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Robert Browning: How to Know Him

by William Lyon Phelps · English · Gutenberg #9067 · 499,787 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Robert Browning: How to Know Him

Author: William Lyon Phelps


        
Release date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #9067]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING: HOW TO KNOW HIM ***




Produced by C. Aldarondo, T. Vergon, R. Prince and the Distributed Proofreaders




[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]

ROBERT BROWNING: HOW TO KNOW HIM

By WILLIAM LYON PHELPS, M.A., PH.D. Lampton Professor of English
    Literature at Yale


WITH PORTRAIT

TO JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY WITH SINCERE AFFECTION AND RESPECT

PREFACE

In this volume I have attempted to give an account of Browning's
life and an estimation of his character: to set forth, with
sufficient illustration from his poems, his theory of poetry, his
aim and method: to make clear some of the leading ideas in his work:
to show his fondness for paradox: to exhibit the nature and basis of
his optimism. I have given in complete form over fifty of his poems,
each one preceded by my interpretation of its meaning and
significance.

W. L. P.

[Illistration: Seven Gables, Lake Huron]




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I THE MAN

II BROWNING'S THEORY OF POETRY

III LYRICS

IV DRAMATIC LYRICS

V DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES

VI POEMS OF PARADOX

VII BROWNING'S OPTIMISM

INDEX




LIST OF POEMS


ABT VOGLER

ANDREA DEL SARTO

APPARENT FAILURE

BAD DREAMS

BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB, THE

CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS

CAVALIER TUNES

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"

CONFESSIONS

COUNT GISMOND

CRISTINA

EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO

EPILOGUE TO FEFINE AT THE FAIR

EPISTLE (AN) CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH

EVELYN HOPE

EYES CALM BESIDE THEE

FACE, A

GLOVE, THE

GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL, A

GUARDIAN-ANGEL, THE

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY

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

JAMES LEE'S WIFE (two stanzas from)

JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION

LABORATORY, THE

LAST RIDE TOGETHER, THE

LOST LEADER, THE

LOST MISTRESS, THE

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

MEETING AT NIGHT

MY LAST DUCHESS

MY STAR

NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE

ONE WAY OF LOVE

ONE WORD MORE

OVER THE SEA OUR GALLEYS WENT

PARTING AT MORNING

PORPHYRIA'S LOVER

PROLOGUE TO ASOLANDO

PROLOGUE TO JOCOSERIA

PROLOGUE TO LA SAISIAZ

PROLOGUE TO PACCHIAROTTO

PROLOGUE TO THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC

PROSPICE

RABBI BEN EZRA

REPHAN

RESPECTABILITY

SAUL

SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER

SONG FROM A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

SONGS FROM PIPPA PASSES

STATUE (THE) AND THE BUST

SUMMUM BONUM

"TRANSCENDENTALISM"

UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY

WHICH?






BROWNING



I


THE MAN

If we enter this world from some other state of existence, it seems
certain that in the obscure pre-natal country, the power of free
choice--so stormily debated by philosophers and theologians
here--does not exist. Millions of earth's infants are handicapped at
the start by having parents who lack health, money, brains, and
character; and in many cases the environment is no better than the
ancestry. "God plants us where we grow," said Pompilia, and we can
not save the rose by placing it on the tree-top. Robert Browning,
who was perhaps the happiest man in the nineteenth century, was
particularly fortunate in his advent. Of the entire population of
the planet in the year of grace 1812, he could hardly have selected
a better father and mother than were chosen for him; and the place
of his birth was just what it should have been, the biggest town on
earth. All his life long he was emphatically a city man, dwelling in
London, Florence, Paris, and Venice, never remaining long in rural
surroundings.

Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Southampton Street, Camberwell,
London, a suburb on the southern side of the river. One hundred years
later, as I traversed the length of this street, it looked squalid
in the rain, and is indeed sufficiently unlovely. But in 1812 it was
a good residential locality, and not far away were fresh woods and
pastures....  The good health of Browning's father may be inferred
from the fact that he lived to be eighty-four, "without a day's
illness;" he was a practical, successful business man, an official
in the Bank of England. His love of literature and the arts is
proved by the fact that he practised them constantly for the pure
joy of the working; he wrote reams and reams of verse, without
publishing a line. He had extraordinary facility in composition,
being able to write poetry even faster than his son. Rossetti said
that he had "a real genius for drawing." He owned a large and
valuable library, filled with curiosities of literature. Robert was
brought up among books, even in earliest youth turning over many a
quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. His latest biographers
have shown the powerful and permanent effects on his poetry of this
early reading.

Browning's father--while not a rich man--had sufficient income to
give his son every possible advantage in physical and intellectual
training, and to enable him to live without earning a cent; after
Robert grew up, he was absolutely free to devote his entire time and
energy to writing poetry, which, even to the day of his death, did
not yield a livelihood. The young poet was free from care, free from
responsibility, and able from childhood to old age to bring out the
best that was in him. A curious and exact parallel is found in the
case of the great pessimist, Schopenhauer, who never ceased to be
grateful to his father for making his whole life-work possible. In
his later years, Browning wrote: "It would have been quite
unpardonable in any case not to have done my best. My dear father
put me in a condition most favourable for the best work I was
capable of. When I think of the many authors who had to fight their
way through all sorts of difficulties I have no reason to be proud
of my achievements."

Browning's mother, whom he loved with passionate adoration, was a
healthy and sensible woman; better than all these gifts, she was
deeply religious, with sincere and unaffected piety. She was a
Dissenter, a Congregationalist, and brought up Robert in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord, herself a noble example of her teachings.
This evangelical training had an incalculably strong influence on
the spirit of Browning's poetry. She loved music ardently, and when
Robert was a boy, used to play the piano to him in the twilight. He
always said that he got his devotion to music from her.

In these days, when there is such a strong reaction everywhere
against the elective system in education, it is interesting to
remember that Browning's education was simply the elective system
pushed to its last possibility. It is perhaps safe to say that no
learned man in modern times ever had so little of school and college.
His education depended absolutely and exclusively on his inclinations;
he was encouraged to study anything he wished. His father granted
him perfect liberty, never sent him to any "institution of learning,"
and allowed him to do exactly as he chose, simply providing
competent private instruction in whatever subject the youth
expressed any interest. Thus he learned Greek, Latin, the modern
languages, music (harmony and counterpoint, as well as piano and
organ), chemistry (a private laboratory was fitted up in the house),
history and art. Now every one knows that; so far as definite
acquisition of knowledge is concerned, our schools and colleges-at
least in America--leave much to be desired; our boys and girls study
the classics for years without being able to read a page at sight;
and the modern languages show a similarly meagre harvest. If one
wishes positive and practical results one must employ a private tutor,
or work alone in secret. The great advantages of our schools and
colleges--except in so far as they inspire intellectual
curiosity--are not primarily of a scholarly nature; their strength
lies in other directions. The result of Browning's education was
that at the age of twenty he knew more than most college graduates
ever know; and his knowledge was at his full command. His favorite
reading on the train, for example, was a Greek play; one of the
reasons why his poetry sometimes seems so pedantic is simply because
he never realised how ignorant most of us really are. I suppose he
did not believe that men could pass years in school and university
training and know so little. Yet the truth is, that most boys,
brought up as Browning was, would be utterly unfitted for the active
duties and struggles of life, and indeed for the amenities of social
intercourse. With ninety-nine out of a hundred, such an education,
so far as it made for either happiness or efficiency, would be a
failure. But Browning was the hundredth man. He was profoundly
learned without pedantry and without conceit; and he was primarily a
social being,

His physical training was not neglected. The boy had expert private
instruction in fencing, boxing, and riding. He was at ease on the
back of a spirited horse. He was particularly fond of dancing, which
later aroused the wonder of Elizabeth Barrett, who found it
difficult to imagine the author of _Paracelsus_ dancing the polka.

In 1833 appeared Browning's first poem, _Pauline_, which had been
completed before he was twenty-one years old. His aunt, Mrs.
Silverthorne, gave him one hundred and fifty dollars, which paid the
expenses of publication. Not a single copy was sold, and the unbound
sheets came home to roost. The commercial worth of _Pauline_ was
exactly zero; today it is said that only five copies exist. One was
sold recently for two thousand four hundred dollars.

In 1834 Browning visited Russia, going by steamer to Rotterdam, and
then driving fifteen hundred miles with horses. Although he was in
Russia about three months, and at the most sensitive time of life,
the country made surprisingly little impression upon him, or at
least upon his poetry. The dramatic idyl, _Ivan Ivànovitch_, is
practically the only literary result of this journey. It was the
south, and not the north, that was to be the inspiration of Browning.

He published his second poem, _Paracelsus_, in 1835. Although this
attracted no general attention, and had no sale, it was
enthusiastically reviewed by John Forster, who declared that its
author was a man of genius. The most fortunate result of its
appearance was that it brought Browning within the pale of literary
society, and gave him the friendship of some of the leading men in
London. The great actor Macready was charmed with the poem, and
young Browning haunted Macready's dressing-room at the theatre for
years; but their friendship ceased in 1843 when _A Blot in the
'Scutcheon_ was acted. Browning wrote four plays for Macready, two
of which were accepted.

Although Browning late in life remarked in a casual conversation
that he had visited Italy in 1834, he must have been mistaken, for
it is impossible to find any record of such a journey. To the best
of our knowledge, he first saw the land of his inspiration in 1838,
sailing from London on April 13th, passing through the Straits of
Gibraltar on the twenty-ninth, and reaching Trieste on May 30th. On
the first of June he entered Venice. It was on a walking-trip that
he first saw the village of Asolo, about thirty miles to the
northeast of Venice. Little did he then realise how closely his name
would be forever associated with this tiny town. The scenes of
_Pippa Passes_ he located there: the last summer of his life, in
1889, was spent in Asolo, his last volume he named in memory of the
village; and on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, the
street where he lived and wrote in 1889 was formally named Via
Roberto Browning. His son, Robert Barrett Browning, lived to see
this event, and died at Asolo on July 8, 1912.

The long and obscure poem _Sordello_ was published in 1840; and then
for thirty years Browning produced poetry of the highest order:
poetry that shows scarcely any obscurity, and that in lyric and
dramatic power has given its author a fixed place among the greatest
names in English literature.

The story of the marriage and married life of Elizabeth Barrett and
Robert Browning is one of the greatest love stories in the world's
history; their love-letters reveal a drama of noble passion that
excels in beauty and intensity the universally popular examples of
Heloise and Abelard, Aucassin and Nicolette, Paul and Virginia.
There was a mysterious bond between them long before the personal
acquaintance: each admired the other's poetry. Miss Barrett had a
picture of Browning in her sickroom, and declared that the adverse
criticism constantly directed against his verse hurt her like a lash
across her own back. In a new volume of poems, she made a
complimentary reference to his work, and in January, 1845, he wrote
her a letter properly beginning with the two words, "I love." It was
her verses that he loved, and said so. In May he saw her and
illustrated his own doctrine by falling in love with her at first
sight. She was in her fortieth year, and an invalid; but if any one
is surprised at the passion she aroused in the handsome young poet,
six years her junior, one has only to read her letters. She was a
charming woman, feminine from her soul to her finger-tips, the
incarnation of _das Ewigweibliche_. Her intimate friends were mostly
what were then known as strong-minded women--I suppose to-day they
would seem like timid, shy violets. She was modest, gentle, winsome,
irresistible: profoundly learned, with the eager heart of a child.

Wimpole Street in London, "the long, unlovely street," as Tennyson
calls it, is holy ground to the lover of literature: for at Number
67 lived Arthur Henry Hallam, and diagonally opposite, at Number 50,
lived Elizabeth Barrett. This street--utterly commonplace in
appearance--is forever associated with the names of our two great
Victorian poets: and the association with Tennyson is Death: with
Browning, Love.

