Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning

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Title: Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning

Author: Robert Browning

Editor: Myra Reynolds

Release date: February 9, 2009 [eBook #28041]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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The Lake Library Edition

SELECTIONS FROM THE POEMS AND PLAYS OF ROBERT BROWNING

Edited, with an Introduction by

MYRA REYNOLDS

Professor of English Literature in the
University of Chicago

[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]

Scott, Foresman and Company
Chicago Atlanta New York

286.4

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION-- PAGE

I. The Life of Browning 7
II. The Poetry of Browning 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY 57

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 60

SELECTIONS FROM BROWNING--

(_The figures in parentheses refer to the pages of the
Notes._)

Songs from Paracelsus (389) 65
Cavalier Tunes (391) 69
The Lost Leader (391) 72
"How They Brought the Good News" (392) 73
The Flower's Name (393) 76
Meeting at Night (393) 78
Parting at Morning (393) 78
Evelyn Hope (393) 78
Love Among the Ruins (394) 81
Up at a Villa--Down in the City (394) 84
A Toccata of Galuppi's (395) 88
Old Pictures in Florence (396) 91
"De Gustibus--" (399) 101
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad (399) 103
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea (400) 104
Saul (400) 105
My Star (402) 126
Two in the Campagna (403) 126
In Three Days (403) 129
The Guardian-Angel (403) 130
Memorabilia (404) 132
Incident of the French Camp (404) 133
My Last Duchess (404) 135
The Boy and the Angel (404) 137
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (404) 141
The Flight of the Duchess (405) 152
A Grammarian's Funeral (406) 183
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (407) 189
How It Strikes a Contemporary (409) 196
Fra Lippo Lippi (409) 200
Andrea Del Sarto (413) 213
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church (414) 222
Cleon (416) 227
One Word More (417) 239
Abt Vogler (419) 247
Rabbi Ben Ezra (422) 253
Caliban Upon Setebos (423) 260
May and Death (425) 271
Prospice (425) 272
A Face (425) 273
O Lyric Love (425) 274
Prologue to Pacchiarotto (425) 275
House (426) 276
Shop (426) 278
Hervé Riel (426) 282
Good to Forgive (427) 289
"Such a Starved Bank of Moss" (427) 290
Epilogue to the Two Poets of Croisic (427) 290
Pheidippides (427) 295
Muléykeh (428) 302
Wanting Is--What? (428) 309
Never the Time and the Place (428) 310
The Patriot (429) 311
Instans Tyrannus (429) 312
The Italian in England (430) 315
"Round Us the Wild Creatures" (431) 321
Prologue to Asolando (431) 321
Summum Bonum (431) 323
Epilogue to Asolando (431) 324
Pippa Passes (431) 325

NOTES 389

INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE OF BROWNING

Robert Browning, the poet, was the third of that name. The first Robert
Browning, a man of energy and ability, held an important post in the
Bank of England. His wife, Margaret Tittle, was a Creole from the West
Indies, and at the time of her marriage her property was still in the
estates owned by her father near St. Kitts. When their son, the second
Robert, was seven years of age, his mother died, and his father
afterwards married again. The second wife's ascendency over her husband
was unfortunately exerted against the best interests of the son. His
desire to become an artist, his wish for a university training, were
disregarded, and he was sent instead to St. Kitts, where he was given
employment on his mother's sugar plantations. The breach between Robert
and his father became absolute when the boy defied local prejudice by
teaching a negro to read, and when, because of what his father
considered a sentimental objection to slavery, he finally refused to
remain in the West Indies. The young man returned to England and at
twenty-two started on an independent career as a clerk in the Bank of
England. In 1811 he married Sarah Anne Wiedemann. They settled in
Camberwell, London, where Robert, the poet, was born, May 7, 1812, and
his sister Sarianna in 1814.

Browning's father was a competent official in the Bank and a successful
business man, but his tastes were æsthetic and literary, and his
leisure time was accordingly devoted to such pursuits as the collection
of old books and manuscripts. He also read widely in both classic and
modern literatures. The first book of the _Iliad_ he knew by heart, and
all the _Odes_ of Horace, and he was accustomed to soothe his child to
sleep by humming to him snatches of Anacreon to the tune of "A Cottage
in the Wood." Mr. Browning had also considerable skill in two realms of
art, for he drew vigorous portraits and caricatures, and he had, even
according to his son's mature judgment, extraordinary force and facility
in verse-making. In character he was serene, lovable, gentle,
"tenderhearted to a fault." So instinctively chivalrous was he that
there was "no service which the ugliest, oldest, crossest woman in the
world might not have exacted of him." He was a man of great physical
vigor, dying at the age of eighty-four without ever having been ill.

Browning's mother was the daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who
had settled in Dundee and married a Scotch wife. Mrs. Browning impressed
all who knew her by her sweetness and goodness. Carlyle spoke of her as
"the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman"; her son's friend, Mr. Kenyon,
said that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it
wherever they were; and her son called her "a divine woman." She had
deep religious instincts and concerned herself particularly with her
son's moral and spiritual development. The bond between them was always
very strong, and when she died in 1849 his wife wrote, "He has loved his
mother as such passionate natures can love, and I never saw a man so
bowed down in an extremity of sorrow--never."

Robert Browning's childhood was passed in an unusually serene and happy
home. In _Development_ he tells how, at five years of age, he was made
to understand the main facts of the Trojan War by his father's clever
use of the cat, the dogs, the pony in the stable, and the page-boy, to
impersonate the heroes of that ancient conflict. Latin declensions were
taught the child by rhymes concocted by his father as memory-easing
devices. Stories and even lessons were made intelligible and vivid by
colored maps and comic drawings. Until the boy was fourteen, his
schooling was of the most casual sort, his only formal training being
such as he received in the comparatively unimportant three or four years
he spent, after he was ten, at Mr. Ready's private school. His real
education came, through all his early life, from his home. What would
now be called nature-study he pursued ardently and on his own initiative
in the home garden and neighboring fields. His love for animals was
inherited from his mother and fostered by her. He used to keep, says
Mrs. Orr in her account of his life, "owls and monkeys, magpies and
hedge-hogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly
bringing home the more portable animals in his pockets and transferring
them to his mother for immediate care." Browning says that his faculty
of observation at this time would not have disgraced a Seminole Indian.
In the matter of reading he was not entirely without advice and
guidance, but was, on the whole, allowed unusual freedom of choice. He
afterwards told Mrs. Orr that Milton, Quarles, Voltaire, Mandeville, and
Horace Walpole were the authors in whom, as a boy, he particularly
delighted. His love for art was established and developed by visits to
the Dulwich picture gallery, of which he afterwards wrote to Miss
Barrett with "love and gratitude" because he had been allowed to go
there before the age prescribed by the rules, and had thus learned to
know "a wonderful Rembrandt," a Watteau, "three triumphant Murillos," a
Giorgione Music Lesson, and various Poussins. His marked early
susceptibility to music is evidenced by an incident narrated by Mr.
Sharp: "One afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself.
She was startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round she beheld a
little white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just
discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment
the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not
what, but, as his paroxysm subsided, whispering with shy urgency: 'Play!
Play!'"

In various ways the boy Robert was noticeably precocious. He could not
remember a time, he said, when he did not rhyme, and his sister records
that as a very little boy he used to walk around the table "spanning out
on the smooth mahogany the scansion of verses he had composed." Some of
these early lines he could recall and he could recall, too, the
prodigious satisfaction with which he uttered them, especially the
sentence he put into the mouth of a man who had just committed
murder--"Now my soul is satisfied." At twelve he had a volume named
_Incondita_ ready for publication. To discerning eyes the little volume
was a production of great promise, dominated though it was by the
influence of his father's idol, Pope, and of his own temporary ruling
deity, Byron. But a publisher was not found, and in later years, at
Browning's request, the two extant manuscript copies of _Incondita_ were
destroyed, along with many others of his youthful poems that had been
preserved by his father.

Browning's early tastes in the realm of poetry were, on the whole,
romantic. "Now here is the truth," he wrote to Miss Barrett, "the first
book I ever bought in my life was Ossian--and years before that the
first _composition_ I ever was guilty of was something in _imitation_ of
Ossian whom I had not read, but _conceived_, through two or three
scraps in other books." But the decisive literary influence was yet to
come. When he was fourteen he happened to see on a bookstall a volume
marked, "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem. Very Scarce"; and he at once
wished to know more of this Mr. Shelley. After a perplexing search his
mother found the desired poems, most of them in first editions, at the
Olliers, Vere Street, London. She took home also three volumes by
another poet, John Keats, who, she was told, was the subject of an elegy
by Shelley. Browning never forgot the May evening when he first read
these new books, to the accompaniment, he said, of two nightingales, one
in a copper-beech, one in a laburnum, each striving to outdo the other
in melody. A new imaginative world was opened to the boy. In
_Memorabilia_ he afterwards recorded the strong intellectual and
emotional excitement, the thrill and ecstasy of this poetical
experience. To Shelley especially did he give immediate and fervid
personal loyalty, even to the extent of endeavoring to follow him in
"atheism" and vegetarianism.

When at fourteen the boy left Mr. Ready's school it was decided that his
further education should be carried on at home under private tutors. He
studied music under able masters, one in thorough-bass, and one in
execution. He played and sang, and he composed spirited settings for
songs. He read voraciously. He took lessons in dancing, riding, boxing,
and fencing, and is said to have shown himself exceptionally active and
vigorous. He kept up his interest in art, and he practiced drawing from
casts. He found time also for various friendships. For Miss Eliza and
Miss Sarah Flower, two sisters, nine and seven years his senior, he had
a deep affection. Both young ladies were gifted in music, and this was
one source of their attractions for the music-loving boy. Miss Sarah
Flower wrote sacred hymns, the best known of which is "Nearer my God to
Thee," and her sister composed music which Browning, even in his mature
years, ranked as of especial significance. Other friends of this period
were Joseph Arnold, afterwards Chief Justice of Bombay, and a man of
great ability; Alfred Domett, a striking and interesting personality
described by Browning in a poem beginning "What's Become of Waring," and
referred to in "The Guardian Angel"; and the three Silverthorne boys,
his cousins, the death of one of whom was the occasion of the poem "May
and Death."

In spite of friends, a beautiful home, and congenial work, this period
of home tutelage does not seem to have been altogether happy. His sister
in commenting on this period said, "The fact was, poor boy, he had
outgrown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they
were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he chafed under them."
Furthermore, the youth, before he had found his real work as a poet, was
restless, irritable, and opinionated; and an ever-present cause of
friction was the fact that there were few subjects of taste on which he
and his father did not disagree. Their poetic tastes were especially at
variance. The father counted Pope supreme in poetry, and it was many
years before he could take pleasure in the form in which his son's
genius expressed itself. All the more noteworthy, then, is the
generosity with which Mr. Browning looked after his son's interests
through the unprofitable early years of his poetic career, a generosity
never lost sight of by the son. Mr. Sharp in his _Life of Browning_
records some words uttered by Mr. Browning a week or two before his
death, which show how permanent was his sense of indebtedness to his
father. "It would have been quite unpardonable in my case," he said,
"not to have done my best. My dear father put me in a condition most
favorable for the best work I was capable of. When I think of the many
authors who have had to fight their way through all sorts of
difficulties, I have no reason to be proud of my achievements.... He
secured for me all the care and comfort that a literary man needs to do
good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to
realize his expectations of me."

After it was determined that Robert should "commence poet," he and his
father came to the conclusion that a university training had many
elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a
richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from
"sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from
"seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us
that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and
digest the whole of Dr. Johnson's _Dictionary_.

Browning's first published poem, _Pauline_, appeared anonymously in
January, 1833, when he was twenty years old. This poem is of especial
autobiographical interest. Its enthusiastic praise of Shelley recalls
his early devotion to that poet, and in many scattered passages we find
references to his own personality or experiences. The following lines
show with what intensity he recreated the lives and scenes in the books
he read:

And I myself went with the tale--a god
Wandering after beauty, or a giant
Standing vast in the sunset--an old hunter
Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.
I tell you, naught has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives:
I had not seen a work of lofty art,
Nor woman's beauty, nor sweet nature's face,
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea,
The deep groves and white temples and wet caves;
And nothing ever will surprise me now--
Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair.

There is true and powerful self-analysis in the lines beginning:

I am made up of an intensest life;

and the invocation in lines 811-854 reveals the passionately religious
nature of the young poet. In _The Early Writings of Robert Browning_[1]
Mr. Gosse gives an account of the impression made by this poem upon men
so diverse as the Rev. William Johnson Fox, John Stuart Mill, and Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, to all of whom, in spite of its crudities and very
evident immaturity, it seemed a production of exceptional promise.

