age appears in other poems by B., but is not consistently treated as either justifiable or indefensible. The speaker of this poem, who defends his love for Evelyn Hope despite being ‘thrice as old’ as her (l. 21), is not as obvious a prey to wishful thinking as the Queen in In a Balcony (see esp. ii 141–94, III 428–30); in Dis Alîter Visum (p. 688) a young woman rebukes an older man for not proposing to her; Guido’s marriage to Pompilia in Ring, however, in which the age difference is the same as in Evelyn Hope, is unequivocally condemned. B. would have been aware of the traditional satirical view of old men’s sexual desire for younger women (reaching back to Greek comedy, and including celebrated treatments of the theme such as Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale), as well as contemporary versions such as Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1846–48), in which Mr Dombey marries (disastrously) the much younger Edith Granger. The preferred Victorian resolution was that proposed by Dickens in a later novel, Bleak House (1852–53), in which Mr Jarndyce nobly renounces his love for Esther Summerson in favour of her younger suitor Alan Woodcourt. The speaker’s attitude here, it should be said, is very much not that of renunciation; the metaphysical, indeed mystical dimension of the poem does not exclude sexual desire, explicitly voiced at l. 32.
1
Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
5 Beginning to die too, in the glass.
Little has yet been changed, I think—
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays thro’ the hinge’s chink.
2
Sixteen years old when she died!
10 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name—
It was not her time to love: beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
And now was quiet, now astir—
15 Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.
3
Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
20 Made you of spirit, fire and dew—
And just because I was thrice as old,
And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was nought to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, nought beside?
4
25 No, indeed! for God above
Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love,—
I claim you still, for my own love’s sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
30 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few—
Much is to learn and much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.
5
But the time will come,—at last it will,
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say,
35 In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium’s red—
And what you would do with me, in fine,
40 In the new life come in the old one’s stead.
6
I have lived, I shall say, so much since then,
Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
45 Yet one thing, one, in my soul’s full scope,
Either I missed or itself missed me—
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!
7
I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;
50 My heart seemed full as it could hold—
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold.
So, hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep—
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.
55 There, that is our secret! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember, and understand.
Title. Evelyn Hope: the name ‘Evelyn’ seems to have become fashionable for women in the mid-nineteenth century; the heroine of Rank and Beauty (1856), one of the ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ criticized by George Eliot, is called Evelyn Wyndham.
1. dead!] emended from 1855 which has no punctuation, in agreement with H proof, 1856, 1863–88. In the list of ‘Errata’ he supplied to his American publisher, James T. Fields, B. requests a full stop, not an exclamation mark (B to Fields 192), but this does not accord with the proof reading and was not implemented in 1856 or any subsequent edition.
2. Alluding to the custom of ‘watching’ of the body between death and burial in order to pray for the soul of the deceased.
7–8. Cp. lines added in 1849 to Pippa Passes i 4 (p. 101): ‘But this blood-red beam through the shutter’s chink, / —We call such light, the morning’s’. Note that line 5 then mentions geraniums.
7. no light] nor light (H proof, but not H proof 2).
15. Cp. (noting the connection in ll. 7–8) Pippa’s fourth song in Pippa Passes (iv 187–200, p. 166), which ends ‘Suddenly God took me’ In 1849 B. added two lines at 188^189 which make clear that the song concerns the death of a child: ‘There was nought above me, and nought below, / My childhood had not learned to know!’ See also ll. 18–20n. unawares: suddenly, unexpectedly; cp. Home-Thoughts, from Abroad 4 (p. 253).
16. ‘The sweet white brow now sums up her whole being’; ‘the brow is the only remaining feature which tells of her as she was when she was alive’. The brow does not (immediately) lose its expressive power like the eyes or the mouth. On the possible reminiscence of Domett’s poetry in this line, see headnote. Cp. also the belief attributed to B. by the Dowager Countess of Jersey: ‘he had the rather curious idea that the soul’s last sojourn was just between the eyebrows. He said that he had seen several people die, and that the last movement was there. I cannot think that a quiver of the forehead proves it’ (Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life [1922] 87). The remark is undated, but probably comes from the 1870s. For another quotation from this book, see Old Pictures 175–6n. (p. 422).
18–20. The signs of the zodiac are traditionally divided into four groups named after the ‘elements’ of air, fire, water and earth; the speaker takes issue with the suggestion that Evelyn’s ‘horoscope’ would reveal no constellations associated with ‘earth’. Pippa’s fourth song (see l. 15n.) mentions ‘stars, the Seven and One’ in a context which may have mystical meaning: see iv 194n. (p. 166).
21. thrice as old: for this motif in B., see headnote.
25–8. Cp. the moment in A Soul’s Tragedy when Chiappino forces Eulalia to confirm that, despite his lifelong passion for her, she has never loved him: ‘That’s sad—say what I might, / There was no helping being sure this while / You loved me—love like mine must have return, / I thought—no river starts but to some sea!’ (i 233–6, II 191).
29–32. An apparent allusion to the doctrine of ‘metempsychosis’, or the transmigration of souls; in his essay ‘Swedenborg; or, the Mystic’ (1844), Emerson suggests that Swedenborgianism adheres to a doctrine of ‘subjective’ metempsychosis: ‘All things in the universe arrange themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love. Man is such as his affection and thought are. Man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding. As he is, so he sees. The marriages of the world are broken up. Interiors associate all in the spiritual world.’ See also headnote, and cp. Old Pictures 161–76n. (p. 422), and By the Fire-Side (p. 456). The speaker’s wording recalls Wordsworth’s version of this doctrine in ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’, l. 58: ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting’.
31. learn and much] learn, much (1870 –88).
35. lower earth: either ‘in this world’ (from the perspective of a new and higher one), or an allusion to Swedenborgian doctrine (see headnote) as explained in Arcana Coelestia, transl. Elliott (1853–57), 4728: ‘The lower earth is directly below the feet, and is a region that does not extend to any great distance all around. There the majority stay after death before being raised up into heaven.’ During this period their souls undergo ‘vastation’ or purification until they are ready to be admitted to heaven. in the years long still: during the years between death and admission to the ‘new life’ (see headnote).
44. spoiled the climes: plundered or ‘despoiled’ all the ‘climes’ or regions of the earth; cp. Sordello v 623–4 (I 699): ‘they ranged / The spoils of every clime at Venice’.
48. issue: outcome, result.
49. while;] while (H proof, 1888); while! (Mass. Hist. Soc. MS, 1863–68, 1872). The agreement between 1888 and H proof is fortuitous, since although the reading in H proof may not be a misprint, that in 1888 certainly is one: it was corrected in 1889 and features in both the lists of corrections which B. compiled for that text. The syntax of H proof makes sense with ‘that’ understood after ‘while’, but this cannot be said of 1888 because of the revision in the next line.
50. hold—] hold? (Mass. Hist. Soc. MS, 1870–88); hold; (1872). This is a relatively rare instance of 1872 not agreeing with the corrected version of 1868, and introducing a variant of its own.
52. hair’s young gold: gold hair is a recurring motif in B.’s poetry; see Porphyria 18–20n. (p. 72).
53. this leaf: the leaves of various plants (e.g. laurel, acanthus) have traditional associations with the afterlife, but none has been previously mentioned; ‘this leaf ’ may therefore mean the ‘leaf’ or sheet of paper on which the poem itself is written.
54. hand.] hand! (1868–88). This variant does not appear in Mass. Hist. Soc. MS.
55. secret! go to sleep;] secret: go to sleep! (1868–88).