Not only was Elizabeth believed to be a hopeless invalid, but her
father had forbidden any of his children to marry. He was a
religious man, whose motto in his own household was apparently
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." He had the particular
kind of piety that is most offensive to ordinary humanity. He gave
his children, for whom he had a stern and savage passion, everything
except what they wanted. He had an insane jealousy of any possible
lover, and there is no doubt that he would have preferred to attend
the funeral of any one of his children rather than a marriage. But
Browning's triumphant love knew no obstacles, and he persuaded
Elizabeth Barrett to run away with him. They were married in
September, 1846, and shortly after left for Italy. Her father refused
to see either of them in subsequent years, and returned his
daughter's letters unopened. Is there any cause in nature for these
hard hearts?

Browning's faith wrought a miracle. Instead of dying on the journey
to Italy, Mrs. Browning got well, and the two lived together in
unclouded happiness for fifteen years, until 1861, when she died in
his arms. Not a scrap of writing passed between them from the day of
her marriage to the day of her death: for they were never separated.
She said that all a woman needed to be perfectly happy was three
things--Life, Love, Italy--and she had all three.

The relations between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning had all
the wonder and beauty of a mediaeval romance, with the notable
addition of being historically true. The familiar story of a damosel
imprisoned in a gloomy dungeon, guarded by a cruel dragon--and then,
when all her hope had vanished, rescued by the sudden appearance of
the brilliant knight, who carried her away from her dull prison to a
land of sunshine and happiness--this became the literal experience
of Elizabeth Barrett. Her love for her husband was the passionate
love of a woman for a man, glorified by adoration for the champion
who had miraculously transformed her life from the depths of despair
to the topmost heights of joy. He came, "pouring heaven into this
shut house of life." She expressed the daily surprise of her
happiness in her Sonnets, which one day she put shyly into his hands:

  I thought once how Theocritus had sung
  Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
  Who each one in a gracious hand appears
  To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
  And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
  I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
  The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
  Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
  A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
  So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
  Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
  And a voice said in mastery while I strove, ...
  "Guess now who holds thee?"--"Death!" I said. But, there,
  The silver answer rang ... "Not Death, but Love."

  My own Beloved, who hast lifted me
  From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
  And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
  A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
  Shines out again, as all the angels see,
  Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
  Who camest to me when the world was gone,
  And I who looked for only God, found _thee_!
  I find thee: I am safe, and strong, and glad.
  As one who stands in dewless asphodel
  Looks backward on the tedious time he had
  In the upper life ... so I, with bosom-swell,
  Make witness here between the good and bad,
  That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

Browning replied to this wonderful tribute by appending to the fifty
poems published in 1855 his _One Word More_. He wrote this in a
metre different from any he had ever used, for he meant the poem to
be unique in his works, a personal expression of his love. He
remarked that Rafael wrote sonnets, that Dante painted a picture,
each man going outside the sphere of his genius to please the woman
he loved, to give her something entirely apart from his gifts to the
world. He wished that he could do something other than poetry for his
wife, and in the next life he believed that it would be possible.
But here God had given him only one gift--verse: he must therefore
present her with a specimen of the only art he could command; but it
should be utterly unlike all his other poems, for they were dramatic;
here just once, and for one woman only, he would step out from
behind the scenes, and address her directly in his own person.

Of course Browning could have modelled a statue, or written a piece
of music for Elizabeth, for in both of these arts he had attained
moderate proficiency: but he wished not only to make a gift just for
her, but to give it to her in public, with the whole world regarding;
therefore it must be of his best.

He calls her his _moon_ of poets. He reminds her how a few days ago,
they had seen the crescent moon in Florence, how they had seen it
nightly waxing until it lamped the facade of San Miniato, while the
nightingales, in ecstasy among the cypress trees, gave full-throated
applause. Then they had travelled together to London, and now saw
the same dispirited moon, saving up her silver parsimoniously, sink
in gibbous meanness behind the chimney-tops.

The notable thing about the moon is that whereas the earth, during
one revolution about the sun, turns on its own axis three hundred
and sixty-five times, the shy moon takes exactly the same length of
time to turn around as she takes to circle once around the earth.
For this reason, earth's inhabitants have never seen but one side of
the moon, and never will. Elizabeth Browning is _his_ moon, because
she shows the other side to him alone. The radiant splendor of her
poetry fills the whole earth with light; but to her husband she
shows the other side, the loving, domestic woman, the unspeakably
precious and intimate associate of his daily life. The world thinks
it knows her; but it has seen only one side; it knows nothing of the
marvellous depth and purity of her real nature.



ONE WORD MORE

TO E.B.B. 1855


I

  There they are, my fifty men and women
  Naming me the fifty poems finished!
  Take them, Love, the book and me together:
  Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.


  II

  Rafael made a century of sonnets,
  Made and wrote them in a certain volume
  Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
  Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
  These, the world might view--but one, the volume.
  Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
  Did she live and love it all her life-time?
  Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
  Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
  Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,
  Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving--
  Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,
  Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?


  III

  You and I would rather read that volume,
  (Taken to his beating bosom by it)
  Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
  Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas--
  Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
  Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
  Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre--
  Seen by us and all the world in circle.


  IV

  You and I will never read that volume.
  Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple
  Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it
  Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
  Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!"
  Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.


  V

  Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
  Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."
  While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
  (Peradventure with a pen corroded
  Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
  When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
  Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
  Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
  Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
  Let the wretch go festering through Florence)--
  Dante, who loved well because he hated,
  Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
  Dante standing, studying his angel,--
  In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
  Says he--"Certain people of importance"
  (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
  "Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
  Says the poet-"Then I stopped my painting."


  VI

  You and I would rather see that angel,
  Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
  Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.


  VII

  You and I will never see that picture.
  While he mused on love and Beatrice,
  While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
  In they broke, those "people of importance":
  We and Bice bear the loss for ever.


  VIII

  What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
  This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
  Once, and only once, and for one only,
  (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
  Fit and fair and simple and sufficient--
  Using nature that's an art to others,
  Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.
  Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
  None but would forego his proper dowry,--
  Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,--
  Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
  Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
  Once, and only once, and for one only,
  So to be the man and leave the artist,
  Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.


  IX

  Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!
  He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
  Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
  Even he, the minute makes immortal,
  Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
  Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
  While he smites, how can he but remember,
  So he smote before, in such a peril,
  When they stood and mocked--"Shall smiting help us?"
  When they drank and sneered--"A stroke is easy!"
  When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
  Throwing him for thanks--"But drought was pleasant."
  Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
  Thus the doing savours of disrelish;
  Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
  O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
  Carelessness or consciousness--the gesture.
  For he bears an ancient wrong about him,
  Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
  Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude--
  "How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?"
  Guesses what is like to prove the sequel--
  "Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought was better."


  X

  Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
  Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance,
  Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.
  Never dares the man put off the prophet.


  XI

  Did he love one face from out the thousands,
  (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,
  Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave,)
  He would envy yon dumb patient camel,
  Keeping a reserve of scanty water
  Meant to save his own life in the desert;
  Ready in the desert to deliver
  (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
  Hoard and life together for his mistress.


  XII

  I shall never, in the years remaining,
  Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
  Make you music that should all-express me;
  So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
  This of verse alone, one life allows me;
  Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
  Other heights in other lives, God willing:
  All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!


  XIII

  Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
  Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
  Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
  Lines I write the first time and the last time.
  He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
  Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
  Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
  Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
  Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.
  He who blows thro' bronze, may breathe thro' silver,
  Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
  He who writes, may write for once as I do.


  XIV

  Love, you saw me gather men and women,
  Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
  Enter each and all, and use their service,
  Speak from every mouth,--the speech, a poem.
  Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
  Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
  I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's,
  Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
  Let me speak this once in my true person,
  Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
  Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
  Pray you, look on these my men and women,
  Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
  Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
  Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.


  XV

  Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
  Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
  Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
  Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
  Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
  Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
  Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
  Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
  Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
  Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
  Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
  Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
  Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.


  XVI

  What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
  Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
  Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
  All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos)
  She would turn a new side to her mortal,
  Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
  Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
  Blind to Galileo on his turret,
  Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
  Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal--
  When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
  Opens out anew for worse or better!
  Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
  Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
  Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
  Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
  Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
  Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
  Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
  Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
  Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
  Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
  When they ate and drank and saw God also!


  XVII

  What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
  Only this is sure--the sight were other,
  Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
  Dying now impoverished here in London.
  God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
  One to show a woman when he loves her!


  XVIII

  This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
  This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
  Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
  Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
  There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
  Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
  But the best is when I glide from out them,
  Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
  Come out on the other side, the novel
  Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
  Where I hush and bless myself with silence.


  XIX

  Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
  Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
  Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it,
  Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!

              R. B.

The Brownings travelled a good deal: they visited many places in
Italy, Venice, Ancona, Fano, Siena, and spent several winters in Rome.
The winter of 1851-52 was passed at Paris, where on the third of
January Browning wrote one of his most notable poems, _Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower Came_. One memorable evening at London in 1855
there were gathered together in an upper room Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, Dante and William Rossetti. Tennyson had just
published _Maud_ and Browning the two volumes called _Men and Women_.
Each poet was invited to read from his new work. Tennyson, with one
leg curled under him on the sofa, chanted _Maud_, the tears running
down his cheeks; and then Browning read in a conversational manner
his characteristic poem, _Fra Lippo Lippi_. Rossetti made a
pen-and-ink sketch of the Laureate while he was intoning. On one of
the journeys made by the Brownings from London to Paris they were
accompanied by Thomas Carlyle, who wrote a vivid and charming
account of the transit. The poet was the practical member of the
party: the "brave Browning" struggled with the baggage, and the
customs, and the train arrangements; while the Scot philosopher
smoked infinite tobacco.

The best account of the domestic life of the Brownings at Casa Guidi
in Florence was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and published in his
_Italian Note-Books_. On a June evening, Mr. and Mrs. Browning,
William Cullen Bryant, and Nathaniel Hawthorne ate strawberries and
talked spiritualism. Hawthorne and Browning stood on the little
balcony overlooking the street, and heard the priests chanting in
the church of San Felice, the chant heard only in June, which
Browning was to hear again on the night of the June day when he
found the old yellow book. Both chant and terrace were to be
immortalised in Browning's epic. Hawthorne said that Browning had an
elfin wife and an elf child. "I wonder whether he will ever grow up,
whether it is desirable that he should." Like all visitors at Casa
Guidi, the American was impressed by the extraordinary sweetness,
gentleness, and charity of Elizabeth Browning, and by the energy,
vivacity, and conversational powers of her husband. Hawthorne said
he seemed to be in all parts of the room at once.

Mr. Barrett Browning told me in 1904 that he remembered his mother,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as clearly as though he had seen her
yesterday. He was eleven years old at the time of her death. He
would have it that her ill health had been greatly exaggerated. She
was an invalid, but did not give the impression of being one. She
was able to do many things, and had considerable power of endurance.
One day in Florence she walked from her home out through the Porta
Romana, clear up on the heights, and back to Casa Guidi. "That was
pretty good, wasn't it?" said he. She was of course the idol of the
household, and everything revolved about her. She was "intensely
loved" by all her friends. Her father was a "very peculiar man." The
son's account of her health differs radically from that written by
the mother of E. C. Stedman, who said that Mrs. Browning was kept
alive only by opium, which she had to take daily. This writer added,
however, that in spite of Mrs. Browning's wretched health, she had
never heard her speak ill of any one, though she talked with her
many times.

After the death of his wife, Browning never saw Florence again. He
lived in London, and after a few years was constantly seen in society,
Tennyson, who hated society, said that Browning would die in a dress
suit. His real fame did not begin until the year 1864, with the
publication of _Dramatis Personæ_. During the first thirty years of
his career, from the publication of _Pauline_ in 1833 to the
appearance of _Dramatis Personæ_, he received always tribute from
the few, and neglect, seasoned with ridicule, from the many. _Pauline,
Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Christmas-Eve,
Men and Women_--each of these volumes was greeted enthusiastically
by men and women whose own literary fame is permanent. But the world
knew him not. How utterly obscure he was may be seen by the fact
that so late as 1860, when the publisher's statement came in for
_Men and Women_, it appeared that during the preceding six months
not a single copy had been sold! The best was yet to be. _The
Dramatis Personæ_ was the first of his books to go into a genuine
second edition. Then four years later came _The Ring and the Book_,
which a contemporary review pronounced to be the "most precious and
profound spiritual treasure which England has received since the
days of Shakespeare."