After an interval of two years Browning published, this time under his
own name, a second long poem. The subject, Paracelsus, had been
suggested by the friend, Amédeé de Ripert-Monclar, to whom the poem is
dedicated. In pursuance of his purposed rehabilitation of a vanished age
Browning made extensive researches in the British Museum into the
history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical
science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis
of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in
subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was
recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he
was admitted into the foremost literary circles of London. One of
his most distinguished new friends was Mr. Macready, the great actor. It
was at his house that Browning first met Mr. Forster, who had already
written favorable critiques of _Paracelsus_, one for _The Examiner_ and
one for _The New Monthly Magazine_. Other literary associates of this
period were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Sergeant Talfourd, Dickens, and
Walter Savage Landor. There were not infrequent dinners and suppers to
which the young poet was welcomed. He is described as being at this
period singularly handsome. "He looks and acts," said Mr. Macready,
"more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." He had
sculpturesque masses of dark wavy hair, a skin like delicate ivory,
deep-set, expressive eyes, and a sensitive mouth. He was slender,
graceful, and most attractive in manner, and he was something of a dandy
in his attention to dress. He is said to have made an especially good
impression on one occasion when the circumstances must have been as
trying as they were exhilarating. In May, 1836, a group of poets had
assembled at Mr. Talfourd's to celebrate Macready's successful
production of Talfourd's _Ion_. Browning sat opposite Macready, who was
between Wordsworth and Landor. When Talfourd proposed a toast, "The
Poets of England," he spoke in complimentary terms of Wordsworth and
Landor, but called for a response from "the youngest of the Poets of
England, the author of _Paracelsus_." Landor raised his cup to the young
man, and Wordsworth shook hands with him across the table, saying, "I am
proud to know you, Mr. Browning."

Browning's third literary venture was a tragedy, _Strafford_, dedicated
to Macready, at whose request it was written. The drama presents the
impeachment, condemnation, and execution of the Earl of Strafford, a
statesman who, according to the play, loved the unworthy King Charles
the First and sacrificed everything, even to life itself, in his blind
loyalty to a master who treacherously deserted him in the hour of need.
It was a topic to which Browning had already given much thought, for he
had the preceding year completed, from materials supplied by Mr. John
Forster, a _Life of Strafford_ begun by Forster for Lardner's _Eminent
British Statesmen_.[2] The question of the historic truthfulness of the
drama is discussed by the historian Gardiner in the Introduction to Miss
Emily H. Hickey's edition of _Strafford_. He shows that the play is in
its details and "even in the very roots of the situation" untrue to
fact, and yet he maintains that in the chief characters there is
essential truth of conception. "Every time that I read the play," says
Gardiner, "I feel more certain that Browning has seized the real
Strafford ... Charles, too, with his faults, perhaps exaggerated, is
nevertheless the real Charles." The play was produced at Covent Garden
Theater in May, 1837, with Macready as Strafford and Miss Helen Faucit
as Lady Carlisle, and was successful in spite of poor scenery and
costuming and poor acting in some of the parts. But owing to the
financial condition of the theater and the consequent withdrawal of one
of the important actors after the fifth night, the play had but a brief
run. It was presented again in 1886 under the auspices of the Browning
Society, and its power as an acting play "surprised and impressed" the
audience.

Before the composition of _Strafford_ Browning had begun a long poem,
_Sordello_, which he completed after his first visit to Italy in 1838,
and published in 1840. No one of his poems is more difficult to read,
and many are the stories told of the dismay occasioned by its various
perplexities. The effect of this poem on Browning's fame was disastrous.
In fact, after _Sordello_ there began a period, twenty years long, of
almost complete indifference in England to Browning's work. The
enthusiasm over the promise of his early poems died quite away. Late in
life Mr. Browning commented on this period of his literary career as a
time of "prolonged desolateness." Yet the years 1841-1846 are the years
in which he attained his poetic maturity, and years in which he did some
of his best work. During this period he brought out the series somewhat
fancifully called _Bells and Pomegranates_. The phrase itself comes from
_Exodus_ xxviii, 33, 34. As a title Browning explained it to mean
"something like a mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense,
poetry with thought." This cheap serial edition, the separate numbers of
which sold at first at sixpence and later at half a crown, included
_Pippa Passes_, _King Victor and King Charles_, _Dramatic Lyrics_, _The
Return of the Druses_, _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, _Colombe's Birthday_,
_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, _Luria_, and _A Soul's Tragedy_.

All of Browning's plays except _Strafford_ and _In a Balcony_ came out
of this series. The most beautiful of them all, _Pippa Passes_, appeared
in 1841. It is hardly a drama at all in the conventional sense, though
it has one scene, that between Ottima and Sebald, of the highest
dramatic power; but it has always been a favorite with readers. When it
was published Miss Barrett wrote to Mr. Browning that she found it in
her heart to covet the authorship of this poem more than any other of
his works, and he said in answer that he, too, liked _Pippa_ better than
anything else he had yet done. Mr. Sharp, while emphasizing the
undramatic quality of the play, counts it "the most imperishable because
the most nearly immaculate of Browning's dramatic poems." "It seems to
me," he adds, "like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough
for the sinking plummet of the most curious explorer of the depths of
life. It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and the more it is
known the wider and more alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought
which it discloses. It has, more than any other long composition by its
author, that quality of symmetry, that _symmetria prisca_ recorded of
Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might
be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called fundamental brain
work, is as luminous, depth within depth, as the morning air....
Everyone who knows Browning at all knows _Pippa Passes_."

Of the seven dramas published in _Bells and Pomegranates_ there is
comparatively little stage history to record. In spite of occasional
fairly successful productions it must be admitted that Browning's plays
have never achieved, probably never will achieve, popularity in the
shape of long runs in many cities.[3] They are too subjective, too
analytic, too psychological, for quick or easy understanding. But to the
reader they offer many delights. The stories are clear, coherent,
interesting; the characters strongly individualized; the crises of
experience stimulating; the interaction of personalities subtly
analyzed; the poetry noble and beautiful.

The two non-dramatic numbers of _Bells and Pomegranates_ were _Dramatic
Lyrics_ (No. 3, 1842) and _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (No. 7, 1845).
The first included such poems as "Cavalier Tunes," "In a Gondola,"
"Porphyria," and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; the second included "How
they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "The Lost Leader," "The
Tomb at St. Praxed's," "The Flight of the Duchess," "The Boy and the
Angel," and the first part of "Saul." These poems, together with the
dramas, make a remarkably rich body of poetry to be produced in the
short space of five years. And the character of the work, its variety
and beauty and strength and originality, were such that its meager and
grudging acceptance seems now inexplicable.

The most important event in the life of Browning during this period was
his acquaintance with Miss Elizabeth Barrett. In 1844 she brought out a
new volume of poems which he saw and greatly admired. He wrote to her
expressing delight in her work and asking permission to call; but Miss
Barrett, owing to long-continued invalidism, had lived in almost entire
seclusion, and she was not at first willing to receive Mr. Browning.
This was in January, 1845, and many letters passed between them before
the first interview in the following May. Mr. Browning's love for Miss
Barrett found almost immediate expression and she was soon conscious of
an equally strong love for him, but for a considerable time she
persistently refused to marry him. To her mind the obstacles were almost
insurmountable. Of these her ill-health was chief. She could not
consent, she said, to dim the prosperities of his career by a union with
her future, which she characterized as a precarious thing, a thing for
making burdens out of--but not for his carrying. In exchange for the
"noble extravagancies" of his love she could bring him only "anxiety and
more sadness than he was born to." This obstacle of ill-health was
unexpectedly modified by a very mild winter and by the new physical
vigor brought in the train of new happiness. From this point of view the
marriage, though hazardous, was practicable by the end of the summer of
1846. A second obstacle lay in the nature and opinions of Miss Barrett's
father, who governed even his grown-up children by "an incredible system
of patriarchal absolutism." By what was variously termed an obliquity of
the will, an eccentricity, a monomania, he had decided that none of his
children should marry, and on this point he demanded "passive
obedience." It was perfectly clear that Miss Barrett could not gain his
consent to her marriage, and so, after long hesitation and much
unhappiness, she decided to marry Mr. Browning without that consent. In
order to save her family and close friends from the blame sure to fall
upon them for the remotest sanction of her marriage, her plans were kept
an absolute secret. She met Mr. Browning at Marylebone Church on
September 12, 1846, and they were married there, Mrs. Browning returning
at once to her own home, where she remained till a week later, when she
started for Italy with her husband. The wedding was then announced.
Throughout her father's life Mrs. Browning endeavored to placate him,
for she devotedly loved him and she had been his favorite child, but in
vain. He would never see her again, he returned her letters unopened,
and he would not allow her to be spoken of in his presence.

After resting a week in Paris Mr. and Mrs. Browning went on to Pisa,
where they remained nearly seven months. The "miracle" of the Pisa life
was Mrs. Browning's gain in health. "You are not _improved_, you are
_transformed_," was Mrs. Jameson's exclamation. It was at Pisa that Mr.
Browning came to know of the sonnets his wife had written during the
progress of their courtship and engagement. In _Critical Kit-Kats_
(1896) Mr. Gosse tells the story as Mr. Browning gave it to him: "One
day, early in 1847, their breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went
upstairs, while her husband stood at the window watching the street till
the table could be cleared. He was presently aware of someone behind
him, although the servant had gone. It was Mrs. Browning who held him by
the shoulder to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time
pushed a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to
read that and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled
again to her room." Mr. Browning felt at once that he had no right to
keep such poetry as a private possession. "I dared not," he said,
"reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since
Shakespeare's." They were accordingly published in 1850, under the
intentionally mystifying title, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.

The Brownings reached Florence April 20, 1847. After several changes
they were, in May, 1848, established in the home in which they remained
during Mrs. Browning's life. It was a suite of rooms on the second floor
of the Palazzo Guidi. Of the practical side of this early Florentine
life, Mrs. Browning wrote, "My dear brothers have the illusion that
nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how
preposterous it does seem to me! We scarcely spend three hundred, and I
have every luxury I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up,
at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged
itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get
into pecuniary difficulties his sympathies always go with the butchers
and the bakers." In accordance with this horror of owing five shillings
five days, the furnishings of the new home, "the rococo chairs, spring
sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the rest," were
accumulated at a pace dictated by the bank account, but for all that it
was not long before the rooms began to take on an aspect as beautiful as
it was homelike.

By preference the Brownings lived very quietly. At the end of fifteen
months Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has not been out an evening of the
fifteen months; but what with music and books and writing and talking,
we scarcely know how the days go, it's such a gallop on the grass."
March 9, 1849, was born Wiedemann, later known as "Penini" or "Pen"
Browning. Coincident with this joy was the grief caused by the death of
Browning's mother, a sorrow from which he rallied but slowly. The
Florentine life was occasionally varied by summers at Bagni di Lucca,
winters in Paris or Rome, and several visits to England. There was also
an increasing social life. Americans were especially welcome to the
Brownings because, while England was still indifferent to Browning's
work, America had given it an appreciative welcome. In March, 1861, Mrs.
Browning wrote, "I don't complain for myself of an unappreciative
public. _I have no reason_. But just for _that_ reason I complain more
about Robert.... In America he is a power, a writer, a poet--he is read,
he lives in the hearts of the people."[4]

Among the Americans associated with the Brownings for longer or shorter
periods during their life in Florence were two distinguished women,
Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1847, George
William Curtis spent two days with the Brownings at Vallombrosa, a visit
later described in his _Easy Chair_. Mr. Field, who had brought out the
American reprint of the two-volume edition of Browning's poems in 1849,
was a guest at Casa Guidi in 1852. Charles Sumner writes of "delicious
Tuscan evenings" with the Brownings and the Storys in 1859. Mr.
Browning's interests in art led to friendships with American artists,
among whom were Mr. Page, who painted a successful portrait of Browning;
Miss Harriet Hosmer, to whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning finally consented to
sit for the "Clasped Hands"; and Hiram Powers. The dearest American
friends were, however, Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Story.

Music and art were among Browning's chief delights in Florence. George
William Curtis in describing the trip to Vallombrosa says that it was
part of their pleasure to sit in the dusky convent chapel while Browning
at the organ "chased a fugue of Master Hughes of Saxe Gotha, or dreamed
out upon twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi's." Modeling
in clay was even more satisfying as a personal resource. In the autumn
of 1860 Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has taken to modeling under Mr.
Story (at his studio) and is making extraordinary progress, turning to
account his studies in anatomy. He has copied already two busts, the
young Augustus and the Psyche, and is engaged on another, enchanted with
his new trade, working six hours a day." Some months later she added,
"The modeling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he
has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has
exulted and been happy--'_no, nothing ever made him so happy before_.'"
He found, also, an unfailing pleasure in the study of great pictures.
And he was a buyer of pictures with a collector's delight in hunting out
the work of the unappreciated early Tuscan artists. Mrs. Orr says that
he owned at least one picture by each of the obscure artists mentioned
in "Old Pictures in Florence."

Mrs. Browning sometimes expressed regret that Browning should give
himself so unreservedly in so many directions, because she felt that he
had thus too little time and energy left for poetry. Her fear was not
without justification, for after the richly productive period from 1841
to 1846, we come upon a space of nine years the only publications of
which are, in 1850, _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, a long poem in two
parts giving the arguments in favor of Christianity; and, in 1852, an
introduction to a collection of letters then supposed to be by Shelley,
but since found to be spurious. The essay is nevertheless of importance
as an exposition of Browning's theory of poetry, and as an interesting
study of Shelley.

