Elizabeth Barrett Browning, E.B.B. (1806-1861)
“Mother and Poet” (1862)
Editorial Introduction
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Mother and Poet,” first published in her 1862 collection Last Poems, gives voice to a bereaved Italian mother grieving the deaths of both sons during the Risorgimento, Italy’s unification movement. Inspired by Olimpia Savio of Turin, whose sons died in the battles of Ancona and Gaeta, the poem challenges readers to consider the hidden costs of national freedom, especially the grief of women who are culturally bound to nurture life rather than sacrifice it. I selected this poem because it complicates patriotic idealism through the lens of maternal mourning, exposing the domestic and emotional casualties that historical narratives often obscure.
My annotations prioritize literary form, historical references, and visual culture to show how Barrett Browning critiques the transformation of private women into political symbols. The speaker’s question, “What art’s for a woman?” reflects both resignation and rage as she realizes the nationalist values she instilled in her sons led to their deaths. Barrett Browning’s italicized “Tell his mother” and the capitalization in “My Italy’s THERE” underscore the tension between public victory and personal devastation. The poem’s references to Gaeta, the final Bourbon stronghold whose 1861 fall marked a national triumph, are laced with anguish as the mother cries “What then?” even as the nation celebrates. Visual references reinforce these tensions: Gerolamo Induno’s painting A Great Sacrifice and Giuseppe Molteni’s La derelitta echo Barrett Browning’s themes of maternal desolation on the margins of political fervor.
Similarly, audio performance deepens our reading; Ghizela Rowe’s subdued voice in her reading of the poem highlights sorrow where a printed line might suggest restraint. This video recording is available in the annotations and in the green box below. These contextual and multimodal frames help future readers avoid sentimentalizing the speaker’s grief or misreading her complicity.
By drawing connections between poetic form, historical events, and nineteenth-century mourning art, this edition argues that Barrett Browning’s monologue mourns not only two sons but the silencing of mothers in national myth. I hope readers come away with a renewed awareness of how war rhetoric depends on domestic sacrifice and how literary and visual texts together resist forgetting that cost.
- How does the ababb rhyme scheme and five-line stanza form shape the rhythm of the poem? What effect does the short final line in each stanza create?
- How does the poem use images of women’s “art” (nursing, sewing, teaching) to connect private domestic life with national politics?
- In stanza V the speaker recalls teaching her sons to say “country.” How does this memory reveal both pride and anguish?
- What meaning lies in the cry “O my beautiful eyes!” (stanza VI)? How does it capture both possession and reflection?
- How does the poem contrast the mother’s grief with the public celebrations of Italian unification in Turin (stanzas VIII–IX)?
- What does the line “each house must always keep one” (stanza XV) suggest about losing both sons?
- The final stanza returns to the opening scene. How does this repetition shape the poem’s ending, and what judgment does it cast on patriotic victory?
Supplemental Resources
This video recording combines a reading of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Mother and Poet” with a montage of images depicting soldiers from around the world.
I.
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 !
II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said ;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
— The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead. 10
III.
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 pressed,
And I proud, by that test.
IV.
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
V.
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.
VI.
And when their eyes flashed … 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
VII.
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, — of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me ; and, soon coming home to be spoiled
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
VIII.
Then was triumph at Turin : `Ancona was free !’
And some one 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 cheered in the street. 40
IX.
I bore it ; friends soothed me ; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
X.
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, `I was not to faint, —
One loved me for two — would be with me ere long :
And Viva l’ Italia ! — he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.” 50
XI.
My Nanni would add, `he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ’twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.”
XII.
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
XIII.
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe ?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.
XIV.
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 turned away,
And no last word to say ! 70
XV.
Both boys dead ? but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
‘Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall ;
And, when Italy ‘s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son ?
XVI.
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
XVII.
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) —
XVIII.
What then ? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly ! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow :
My Italy ‘s THERE, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair ! 90
XIX.
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.
XX.
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 ! 100
[This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]