Fame, which had shunned him for thirty years, came to him in
extraordinary measure during the last part of his life: another
exact parallel between him and the great pessimist Schopenhauer. It
was naturally sweet, its sweetness lessened only by the thought that
his wife had not lived to see it. Each had always believed in the
superiority of the other: and the only cloud in Mrs. Browning's mind
was the (to her) incomprehensible neglect of her husband by the
public. At the time of the marriage, it was commonly said that a
young literary man had eloped with a great poetess: during their
married life, her books went invariably into many editions, while
his did not sell at all. And even to the last day of Browning's
earthly existence, her poems far outsold his, to his unspeakable
delight. "The demand for my poems is nothing like so large," he
wrote cheerfully, in correcting a contrary opinion that had been
printed. Even so late as 1885, I found this passage in an account of
Mrs. Browning's life, published that year, It appears that "she was
married in 1846 to Robert Browning, who was also a poet and dramatic
writer of some note, though his fame seems to have been almost
totally eclipsed by the superior endowments of his gifted wife." This
reminds us of the time when Mr. and Mrs. Schumann were presented to
a Scandinavian King: Mrs. Schumann played on the piano, and His
Majesty, turning graciously to the silent husband, enquired
"Are you also musical?"

The last summer of Browning's life, the summer of 1889, was passed
at Asolo: in the autumn he moved into his beautiful house in Venice,
the Palazzo Rezzonico, which had the finest situation of all
Venetian residences, built at an angle in the Grand Canal. Although
seventy-seven years old, he was apparently as vigorous as ever: no
change had taken place in his appearance, manner or habits. One day
he caught a bad cold walking on the Lido in a bitter wind; and with
his usual vehement energy declined to take any proper care of his
throat. Instead of staying in, he set out for long tramps with
friends, constantly talking in the raw autumn air. In order to prove
to his son that nothing was the matter with him, he ran rapidly up
three flights of stairs, the son vainly trying to restrain him.
Nothing is more characteristic of the youthful folly of aged folk
than their impatient resentment of proffered hygienic advice. When
we are children, we reject with scorn the suggestions of our parents;
when we are old, we reject with equal scorn the advice of our
children. Man is apparently an animal more fit to give advice than
to take it. Browning's impulsive rashness proved fatal. Bronchitis
with heart trouble finally sent him to bed, though on the last
afternoon of his life he rose and walked about the room. During the
last few days he told many good stories and talked with his
accustomed eagerness. He died at ten o'clock in the evening of the
twelfth of December, 1889, A few moments before his death came a
cablegram from London announcing that his last volume of poems had
been published that day, and that the evening papers were speaking
in high terms of its contents. "That is very gratifying," said he.

Browning's life was healthy, comfortable, and happy. With the
exception of frequent headaches in his earlier years, he never knew
sickness or physical distress. His son said that he had never seen
him in bed in the daytime until the last illness. He had a truly
wonderful digestion; it was his firm belief that one should eat only
what one really enjoyed, desire being the infallible sign that the
food was healthful. "My father was a man of _bonne fourchette_" said
Barrett Browning to me; "he was not very fond of meat, but liked all
kinds of Italian dishes, especially with rich sauces. He always ate
freely of rich and delicate things. He could make a whole meal off
mayonnaise." It is pleasant to remember that Emerson, the other
great optimist of the century, used to eat pie for breakfast. Unlike
Carlyle and Tennyson, who smoked constantly, Browning never used
tobacco; he drank wine with his meals, but sparingly, and never more
than one kind of wine at a dinner. While physically robust, fond of
riding and walking, never using a cab or public conveyance if he
could help it, he was like most first-class literary men in caring
nothing whatever for competitive sports. He did not learn to swim
until late in life; his son taught him at Pornic, in Brittany. He
was venturesome for a man well on in years, swimming far out with
boyish delight, as he has himself described it in the _Prologue to
Fifine at the Fair_.

Browning's eyes were peculiar, one having a long focus, the other
very short. He had the unusual accomplishment (try it and prove) of
closing either eye without "squinching," and without any apparent
effort, though sometimes on the street in strong sunshine his face
would be a bit distorted. He did all his reading and writing with
one eye, closing the long one as he sat down at his desk. He never
wore glasses, and was proud of his microscopic eye. He often wrote
minutely, to show off his powers. When he left the house to go for a
walk, he shut the short eye and opened the long one, with which he
could see an immense distance. He never suffered with any pain in
his eyes except once, when a boy, he was trying to be a vegetarian
in imitation of his youthful idol, Shelley.

Contrary to the oft-repeated statement, Browning was not a really
fine pianist. As a very young man, he used to play several
instruments, and once he had been able to play all of Beethoven's
sonatas on the piano. In later life he became ambitious to improve
his skill with this instrument, and had much trouble, for his
fingers were clumsy and stiff. He therefore used to rise at six, and
practise finger-exercises for an hour!

He loved first-class music ardently, had a profound knowledge of it,
and was a good judge. If the performance was fine, he would express
his praise with the utmost enthusiasm; but bad work caused him acute
pain. Sometimes at a concert he would put his fingers in his ears,
his suffering being apparently uncontrollable.

The salient feature of his character was his boyish vivacity and
enthusiasm. If he looked out of the window and saw a friend coming
along the street to call, he would often rush out and embrace him.
In conversation he was extraordinarily eager and impulsive, with a
great flow of talk on an enormous range of subjects. If he liked
anything, he spoke of it in the heartiest manner, laughing aloud
with delight. He was very generous in his appreciation and praise of
other men's work, being beautifully free from that jealousy which is
one of the besetting sins of artists. He always tried to see what
was good. Occasionally he was enraged at reading a particularly
hostile criticism of himself, but on the whole he stood abuse
very well, and had abundant opportunity to exercise the gift of
patience. A great admirer of Tennyson's poetry and of Tennyson's
character--they were dear and intimate friends--he never liked the
stock comparison. "Tennyson and I are totally unlike," he used to say.
No letter from one rival to another was ever more beautiful than the
letter Browning wrote to Tennyson on the occasion of the Laureate's
eightieth birthday:

  "My DEAR TENNYSON--To-morrow is your birthday--indeed, a memorable
  one. Let me say I associate myself with the universal pride of our
  country in your glory, and in its hope that for many and many a year
  we may have your very self among us--secure that your poetry will be
  a wonder and delight to all those appointed to come after. And for
  my own part, let me further say, I have loved you dearly. May God
  bless you and yours.

  "At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your works,
  or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, expressed
  or kept silent, than this which an opportunity allows me to
  utter--that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, admiringly and
  affectionately yours,

            "ROBERT BROWNING."

What I have said of Browning's impulsiveness is borne out not only
by the universal testimony of those who knew him well, but
particularly by a letter of Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Jameson. The
manuscript of this letter was bought in London by an American, and
went down with the _Titanic_ in 1912. An extract from it appeared in
a bookseller's catalogue--"You must learn Robert--he is made of
moods--chequered like a chess-board; and the colour goes for too
much--till you learn to treat it as a game."

No man--little or great--was ever more free from pose. His appearance,
in clothes and in hair, was studiously normal. No one in his later
years would ever have guessed that he was a poet, either in seeing
him on the street, or in meeting him at dinner. He was interested in
multitudinous things, but never spoke of poetry--either in general
or in his own particular--if he could avoid doing so. The fact that
strangers who were presented to him and talked with him did not
guess that he was _the_ Mr. Browning, gave rise to numberless
humorous situations.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said of his personal character is
the truthful statement that he stood in the finest manner two
searching tests of manhood--long neglect and sudden popularity, The
long years of oblivion, during which he was producing much of his
best work, made him neither angry nor sour, though he must have
suffered deeply. On the other hand, when his fame reached prodigious
proportions, he was neither conceited nor affected. He thoroughly
believed in himself, and in his work; and he cared more about it
than he did for its reception.

The crushing grief that came to him in the death of his wife he bore
with that Christian resignation of which we hear more often than
perhaps we see in experience. For Browning was a Christian, not only
in faith but in conduct; it was the mainspring of his art and of his
life. There are so many writers whose lives show so painful a
contrast with the ideal tone of their written work, that it is
refreshing and inspiring to be so certain of Browning; to know that
the author of the poems which thrill us was as great in character as
he was in genius.



II


BROWNING'S THEORY OF POETRY

With one exception, the economic law of supply and demand governs
the production of literature exactly as it determines the price of
wheat. For many years the Novel has been the chief channel of
literary expression, the dominant literary form: in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, the Drama was supreme. During the early part of the
eighteenth century, theological poetry enjoyed a great vogue; Pope's
_Essay on Man_ circulated with the rapidity of a modern detective
story. Consider the history of the English sonnet. This form of
verse was exceedingly popular in 1600, By 1660 it had vanished, and
remained obsolete for nearly a hundred years; about the middle of
the eighteenth century it was revived by Thomas Edwards and others;
in the nineteenth century it became fashionable, and still holds its
place, as one may see by opening current magazines. Why is it that
writers put their ideas on God, Nature, and Woman in the form of a
drama in 1600, and in the form of a novel in 1900? Why is it that an
inspired man should make poems of exactly fourteen lines in 1580 and
in 1880, and not do it in 1680? If we do not attempt an ultimate
metaphysical analysis, the answer is clear. The bookseller supplies
the public, the publisher supplies the bookseller, the author
supplies the publisher. A bookseller has in his window what the
people want, and the publisher furnishes material in response to the
same desire; just as a farmer plants in his fields some foodstuffs
for which there is a sharp demand. Authors are compelled to write
for the market, whether they like it or not, otherwise their work
can not appear in print. The reason why the modern novel, with all
its shortcomings, is the mirror of ideas on every conceivable topic
in religious, educational, economic, and sociological thought, is
because the vast majority of writers are at this moment compelled by
the market to put their reflections into the form of novels, just as
Marlowe and Chapman were forced to write plays. With one exception,
the law of supply and demand determines the metrical shape of the
poet's frenzy, and the prose mould of the philosopher's ideas.

The exception is so rare that it establishes the rule. The exception
is Genius--next to radium the scarcest article on earth. And even
Genius often follows the market--it takes the prevailing literary
fashion, and adapts itself to the form in vogue in a more excellent
way. Such genius--the Genius for Adaptation--never has to wait long
for recognition, simply because it supplies a keen popular demand.
Such a genius was Shakespeare: such a genius was Pope: such a genius
was Scott: such a genius was Byron: such a genius was Tennyson. But
the true exception to the great economic law is seen in the Man of
Original Genius, who cares not at all for the fashion except perhaps
to destroy it. This man is outside the law of supply and demand,
because he supplies no demand, and there exists no demand for him.
He therefore has to create the demand as well as the supply. Such a
man in Music was Wagner: such a man in Drama was Ibsen: such a man
in Poetry was Browning.

These three men were fortunate in all reaching the age of seventy,
for had they died midway in their careers, even after accomplishing
much of their best work, they would have died in obscurity. They had
to wait long for recognition, because nobody was looking for them,
nobody wanted them. There was no demand for Wagner's music--but
there is now, and he made it. There was no demand for plays like
those of Ibsen; and there was not the slightest demand for poetry
like _Pauline_ and the _Dramatic Lyrics_. The reason why the public
does not immediately recognise the greatness of a work of original
genius, is because the public at first--if it notices the thing at
all--apprehends not its greatness, but its strangeness. It is so
unlike the thing the public is seeking, that it seems grotesque or
absurd--many indeed declare that it is exactly the opposite of what
it professes to be. Thus, many insisted that Ibsen's so-called
dramas were not really plays: they were merely conversations on
serious and unpleasant themes. In like manner, the critics said that
Wagner, whatever he composed, did not compose music; for instead of
making melodies, he made harsh and discordant sounds. For eighty
years, many men of learning and culture have been loudly proclaiming
that Browning, whatever he was, was not a poet; he was ingenious, he
was thoughtful, a philosopher, if you like, but surely no poet. When
_The Ring and the Book_ was published, a thoroughly respectable
British critic wrote, "Music does not exist for him any more than
for the deaf." On the other hand, the accomplished poet, musician,
and critic, Sidney Lanier, remarked:

"Have you seen Browning's _The Ring and the Book_? I am confident
that at the birth of this man, among all the good fairies who
showered him with magnificent endowments, one bad one--as in the old
tale--crept in by stealth and gave him a constitutional twist i' the
neck, whereby his windpipe became, and has ever since remained, a
marvellous tortuous passage. Out of this glottis-labyrinth his words
won't, and can't, come straight. A hitch and a sharp crook in every
sentence bring you up with a shock. But what a shock it is! Did you
ever see a picture of a lasso, in the act of being flung? In a
thousand coils and turns, inextricably crooked and involved and
whirled, yet, if you mark the noose at the end, you see that it is
directly in front of the bison's head, there, and is bound to catch
him! That is the way Robert Browning catches you. The first sixty or
seventy pages of _The Ring and the Book_ are altogether the most
doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music, in the English
language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi, that of
Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are
unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, _me judice_.
Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get
lightning glimpses--and, as one naturally expects from lightning,
zigzag glimpses--into the intense night of the passion of these souls.
It is entirely wonderful and without precedent." [1]

One of the most admirable things about Browning's admirable career
as poet and man is that he wrote not to please the critics, as
Tennyson often did, not to please the crowd, as the vast horde of
ephemeral writers do, but to please himself. The critics and the
crowd professed that they could not understand him; but he had no
difficulty in understanding them. He knew exactly what they wanted,
and declined to supply it. Instead of giving them what he thought
they wanted, he gave them what he thought they needed. That
illustrates the difference between the literary caterer and the
literary master. Some poets, critics, dramatists, and novelists are
born to be followers of the public taste; they have their reward.
Only a few, and one at a time, are leaders. This is entirely as it
should be, for, with followers, the more the merrier; with leaders
it is quite otherwise.