In 1855, at the close of this period of nine years, there appeared a
collection of fifty-one poems entitled _Men and Women_. In "fundamental
brain power," insight, beauty, and mastery of style, these poems show
Browning at the highest level of his poetic achievement. It is in these
remarkable poems that he brought to perfection a poetic form which he
practically invented, the dramatic monologue, a form in which there is
but one speaker but which is essentially dramatic in effect. The
dramatic quality arises partly from the implied presence of listeners
whose expressions of assent or dissent determine the progress or the
abrupt changes of direction of the speaker's words. In "Andrea del
Sarto," for example, Lucrezia's smiles and frowns and gestures of
impatience are a constant influence, and the poem presents as vivid an
interplay of personalities as any scene in a drama. But the implied
listener is hardly more than a secondary dramatic element, the chief one
being that the speaker talks, as do the characters in a play, out of the
demands of the immediate experience, gradually and casually disclosing
all the tangled web of influence, all the clashes of will with destiny,
of desire with convention, that have led to the crisis depicted. Fra
Lippo Lippi gives no consecutive history of his life, only such snatches
of it as partially account for his present mad freak, but the strife
between his own nature and instinct on the one hand and the conventions
and traditions of religious art on the other could hardly be more
vividly presented. _In a Balcony_, the one drama in _Men and Women_, has
but a fragment of a plot, but in intensity, reality, and passion it
excels most of Browning's dramas, and, in spite of its long speeches,
has proved effective on the stage.[5] In variety of theme,
subject-matter, and verse-form, the poems of _Men and Women_ defy
classification. Whatever page one turns, there is something novel,
stimulating, captivating. All of Browning's Florentine interests are
represented here--his love of old pictures and little-known music, his
delight in Florence, Venice, Rome, in all Italy, her skies and her
landscapes, the vagrants of her streets, her religious ceremonies, her
church dignitaries, her scholars. Then there are love-poems in all
tones and tempers, the noblest of them all, "One Word More," being
Browning's most direct and personal tribute to his wife. And we see in
its keenest form his intellectual delight in subtle disquisition. The
doctrine of immortality as it appeals to the mind of the cultured,
dissatisfied pagan Cleon; the miracle of Lazarus as it is brooded over
by the Arab physician Karshish; the balancing of faith and doubt in the
clever casuistry of Bishop Blougram--these are topics to Browning's
taste and are treated with skill and mastery. Taken all in all these
poems give to the reader a full impression of Browning's characteristic
force, the darting, penetrating power of his phrase, the rush and energy
and leap of his thought. It is by _Men and Women_, the somewhat similar
_Dramatis Personæ_, and the earlier _Dramatic Lyrics_ and _Dramatic
Romances_, that Browning is most widely and most favorably known.

During the first ten years that the Brownings were in Florence Mrs.
Browning's health was so good that she was able to enjoy social and
outdoor pleasures to a degree that would have been thought impossible
before her marriage. She had also kept up her literary work. A new
edition of her poems appeared in 1849; in 1851 she published _Casa Guidi
Windows_, poems illustrative of her ardent interest in all that
pertained to the fight for Italian freedom; and in 1856 her long-planned
verse novel _Aurora Leigh_ was completed and published. But soon after
this her strength began insensibly to fail and during the last three
years of her life she suffered much from repeated bronchial attacks.
However, her death, in June, 1861, was entirely unexpected. The
Florentines had loved her deeply and had appreciated her utterances in
behalf of a free Italy. She was, accordingly, buried in Florence, with
"extraordinary demonstrations of respect," and the house where she had
lived was marked by the municipality with a commemorative tablet.

Browning's wish was to leave Florence at once and to make the new life
as unlike the old as possible. He went to London, and after some delay
established himself in a house at Warwick Crescent, where he lived till
1887. The first portion of his life in England was one of "unbearable
loneliness." He took care of his son, busied himself with a new edition
of his wife's poems, read and studied and wrote with feverish intensity,
and avoided people. But with the spring of 1863, says Mr. Gosse, "a
great change came over Browning's habits. He had shunned all invitations
into society, but ... it suddenly occurred to him that this mode of life
was morbid and unworthy," and thereupon he entered into the social,
literary, musical, and artistic life of London.

The nine years following 1855 were again a period of small productivity.
_Dramatis Personæ_ was a slender volume to represent so many years, even
though it contained such great poems as "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "A Death in
the Desert," and "Abt Vogler." But during this period a long poem, _The
Ring and the Book_, had been maturing. In 1860, while still at Casa
Guidi, Browning had found at a book-stall the now famous "square old
yellow Book," containing the legal record of a famous Roman murder case.
He read the account on the way home, and before night had so mastered
the details that, as he paced up and down on the terrace in the
darkness, he saw the tragedy unfold before him in picture after picture.
It was not, however, till 1864 that he definitely set to work on the
composition of the poem. It was published in four volumes of three parts
each, in the winter and spring of 1868-9. The poem has a novel
structure. The story is retold ten times by different persons and with
such variations of fact and opinions and style as are dictated by the
knowledge and the character of the speaker. The monologues of Count
Guido, who murdered his wife, of Pompilia the young wife, of Caponsacchi
the "soldier saint" who endeavored to save her, and of the old Pope, are
by far the most interesting portions of the poem, but the whole of it is
remarkable, and it justly takes rank as one of England's greatest poems.
With the appearance of this book Browning's genius received adequate
recognition in high places. _The Athenæum_ called it "the _opus magnum_
of the generation, not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic
achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual
treasure that England has possessed since the days of Shakespeare."

The last ten or twelve years of Browning's life were so crowded with
interests, occupations, publications, friends, honors, that not even a
summary of them can be undertaken here. Mr. Sharp says of this period:

"Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he did his best to gratify
Everybody. He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself
acquainted with the leading contents of the journals and magazines;
conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian
books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Æschylus; knew all the
gossip of the literary clubs, the salons, and the studios; was a
frequenter of afternoon tea parties; and then, over and above it, he was
Browning--the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in
poetry since Shakespeare."

Mr. Henry James in commenting on Browning's rich and ample London period
with "its felicities and prosperities of every sort," says that in
contemplating "the wonderful Browning ... the accomplished, saturated,
sane, sound man of the London world and the world of culture," it was
impossible not to believe that "he had arrived somehow, for his own deep
purposes, at the enjoyment of a double identity," so dissociated were
the poet and the "member of society." Phillips Brooks, who met Browning
in England in 1865-6, was impressed by his fullness of life and said he
was "very like some of the best of Thackeray's London men." In public
and on ordinary social occasions Browning is said to have been frank,
charming, friendly--"more agreeable," Mary Anderson said, "than
distinguished." With intimate friends, however, the poet had quite
another sort of charm. "To a single listener," says Mr. Gosse, with whom
he was on familiar terms, "the Browning of his own study was to the
Browning of a dinner party as a tiger cat is to a domestic cat. In such
conversation his natural strength came out. His talk assumed the volume
and the tumult of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to a
whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational melody. Those whom
he was expecting will never forget his welcome, the loud trumpet-note
from the other end of the passage, the talk already in full flood at a
distance of twenty feet. Then, in his own study or drawing-room, what he
loved was to capture his visitor in a low armchair's 'sofa-lap of
leather,' and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk
around the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving
magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now groveling on
the floor to find some reference in a folio, talking all the while, a
redundant turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences flowing from
those generous lips."

Elsewhere Mr. Gosse summed up his personal impressions of Mr. Browning,
as follows:

"I am bound to tell you that I saw a different Browning from the hero
of all the handbooks and 'gospels' which are now in vogue. People are
beginning to treat this vehement and honest poet as if he were a sort of
Marcus Aurelius and John the Baptist rolled into one. I have just seen a
book in which it is proposed that Browning should supersede the Bible,
in which it is asserted that a set of his volumes will teach religion
better than all the theologies in the world. Well, I did not know that
holy monster.... What I saw was an unostentatious, keen, active man of
the world, one who never failed to give good practical advice in matters
of business and conduct, one who loved his friends and certainly hated
his enemies; a man alive in every eager passionate nerve of him; a man
who loved to discuss people and affairs, and a bit of a gossip; a bit of
a partisan, too, and not without his humorous prejudices. He was simple
to a high degree, simple in his scrupulous dress, his loud, happy voice,
his insatiable curiosity."

Browning's London life was varied by many summer journeyings to French
sea-coast towns, to Wales, and to Scotland. But it was seventeen years
after the death of his wife before he could bring himself to revisit
Italy. Even then he avoided Florence. He took his sister to Northern
Italy; and Asolo and Venice became the towns around which their
affections centered. Two American friends, Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, and
Mrs. Arthur Bronson,[6] contributed to the happiness of these Italian
sojourns. In 1888 Browning's son, who had married an American girl,
bought the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice, so that Browning had an
additional personal reason for his trip to Venice in 1889. He was well,
and he took great pleasure in his son's admirably planned restoration of
the old Venetian palace. He worked, walked, talked with nearly normal
vigor. But a bronchial attack proved more than his weakened heart could
withstand, and he died peacefully, almost painlessly, in his son's home
on December 12, 1889. On the day of his death his last book, _Asolando_,
was published, so that his brave-hearted "Epilogue" was really his
valediction to this and his heroic greeting to another world. He could
"greet the unseen with a cheer," because in thought and act he was

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year.
The most pathetic element of the imposing ceremonies was the singing of
Mrs. Browning's poem, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep."

THE POETRY OF BROWNING

Before entering upon a discussion of Browning's poetry it will be of
interest to note briefly some of the more striking general
characteristics of the English literature contemporary with his work.
From _Pauline_ to _Asolando_ is over half a century, but as a central
and especially significant portion of Browning's career we may take the
three decades from 1841, when he began the _Bells and Pomegranates_
series, to 1869, when _The Ring and the Book_ appeared, for these years
include all of his dramas and most of the poetry on which his fame
rests. A survey of this period at once reveals the predominance of
fiction. Within these years come nearly all the novels of Charles
Dickens, of William Makepeace Thackeray, of Charlotte Brontë, of Wilkie
Collins, of Charles Kingsley, of Mrs. Gaskell, of Anthony Trollope, of
George Macdonald, of Charles Reade, much of the work of Bulwer Lytton,
all the novels of George Eliot except _Middlemarch_ and _Daniel
Deronda_, and the earliest of George Meredith's books. This is a notable
showing. No previous period in English literature had presented anything
like so wide a range in fiction or had brought forward so large a number
of novels of the first rank. These years were equally rich in essays,
including much of Carlyle's work, all of Macaulay's except the early
"Essay on Milton," the religious polemics of Frederick Dennison Maurice
and John Henry Newman, nearly all of Ruskin's discussions of art and
social history, most of Leigh Hunt's literary criticism, and Matthew
Arnold's important early critical essays. This, too, is a notable
showing. But if we turn to the two realms in which Browning excelled,
poetry and drama, we find different conditions. During the central
period of his career, there was, aside from his own work, not a single
important drama published. The theaters were prosperous, but they
brought out only old plays or new ones of inferior rank. In poetry, too,
if we set aside the great names of Tennyson and Browning, the period was
neither rich nor varied. During Browning's first great productive
period, 1841-46, the only other poems of note were Tennyson's two
volumes in 1842. In the nine years from 1846 to _Men and Women_ in 1855,
the chief poems were Tennyson's _The Princess_, _In Memoriam_, and
_Maud_, for though Wordsworth's _Prelude_ was one of the greatest
publications of the mid-century, it was written years before, and can
hardly be counted as belonging to this era. There are, during the
decade, many poems of secondary rank, the most important of them being
Mrs. Browning's _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ and _Aurora Leigh_, but
besides Tennyson and Browning, the only poet of high rank is Matthew
Arnold, whose slender volumes voice the doubts and difficulties of the
age as Browning's poems voice its optimism. In the fourteen years
between _Men and Women_ and _The Ring and the Book_ poets of a new kind
appear; William Morris's _Defense of Guinevere_, _The Life and Death of
Jason_ and _The Earthly Paradise_, and Swinburne's early poems are alien
to the work of Browning in form, subject-matter, and ideals. The fact
is, the more definitely we try to place Browning in his literary
environment the more distinctly do we perceive that he was _sui generis_
among his contemporaries. He combined in striking fashion the intensity
of the poet and the strong social sense of the prose writer.

It seems also wise to glance at the outset at a few of the main
criticisms that have been made on Browning's poetry, for the result of
his marked originality is that no poet of the time has been so greatly
praised and blamed.