In the case of a man of original genius, the first evidence of
approaching fame is seen in the dust raised by contempt, scorn,
ridicule, and various forms of angry resistance from those who will
ultimately be converts. People resist him as they resist the Gospel.
He comes unto his own, and his own receive him not. The so-called
reading public have the stupid cruelty of schoolboys, who will not
tolerate on the part of any newcomer the slightest divergence in
dress, manners, or conversation from the established standard.
Conformity is king; for schoolboys are the most conservative mass of
inertia that can be found anywhere on earth. And they are thorough
masters of ridicule--the most powerful weapon known to humanity. But
as in schoolboy circles the ostracising laughter is sometimes a sign
that a really original boy has made his appearance, so the
unthinking opposition of the conventional army of readers is
occasionally a proof that the new man has made a powerful impression
which can not be shaken off.

[Footnote 1: Life of Sidney Lanier, by Professor Edwin Mims.]

This is what Browning did with his "lasso" style. It was suitably
adapted to his purposes, and the public behaved somewhat like the
buffalo. They writhed, kicked, struggled, plunged, and the greater
the uproar, the more evident it was that they were caught. Shortly
before his death, Professor F.J. Child, a scholar of international
fame, told me angrily that Wagner was no musician at all; that he
was a colossal fraud; that the growing enthusiasm for him was mere
affectation, which would soon pass away. He spoke with extraordinary
passion. I wondered at his rage, but I understand it now. It was the
rage of a king against the incoming and inexorable tide.

Nothing is more singular to contemplate than the variations in form
of what the public calls melody, both in notation and in language.
What delights the ears of one generation distresses or wearies the
ears of another. Elizabethan audiences listened with rapture to long
harangues in bombastic blank verse: a modern audience can not endure
this. The senses of Queen Anne Englishmen were charmed by what they
called the melody of Pope's verse--by its even regularity and steady
flow. To us Pope's verse is full of wit and cerebration, but we find
the measure intolerably monotonous. Indeed, by a curious irony of
fate, Pope, who regarded himself as a supreme poet, has since
frequently been declared to be no poet at all. Keats wrote _Endymion_
in the heroic couplet--the very measure employed by Pope. But his
use of it was so different that this poem would have seemed utterly
lacking in melody to Augustan ears--Pope would have attempted to
"versify" it. And yet we enjoy it. It seems ridiculous to say that
the man who wrote _Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser_ could not
write melody, and yet it was almost universally said. It seems
strange that critics should have declared that the man who wrote
_Love Among the Ruins_ could not write rhythmical verse, yet such
was once almost the general opinion. Still, the rebellious instinct
of the public that condemned Wagner in music and Browning in poetry
was founded on something genuine; for Wagner was unlike other
musicians, and Browning was unlike other poets.

_Fraser's Magazine_, for December, 1833, contained a review of
Browning's first poem, _Pauline_, which had been published that year.
The critic decided that the new poet was mad: "you being, beyond all
question, as mad as Cassandra, without any of the power to prophesy
like her, or to construct a connected sentence like anybody else. We
have already had a Monomaniac; and we designate you 'The Mad Poet of
the Batch;' as being mad not in one direction only, but in all. A
little lunacy, like a little knowledge, would be a dangerous thing."

Yet it was in this despised and rejected poem that a great, original
genius in English poetry was first revealed. It is impossible to
understand Browning or even to read him intelligently without firmly
fixing in the mind his theory of poetry, and comprehending fully his
ideal and his aim. All this he set forth clearly in _Pauline_, and
though he was only twenty years old when he wrote it, he never
wavered from his primary purpose as expressed in two lines of the
poem, two lines that should never be forgotten by those who really
wish to enjoy the study of Browning:

  And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one
  Who chronicled the stages of all life.

What is most remarkable about this definition of poetry is what it
omits. The average man regards poetry as being primarily concerned
with the creation of beauty. Not a word is said about beauty in
Browning's theory. The average man regards poetry as being
necessarily melodious, rhythmical, tuneful, above all, pleasing to
the senses; but Browning makes no allusion here to rime or rhythm,
nor to melody or music of any sort. To him the bard is a Reporter of
Life, an accurate Historian of the Soul, one who observes human
nature in its various manifestations, and gives a faithful record.
Sound, rhythm, beauty are important, because they are a part of life;
and they are to be found in Browning's works like wild flowers in a
field; but they are not in themselves the main things. The main
thing is human life in its totality. Exactly in proportion to the
poet's power of portraying life, is the poet great; if he correctly
describes a wide range of life, he is greater than if he has
succeeded only in a narrow stretch; and the Perfect Bard would be the
one who had chronicled the stages of all life. Shakespeare is the
supreme poet because he has approached nearer to this ideal than any
one else--he has actually chronicled most phases of humanity, and
has truthfully painted a wide variety of character. Browning
therefore says of him in _Christmas-Eve_--

  As I declare our Poet, him
  Whose insight makes all others dim:
  A thousand poets pried at life,
  And only one amid the strife
  Rose to be Shakespeare.

Browning's poetry, as he elsewhere expresses it, was always dramatic
in principle, always an attempt to interpret human life. With that
large number of highly respectable and useful persons who do not
care whether they understand him or not, I have here no concern: but
to those who really wish to learn his secret, I insist that his main
intention must ever be kept in mind. Much of his so-called obscurity,
harshness, and uncouthness falls immediately into its proper place,
is indeed necessary. The proof of his true greatness not as a
philosopher, thinker, psychologist, but as a poet, lies in the
simple fact that when the subject-matter he handles is beautiful or
sublime, his style is usually adequate to the situation. Browning
had no difficulty in writing melodiously when he placed the posy in
the Ring,

  O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
  And all a wonder and a wild desire,

although just a moment before, when he was joking about his lack of
readers, he was anything but musical. _The Ring and the Book_ is
full of exquisite beauty, amazing felicity of expression, fluent
rhythm and melody; full also of crudities, jolts, harshness, pedantry,
wretched witticisms, and coarseness. Why these contrasts? Because it
is a study of human testimony. The lawyers in this work speak no
radiant or spiritual poetry; they talk like tiresome, conceited
pedants because they were tiresome, conceited pedants; Pompilia's
dying speech of adoring passion for Caponsacchi is sublime music,
because she was a spiritual woman in a glow of exaltation. Guido
speaks at first with calm, smiling irony, and later rages like a
wild beast caught in a spring-trap; in both cases the verse fits his
mood. If Pompilia's tribute to Caponsacchi had been expressed in
language as dull and flat as the pleas of the lawyers, then we
should be quite sure that Browning, whatever he was, was no poet.
For it would indicate that he could not create the right diction for
the right situation and character. Now, his picture of the triple
light of sunset in _The Last Ride Together_ is almost intolerably
beautiful, because such a scene fairly overwhelms the senses. I hear
the common and unintelligent comment, "Ah, if he had only always
written like that!" He would have done so, if he had been interested
in only the beautiful aspects of this world. "How could the man who
wrote such lovely music as that have also written such harsh stuff
as _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_"? The answer is that in the former he
was chronicling a stage of life that in its very essence was beauty:
in the latter, something exactly the opposite. Life has its
trivialities and its ugliness, as well as its sublime aspirations.
In Browning's poetry, whenever the thought rises, the style
automatically rises with it,

Compare the diction of _Holy Cross Day_ with that in _Love Among the
Ruins_. Cleon is an old Greek poet, and he speaks noble, serene verse:
Bishop Blougram is a subtle dialectician, a formidable antagonist in
a joint debate, and he has the appropriate manner and language.
Would you have him talk like the lover in _Evelyn Hope_?

Browning was a great artist, and the grotesque is an organic part of
his structures. To find fault with the grotesque excrescences in
Browning's poetry is exactly like condemning a cathedral because it
has gargoyles. How could the architect that dreamed those wonderful
columns and arches have made those hideous gargoyles? Did he flatter
himself they were beautiful? When _Macbeth_ was translated into
German, the translator was aghast at the coarse language of the
drunken porter. How could the great Shakespeare, who had proved so
often his capacity as an artist, have made such an appalling blunder?
So the translator struck out the offensive words, and made the
porter sing a sweet hymn to the dawn.

The theory of poetry originally stated in _Pauline_ Browning not
only endeavored to exemplify in his work; he often distinctly
repeated it. In _The Glove_, all the courtiers, hide-bound by
conventional ideas, unite in derisive insults howled at the lady. She
goes out 'mid hooting and laughter. Only two men follow her: one,
because he loves her; the other, for purely professional reasons.
To-day, he would of course be a society reporter. "I beg your pardon,
Madam, but would you kindly grant me an interview? I represent the
_New York Flash_, and we shall be glad to present your side of this
story in our next Sunday issue." With equal professional zeal, Peter
Ronsard is keenly interested in discovering the motives that
underlay the lady's action. He simply must know, and in defense of
his importunity, he presents his credentials. He is a poet, and
therefore the strange scene that has just been enacted comes within
his special domain.

                                  I followed after,
  And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?
  If she wished not the rash deed's recallment?
  "For I"--so I spoke--"am a poet:
  Human nature,--behoves that I know it!"

In _Transcendentalism_, a poem which is commonly misunderstood,
Browning informs us that the true poet must deal, not with abstract
thought, but with concrete things. A young poet informs an elder
colleague that he has just launched a huge philosophical poem,
called _Transcendentalism: a Poem in Twelve Books_. His wiser critic
tells him that he is on the wrong track altogether; what he has
written is prose, not poetry. Poetry is not a discussion of abstract
ideas, but the creation of individual things. Transcendentalism is
not a fit subject for poetry, because it deals with metaphysical
thought, instead of discussing men and women. To illustrate his point,
he makes a comparison between botany and roses. Which is the more
interesting, to read a heavy treatise on botany, or to behold roses?
A few pedants may like botany better, but ordinary humanity is quite
right in preferring flowers. Browning indicates that the poet should
not compose abstract treatises, but should create individual works
of art, like the stout Mage of Halberstadt,

  John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about.
  He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,
  And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
  Over us, under, round us every side,
  Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
  And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
  Buries us with a glory, young once more,
  Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

Many have failed to understand this poem, because they think that
Browning himself is constantly guilty of the sin specifically
condemned here. Browning has indeed often been called a thinker, a
philosopher: but a moment's serious reflection will prove that of all
English poetry outside of the drama, Browning's is the least
abstract and the most concrete. Poetry is not condemned because it
arouses thought, but only when it is abstract in method. Browning
often deals with profound ideas, but always by concrete illustrations.
For example, he discusses the doctrine of predestination by giving
us the individual figure of Johannes-Agricola in meditation: the
royalist point of view in the seventeenth century by cavaliers
singing three songs: the damnation of indecision by two Laodicaean
lovers in _The Statue and the Bust_. When Browning is interested in
any doctrine, idea, or system of thought, he creates a person to
illustrate it.