A natural first topic is his really famous "obscurity." This obscurity
is variously ascribed to a diction unduly learned, or almost
unintelligibly colloquial, or grotesquely inventive; to figures of
speech drawn from sources too unfamiliar or elaborated to the point of
confusion; to sentences complicated by startling inversions, by double
parentheses, by broken constructions, or by a grammatical structure
defying analysis. It would be quite possible to illustrate each of these
points from Browning's works, and it cannot be denied that his poetry is
sometimes needlessly and inexcusably hard reading. But in reality the
difficulties in his poems come less from stylistic defects than from the
subject matter. What Mr. Chesterton calls Browning's love for "the
holes and corners of history," leads him to the use of much unfamiliar
detail. A large part of the difficulty in reading _Sordello_ arises from
the fact that all Browning's accumulated knowledge of medieval Italy is
there poured forth in an allusive, taken-for-granted manner, till even
the practiced reader turns away perplexed and overwhelmed. So, too, "Old
Pictures in Florence," "Pictor Ignotus," and "Fra Lippo Lippi" assume on
the part of the reader a minute familiarity with early Florentine art.
Occasionally the poems demand an exceptional technical knowledge of some
sort, as in "Abt Vogler," where only a trained musician can fully
understand the terminology. Many even of the minor poems belong to
realms of thought and experience so remote that only by distinct effort
do we transport ourselves thither. It would, for instance, be absurd to
call "Two in the Campagna" difficult in form or phrasing, yet it
narrates an experience intelligible only to those who have loved deeply
but have found in the very heart of that love a baffling sense of
inevitable personal isolation. Sometimes the difficulty arises from the
extreme subtlety of the thought. "Evelyn Hope," the simplest of poems in
expression, presents novel and elusive ideas. Mr. Chesterton ingeniously
ascribes Browning's obscurity to "intellectual humility," to an
assumption that his readers were in possession of a native endowment and
an acquired intellectual wealth on a par with his own; but the defense
seems rather forced. Mrs. Browning gave one of the best brief analyses
of Mr. Browning's obscurity. He had been attacked as being "misty" and
she wrote to him, "You never _are_ misty, not even in 'Sordello'--never
vague. Your graver cuts deep, sharp lines, always--and there is an extra
distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which,
crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to
escape." But the classic defense of Browning from this point of view
may be found in Swinburne's Introduction to Chapman's _Poems_:

"The difficulty found by many in certain of Mr. Browning's works arises
from a quality the very reverse of that which produces obscurity,
properly so-called. Obscurity is the natural product of turbid forces
and confused ideas; of a feeble and clouded or of a vigorous but unfixed
and chaotic intellect.... Now if there is any great quality more
perceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect it is his decisive
and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of
perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim.... The very
essence of Mr. Browning's aim and method, as exhibited in the ripest
fruits of his intelligence, is such as implies above all other things
the possession of a quality the very opposite of obscurity--a faculty of
spiritual illumination rapid and intense and subtle as lightning, which
brings to bear upon its object by way of direct and vivid illustration
every symbol and every detail on which its light is flashed in passing."
Browning has himself a word to say on this topic. He wrote to a friend:

"I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard
for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never
designedly tried to puzzle people as some of my critics have supposed.
On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should
be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So,
perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over--not a crowd
but a few I value more."

A second charge not infrequently brought against Browning's verse is
that it is harsh, and at times even ugly. This charge, like that of
obscurity, cannot be wholly denied. The harshness results from incorrect
rhymes, from irregular movement of the verse, or from difficult
combinations of vowels and consonants. No reader of Browning's poems can
fail to have been impressed by his intellectual agility in matching odd
rhymes. In dash and originality his rhymes out-rank even those in
Butler's _Hudibras_ and Lowell's _Fable for Critics_. We find in
_Pacchiarotto_, for instance, many rhymes of the gayest, most freakish,
most grotesque character--"monkey, one key," "prelude, hell-hued,"
"stubborn, cub-born," "_was_ hard, hazard," all occur in a single
stanza. An example of exceptional facility in rhyming is found in
"Through the Metidja," where, without repetition of words and without
forcing of the sense thirty-six words rhyme with "ride." It cannot be
denied that this remarkable facility led Browning occasionally into the
use of odd rhymes in poems where no light or comic effect was intended;
but a detailed study of his rhymes[7] shows that the proportion of
incorrect rhymes is really small, that the grotesque rhymes are more
striking than numerous, and that they are usually in places where they
are dramatically appropriate. His use of harsh words and sound-blendings
is also often to be justified on the ground of their appropriateness to
the idea. Compare, for instance, the flowing, easy words, the musical
linking of sounds, in the first stanza of "Love Among the Ruins" with
the harsh words, harshly combined, in the twelfth and thirteenth stanzas
of "Childe Roland." Both effects are artistic because each sort of
combination is in response to the nature of the thought. It is true that
sometimes, perhaps not infrequently, the verse is rugged or uncouth
where the sense does not call for such form, and there are lines that
not only remind us of De Quincey's dictum that certain words should be
"boiled before they are eaten," but which have no metrical flow at all;
they defy any sort of scansion and read like rough prose. But a poet
has a right of appeal to the sum of his manifest excellencies rather
than to his defects, and if we take Browning's best work we find a
harmony of movement superior in musical effect to a more technically
regular meter. In many poems the meter is indissolubly fused with the
pictures, the ideas, the events. Take, for instance, "The Pied Piper of
Hamelin," where the hurry-skurry of the verse is in complete harmony
with the quaint, rapid tale. The hoof-beats of galloping horses is heard
all through "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." The slow
march, the stately chant, are rhythmically present throughout "A
Grammarian's Funeral." In "The Flight of the Duchess" the change from
the rough servitor's narrative to the incantation of the gypsy-queen is
as exquisitely marked in the metrical movement and in the rhymes as it
is in the diction and tone of thought. Many other examples might be
cited. Mr. Brinton, who has made a detailed and competent study of
Browning's verse, gives his final opinion in these words: "In the
volumes of Browning I maintain that we find so many instances of
profound insight into verbal harmonies, such singular strength of poetic
grouping, and such a marvelous grasp of the rhythmic properties of the
English language that we must assign to him a rank second to no English
poet of this century."[8]

A third charge brought against Browning's art is that he makes all his
characters talk "Browningese"; that is, that he endows all of them with
the power to use such words and sentences and thought processes as are
natural to him and to him only. Mr. Stedman in emphasizing this
characteristic of the poet says of _Pippa Passes_: "The usual fault is
present--the characters, whether students, peasants, or soldiers, all
talk like sages; Pippa reasons like a Paracelsus in pantalettes." It is,
of course, obvious at the first glance that there is a lack of
verisimilitude in Pippa's rich and beautiful soliloquies. Certainly no
fourteen-year-old mill girl could so describe a sunrise, or play so
brilliantly with a sunbeam in a water-basin, or outline so cleverly the
stories of the happiest four in Asolo. The same is true of Phene's long
speech to Jules; no untutored girl brought up in degradation, could
present such thoughts in such words. When we analyze Browning's way of
presenting a character, however, we find that the lack of verisimilitude
is usually external and has to do chiefly with expression. Browning
works on the fundamental assumption that he has a poetic right to make
all sorts of people articulate. He lends his mind out in the service of
their thoughts and feelings. He makes people reveal themselves by
putting into words their elusive, dim, tangled, and even unrecognized
motives and hopes and joys and despairs. He sums up in the speeches all
the potentialities of the situation. All the significance latent in the
type of character and environment is somehow heightened and symbolized.
All this is put in his own highly individual diction. Yet it can hardly
be said that he violates poetic realism in the deeper sense, for he
never puts a halo around a situation, never goes counter to its
potentialities. Instead he strikes fire from it. He shows what is
actually in the situation, but at white heat and laid bare to its
center. When this method has once been recognized, discomfort on the
score of lack of verisimilitude practically disappears, and the reader
yields himself to the joy of the rich, subtle, and stimulating analysis.

We may now turn to a consideration of the subject-matter and the main
ideas of Browning's poetry. From whatever point of view we regard his
work, we find that ultimately the emphasis rests on the same great
central fact, the supremacy of his interest in human nature. This
dominating interest is shown, for instance, by a study of his treatment
of physical nature. To be sure, no one can read his poems without
recognizing the truth that his use of natural facts is distinctive in
kind and very stimulating. A mere reference to the pictures of the sky
in _Pippa Passes_, the vivid descriptions of fruits and flowers in "An
Englishman in Italy," the remarkable studies of small animal life in
"Saul" and "Caliban upon Setebos," of birds in "Home-Thoughts, from
Abroad," of insects in the first part of _Paracelsus_ and in many later
poems, suffices to show that in mature life he did not lose the keenness
of observation and interest characteristic of his youth. Yet it is also
evident that his use of nature by way of direct description, or even as
illustrative material, is far less in amount than that of other notable
nineteenth century poets. He cares much less for "the river's line, the
mountains round it and the sky above" than for the "figures of man,
woman, and child these are frame to." Where nature is drawn upon, it is
almost invariably in complete subordination to some human interest, and
its literary form is almost always that of casual mention, background,
or similitude, and the first of these is the most frequent. Furthermore,
nearly all these passages are a mere statement of observed fact without
comment or interpretation. There is one great passage in _Paracelsus_
where the joy of God in the act of creation is depicted; there are
occasional references to the delight of man in the external world; and
now and then, as in "By the Fireside," man and nature are intimately
fused; but such conceptions rarely occur. In Browning's poetry the
boundary lines between man and nature are clearly marked. In
_Paracelsus_ he definitely protests against man's way of reading his own
moods into nature, and of attributing to her his own qualities and
emotions. He also always accounts man, if he has truly entered into his
spiritual heritage, as consciously superior to nature. The troubadour
Eglamour, in _Sordello_, says that man shrinks to naught if matched with
a quiet sea or sky, but Browning calls that Eglamour's "false thought."
To Browning, nature was to be studied, enjoyed, and used, but it was not
as to Keats a realm of enchantment; or as to Wordsworth the realm where
alone the divine and the human could pass the boundaries of sense and
meet; or as to Matthew Arnold a refuge from pain and disillusionment.
Browning regards the world about him more in the sane, unsentimental,
straightforward, intelligible way of Chaucer or of Shakespeare. The
mystical elements in Wordsworth's feeling for nature were foreign to
Browning's mind. An instructive comparison might be made between
Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" and Browning's
"Prologue to Asolando." The poems have the same starting point. Each one
attributes sadness to the poet's old age, and each gives as a cause of
the sadness the inevitable fading of the glory with which all nature was
invested to the eye of his youth. But here the resemblance ends.
Wordsworth believes that the youthful vision was a divine revelation to
be regained when the round of existence should be completed by a return
to his immortal home, and on the memory of that vision he founded his
faith in a future life. But Browning welcomed the loss of the vision.
Objects had been to him "palpably fire-clothed"; but with the loss of
"flame" there was a gain in reality. The vision had enthralled and
subjugated him; but with the sight of "a naked world" he had become
conscious of things as they are, and he rejoiced in a justness of
perception that declared what were to him the two great facts of life,
the power and beauty of God, and the glory of the human soul. On these,
not on nature, he put his stress.

Browning's paramount interest in human nature is further illustrated by
his poems on the various arts. Of music, painting, and sculpture he has
written with the intimate and minute knowledge of a specialist in each
art. He is familiar with implements and materials, with the tricks of
the trade, the talk of the studios; but, after all, the art as an art is
of much less interest to him than is the worker. The process and even
the completed product are in Browning's view important only in so far as
they reveal or affect the artist, the musician, the sculptor, or some
phase of life. In such poems as "Abt Vogler," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea
del Sarto," we are conscious not so much of music and pictures as of the
secret springs of failure, the divine despairs and discontents, the
aspirations, the creative ecstasies, of the men who wrought in these
realms. Andrea del Sarto's art is not the real theme of the poem bearing
his name. It is, rather, his character, of which his art is an
expression. The central fact of the poem is the recognition that a soul
morally impoverished cannot, even with well-nigh perfect technique,
produce great work, while, even with faulty technique, a setting of the
soul to grand issues will secure transcendent meanings. So, too, with
Abt Vogler. His music is not of the greatest, but our concern is with
the musician who, through the completeness of his spiritual absorption
in music, is conducted into a realm of experience beyond that of speech
or even of articulate thought.

Another distinctly human aspect of art interests Browning, and that is
its power to represent and so to recall a vanished civilization. Greek
statues, the devotional pictures of the early Florentines, the work of
the later Italian realists, stand, in "Old Pictures in Florence," as
representatives of the life and thought that produced them. In "A
Toccata of Galuppi's" the music revivifies the superficial gaiety, the
undertone of fear, in the life of eighteenth century Venice. Highly
significant in this connection are the poems in which he traces the
evolution of art. Running through "Old Pictures in Florence" and "Fra
Lippo Lippi" we find an ordered statement of the chief changes in the
ideals of art as Browning saw them. The Greeks, we are told, had
produced in sculpture the most beautiful representations of the human
body. But if their successors had been content merely to admire this
perfect achievement, they would have purchased satisfaction at the price
of their own arrested development. Progress came only when, in the dawn
of Italian art, men turned from Greek perfection, from the supremely
beautiful but limited representations of the human body, to an attempt
to paint the invisible, the spiritual side of man's nature. The work of
these artists was great because it was not imitative and because it
stretched toward an unending and ideal future. But the idealistic and
aspiring temper of early Tuscan art had the defects of its qualities.
Its spiritual ecstasy once conventionalized and reduced to a formula led
to unreality, and, if not to untruth, at least to an unwholesome
ignoring of a part of truth. There was, therefore, an inevitable
reaction to the naturalism described with such verve and gusto by Fra
Lippo Lippi. But this is, after all, social history in terms of art, and
to Browning what has happened in painting is of value chiefly as showing
concretely what has happened in the mind of man.