Browning's theory of poetry is further reenforced by his poem
_How It Strikes a Contemporary_, which, in the final rearrangement
of his works, he placed directly after _Transcendentalism_, as though
to drive his doctrine home. Here is a picture of a real poet. Where
does he live, whence does he get his sources of inspiration, and how
does he pass his time? The poem answers these questions in a most
instructive manner, if only we keep in mind the original definition
given in _Pauline_. It is conventionally believed that the country
is more poetic than the city: that an ideal residence for a poet
would be in lonely, lovely, romantic scenery; and that in splendid
solitude and isolation he should clothe his thoughts in forms of
beauty. Now Browning's own life and methods of work were in exact
contrast to these popular ideas; because his theory of poetry
requires the poet to live in the very midst of human activities, and
to draw his inspiration not from a mountain or the stars, but from
all sorts and conditions of men. Thus, in the poem, _How It Strikes
a Contemporary_, the poet lives in a noisy city, spends his time
walking the streets, and instead of being lost in a trance, he is
intensely aware of everything that happens in the town. The poet is
an observer, not a dreamer. Indeed, the citizens think this old poet
is a royal spy, because he notices people and events with such sharp
attention. Browning would seem to say that the mistake is a quite
natural one; the poet ought to act like a spy, for, if he be a true
poet, he is a spy--a spy on human life. He takes upon himself the
mystery of things, as if he were God's spy.

  He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
  Scenting the world, looking it full in face....
  He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,
  And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,
  And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
  He took such cognizance of men and things,
  If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
  If any cursed a woman, he took note.

This is an exact description of the way Robert Browning walked the
streets of Florence. Only a few years after this poem was printed,
he was glancing o'er the books on stalls in the square of San Lorenzo,
and found the old yellow volume which he turned into an epic of
humanity. The true poet "scents" the world, smells it out, as a dog
locates game. A still stronger expression is used in _Christmas-Eve_,
where the poets "pried" at life, turned up its surface in order to
disclose all its hidden treasures of meaning.



"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"


1855

  Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?
  'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art:
  Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
  Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.
  --True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
  But why such long prolusion and display,
  Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
  And taking it upon your breast, at length,
  Only to speak dry words across its strings?
  Stark-naked thought is in request enough:
  Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears!
  The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
  Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp--
  Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?

  But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
  Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse.
  Boys seek for images and melody,
  Men must have reason--so, you aim at men.
  Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true;
  We see and hear and do not wonder much:
  If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!
  As German Boehme never cared for plants
  Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,
  He noticed all at once that plants could speak,
  Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.
  That day the daisy had an eye indeed--
  Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes!
  We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.
  But by the time youth slips a stage or two
  While reading prose in that tough book he wrote
  (Collating and emendating the same
  And settling on the sense most to our mind),
  We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.
  Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss--
  Another Boehme with a tougher book
  And subtler meanings of what roses say,--
  Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt,
  John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?
  He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,
  And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
  Over us, under, round us every side,
  Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
  And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
  Buries us with a glory, young once more,
  Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

  So come, the harp back to your heart again!
  You are a poem, though your poem's naught.
  The best of all you showed before, believe,
  Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords
  Bent, following the cherub at the top
  That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.




HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY


1855

  I only knew one poet in my life:
  And this, or something like it, was his way.

  You saw go up and down Valladolid,
  A man of mark, to know next time you saw.
  His very serviceable suit of black
  Was courtly once and conscientious still,
  And many might have worn it, though none did:
  The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,
  Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.
  He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
  Scenting the world, looking it full in face,
  An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.
  They turned up, now, the alley by the church,
  That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves
  On the main promenade just at the wrong time:
  You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat,
  Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
  Against the single window spared some house
  Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,--
  Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick
  Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks
  Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.
  He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,
  The man who slices lemons into drink,
  The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys
  That volunteer to help him turn its winch.
  He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,
  And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,
  And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
  He took such cognizance of men and things,
  If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
  If any cursed a woman, he took note;
  Yet stared at nobody,--you stared at him,
  And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
  He seemed to know you and expect as much.
  So, next time that a neighbour's tongue was loosed,
  It marked the shameful and notorious fact,
  We had among us, not so much a spy,
  As a recording chief-inquisitor,
  The town's true master if the town but knew!
  We merely kept a governor for form,
  While this man walked about and took account
  Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,
  And wrote it fully to our Lord the King
  Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,
  And reads them in his bedroom of a night.
  Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,
  A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease
  As back into your mind the man's look came.
  Stricken in years a little,--such a brow
  His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint
  On either side the formidable nose
  Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle's claw.
  Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate?
  When altogether old B. disappeared
  And young C. got his mistress,--was't our friend,
  His letter to the King, that did it all?
  What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?
  Our Lord the King has favourites manifold,
  And shifts his ministry some once a month;
  Our city gets new governors at whiles,--
  But never word or sign, that I could hear,
  Notified to this man about the streets
  The King's approval of those letters conned
  The last thing duly at the dead of night.
  Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,
  Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not!
  Too far above my people,--beneath me!
  I set the watch,--how should the people know?
  Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!"
  Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

  I found no truth in one report at least--
  That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes
  Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,
  You found he ate his supper in a room
  Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,
  And twenty naked girls to change his plate!
  Poor man, he lived another kind of life
  In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,
  Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!
  The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,
  Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,
  Playing a decent cribbage with his maid
  (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese
  And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,
  Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,
  Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

  My father, like the man of sense he was,
  Would point him out to me a dozen times;
  "'St--'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!"
  I had been used to think that personage
  Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,
  And feathers like a forest in his hat,
  Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,
  Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,
  And memorized the miracle in vogue!
  He had a great observance from us boys;
  We were in error; that was not the man.

  I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid,
  To have just looked, when this man came to die,
  And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides
  And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,
  With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.
  Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,
  Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,
  Doing the King's work all the dim day long,
  In his old coat and up to knees in mud,
  Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,--
  And, now the day was won, relieved at once!
  No further show or need for that old coat,
  You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while
  How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!
  A second, and the angels alter that.
  Well, I could never write a verse,--could you?
  Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

In common with all English poets--there is no exception--Browning
loved nature. But he loved human nature so much more that when he
contemplates natural objects he thinks of them _in terms of humanity_.
This is exactly contrary to the conventional method. Most poets and
novelists describe human faces in terms of outdoor nature: the
heroine has "stormy eyes," "rainy eyes," her face is swept by
"gusts of passion," and so on, _ad infinitum_. I do not say that
Browning's is the better way; I say it is his way, because he was
obsessed by humanity. To take instances only from his first poem:

  Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
  Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
  Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs,
  So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
  In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
  Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
  Had violets opening from sleep like eyes.

  Autumn has come like Spring returned to us
  Won from her girlishness.

   ... the trees bend
  O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.

                             So, when Spring comes
  With sunshine back again like an old smile.

  I am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft,
  As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book,
  And in the heaven stars steal out one by one
  As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.

Browning's love for the dramatic was so intense that he carried it
into every kind of poetry that he wrote. Various classes of his
works he called _Dramas, Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances,
Dramatic Idyls, Dramatis Personae_. In one of her prefaces,
Elizabeth Barrett had employed--for the first time in English
literature, I think--the term _Dramatic Lyric_. This naturally
appealed to Browning, and he gave the title in 1842 to his first
published collection of short poems. At first blush "dramatic lyric"
sounds like a contradiction in terms, like "non-mathematical algebra."
Drama is the most objective branch of poetry, and the lyric the most
subjective: but Browning was so intent upon the chronicling of all
stages of life that he carried the methods of the drama into the
lyric form, of which _Meeting at Night_ may serve as an excellent
example. Many of his short poems have the lyrical beauty of Shelley
and Heine; but they all represent the soul of some historical or
imaginary person.

At the very end of _The Ring and the Book_, Browning declared that
human testimony was false, a statement that will be supported by any
lawyer or judge of much court experience. Human testimony being
worthless, there remains but one way for the poet to tell the truth
about humanity, and that is through his art. The poet should use his
skill not primarily with the idea of creating something beautiful,
but with the main purpose of expressing the actual truth concerning
human life and character. The highest art is the highest veracity,
and this conforms to Browning's theory of poetry. This was his ideal,
and by adhering to this he hoped to save his soul. Browning believed
that by living up to our best capacity we attained unto salvation.
The man who hid his talent in the earth was really a lost soul. Like
many truly great artists, Browning felt deeply the responsibility of
his splendid endowment. In one of his letters to Miss Barrett, he
said, "I must write poetry and save my soul." In the last lines of
_The Ring and the Book_ we find this thought repeated:

  So, British public, who may like me yet,
  (Marry and amen!) learn one lesson hence
  Of many which whatever lives should teach:
  This lesson, that our human speech is naught,
  Our human testimony false, our fame
  And human estimation words and wind.
  Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
  Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
  That Art remains the one way possible
  Of speaking truth, to minds like mine at least....
  But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,
  Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth
  Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
  Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
  So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
  Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
  So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
  Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,--
  So write a book shall mean beyond the facts,
  Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.
  And save the soul!

From first to last Browning understood the prevailing criticism of
his poetry, directed against its so-called lack of musical rhythm.
He commented on it more than once. But he answered it always in the
same way, in _Pippa Passes_, in the last stanzas of _Pacchiarotto_,
and in the _Epilogue_ to the same volume. He insisted that what the
critics meant by melody was a childish jingle of rimes like Mother
Goose. Referring to _Sordello_, he makes the Second Student in
_Pippa Passes_ remark, "Instead of cramp couplets, each like a
knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both
classically and intelligibly....  One strip Cools your lip....  One
bottle Clears your throttle." In _Pacchiarotto_, he calls to critics:

  And, what with your rattling and tinkling,
  Who knows but you give me an inkling
  How music sounds, thanks to the jangle
  Of regular drum and triangle?
  Whereby, tap-tap, chink-chink, 'tis proven
  I break rule as bad as Beethoven.
  "That chord now--a groan or a grunt is't?
  Schumann's self was no worse contrapuntist.
  No ear! or if ear, so tough-gristled--
  He thought that he sung while he whistled!"

Browning felt that there was at times a certain virtue in mere
roughness: that there were ideas, which, if expressed in harsh phrase,
would make a deeper impression, and so be longer remembered. The
opening stanza of _The Twins_ was meant to emphasise this point:

  Grand rough old Martin Luther
  Bloomed fables--flowers on furze,
  The better the uncouther:
  Do roses stick like burrs?

Such a theory may help to explain the powerful line in _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_:

  Irks care the cropfull bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Of course Browning's theory of poetry does not justify or explain
all the unmusical passages in his works. He felt, as every poet must,
the difficulty of articulation--the disparity between his ideas and
the verbal form he was able to give them. Browning had his trials in
composition, and he placed in the mouth of the Pope his own ardent
hope that in the next world there will be some means of communication
better than language:

              Expect nor question nor reply
  At what we figure as God's judgment bar!
  None of this vile way by the barren words
  Which, more than any deed, characterise
  Man as made subject to a curse: no speech.

Over and over again, however, Browning declared that poetry should
not be all sweetness. Flowers growing naturally here and there in a
pasture are much more attractive than cut and gathered into a nosegay.
As Luther's long disquisitions are adorned with pretty fables, that
bloom like flowers on furze, so, in the _Epilogue to Pacchiarotto_,
Browning insisted that the wide fields of his verse are not without
cowslips:

  And, friends, beyond dispute
    I too have the cowslips dewy and dear.
  Punctual as Springtide forth peep they:
  But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh?
    Not let them alone, but deftly shear
  And shred and reduce to--what may suit
  Children, beyond dispute?