From the instances already cited it is apparent that Browning's interest
centered, not in abstract or theoretical discussions of human problems,
but in the individuals who face the problems. In this point Browning is
sharply distinguished from his poetic contemporaries as a class. They
felt deeply "all the weary weight of this unintelligible world," so
deeply that while they gave much thought to ideals of social
amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic
distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in the nineteenth
century as the poet who gives us both the "doubter and the doubt," who
is able to join with an impressive statement of the hopes and fears of
man, an equally impressive sequence of individual men and women. In this
he harks back to the broad inclusiveness of the Elizabethan dramatists.
In contemporary literature, his nearest congeners are in fiction, not in
poetry.

The great number and variety of Browning's characters can be illustrated
in different ways. We might, for instance, note how many nationalities
are represented. The personages in "Stafford" and the "Cavalier Tunes"
are Englishmen from the time of the Civil War. "Clive" is a true story
of the Indian Empire. We have from Italian life the numerous characters
in _Sordello_, "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Pictor Ignotus," "The Bishop Orders
His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," "My Last Duchess," _The Ring and the
Book_, "A Grammarian's Funeral," "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," "In
a Gondola," and many more. "Count Gismond" and "Hervé Riel" are French
stories. _Paracelsus_ and "Abt Vogler" are of German origin.
_Balaustion's Adventure_, _Aristophanes' Apology_, "Pheidippides," and
"Echetlos" celebrate Greek thought and adventure. Very important poems
such as "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," have to do with Jewish life. And
unlike Shakespeare, who is not concerned with making Julius Cæsar a
Roman or Duke Theseus a Greek, Browning brings to the creation of each
of these widely divergent characters, a detailed knowledge of the
special habits of life and thought of the nation or race concerned. He
represents also many kinds of human interest. We find in his poems
seekers after knowledge such as Paracelsus, who takes all thought and
fact as his domain; or such as the Grammarian, who found Greek particles
too wide a realm; or such as the pedant Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis,
whose learned rubbish cumbers the land. There are likewise those who
grope after the truths of religion from Caliban on his island to the
learned physician Karshish and the highly cultured Cleon; those who have
the full vision from John to Rabbi Ben Ezra; those who juggle with terms
and creeds as does Bishop Blougram; and out and out frauds like Sludge
the Medium. The church is represented by many men dissimilar in
endowments, tastes, spiritual experiences, and aims. There are Italian
prelates of every sort, from the worldly-minded Bishop of St. Praxed's,
occupied in death with vain thoughts of lapis-lazuli and pure Latin, to
the "soldier-saint," Caponsacchi, who saved Pompilia, and the wise old
Pope who pronounced Guido's doom; from the unworthy priest in the
Spanish Cloister to the very human, kindly Pope in "The Bean Feast." And
from all these it is far down the ages to the evangelical parish priest
of _The Inn Album_, that "purblind honest drudge," who, the deeper to
impress his flock, painted heaven dimly but "made hell distinct." There
are many artists, many musicians. There are poets from Aprile in
_Paracelsus_, and the troubadours Eglamour and Sordello, to Keats and
Shelley. The extremes of social life are given. There are the
street-girls in _Pippa Passes_ and there are kings and queens with royal
retinues. There are statesmen, and warriors, and seekers after romantic
adventure. There are haughty aristocrats of cold and cruel natures, and
there are obscure but high-hearted doers of heroic deeds. Browning's
dictum, "Study man, man, whatever the issue," led him into a world wider
than that known by any other poet of his time, and akin, as has been
pointed out, to that of the great writers of fiction. As an observer of
human life he was not unlike his poor poet of Valladolid who, with his
"scrutinizing hat," went about the streets, absorbed in watching all
kinds of people, all sorts of occupations, "scenting the world, looking
it full in the face." He chose to set forth "the wants and ways" of
actual life. He summed up his work in the "Epilogue to Pacchiarotto":

Man's thoughts and loves and hates!
Earth is my vineyard, these grew there:
From grape of the ground I made or marred
My vintage.

It is further apparent that Browning's characters are never merely
types, but must always be reckoned with as individuals. It was his
belief that no two beings were ever made similar in head and heart;
hence, even where there are external similarities the essential elements
are strongly differentiated. Take, for instance, three poems in which
the situations are not unlike. In "My Last Duchess," "The Flight of the
Duchess," and _The Ring and the Book_, we have a portrayal of three men
of high lineage, but cold, egotistic, cruel, who have married very young
and lovely women over whom the custom of the times gives them absolute
power. But there the likeness ends. We cannot for a moment class
together the polished, aesthetic, well-bred aristocrat of the first
poem, the absurd little popinjay of the second, and the "tiger-cat" of
the third. Less strongly, but as clearly are the wives differentiated.
To the innocent gaiety of heart, the bright, sweet friendliness of the
hapless lady in "My Last Duchess" must be added for the lady in "The
Flight of the Duchess" a native force of character which, when roused by
the call of the gypsy-queen, enables her to break the yoke imposed on
her by the Duke and his mother and go forth into a life of adventure,
freedom, and love. The delicate, flower-like Pompilia in _The Ring and
the Book_ has also power to initiate and carry through a plan of escape,
but her incentive is no call to romantic freedom. Her passive endurance
changes to active revolt only when motive and energy are supplied by her
love for her child. Or take Pippa and Phene in _Pippa Passes_, two
beautiful young girls brought up in dangerous and evil surroundings, but
both innately pure. In character and experience they are, however, as
unlike as two girls could be. Phene, undeveloped in mind and heart, the
easily duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow,
incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the
tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant
love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative
sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her
poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and
much more highly evolved world of thought and feeling. So we might go
through the great assemblage of Browning's characters to find that each
one stands out by himself as a person with his own qualities,
possibilities, and problems.

In all this portrayal of individuals the emphasis is on things of the
mind and heart. In these realms Browning found nothing alien or
uninteresting. From point to point his poetry illustrates what he said
in his comment on _Sordello_, "My stress lay on the incidents in the
development of a human soul; little else is worth study." In all his
poetry environment is of importance only in so far as it is the stuff on
which the soul works. It is "the subtle thing called spirit," it is "the
soul's world" to which he devotes himself.

It is only from a study of Browning's many characters that we may arrive
at a statement of some of the distinguishing features of his philosophy
of life. And any such statements must be made with extreme caution
because of his dramatic method. He utters this caution himself when he
says of his poems, "Their contents are always dramatic in principle, and
so many utterances of so many imaginary people." Yet it is possible, by
taking the general trend and scope of his work, to make justifiable
deductions concerning the dominant ideas in the rich field of his poetry
and drama.

In Browning's philosophy of life, words of especial significance are
"growth" and "progress." Domizia in _Luria_ says:

How inexhaustibly the spirit grows!
One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach
With her whole energies and die content--
So like a wall at the world's edge is stood,
With naught beyond to live for--is that reached?--
Already are new undreamed energies
Outgrowing under, and extending farther
To a new object.

So, too, John in "A Death in the Desert" sums up his belief in the line,

I say that man was made to grow, not stop.

Growth here and growth hereafter are the essential elements of
Browning's creed. And there is no other poet in whom all kinds of
thinking and doing are so uniformly tested by their outcome in the
growth of the soul. Does joy stimulate to fuller life; does suffering
bring out moral qualities; do obstacles develop energy; do sharp
temptations become a source of strength and assured soldiership; does
knowledge of evil lead to a new exaltation of good; does sin lead to
self-knowledge and so to regeneration? Then all these are ministers of
grace, for through them the soul has reached greater heights and fuller
life. Whatever bids the soul "nor stand nor sit, but go" is to be
welcomed. The cost of this growth may be great, but the advances of
spirit are represented as worth any sacrifice. The lady in "The Flight
of the Duchess" goes from splendor and ease to hardship and obscurity,
but she wins freedom of thought and of act and the opportunity to test
the qualities of her soul. In _Pippa Passes_ Sebald might have had love
and wealth, Jules might have attained fame along the conventional path
marked out for him by the Monsignor, Luigi had the prospect of an easy
life and happy love, the Monsignor might have had enhanced honor from
the church into whose coffers he could have turned great revenues. But
instead each responds in turn to Pippa's songs; Sebald gains a true view
of sin, Jules gets a new conception of service and attainment, Luigi's
wavering purpose of self-sacrifice for his country's good is
strengthened, the Monsignor is held back from connivance at a crime. In
all these cases the external loss is as nothing compared to the gain in
spiritual knowledge and energy.

Contact with magnetic and superior personalities is a way of growth
particularly noted by Browning. There are men, he says, who bring new
feeling fresh from God, and whose life "reteaches us what life should
be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness." Pompilia says of
Caponsacchi:

Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of his light
For us i' the dark to rise by.

The highest souls are "seers" in the noblest sense and they "impart the
gift of seeing to the rest." But the helpful personality need not be
great in knowledge or rank. In Pippa Browning emphasizes the power of
unconscious goodness in clarifying the spiritual vision of others and in
thus stimulating to right action. And in David he shows the power of
poetic charm, innocence, and eager love to drive away from another heart
a mood of black despair.

But outside influences are, after all, says Browning, of secondary
importance. They can, at best, do no more than stimulate and guide. When
Andrea del Sarto attributes his general lowering of ideals and power to
the influence of Lucrezia, he evades the real issue. Incentives must
come from the soul's self. Growth is dependent on personal struggle. Man
is, by his very nature,

forced to try and make, else fail to grow--
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain
The good beyond him--which attempt is growth.

So, also, is it better that youth

should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.

It is in the independence and originality of such striving that the soul
discovers and frees its innate potentialities.

An inevitable corollary of this idea of progress is the emphasis put
upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a
divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man.
The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or
satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a
human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or
aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible
disaster, that of arrested development. Man's powers should ever climb
new heights. For his soul's health he should always see "a flying point
of bliss remote, a happiness in store afar, a sphere of distant glory."
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
According to this ideal, man's conception of good is ever changing and
ever widening and hence never in this life to be fully attained; yet the
condition of growth is that he have an unmeasured thirst for good and
that he pursue it with unquenchable ardor.

The importance of love as one of the most effective agencies in
spiritual growth is stated and restated in Browning's poetry and by
exceedingly diverse characters. The Queen in _In a Balcony_ turns away
from her lonely splendor to exclaim,

There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good is some shade flung from love;
Love gilds it, gives it worth.

The Duchess learns from the gypsy

How love is the only good in the world.

The famous singer in "Dis Aliter Visum" knows that art, verse, music,
count as naught beside "love found, gained, and kept." Browning seems to
regard almost any genuine love as a means of opening out the nature to
fuller self-knowledge, to wider sympathies, and to increased power of
action. Hence he condemns all cautious calculation of obstacles, all
dwelling upon conventional difficulties, in the path of those who have
clearly seen "the love-way." Hence even love unrequited is counted of
inestimable value. In _Colombe's Birthday_ Valence says,

Is the knowledge of her, naught? the memory, naught?
--Lady, should such an one have looked on you,
Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life's end--
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell.

But the love of man and woman is not the only sort. A part of the value
of this individual relationship is that it may be regarded as a
revelation and symbol of the spirit of all-embracing sympathy whereby
mankind should be ruled. When Paracelsus analyzes his life he ascribes
his failure to the fact that he has sought knowledge to the exclusion of
all else; he finally came to see that knowledge, however profound, is of
itself barren of satisfaction. He had meant to serve men by revealing
truth to them, but he found that real service is based on the
understanding given by love. In self condemnation he says,

In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love's.
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak.

Browning's conception of the function and power of love is based on his
belief in its divine origin. Twice at least, in "Easter Day" and "Saul,"
his characters work out from an overpowering recognition of God's
omniscience and omnipotence to a final recognition that his love is
equal in scope with his power and knowledge. And he counts human service
as most complete when, as in David before Saul, it reaches out to God's
love and recruits its failing forces from the divine source.

Underlying Browning's doctrine of the value of love, and his doctrine of
progress and aspiration, is his belief in personal immortality. When he
was charged with being strongly against Darwin, with rejecting the
truths of science and regretting its advance, he answered that the idea
of a progressive development from senseless matter until man's
appearance had been a familiar conception to him from the beginning, but
he reiterated his constant faith in creative intelligence acting on
matter but not resulting from it. "Soul," he said, "is not matter, nor
from matter, but above." Two assumptions which though not susceptible of
proof he regards as "inescapable," are the existence of creative
intelligence and of "the subtle thing called spirit." When he argues out
the question of the immortality of this spirit, as in _La Saisiaz_, he
admits the subjective character of the evidence; but when he speaks
spontaneously out of his own feeling or experience, it is with positive
belief in life after death. To Mr. Sharp he said, "Death, death! It is
this harping on death that I do despise so much! Why, _amico mio_, you
know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily
dying body is none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of
existence. Without death which is our crape-like church-yardy word for
change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what we call life.
Pshaw, it is foolish to argue upon such a thing, even. For myself, I
deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!"
When his wife died he wrote in her Testament these words from Dante,
"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 enamored." This faith in life after death explains much of
Browning's philosophy. The source of the pagan Cleon's profound
discouragement was the fact that man should be dowered with
"joy-hunger," should be given the ability to perceive and comprehend
splendor and breadth of experience, but should, through the straitness
of human limitations, be held back from satisfaction and achievement,
and should be left to die thus dazzled, thus baffled. The secret of
Browning's optimism, on the other hand, is his belief that in heaven
the soul is freed from limitations, and blossoms out into capabilities
of joy and of activity beyond anything suggested by the most golden
dreams of earth. To him all life is a unit, beginning here and destined
to unimaginable development hereafter. Earth is regarded as a place of
tutelage where man may learn to set foot on some one path to heaven. And
no work begun here shall ever pause for death. Even apparent failure
here counts for little so the quest be not abandoned. Each of us may, as
Abt Vogler, look without despair on the broken arcs of earth if his
faith reveals the perfect round in heaven.

From any prolonged study of Browning's poetry we become conscious of
certain dominant qualities of style that may be thought of quite apart
from his themes or message. That his style has the defect of its
qualities has already been pointed out. Here we may appropriately
indicate those qualities as positive elements of his power. His diction,
rich alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is
responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut
from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality.
His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in
quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his
versification, varying as it does from passages of melodic smoothness
and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they
dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant rapidity
and ease of a short poem like "Hervé Riel" or in the sustained flow of a
long story like that of Pompilia, we find unusual skill. In
disquisition, in the presentation of complicated and elusive
intellectual processes, there is a quite unmatched agility and
dexterity. Probably no two forms of poetry contain more of Browning's
most noteworthy work than the lyric, especially the reflective love
lyric, and that form which is distinctively his own, the dramatic
monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no competitor. It
is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic
monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision of his
analysis, his lightning glance into the heart of a mystery, the ease
with which he tracks a motive or mood or thought to its last hiding
place, and his consequent passion and fire of sympathy or scorn.

Finally, whether we consider Browning's style or subject matter or
philosophy of life, we become growingly conscious of his force. The
"clear Virgilian line" of Tennyson is the outcome of a nature
instinctively aristocratic and aloof. Browning is out in the thick of
the fight and almost vociferously demands a hearing. Whatever makes his
thought clear, vivid, active, forcible, seems to him, however prosaic it
may appear at first glance, proper poetic material. The immediate effect
of his verse is the rousing of the mind to great issues. His tremendous
sincerity results in a dispelling of mists, a stripping off of husks.
His demand for the truth is a trumpet note of challenge to our doubt or
fear or indifference. His penetrating study of human problems leads to
an inevitable widening of the horizon of comprehension and sympathy on
the part of his readers. And his courage and optimism constitute an
inspiration and stimulus of an uncommonly virile sort.

It has been said that Browning is "not a poet, but a literature," and in
work so vast and varied that it can be thus characterized there must be
wide extremes of value. It is almost certain that portions of his work
cannot live. They are too difficult, too unliterary. But in the portions
where great thought finds adequate form, the product is a priceless gift
and one not equaled by any other poet of his age.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _The Century_, December, 1881, Vol. XXIII, pp. 189-200.]

[Footnote 2: See the article by Mr. F. J. Furnivall in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ for April, 1890.]

[Footnote 3: The first production of _Pippa Passes_ was given in Copley
Hall, Boston, in 1899, with an arrangement in six scenes by Miss Helen
A. Clarke. _The Return of the Druses_ was arranged and presented by Miss
Charlotte Porter in 1902 and was a dramatic success. _A Blot in the
'Scutcheon_ was brought out by Macready, with Phelps in the chief part
and with Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred. It was played to crowded houses
and received much applause. It was revived by Phelps at Sadler's Wells
in 1848; and by the Browning Society in 1885 at St. George's Hall,
London. In the winter of that year the play was given in Washington by
Lawrence Barrett. It has also within a few years been admirably
presented by Mrs. Lemoyne in New York and elsewhere. _Colombe's
Birthday_, which was published in 1844, was not put upon the stage till
1853, when it was performed at the Haymarket Theater in London with Lady
Martin (Helen Faucit) as Colombe. It was performed in Boston in 1854 and
enthusiastically received. It was revived in 1885 with Miss Alma Murray
as Colombe, when it was commented on as being "charming on the boards,
clearer, more direct in action, more picturesque, more full of delicate
surprises than one imagines it in print." It was also successfully
produced at McVicker's Theater, Chicago, in November, 1894, with Miss
Marlowe as Colombe.]

[Footnote 4: An interesting corroboration of Mrs. Browning's words is
found in the fact that the 1868 edition of Browning's works, by Smith
Elder and Co., was reprinted as Numbers 1-19 of the _Official Guide of
the Chicago and Alton R. R., and Monthly Reprint and Advertiser_, edited
by Mr. James Charlton. A copy is in the British Museum. The reprint
appeared in 1872-1874. See Mrs. Orr's bibliography.]

[Footnote 5: A particularly interesting dramatic event was Mrs.
Lemoyne's presentation of _In a Balcony_ at Wallack's Theater, New York,
in the autumn of 1900. Mrs. Lemoyne was the Queen, Otis Skinner was
Norbet, and Eleanor Robson was Constance. See _The Bookman_, 12, 387.]

[Footnote 6: Mrs. Bronson has given a vivid picture of the Brownings at
Asolo and at Venice in the _Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902.]

[Footnote 7: See Miss E. M. Clark in _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 480
(1890).]

[Footnote 8: _Poet-Lore_, Volume II. page 246 (1890).]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The great number of books and articles on Browning and his work is shown
by the Bibliography of Biography and Criticism prepared by John P.
Anderson of the British Museum and printed in William Sharp's _Life of
Robert Browning_. The selection to be given here can hardly more than
suggest this large amount of material.

The 1888-9 edition of Browning's _Works_ by Smith, Elder and Company
incorporates Browning's last revisions and his own punctuation. The
Macmillan edition in nine volumes in 1894 reproduces this text.

For biographical material important books are:

_The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett 1845-1846_, two
volumes, 1902, Harper Brothers.

_The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Edited with Biographical
Additions by Frederic G. Kenyon._ Macmillan, 1897. (Two volumes in one,
1899.)

_The Life and Letters of Robert Browning_ by Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr in
1891. A new edition, revised and in part rewritten by Mr. Frederick G.
Kenyon, was brought out by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1908. Mrs.
Orr and Mr. Kenyon were both friends of Browning and could speak with
authority on many details of his life.

_Robert Browning, Personalia_, by Edmund Gosse. Houghton Mifflin and
Company, 1890. This book consists of a reprint of two articles, one from
_The Century Magazine_ on "The Early Career of Robert Browning," and one
from _The New Review_ entitled "Personal Impressions." These articles
are of exceptional interest because Mr. Gosse lived near Mr. Browning at
Warwick Crescent and they were on terms of close friendship. In
_Critical Kit-Kats_, 1896, Mr. Gosse gives the story of _Sonnets from
the Portuguese_.

_Robert Browning._ In _Bookman Biographies_, edited by W. Robertson
Nicholl. Hodder and Stoughton, London. Many interesting illustrations.

_The Century Magazine_ for 1900 and 1902 gives Mrs. Bronson's account of
Browning at Asolo and at Venice.

For general handbooks see:

_The Browning Cyclopædia._ Edward Berdoe, Macmillan, 1902. Elaborate
analysis of each poem. Many textual notes. Interpretations often
involved and far-fetched to the point of being untenable.

_Handbook of Robert Browning's Works._ Mrs. A. Sutherland Orr. First
edition, 1885; sixth edition, 1891. Republished by Bell and Sons,
London, 1902. Explanatory analysis of each poem. Edition of 1902
contains complete bibliography of Browning's works. Written at the
request of the London Browning Society.

For criticism see, as books varying widely in point of view and scope,
but each of distinct interest:

_An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry._ Hiram
Corson. Boston, 1886.

_An Introduction to the Study of Browning._ Arthur Symons. London,
Cassell and Company, 1886.

_Life of Robert Browning._ William Sharp. Walter Scott and Company,
London, 1897.

_The Poetry of Robert Browning._ Stopford A. Brooke. Crowell and
Company, 1902.

_Robert Browning._ G. K. Chesterton. Macmillan, 1903.

_Robert Browning._ C. H. Herford. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1905.

_Interpretations of Poetry and Religion_, by George Santayana,
Scribners, 1900, contains an interesting presentation of Browning's work
in a chapter entitled "The Poetry of Barbarism."

_Browning Study Programmes_ by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke,
Crowell and Company, 1900, is a series of studies on separate poems or
on groups of poems. Often very suggestive and helpful. In _Poet-Lore_,
edited by Miss Clarke and Miss Porter, are, _passim_, many other
valuable studies and notes on Browning. The Camberwell edition of
Browning's poems, edited by Miss Clarke and Miss Porter with excellent
annotations, was published by Crowell and Company in 1898.

_The London Browning Society's Papers_ and _The Boston Browning
Society's Papers_ contain much valuable material on separate poems or on
various phases of Browning's life and work.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

May 7, 1812. Robert Browning born in Camberwell, London.
1824. _Incondita_ ready for publication.
1825. Shelley and Keats read.
1826. Left Mr. Ready's school.
1833. _Pauline_ published anonymously.
1833-4. Travels in Russia and Italy.
1835. _Paracelsus._
1837. _Strafford._ Acted May 1, 1837, Covent Garden.
1840. _Sordello._
1841-6. _Bells and Pomegranates._
1841. No. I. _Pippa Passes._
1842. No. II. _King Victor and King Charles._
1842. No. III. _Dramatic Lyrics._
1843. No. IV. _The Return of the Druses._
1843. No. V. _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon._ Acted Feb.
11, 1843, Drury Lane.
1844. No. VI. _Colombe's Birthday._ Acted April 25,
1853, Haymarket.
1845. No. VII. _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics._
1846. No. VIII. _Luria_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_.
Jan. 10, 1845. Correspondence between Mr. Browning and Miss
Barrett begun.
May 20, 1845. Their first meeting.
Sept. 12, 1846. Their marriage at Marylebone Church, London.
Oct. 1846. to April, 1847. In Pisa.
April 20, 1847. Arrival at Florence.
May 1848. Settled in permanent home at Casa Guidi.
1849. _Poems by Robert Browning._ Two volumes.
March 9, 1849. Birth of Wiedemann (or "Penini") Browning.
March 1849. Death of Browning's mother.
1850. _Christmas Eve and Easter Day._
June 1851. Mrs. Browning's _Casa Guidi Windows_.
1852. _Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ With an
introductory essay by Robert Browning.
1855. _Men and Women._ In two volumes.
Oct. 1856. Mrs. Browning's _Aurora Leigh_.
June 1860. Browning found the "Yellow Book."
June 29, 1861. Mrs. Browning died. She was buried in Florence.
July 1861. Browning left Florence.
1862. Established himself at 19 Warwick Crescent, London,
where he lived twenty-five years.
1863. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In three
volumes. Chapman and Hall.
1863. _Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert
Browning._ [Editors, B.W. Proctor and John
Forster.]
1864. _Dramatis Personæ._
1866. Browning's father died and Sarianna came to live
with her brother.
1868. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In six
volumes. Smith, Elder and Company.
1868-9. _The Ring and the Book._ In four volumes.
1871. _Balaustion's Adventure._
1871. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society._
1872. _Fifine at the Fair._
1873. _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country._
1875. _Aristophanes' Apology._
1875. _The Inn Album._
July 1876. _Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper._
1877. _The Agamemnon of Æschylus translated._
1878. _La Saisiaz; The Two Poets of Croisic._
Aug. 1878. Browning first revisited Italy.
1879. _Dramatic Idyls._
1880. _Dramatic Idyls._ Second Series.
1881. The London Browning Society established.
1883. _Jocoseria._
1884. _Ferishtah's Fancies._
1887. Browning moved to De Vere Gardens.
1887. _Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning._
Riverside edition: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
1888-9. _The Poetical Works of Robert Browning._ In
sixteen volumes. Smith, Elder and Company. [All
the works collected by the author except
_Asolando_.]
Dec. 12, 1889. _Asolando._
Dec. 12, 1889. Robert Browning died in the Palazzo Rezzonica, his
son's home in Venice.
Dec. 31, 1889. Buried in Westminster Abbey.