Now, there are many law-abiding and transparently honest persons who
prefer anthologies to "works," who love to read tiny volumes prettily
bound, called "Beauties of Ruskin," and who have substituted for the
out-of-fashion "Daily Food" books, painted bits of cardboard with
sweet sayings culled from popular idols of the day, with which they
embellish the walls of their offices and bedrooms, in the hope that
they may hoist themselves into a more hallowed frame of mind. This
is the class--always with us, though more prosperous than the
poor--who prefer a cut bouquet to the natural flowers in wood and
meadow, and for whose comfort and convenience Browning declined to
work. His poetry is too stiff for these readers, partly because they
start with a preconceived notion of the function of poetry. Instead
of being charmed, their first sensation is a shock. They honestly
believe that the attitude of the mind in apprehending poetry should
be passive, not active: is not the poet a public entertainer? Did we
not buy the book with the expectation of receiving immediate pleasure?
The anticipated delight of many persons when they open a volume of
poems is almost physical, as it is when they settle themselves to
hear certain kinds of music. They feel presumably as a comfortable
cat does when her fur is fittingly stroked. The torture that many
listeners suffered when they heard Wagner for the first time was not
imaginary, it was real; "Oh, if somebody would only play a tune!" Yet
Wagner converted thousands of these quondam sufferers, and conquered
them without making any compromises. He simply enlarged their
conception of what opera-music might mean. He gave them new sources
of happiness without robbing them of the old. For my part, although
I prefer Wagner's to all other operas, I keenly enjoy Mozart's
_Don Giovanni_, Charpentier's _Louise_, Gounod's _Faust_, Strauss's
_Salomé_, Verdi's _Aida_, and I never miss an opportunity to hear
Gilbert and Sullivan. Almost all famous operas have something good
in them except the works of Meyerbeer.

We all have moods when the mind wishes to be lulled, soothed, charmed,
hypnotised with agreeable melody, and in English literature we
fortunately have many great poets who can perform this service.

  That strain again! it had a dying fall.

Tennyson was a veritable magician, who charmed with his genius
hundreds and thousands of people. No arduous mental effort is
necessary for the enjoyment of his verse, which is one reason why he
is and will remain a popular poet. Browning can not be taken in just
that way, any more than a man completely exhausted with the day's
work can enjoy _Siegfried_ or _Hedda Gabler_. Active, constant
cerebration on the part of the listener or the reader is essential.
This excludes at once a considerable number to whom the effort of
real thinking is as strange as it is oppressive. Browning is a
stimulus, not a sedative; his poetry is like an electric current
which naturally fails to affect those who are non-conductors of
poetry. As one of my undergraduate students tersely expressed it,
"Tennyson soothes our senses: Browning stimulates our thoughts."
Poetry is in some ways like medicine. Tennyson quiets the nerves:
Browning is a tonic: some have found Thomson's _Seasons_ invaluable
for insomnia: the poetry of Swift is an excellent emetic.

I do not quite understand the intense anger of many critics and
readers over the eternal question of Browning's obscurity. They have
been harping on this theme for eighty years and show no more sign of
exhaustion than a dog barking in the night. Why do the heathen rage?
Why do they not let Browning alone, and read somebody they can
understand? Browning is still gravely rebuked by many critics for
having written _Sordello_. Over and over again we have been informed
that the publication of this poem shattered his reputation for
twenty-five years. Well, what of it? what difference does it make now?
He seems to have successfully survived it. This huge work, which
William Sharp called "that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry,"
is destined to have an immortality all its own. From one point of
view, we ought to be grateful for its publication. It has aroused
inextinguishable laughter among the blessed gods. It is not witty in
itself, but it is the cause of wit in many. Douglas Jerrold and
Carlyle commented delightfully on it; even Tennyson succeeded for
once in saying something funny. One critic called it a fine house in
which the architect had forgotten to put any stairs. Another called
it a huge boil in which all the impurities in Browning's system came
to an impressive head, after which the patient, pure from poison,
succeeded in writing the clear and beautiful _Pippa Passes_. Besides
innumerable parodies that have been forgotten, Browning's obscurity
was the impenetrable flint that struck two mental flashes that
belong to literature, Calverley's _Cock and the Bull_, and
Swinburne's _John Jones_, a brilliant exposition of the perversities
in that tedious poem, _James Lee's Wife_. Not long ago, a young man
sat by the lamplight, studying a thick volume with evident discomfort.
To the friend who asked what he was doing, he replied, "I'm studying
Browning."

"Why, no, you idiot, that isn't Browning: you are reading the index
of first lines to the works of Wordsworth."

"By Jove! you're right! But it sounds just like Browning."

Browning's place in English literature is not with the great
verse-sculptors, not with the masters of imperishable beauty of form;
he does not belong to the glorious company where reign supreme Milton,
Keats, and Tennyson; his place is rather with the Interpreters of
Life, with the poets who use their art to express the shine and
shade of life's tragicomedy--to whom the base, the trivial, the
frivolous, the grotesque, the absurd seem worth reporting along with
the pure, the noble, and the sublime, since all these elements are
alike human. In this wide field of art, with the exception of
Shakespeare, who is the exception to everything, the first-born and
the last-born of all the great English poets know no equal in the
five centuries that rolled between them. The first person to say
this publicly was himself a poet and a devoted student of
Form--Walter Savage Landor. When he said it, people thought it was
mere hyperbole, the stressed language of compliment; but we know now
that Landor's words are as true as they are beautiful:

  Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
  Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
  Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
  No man hath walk'd along our roads with step
  So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue
  So varied in discourse.

Many critics who are now dead, and some that are yet alive, have
predicted the speedy death of Browning's reputation. This prediction
seems to afford a certain class of critics a calm and holy joy. Some
years ago, Mr. James Douglas, of London, solemnly announced the
approaching demise. Browning will die, said he, even as Donne is dead,
and for the same reason. But Donne is not quite dead.

  I must survive a thing ere know it dead.

I think Donne will survive all our contemporary criticisms about him.
Ben Jonson said that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved
hanging. But Donne, though he forgot to keep step with the procession
of poets, has survived many poets who tripped a regular measure. He
has survived even Pope's "versification" of his poems, one of the
most unconsciously humorous things in English literature. Accent
alone will not keep a man alive. Which poet of these latter days
stands the better chance to remain, Francis Thompson, whose
spiritual flame occasionally burned up accent, or Alfred Austin, who
studied to preserve accent through a long life? Accent is indeed
important; but raiment is of little value unless it clothes a living
body. Does Browning's best poetry smell of mortality? Nearly every
new novel I read in English has quotations from Browning without the
marks, sure evidence that the author has read him and assumes that
the readers of the novel have a like acquaintance. When Maeterlinck
wrote his famous play, _Monna Vanna_, he took one of the scenes
directly from Browning's _Luria_: he said that he had been inspired
by Browning: that Browning is one of the greatest poets that England
has ever produced: that to take a scene from him is a kind of public
homage, such as we pay to Homer, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare.

With the exception of Shakespeare, any other English poet could now
be spared more easily than Browning. For, owing to his aim in poetry,
and his success in attaining it, he gave us much vital truth and
beauty that we should seek elsewhere in vain; and, as he said in the
_Epilogue_ to _Pacchiarotio_, the strong, heady wine of his verse
may become sweet in process of time.





III



LYRICS

A pure lyric, as distinguished from other kinds of poetry, narrative,
descriptive, epic, dramatic, should have three characteristic
qualities, immediately evident on the first reading: it should be
short, it should be melodious, it should express only one mood. A
very long lyrical poem has never been written, and probably could
not be: a lyric without fluent melody is unthinkable: and a poem
representing a great variety of moods would more properly be classed
as descriptive or dramatic than lyrical. Examples of the perfect
lyric in nineteenth century English poetry are Shelley's _I Arise
From Dreams of Thee_; Keats's _Bright Star_; Byron's _She Walks in
Beauty_; Tennyson's _Break, Break, Break_. In each one of these
notable illustrations the poem is a brief song of passion,
representing the mood of the singer at that moment.

There are innumerable _lyrical_ passages in Browning's long poems,
and in his dramatic monologues; there are splendid outbursts of
melody. He could not be ranked among the greatest English poets if
he had not been one of our greatest singers. But we do not go to
Browning primarily for song. He is not one of our greatest lyrical
poets. It is certain, however, that he could have been had he chosen
to be. He wrote a sufficient number of pure lyrics to prove his
quality and capacity. But he was so much more deeply interested in
the study of the soul than in the mere expression of beauty--he was
so essentially, from _Pauline_ to _Asolando_--a dramatic poet, that
his great contribution to literature is seen in profound and subtle
interpretations of the human heart. It is fortunate that he made the
soul his specialty, because English literature is wonderfully rich
in song: there are many poets who can thrill us with music: but
there is only one Browning, and there is no group of writers in any
literature among which he can be classed.

Browning's dramatic lyrics differ from Tennyson's short poems as the
lyrics of Donne differed from those of Campion; but Browning
occasionally tried his hand at the composition of a pure lyric, as
if to say, "You see I can write like this when I choose." Therein
lies his real superiority to almost all other English poets: he
could do their work, but they could not do his. It is significant
that his first poem, _Pauline_, should have deeply impressed two men
of precisely opposite types of mind. These two were John Stuart Mill
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti--their very names illustrating
beautifully the difference in their mental tastes and powers. Carlyle
called Mill a "logic-chopping engine," because his intellectual
processes were so methodical, systematic, hard-headed: Rossetti was
a master of color and harmony. Yet Mill found in _Pauline_ the
workings of a powerful mind: and Rossetti's sensitive temperament
was charmed with the wonderful pictures and lovely melodies it
contained.

I like to think that Mill read, paused, re-read and meditated on
this passage:

  I am made up of an intensest life,
  Of a most clear idea of consciousness
  Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
  From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
  And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
  But linked, in me, to self-supremacy
  Existing as a centre to all things,
  Most potent to create and rule and call
  Upon all things to minister to it;
  And to a principle of restlessness
  Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all--
  This is myself; and I should thus have been
  Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.

I like to think that Rossetti was thrilled with this picture of
Andromeda:

                         Andromeda!
  And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
  But change can touch her not--so beautiful
  With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair
  Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze,
  And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
  Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
  As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
  By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
  At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing
  I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
  To save will come in thunder from the stars.

It is rather singular, in view of the great vogue of the sonnet in
the nineteenth century, that neither Tennyson nor Browning should
have succeeded in this form. The two men wrote very few
sonnets--Browning fewer than Tennyson--and neither ever wrote a
great one. Longfellow, so inferior in most respects to his two great
English contemporaries, was an incomparably superior sonnetteer.
Tennyson's sonnets are all mediocre: Browning did not publish a
single sonnet in the final complete edition of his works. He did
however print a very few on special occasions, and when he was
twenty-two years old, between the composition of _Pauline_ and
_Paracelsus_, there appeared in the _Monthly Repository_ a sonnet
beginning

  Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)

which is the best example from his pen that has been preserved.
Although he did not think much of it in later years, it has been
frequently reprinted, and is worth keeping; both for the ardor of
its passion, and because it is extraordinary that he should have
begun so very early in his career a form of verse that he
practically abandoned. This sonnet may have been addressed to a
purely imaginary ideal; but it is possible that the young man had in
mind Eliza Flower, for whom he certainly had a boyish love, and who
was probably the original of Pauline. She and her sister, Sarah
Flower, the author of _Nearer, My God, to Thee_, were both older
than Browning, and both his intimate friends during the period of
his adolescence.



SONNET


1834

  Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)
  May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears:
  I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low
  Their passionate praises reach thee--my cheek wears
  Alone no wonder when thou passest by;
  Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply
  To the irrepressible homage which doth glow
  On every lip but mine: if in thine ears
  Their accents linger--and thou dost recall
  Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,
  Beside each votarist whose lighted brow
  Wore worship like an aureole, "O'er them all
  My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail
  Save that one only:"--Lady, could'st thou know!

It is perhaps characteristic of Browning that this early sonnet
should be so irregular in its rime-scheme.

The songs in _Paracelsus_ (1835) prove that Browning was a genuine
lyrical poet: the best of them, _Over the Sea Our Galleys Went_, is
more properly a dramatic monologue: but the song in the second act,
by Aprile (who I think stands for Keats) is a pure lyric, and so are
the two stanzas sung by Paracelsus in the fourth act. There are
lines here which suggest something of the drowsy music of Tennyson's
_Lotos-Eaters_, published in 1832:

         .... such balsam falls
    Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
  From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
  Spent with the vast and howling main,
  To treasure half their island-gain.