SELECTIONS

FROM THE

POEMS AND PLAYS

ROBERT BROWNING

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

"HEAP CASSIA, SANDAL-BUDS, AND STRIPES"

Heap cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair; such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals, 5
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud 10
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From closet long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Moldering her lute and books among, 15
As when a queen, long dead, was young.

"OVER THE SEA OUR GALLEYS WENT"

Over the sea our galleys went
With cleaving prows in order brave
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave--
A gallant armament; 20
Each bark built out of a forest-tree
Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black bull-hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, 25
To bear the playful billows' game.
So each good ship was rude to see,
Rude and bare to the outward view,
But each upbore a stately tent
Where cedar pales in scented row 30
Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine,
And an awning drooped the mast below,
In fold on fold of the purple fine,
That neither noontide nor starshine
Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, 35
Might pierce the regal tenement.
When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad
We set the sail and plied the oar;
But when the night-wind blew like breath,
For joy of one day's voyage more, 40
We sang together on the wide sea,
Like men at peace on a peaceful shore;
Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,
Each helm made sure by the twilight star,
And in a sleep as calm as death, 45
We, the voyagers from afar,
Lay stretched along, each weary crew
In a circle round its wondrous tent
Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,
And with light and perfume, music too. 50
So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness passed,
And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast.

Now one morn land appeared--a speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky. 55
"Avoid it," cried our pilot, "check
The shout, restrain the eager eye!"
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh; 60
So we broke the cedar pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,
And a statue bright was on every deck!
We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbor thus, 65
With pomp and pæan glorious.

A hundred shapes of lucid stone!
All day we built its shrine for each,
A shrine of rock for everyone,
Nor paused till in the westering sun 70
We sat together on the beach
To sing because our task was done.
When lo! what shouts and merry songs!
What laughter all the distance stirs!
A loaded raft with happy throngs 75
Of gentle islanders!
"Our isles are just at hand," they cried,
"Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping;
Our temple-gates are opened wide,
Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping 80
For these majestic forms"--they cried.
Oh, then we awoke with sudden start
From our deep dream, and knew, too late,
How bare the rock, how desolate,
Which had received our precious freight. 85
Yet we called out--"Depart!
Our gifts once given must here abide.
Our work is done; we have no heart
To mar our work"--we cried.

III

"THUS THE MAYNE GLIDETH"

Thus the Mayne glideth 90
Where my Love abideth.
Sleep's no softer; it proceeds
On through lawns, on through meads,
On and on, whate'er befall,
Meandering and musical, 95
Though the niggard pasturage
Bears not on its shaven ledge
Aught but weeds and waving grasses
To view the river as it passes,
Save here and there a scanty patch 100
Of primroses too faint to catch
A weary bee.
And scarce it pushes
Its gentle way through strangling rushes
Where the glossy kingfisher
Flutters when noon-heats are near, 105
Glad the shelving banks to shun,
Red and steaming in the sun,
Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat
Burrows, and the speckled stoat;
Where the quick sandpipers flit 110
In and out the marl and grit
That seems to breed them, brown as they.
Naught disturbs its quiet way,
Save some lazy stork that springs,
Trailing it with legs and wings, 115
Whom the shy fox from the hill
Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.

CAVALIER TUNES

MARCHING ALONG

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing;
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues nourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 5
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song:

God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup. 10
Till you're--
CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,_
_Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._

Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well! 15
England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,
CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,_
_Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_

Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls 20
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
Hold by the right, you double your might;
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight.
CHORUS.--_March we along, fifty-score strong,_
_Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_

GIVE A ROUSE

King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse; here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!

Who gave me the goods that went since? 5
Who raised me the house that sank once?
Who helped me to gold I spent since?
Who found me in wine you drank once?
CHORUS.--
_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?_
_King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?_ 10
_Give a rouse; here's, in hell's despite now,_
_King Charles!_

To whom used my boy George quaff else,
By the old fool's side that begot him?
For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 15
While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
CHORUS.--
_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?_
_King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?_
_Give a rouse; here's, in hell's despite now,_
_King Charles!_ 20

III

BOOT AND SADDLE

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my castle before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray,
CHORUS.--_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say; 5
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--
CHORUS.--_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"_

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array; 10
Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,
CHORUS.--_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"_

Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
I've better counselors; what counsel they? 15
CHORUS.--_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"_

THE LOST LEADER

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat--
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 5
So much was theirs who so little allowed;
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 10
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us--they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15
--He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
We shall march prospering--not through his presence;
Songs may inspirit us--not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done--while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 20
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins; let him never come back to us! 25
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own; 30
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX"

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gatebolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 5
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, 10
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom a great yellow star came out to see; 15
At Düffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray;

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back 25
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence--ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 30

By Hasselt Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely--the fault's not in her;
We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 35
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; 40
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 45
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 50
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is--friends flocking round 55
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. 60

GARDEN FANCIES

THE FLOWER'S NAME

Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since;
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, 5
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

Down this side of the gravel-walk
She went while her robe's edge brushed the box; 10
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you, noble roses, I know; 15
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name. 20
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Roses, if I live and do well, 25
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground, 30
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not;
Stay as you are and be loved forever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not; 35
Mind, the shut pink month opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle--
Is not the dear mark still to be seen? 40

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, 45
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
--Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces--
Roses, you are not so fair after all!

MEETING AT NIGHT

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 5
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match, 10
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

PARTING AT MORNING

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim;
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

EVELYN HOPE

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,
Beginning to die too, in the glass; 5
Little has yet been changed, I think;
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; 10
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,
Till God's hand beckoned unawares-- 15
And the sweet white brow is all of her.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire, and dew-- 20
And just because I was thrice as old
And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was naught to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, naught beside?

No, indeed! for God above 25
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,
Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few; 30
Much is to learn, much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.

But the time will come--at last it will,
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
In the lower earth, in the years long still, 35
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,
In the new life come in the old one's stead. 40

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;
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 45
Either I missed or itself missed me;
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!
My heart seemed full as it could hold; 50
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!
There, that is our secret; go to sleep! 55
You will wake, and remember, and understand.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop 5
As they crop--
Was the site once of a city great and gay
(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
Ages since 10
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

Now--the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure; certain rills 15
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires 20
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass 25
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone-- 30
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold 35
Bought and sold.

Now--the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored, 40
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks--
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all around, the chariots traced 45
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-colored eve
Smiles to leave 50
To their folding all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray
Melt away--
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 55
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come. 60

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts--and then, 65
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face, 70
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high 75
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force--
Gold, of course.
O heart! O blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns 80
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.

UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY

(AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; 5
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
--I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned 10
wool.

But the city, oh, the city--the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the
eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets 15
high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the
heights:
You've the brown plowed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray 20
olive-trees.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick 25
and sell.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and
pash
Round the lady atop in her conch--fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a 30
sort of sash.

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty when they mix i' the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is 35
shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the
hill.
Enough of the seasons--I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin;
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in;
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. 40
By and by there's the traveling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws
teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post office such a scene-picture--the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, 45
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the
Duke's!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so,
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero;
"And, moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of Saint Paul
has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than 50
ever he preached."
Noon strikes--here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and
smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her
heart!
_Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
No keeping one's haunches still; it's the greatest pleasure in life.

But bless you, it's dear--it's dear! fowls, wine, at double 55
the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the
gate
It's a horror to think of. And so the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers; but still--ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and
sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the 60
yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of
scandals;
_Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

O Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were 5
the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Aye, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by ... what
you call
Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival;
I was never out of England--it's as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in 10
May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red--
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his 15
head?

Well, and it was graceful of them--they'd break talk off and afford
--She, to bite her mask's black velvet--he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on
sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--"Must 20
we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths--"Life might last! we can but try!"

"Were you happy?"--"Yes."--"And are you still as happy?"--"Yes. And
you?"
--"Then, more kisses!"--"Did _I_ stop them, when a million seemed so
few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare 25
say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the 30
sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice 35
earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.

"Yours for instance; you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction--you'll not die, it cannot be!

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, 40
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop;
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown 45
old.

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say;
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,
No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled 5
In the valley beneath where, white and wide
And washed by the morning water-gold,
Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

River and bridge and street and square
Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, 10
Through the live translucent bath of air,
As the sights in a magic crystal ball.
And of all I saw and of all I praised,
The most to praise and the best to see
Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised; 15
But why did it more than startle me?

Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,
Could you play me false who loved you so?
Some slights if a certain heart endures
Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know! 20
I' faith, I perceive not why I should care
To break a silence that suits them best,
But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear
When I find a Giotto join the rest.

On the arch where olives overhead 25
Print the blue sky with twig and leaf
(That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed)
'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief,
And mark through the winter afternoons,
By a gift God grants me now and then, 30
In the mild decline of those suns like moons,
Who walked in Florence, besides her men.

They might chirp and chaffer, come and go
For pleasure or profit, her men alive--
My business was hardly with them, I trow, 35
But with empty cells of the human hive--
With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church's apsis, aisle, or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave. 40

Wherever a fresco peels and drops,
Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains;
One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45
Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,
--A lion who dies of an ass's kick,
The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

For oh, this world and the wrong it does!
They are safe in heaven with their backs to it, 50
The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz
Round the works of, you of the little wit!
Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope,
Now that they see God face to face,
And have all attained to be poets, I hope? 55
'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

Much they reck of your praise and you!
But the wronged great souls--can they be quit
Of a world where their work is all to do,
Where you style them, you of the little wit, 60
Old Master This and Early the Other,
Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows:
A younger succeeds to an elder brother,
Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

And here where your praise might yield returns, 65
And a handsome word or two give help,
Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns
And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.
What, not a word for Stefano there,
Of brow once prominent and starry, 70
Called Nature's Ape and the world's despair
For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.)

There stands the Master. Study, my friends,
What a man's work comes to! So he plans it,
Performs it, perfects it, makes amends 75
For the toiling and moiling, and then, _sic transit_!
Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor,
With upturned eye while the hand is busy,
Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbor!
'Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy. 80

"If you knew their work you would deal your dole."
May I take upon me to instruct you?
When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,
Thus much had the world to boast _in fructu_--
The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, 85
Which the actual generations garble,
Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken)
And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.

So you saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be; 90
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there:
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied, 95
And your little date, by their forms that stay.

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The Son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. 100
You're wroth--can you slay your snake like Apollo?
You're grieved--still Niobe's the grander!
You live--there's the Racers' frieze to follow:
You die--there's the dying Alexander.

So, testing your weakness by their strength, 105
Your meager charms by their rounded beauty,
Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty.
--When I say "you" 'tis the common soul,
The collective, I mean--the race of Man 110
That receives life in parts to live in a whole,
And grow here according to God's clear plan.

Growth came when, looking your last on them all,
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start--What if we so small 115
Be greater and grander the while than they?
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs--ours, for eternity. 120

Today's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect--how else? they shall never change;
We are faulty--why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer's hand is not arrested 125
With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished;
They stand for our copy, and, once invested
With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven--
The better! What's come to perfection perishes. 130
Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven:
Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.
Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!
Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish,
Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) "O!" 135
Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,
But what and where depend on life's minute?
Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter
Our first step out of the gulf or in it? 140
Shall Man, such step within his endeavor,
Man's face, have no more play and action
Than joy which is crystallized forever,
Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

On which I conclude, that the early painters, 145
To cries of "Greek Art and what more wish you?"--
Replied, "To become now self-acquainters,
And paint man, man, whatever the issue!
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: 150
To bring the invisible full into play!
Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?"

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory
For daring so much, before they well did it.
The first of the new, in our race's story, 155
Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit.
The worthies began a revolution,
Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge,
Why, honor them now! (ends my allocution)
Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college. 160

There's a fancy some lean to and others hate--
That, when this life is ended, begins
New work for the soul in another state,
Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:
Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, 165
Repeat in large what they practiced in small,
Through life after life in unlimited series;
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best, 170
And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene--
When our faith in the same has stood the test--
Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
The uses of labor are surely done;
There remaineth a rest for the people of God; 175
And I have had troubles enough, for one.

But at any rate I have loved the season
Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy;
My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,
My painter--who but Cimabue? 180
Nor ever was a man of them all indeed,
From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo,
Could say that he missed my critic-meed.
So, now to my special grievance--heigh-ho!

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, 185
Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,
Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er:
--No getting again what the church has grasped!
The works on the wall must take their chance;
"Works never conceded to England's thick clime!" 190
(I hope they prefer their inheritance
Of a bucketful of Italian quicklime.)

When they go at length, with such a shaking
Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly
Each master his way through the black streets taking, 195
Where many a lost work breathes though badly--
Why don't they bethink them of who has merited?
Why not reveal while their pictures dree
Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted?
Why is it they never remember me? 200

Not that I expect the great Bigordi,
Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I
Say of a scrap of Frà Angelico's;
But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, 205
To grant me a taste of your intonaco,
Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

Could not the ghost with the close red cap,
My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, 210
Save me a sample, give me the hap
Of a muscular Christ that shows the draftsman?
No Virgin by him the somewhat petty,
Of finical touch and tempera crumbly--
Could not Alesso Baldovinetti 215
Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

Margheritone of Arezzo,
With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret
(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) 220
Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,
Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
If such remain, as is my conviction,
The hoarding it does you but little honor.