SONGS FROM PARACELSUS


1835

  (Aprile sings)

  I hear a voice, perchance I heard
  Long ago, but all too low,
  So that scarce a care it stirred
  If the voice were real or no:
  I heard it in my youth when first
  The waters of my life outburst:
  But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
  That voice, still low, but fatal-clear--
  As if all poets, God ever meant
  Should save the world, and therefore lent
  Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
  To do his work, or lightly used
  Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
  So, mourn cast off by him for ever,--
  As if these leaned in airy ring
  To take me; this the song they sing.

  "Lost, lost! yet come,
  With our wan troop make thy home.
  Come, come! for we
  Will not breathe, so much as breathe
  Reproach to thee,
  Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
  So sank we in those old years,
  We who bid thee, come! thou last
  Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
  And altogether we, thy peers,
  Will pardon crave for thee, the last
  Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
  With those who watch but work no more,
  Who gaze on life but live no more.
  Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
  The message which our lips, too weak,
  Refused to utter,--shouldst redeem
  Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
  Yet we chose thee a birthplace
  Where the richness ran to flowers:
  Couldst not sing one song for grace?
  Not make one blossom man's and ours?
  Must one more recreant to his race
  Die with unexerted powers,
  And join us, leaving as he found
  The world, he was to loosen, bound?
  Anguish! ever and for ever;
  Still beginning, ending never.
  Yet, lost and last one, come!
  How couldst understand, alas,
  What our pale ghosts strove to say,
  As their shades did glance and pass
  Before thee night and day?
  Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
  Once more, therefore, come, O come!
  How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
  Shall next thy post of life inherit--
  How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
  Tell us of thy sad undoing
  Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
  Our weary task, ever renewing
  Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
  Our powers, and man they could not save!"

  (Paracelsus sings)
  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,
  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
  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,
  Mouldering her lute and books among,
  As when a queen, long dead, was young.

  (Song by Festus)

  Thus the Mayne glideth
  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,
  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
  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,
  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
  In and out the marl and grit
  That seems to breed them, brown as they:
  Nought disturbs its quiet way,
  Save some lazy stork that springs,
  Trailing it with legs and wings,
  Whom the shy fox from the hill
  Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.

The songs in _Pippa Passes_ (1841) are ail exquisite works of art.
The one on the King had been printed in the _Monthly Repository_ in
1835; the others appeared for the first time in the published drama.
All of them are vitally connected with the action of the plot,
differing in this respect from the Elizabethan custom of simple
interpolation. The song sung in the early morning by the girl in her
chamber

  All service ranks the same with God

contains the philosophy of the play--human lives are inextricably
intertwined, and all are dependent on the will of God. No individual
can separate himself either from other men and women, or can sever
the connection between himself and his Father in Heaven. The first
stanza repeats the teaching of Milton in the sonnet on his blindness:
the second is more definitely connected with Pippa's professional
work.

        Untwine me from the mass
  Of deeds which make up life,

refers to her daily duty as a girl in the silk-mill, for she
naturally thinks of the complexity of life as a tangled skein.

  All service ranks the same with God:
  If now, as formerly he trod
  Paradise, his presence fills
  Our earth, each only as God wills
  Can work--God's puppets, best and worst,
  Are we; there is no last nor first.

  Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
  Costs it more pain that this, ye call
  A "great event," should come to pass,
  Than that? Untwine me from the mass
  Of deeds which make up life, one deed
  Power shall fall short in or exceed!




OTHER SONGS FROM PIPPA PASSES


1841

  You'll love me yet!--and I can tarry
    Your love's protracted growing:
  June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
    From seeds of April's sowing.

  I plant a heartful now: some seed
    At least is sure to strike,
  And yield--what you'll not pluck indeed,
    Not love, but, may be, like.

  You'll look at least on love's remains,
    A grave's one violet:
  Your look?--that pays a thousand pains.
    What's death? You'll love me yet!

  Overhead the tree-tops meet,
  Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
  There was nought above me, nought below,
  My childhood had not learned to know:
  For, what are the voices of birds
  --Ay, and of beasts,--but words, our words,
  Only so much more sweet?
  The knowledge of that with my life begun.
  But I had so near made out the sun,
  And counted your stars, the seven and one,
  Like the fingers of my hand:
  Nay, I could all but understand
  Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
  And just when out of her soft fifty changes
  No unfamiliar face might overlook me--
  Suddenly God took me.

The most famous song in the play, which simply sings itself, is:

  The year's at the spring
  And day's at the morn;
  Morning's at seven;
  The hill-side's dew-pearled;
  The lark's on the wing;
  The snail's on the thorn:
  God's in his heaven--
  All's right with the world!

The last line is unfortunately very often misquoted

  All's well with the world!

a remark never made either by Pippa or by Browning. In Browning's
philosophy all may be right with the world, and yet far from well.
Perhaps it is too prosaically minute to point out in so beautiful a
poem, a scientific error, but at seven o'clock on the first of
January in Asolo the sun is still below the horizon.




MERTOUN'S SONG FROM A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON


1843

  There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest;
  And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the
       surest:
  And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre
  Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the
       wild-grape cluster,
  Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted marble:
  Then her voice's music ... call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
       warble!
  And this woman says, "My days were sunless and my nights were
       moonless,
  Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's
       outbreak tuneless,
  If you loved me not!" And I who--(ah, for words of flame!) adore
       her,
  Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her--
  I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me,
  And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me!

The two lyrics, _Home-Thoughts, from the Sea_ and _Home-Thoughts,
from Abroad_, were written during Browning's first Italian journey in
1838; and it seems strange that he did not print them among the
_Dramatic Lyrics_ of 1842 but reserved them for the _Dramatic
Romances_ of 1845; especially as he subsequently transferred them to
the _Lyrics_. They are both notable on account of the strong feeling
for England which they express. No great English poet has said so
little of England as Browning, though his own feelings were always
keenly patriotic. Even in _Pauline_, a poem without a country, there
occur the two lines

 ... and I cherish most
  My love of England--how her name, a word
  Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!

The allusion to the English thrush has given immortality to
_Home-Thoughts, from Abroad_. Many had observed that the thrush
sings a lilt, and immediately repeats it: but Browning was the first
to give a pretty reason for it. The thrush seems to say, "You think
that beautiful melody is an accident? Well, I will show you it is no
fluke, I will sing it correctly right over again." Browning was not
in Italy in April--perhaps he wrote the first stanza on the voyage,
as he wrote _Home-Thoughts, from the Sea_, and added the second
stanza about May and June after he had reached the country of his
quest.




HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA


1845

  Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west 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 North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
  "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say,
  Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
  While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.




HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD


1845


  I

  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
  Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
  While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
  In England--now!


  II

  And after April, when May follows,
  And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
  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
  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!

The collection of poems called _James Lee's Wife_, published in the
_Dramatis Personae_ (1864), seems to me illustrative of Browning's
worst faults; it is obscure, harsh, and dull. But it contains one
fine lyric descriptive of an autumn morning, a morning, by the way,
much commoner in America during autumn than anywhere in Europe. The
second stanza is nobly ethical in its doctrine of love--that we
should not love only those persons whom we can respect, for true
love seeks no profit. It must be totally free from the prospect of
gain. A beautiful face inspired another lyric in this volume, and
Browning drew upon his memories of Correggio to give the perfect
tone to the poem.




FROM JAMES LEE'S WIFE


1864


  I

  Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
    This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
  To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
  For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
    Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
  The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.


  II

  That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
    Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
  If you loved only what were worth your love,
  Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
    Make the low nature better by your throes!
  Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!




A FACE


1864

  If one could have that little head of hers
    Painted upon a background of pale gold,
  Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!
    No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
  Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
    In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
  For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft
    Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's
  Burthen of honey-coloured buds to kiss
  And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.
  Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,
  How it should waver on the pale gold ground
  Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
  I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
  Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
  Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb:
  But these are only massed there, I should think,
    Waiting to see some wonder momently
    Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky
    (That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by),
    All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
  Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

One of the most original and powerful of Browning's lyrical pieces
comes just where we should least expect it, at the end of that dark,
dreary, and all but impenetrable wilderness of verse, _Fifine at the
Fair_. It serves as an _Epilogue_, but it would be difficult and
unprofitable to attempt to discover its connection with the poem to
which is appended. Its metre is unique in Browning, and stirs the
heart with inexpressible force. In music it most closely resembles
the swift thrilling roll of a snare drum, and can be read aloud in
exact accord with that instrument. Browning calls it _The Householder_,
and of course it represents in his own life the anticipated moment
when the soul leaves its house to unite with its mate. Out of the
catastrophe of death appears a radiant vision which really seems too
good to be true.

  "What, and is it really you again?" quoth I:
  "I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.

The man is weary of his old patched up body, now no longer needed:
weary of the noisy nuisances of life, and the tiresome and futile
gabble of humanity: resentful, now that his spirit has actually
survived death, when he remembers the scientific books he had read
which almost struck despair in him. He petulantly says,

  "If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I:
  "And was I so better off up there?" quoth She.

He is for immediate departure, leaving his empty carcass where it
lies; but she reminds him of the necessity for decent burial. Much
is to be done before they can begin to enjoy together their new and
freer existence. There is the body to be buried; the obituary
notices to be written for the papers: the parson and undertaker to be
summoned: the formalities of the funeral: the selection of a proper
tombstone, with care for the name and accurate carving of the date
of death thereupon: and finally a bit of verse in the way of final
flourish. So these two spirits look on with impatience at the
funeral exercises, at the weeping friends left behind, and not until
the coffin is under ground, are they at liberty to depart from
terrestial scenes. If we do survive the death of the body, with what
curious sensations must we regard the solemn ceremonies of its
interment!




EPILOGUE TO FIFINE


1872

  THE HOUSEHOLDER


  I

  Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:
    Dreary, weary with the long day's work:
  Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:
    Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;
  When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry,
    Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!--
  "What, and is it really you again?" quoth I:
    "I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.


  II

  "Never mind, hie away from this old house--
    Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and shame!
  Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse!
    Let them--every devil of the night--lay claim,
  Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me! Good-bye!
    God be their guard from disturbance at their glee,
  Till, crash, comes down the carcass in a heap!" quoth I:
    "Nay, but there's a decency required!" quoth She.


  III

  "Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days, nights!
    All the neighbour-talk with man and maid--such men!
  All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-sights;
    All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof; and then,
  All the fancies ... Who were they had leave, dared try
    Darker arts that almost struck despair in me?
  If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I:
    "And was I so better off up there?" quoth She,


  IV

  "Help and get it over! _Re-united to his wife_
    (How draw up the paper lets the parish-people know?)
  _Lies M., or N., departed from this life,
    Day the this or that, month and year the so and so_.
  What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse? Try!
    _Affliction sore long time he bore_, or, what is it to be?
  _Till God did please to grant him ease_. Do end!" quoth I:
    "I end with--Love is all and Death is nought!" quoth She.

The same thought--the dramatic contrast between the free spirit and
its prison-house--is the basis of the two lyrics that serve as
prologues to _Pacchiarotto_ and to _La Saisiaz_. As Dryden's
prefaces are far better than his plays, so Browning's _Prologues_ to
_Pacchiarotto_, to _La Saisiaz_, to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, to
_Jocoseria_ are decidedly superior in poetic art and beauty to the
volumes they introduce. Indeed the prologue to _The Two Poets of
Croisic_ is one of the most beautiful and perfect lyrics in the
English language.




PROLOGUE


1878


  I

  Such a starved bank of moss
    Till that May-morn,
  Blue ran the flash across:
    Violets were born!


  II

  Sky--what a scowl of cloud
    Till, near and far,
  Ray on ray split the shroud.
    Splendid, a star!


  III

  World--how it walled about
    Life with disgrace
  Till God's own smile came out:
    That was thy face!




PROLOGUE TO _PACCHIAROTTO_


1876


  I

  O the old wall here! How I could pass
    Life in a long Midsummer day,
  My feet confined to a plot of grass,
    My eyes from a wall not once away!


  II

  And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
    Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
  Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
    In lappets of tangle they laugh between.


  III

  Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
    Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims
  The body,--the house, no eye can probe,--
    Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?


  IV

  And there again! But my heart may guess
    Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
  So, the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess
    Died out and away in the leafy wraps.