They pass; for them the panels may thrill, 225
The tempera grow alive and tinglish;
Their pictures are left to the mercies still
Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,
Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize,
Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno 230
At naked High Art, and in ecstasies
Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

No matter for these! But Giotto, you,
Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it--
Oh, never! it shall not be counted true-- 235
That a certain precious little tablet
Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover--
Was buried so long in oblivion's womb
And, left for another than I to discover,
Turns up at last! and to whom?--to whom? 240

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,
(Or was it rather the Ognissanti?)
Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!
Nay, I shall have it yet! _Detur amanti!_
My Koh-i-noor--or (if that's a platitude) 245
Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye;
So, in anticipative gratitude,
What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard
Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250
To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard,
We shall begin by way of rejoicing;
None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),
Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,
Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge 255
Over Morello with squib and cracker.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot--
No mere display at the stone of Dante,
But a kind of sober Witanagemot
(Ex: "Casa Guidi," _quod videas ante_) 260
Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,
How Art may return that departed with her.
Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,
And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate, 265
Utter fit things upon art and history,
Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,
Make of the want of the age no mystery;
Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,
Show--monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks 270
Out of the bear's shape into Chimæra's,
While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's.

Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan,
Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an "_issimo_,")
To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan, 275
And turn the bell-tower's _alt_ to _altissimo_:
And find as the beak of a young beccaccia
The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia,
Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy. 280

Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold
Is broken away, and the long-pent fire,
Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled
Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire
While "God and the People" plain for its motto, 285
Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky?
At least to foresee that glory of Giotto
And Florence together, the first am I!

"DE GUSTIBUS----"

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-- 5
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say--
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon, 10
With the bean-flowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled, 15
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)-- 20
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted, 25
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, forever crumbles 30
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news today--the king 35
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm a sling:
--She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me-- 40
(When fortune's malice
Lost her--Calais)--
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy."
Such lovers old are I and she: 45
So it always was, so shall ever be!

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 5
Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! 10
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture 15
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
"Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say, 5
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

SAUL

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss his
cheek.
And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,
Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent
Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, 5
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon 10
life.

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue
Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat
Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III

Then I, as was meet,
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet, 15
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped;
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,
That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I 20
prayed,
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid
But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied.
At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon I descried
A something more black than the blackness--the vast, the upright
Main prop which sustains the pavilion; and slow into sight 25
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.
Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide
On the great cross-support in the center, that goes to each side;
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his 30
pangs
And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come
With the springtime--so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and
dumb.

Then I tuned my harp--took off the lilies we twine round its chords
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide--those 35
sunbeams like swords!
And I first played the tune all our sheep know as, one after one,
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40
Into eve and the blue far above us--so blue and so far!

--Then the tune for which quails on the cornland will each leave his
mate
To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate
Till for boldness they fight one another; and then, what has weight
To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand house-- 45
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.

VII

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when
hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great 50
hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.--And then, the last
song
When the dead man is praised on his journey--"Bear, bear him along,
With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not
here
To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.
Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"--And then, the glad 55
chaunt
Of the marriage--first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.--And then, the great march
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch
Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends?--Then, the chorus
intoned
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. 60
But I stopped here; for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered; and sparkles 'gan dart
From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start,
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at 65
heart.
So the head; but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang:

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste,
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 70
Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust 75
divine,
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draft of wine,
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! 80
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst
guard
When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung
The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongue
Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more 85
attest,
I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for
best'?
Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, but
the rest.
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained
true;
And the friends of thy boyhood--that boyhood of wonder and 90
hope,
Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope--
Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;
And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine!
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the
throe
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and lets the gold 95
go)
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them--all
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature--King Saul!"

And lo, with that leap of my spirit--heart, hand, harp, and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for--as when, dare I 100
say,
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array,
And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot--"Saul!" cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped
By the tent's cross-support in the center, was struck by his name.
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the 105
aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of
stone
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate--leaves grasp of the
sheet?
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your 110
mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold--
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest--all hail, there they
are!
--Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his 115
crest
For their food in the ardors of summer. One long shudder thrilled
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse, 'twixt hope and
despair;
Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his 120
right hand
Held the brow, held the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand
To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore,
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean--a sun's slow decline 125
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine
Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

What spell or what charm,
(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge
To sustain him where song had restored him?--Song filled to 130
the verge
His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty; beyond, on what
fields,
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye
And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?
He saith, "It is good"; still he drinks not; he lets me 135
praise life,
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

XII

Then fancies grew rife
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep
Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill 140
and the sky;
And I laughed--"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my
flocks,
Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show
Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!
Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage 145
that gains,
And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old
trains
Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus--

XIII

"Yea, my King,"
I began--"thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring
From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by 150
brute:
In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears
fruit.
Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree--how its stem trembled
first
Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst
The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn
Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet more was 155
to learn,
E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we
slight,
When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight
Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and
branch
Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall
stanch
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such 160
wine.
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!
By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy
More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.
Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast
done
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the 165
sun
Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests
efface,
Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace
The results of his past summer-prime--so, each ray of thy will,
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too 170
give forth
A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the
North
With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!
But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last;
As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height,
So with man--so his power and his beauty forever take 175
flight.
No! Again a long draft of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years!
Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb--bid arise
A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the
skies,
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers; whose fame 180
would ye know?
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go
In great characters cut by the scribe--Such was Saul, so he did;
With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid--
For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to
amend,
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they 185
shall spend
(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record
With the gold of the graver, Saul's story--the statesman's great word
Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part 190
In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!"

XIV

And behold while I sang ... but O Thou who didst grant me that day,
And before it not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,
Carry on and complete an adventure--my shield and my sword
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my 195
word--
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever
On the new stretch of heaven above me--till, mighty to save,
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance--God's throne from
man's grave!
Let me tell out my tale to its evening--my voice to my heart 200
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!
For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron 205
retrieves
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

I say then--my song
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong
Made a proffer of good to console him--he slowly resumed
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the 210
swathes
Of his turban, and see--the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,
He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.
He is Saul, ye remember in glory--ere error had bent
The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though 215
much spent
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.
So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile
Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,
And sat out my singing--one arm round the tent-prop, to 220
raise
His bent head, and the other hung slack--till I touched on the praise
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots 225
which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace; he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow; through my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, 230
with kind power--
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine--And
oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned--"Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and 235
this;
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
As this moment--had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!"

XVI

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more--no song more! outbroke--

XVII

"I have gone the whole round of creation; I saw and I spoke;
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my 240
brain
And pronounced on the rest of his handwork--returned him again
His creation's approval or censure; I spoke as I saw;
I report, as a man may of God's work--all's love, yet all's law.
Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked
To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was 245
asked.
Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?
I but open my eyes--and perfection, no more and no less,
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God 250
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet. 255
Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think),
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst 260
E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold, I could love if I durst!
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
God's own speed in the one way of love; I abstain for love's sake.
--What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and
small,
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth 265
appall?
In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
Here, the creature surpass the Creator--the end what Began?
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, 270
And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvelous dower
Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the 275
whole?
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
Aye, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
This perfection--succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of
night?
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake, 280
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now--and bid him awake
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
Clear and safe in new light and new life--a new harmony yet
To be run, and continued, and ended--who knows?--or endure!
The man taught enough, by life's dream, of the rest to make 285
sure;
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII

"I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.
All's one gift; thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to 290
my prayer
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:
_I_ will?--the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loath
To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my 295
despair?
This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would
do!
See the King--I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would--knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! 300
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!
So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown--
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with 305
death!
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most
weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 310
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ
stand!"

XIX

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to 315
right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware;
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news--
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her
crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and 320
shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-- 325
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling
still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and 330
chill
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent--he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and 335
low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--"E'en so, it is so!"

MY STAR

All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red, 5
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 10
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA

I wonder do you feel today
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May? 5

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go. 10

Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin; yonder weed
Took up the floating weft, 15

Where one small orange cup amassed
Five beetles--blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal; and last,
Everywhere on the grassy slope
I traced it. Hold it fast! 20

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air--
Rome's ghost since her decease. 25

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting nature have her way
While heaven looks from its towers! 30

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love? 35

I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more,
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core
O' the wound, since wound must be? 40

I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul's springs--your part my part
In life, for good and ill. 45

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul's warmth--I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak--
Then the good minute goes. 50

Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star? 55

Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern--
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn. 60

IN THREE DAYS

So, I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
Then two long hours, and that is morn.
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
Feel, where my life broke off from thine, 5
How fresh the splinters keep and fine--
Only a touch and we combine!

Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights, at least the nights are short.
As night shows where her one moon is, 10
A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
So life's night gives my lady birth
And my eyes hold her! What is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

O loaded curls, release your store 15
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Outbreaking into fairy sparks,
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside, 20
Through lights and darks how manifold--
The dark inspired, the light controlled!
As early Art embrowns the gold.

What great fear, should one say, "Three days
That change the world might change as well 25
Your fortune; and if joy delays,
Be happy that no worse befell!"
What small fear, if another says,
"Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways; 30
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,
With an end somewhere undescried."
No fear!--or if a fear be born
This minute, it dies out in scorn. 35
Fear? I shall see her in three days
And one night, now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn.

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL

A PICTURE AT FANO

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending 5
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
--And suddenly my head is covered o'er 10
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb--and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.

I would not look up thither past thy head 15
Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,
Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether 20
Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread?

If this was ever granted, I would rest
My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands
Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands, 25
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy, and suppressed.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies 30
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared? 35

Guercino drew this angel I saw teach
(Alfred, dear friend!)--that little child to pray,
Holding the little hands up, each to each
Pressed gently--with his own head turned away
Over the earth where so much lay before him 40
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,
And he was left at Fano by the beach.

We were at Fano, and three times we went
To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul's content 45
--My angel with me too; and since I care
For dear Guercino's fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent)--

And since he did not work thus earnestly 50
At all times, and has else endured some wrong--
I took one thought his picture struck from me,
And spread it out, translating it to song.
My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend?
How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? 55
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.

MEMORABILIA

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that, 5
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at--
My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt, 10
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather,
And there I put inside my breast
A molted feather, an eagle-feather! 15
Well, I forget the rest.

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 5
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans
That soar, to earth may fall, 10
Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall"--
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew 15
Until he reached the mound.

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy;
You hardly could suspect-- 20
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace 25
We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire, 30
Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

The chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye 35
When her bruised eaglet breathes;
"You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead. 40

MY LAST DUCHESS

FERRARA

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said 5
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek; perhaps 15
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat"; such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast, 25
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30
Or blush, at least. She thanked men--good! but thanked
Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 35
In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; 45
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense 50
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL

Morning, evening, noon, and night,
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.

Hard he labored, long and well; 5
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period,
He stopped and sang, "Praise God!"

Then back again his curls he threw,
And cheerful turned to work anew. 10

Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done;
I doubt not thou art heard, my son:

"As well as if thy voice today
Were praising God, the Pope's great way.

"This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 15
Praises God from Peter's dome."

Said Theocrite, "Would God that I
Might praise him, that great way, and die!"

Night passed, day shone,
And Theocrite was gone. 20

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

God said in heaven, "Nor day nor night
Now brings the voice of my delight."

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, 25
Spread his wings and sank to earth;

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell,
Lived there, and played the craftsman well;

And morning, evening, noon, and night,
Praised God in place of Theocrite. 30

And from a boy, to youth he grew;
The man put off the stripling's hue;

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay;

And ever o'er the trade he bent, 35
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, "A praise is in mine ear;
There is no doubt in it, no fear: 40

"So sing old worlds, and so
New worlds that from my footstool go.

"Clearer loves sound other ways;
I miss my little human praise."

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 45
The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'Twas Easter Day; he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
The great outer gallery, 50

With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite;

And all his past career
Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 55
Till on his life the sickness weighed;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer;

And rising from the sickness drear
He grew a priest, and now stood here. 60

To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned.

"I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell
And set thee here; I did not well.

"Vainly I left my angel-sphere, 65
Vain was thy dream of many a year.

"Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped--
Creation's chorus stopped!

"Go back and praise again
The early way, while I remain. 70

"With that weak voice of our disdain,
Take up creation's pausing strain.

"Back to the cell and poor employ;
Resume the craftsman and the boy!"

Theocrite grew old at home; 75
A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome.

One vanished as the other died;
They sought God side by side.

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN;

A CHILD'S STORY

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied; 5
But when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin was a pity.

Rats! 10
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats, 15
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats. 20

III

At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation--shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 25
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking 30
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sat in council; 35
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain--
I'm sure my poor head aches again, 40
I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" 45
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!"--the Mayor cried, looking bigger-- 55
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red,
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in;
There was no guessing his kith and kin;
And nobody could enough admire 65
The tall man and his quaint attire.
Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!"

He advanced to the council-table: 70
And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!

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