  V

  Wall upon wall are between us: life
    And song should away from heart to heart.
  I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strife
    At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start--


  VI

  Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
    That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free;
  Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
    Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!





PROLOGUE TO _LA SAISIAZ_

1878


  I

  Good, to forgive;
    Best, to forget!
    Living, we fret;
  Dying, we live.
  Fretless and free,
    Soul, clap thy pinion!
    Earth have dominion,
  Body, o'er thee!


  II

  Wander at will,
    Day after day,--
    Wander away,
  Wandering still--
  Soul that canst soar!
    Body may slumber:
    Body shall cumber
  Soul-flight no more.


  III

  Waft of soul's wing!
    What lies above?
    Sunshine and Love,
  Skyblue and Spring!
  Body hides--where?
    Ferns of all feather,
    Mosses and heather,
  Yours be the care!




PROLOGUE TO _JOCOSERIA_

1883

          Wanting is--what?
            Summer redundant,
            Blueness abundant,
            --Where is the blot?
  Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,
  --Framework which waits for a picture to frame:
  What of the leafage, what of the flower?
  Roses embowering with nought they embower!
  Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,
  Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer!
            Breathe but one breath
            Rose-beauty above.
            And all that was death
            Grows life, grows love,
                Grows love!




NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE

1883

  Never the time and the place
      And the loved one all together!
    This path--how soft to pace!
      This May--what magic weather!
    Where is the loved one's face?
  In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
    But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
  Where, outside, rain and wind combine
    With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
    With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
  With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
  O enemy sly and serpentine,
    Uncoil thee from the waking man!
      Do I hold the Past
      Thus firm and fast
    Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?
  This path so soft to pace shall lead
  Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed!
  Or narrow if needs the house must he,
  Outside are the storms and strangers: we--
  Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,
  --I and she!





IV


DRAMATIC LYRICS

Browning's poetic career extended from 1833 to 1889, nearly sixty
years of fairly continuous composition. We may make a threefold
division: first, the thirteen years before his marriage in 1846;
second, the fifteen years of married life, closing in 1861; third,
the remaining twenty-eight years. During the first period he
published twelve works; during the second, two; during the third,
eighteen. The fact that so little was published during the years
when his wife was alive may be accounted for by the fact that the
condition of her health required his constant care, and that after
the total failure of _Men and Women_ (1855) to attract any
popular attention, Browning for some time spent most of his
energy in clay-modelling, giving up poetry altogether. Not long
before the death of Mrs. Browning, he was busy writing _Prince
Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, although he did not publish it until the
right moment, which came in 1871. After the appearance of _Dramatis
Personae_ (1864), and _The Ring and the Book_ (1868-9), Browning's
fame spread like a prairie fire; and it was quite natural that his
immense reputation was a sharp spur to composition. One is more
ready to speak when one is sure of an audience. Capricious destiny,
however, willed that the books which sold the fastest after
publication, were, with few exceptions, the least interesting and
valuable of all the poet's performances. Perhaps he did not take so
much care now that his fame was assured; perhaps the fires in his
own mind were dying; perhaps the loss of his wife robbed him of
necessary inspiration, as it certainly robbed him of the best critic
he ever had, and the only one to whom he paid any serious attention.
When we remember that some of the _Dramatic Romances_, _Luria_,
_A Soul's Tragedy_, _Christmas-Eve_, _Men and Women_, and some of
the _Dramatis Personae_ were read by her in manuscript, and that
_The Ring and the Book_ was written in the shadow of her influence,
we begin to realise how much she helped him. Their love-letters
during the months that preceded their marriage indicate the
excellence of her judgment, her profound and sympathetic
understanding of his genius and his willingness to listen to her
advice. He did not intend to publish _A Soul's Tragedy_ at all,
though it is one of his most subtle and interesting dramas, and only
did so at her request; part of the manuscript of _Christmas-Eve_ is
in her handwriting,

It is worth remembering too that in later years Browning hated to
write poetry, and nothing but a sense of duty kept him during the
long mornings at his desk. He felt the responsibility of genius
without its inspiration.

Browning has given a little trouble to bibliographers by
redistributing the poems originally published in the three works,
_Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842), _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845),
and _Men and Women_ (1855). The _Dramatic Lyrics_ at first contained
sixteen pieces; the _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ twenty-three; the
_Men and Women_ fifty-one. In the final arrangement the first of
these included fifty; the second, called simply _Dramatic Romances_,
twenty-five; whilst the last was reduced to thirteen. He also
changed the titles of many of the poems, revised the text somewhat,
classified two separate poems under one title, _Claret and Tokay_,
and _Here's to Nelson's Memory_, under the heading _Nationality in
Drinks_, and united the two sections of _Saul_ in one poem. It is
notable that he omitted not one, and indeed it is remarkable that
with the exception of _The Boy and the Angel_, _A Lover's Quarrel_,
_Mesmerism_, and _Another Way of Love_, every poem in the long
list has the indubitable touch of genius; and even these four are
not the worst of Browning's compositions.

It would have seemed to us perhaps more fitting if Browning had
grouped the contents of all three works under the one heading
_Men and Women_; for that would fairly represent the sole subject
of his efforts. Perhaps he felt that the title was too general, and
as a matter of fact, it would apply equally well to his complete
poetical works. I think, however, that he especially loved the
appellation _Dramatic Lyrics_, for he put over half of the poems
finally under that category. The word "dramatic" obsessed Browning.

What is a dramatic lyric? When Tennyson published in 1842 his
_Ulysses_, a Yankee farmer in America made in one sentence three
remarks about it: a statement and two prophecies. He said that
_Ulysses_ belonged to a high class of poetry, destined to be the
highest, and to be more cultivated in the next generation. Now
_Ulysses_ is both a dramatic lyric and a dramatic monologue, and
Tennyson never wrote anything better than this poem. As it became
increasingly evident that the nineteenth century was not going to
have a great literary dramatic movement on the stage, while at the
same time the interest in human nature had never been keener, the
poets began to turn their attention to the interpretation of
humanity by the representation of historical or imaginary
individuals speaking: and their speech was to reveal the secrets of
the human soul, in its tragedy and comedy, in its sublimity and
baseness, in its nobility and folly. Later in life Tennyson
cultivated sedulously the dramatic monologue; and Browning, the most
original force in literature that the century produced, after
abandoning his early attempts at success on the stage, devoted
practically the entire strength of his genius to this form of poetry.
Emerson was a wise man.

In reshuffling the short poems in the three works mentioned above,
it is not always easy to see the logic of the distribution and it
would be interesting if we could know the reasons that guided the
poet in the classification of particular poems. Thus it is perfectly
clear why _Incident of the French Camp_, _Count Gismond_, and
_In a Gondola_ were taken from the _Dramatic Lyrics_ and placed
among the _Dramatic Romances_; it is easy to see why _The Lost Leader_
and _Home-Thoughts, from Abroad_ were taken from the _Romances_ and
placed among the _Lyrics_; it is not quite so clear why _Rudel_ and
_Artemis Prologizes_ were taken from the _Lyrics_ and classed
among _Men and Women_, when nearly all the poems originally
published under the latter head were changed to _Lyrics_ and _
Romances_. In changing _How They Brought the Good News_ from the
_Dramatic Romances_, where it was originally published, to _
Dramatic Lyrics_, Browning probably felt that the lyrical sound of
the piece was more important than the story: but it really is a
dramatic romance. Furthermore, _My Last Duchess_ would seem to fall
more properly under the heading _Men and Women_; Browning, however,
took it from the _Dramatic Lyrics_ and placed it among the _Dramatic
Romances_. In most cases, however, the reason for the transfer of
individual poems is clear; and a study of the classification is of
positive assistance toward the understanding of the piece.

In the eight volumes published from 1841 to 1846, which Browning
called _Bells and Pomegranates_, meaning simply Sound and Sense,
Meat and Music, only two are collections of short poems and the
other six contain exclusively plays--seven in all, two being printed
together in the last volume. Browning intended the whole _Bells and
Pomegranates_ series to be devoted to the drama, as one may see by
the original preface to _Pippa Passes_: but that drama and the next
did not sell, and the publisher suggested that he include some short
poems. This explains why the third volume is filled with lyrics; and
in a note published with it, Browning half apologised for what might
seem a departure from his original plan, saying these two might
properly fall under the head of dramatic pieces; being, although
lyrical in expression, "always dramatic in principle, and so many
utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."

He means then by a dramatic lyric a poem that is short, that is
musical, but that is absolutely not subjective--does not express or
betray the writer's own ideas nor even his mood, as is done in
Tennyson's ideal lyric, _Crossing the Bar_. A dramatic lyric is a
composition lyrical in form, and dramatic in subject-matter;
remembering all the time that by dramatic we do not necessarily mean
anything exciting but simply something objective, something entirely
apart from the poet's own feelings. On the stage this is
accomplished by the creation of separate characters who _in propria
persona_ express views that may or may not be in harmony with the
poet's own. Thus, Macbeth's speech, beginning

  Out, out, brief candle!

is really a dramatic lyric; because it is lyrical in form, and it
expresses views on the value of life which could hardly have been
held by Shakespeare, though they seem eminently fitting from the
lips of a man who had tried to gain the whole world by losing his
soul, and had succeeded in losing both.

In view of Browning's love for this form of verse, it is interesting
to remember that the first two independent short poems that he ever
wrote and retained in his works are both genuine dramatic lyrics.
These are _Porphyria's Lover_ and _Johannes Agricola_, printed in
the _Monthly Repository_ in 1836, when Browning was twenty-four
years old. Thus early did he show both aptitude for this form and
excellence in it, for each of these pieces is a work of genius. They
were meant to be studies in abnormal psychology, for they were
printed together in the _Dramatic Lyrics_ under the caption _
Madhouse Cells_. Browning was very young then, and naturally thought
a man who believed in predestination and a man who killed the woman
he loved were both insane; but after a longer experience of life,
and seeing how many strange creatures walk the streets, he ceased to
call these two men, obsessed by religion and obsessed by love, mad.
If Porphyria's lover is mad, there is method in his madness. Her
superior social rank has stifled hitherto the instincts of the heart;
she has never given her lover any favors; but to-night, at the
dinner-dance, by one of those strange and inexplicable caprices that
make Woman the very Genius of the Unexpected, she has a vision. In
the midst of the lights and the laughter, she sees her lonely lover
sitting dejectedly in his cold and cheerless cottage, thinking of her.
She slips away from the gay company, trips through the pouring rain,
and enters the dark room like an angel of light. After kindling a
blazing fire in the grate, she kindles her lover's hope-dead heart;
she draws him to her and places his head on her naked shoulder.
Suddenly a thought comes to him; one can see the light of murder in
his eyes. At this moment she is sublime, fit for Heaven: for the
first time in her life, a noble impulse has triumphed over the
debasing conventions of society; if he lets her go, she will surely
fall from grace, and become a lost soul. He strangles her with her
yellow hair, risking damnation for her salvation. So the quick and
the dead sit together through the long night.




PORPHYRIA'S LOVER

1836

  The rain set early in to-night,
    The sullen wind was soon awake,
  It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
    And did its worst to vex the lake:
    I listened with heart fit to break.
  When glided in Porphyria; straight
    She shut the cold out and the storm,
  And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
    Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
    Which done, she rose, and from her form
  Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
    And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
  Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
    And, last, she sat down by my side
    And called me. When no voice replied,
  She put my arm about her waist,
    And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
  And all her yellow hair displaced,
    And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
    And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
  Murmuring how she loved me--she
    Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
  To set its struggling passion free
    From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
    And give herself to me for ever.
  But passion sometimes would prevail,
    Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
  A sudden thought of one so pale
    For love of her, and all in vain:
    So, she was come through wind and rain.
  Be sure I looked up at her eyes
    Happy and proud; at last I knew
  Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
    Made my heart swell, and still it grew
    While I debated what to do.
  That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
    Perfectly pure and good: I found
  A thing to do, and all her hair
    In one long yellow string I wound
    Three times her little throat around,
  And strangled her. No pain felt she;
    I am quite sure she felt no pain.
  As a shut bud that holds a bee,
    I warily oped her lids: again
    Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
  And I untightened next the tress
    About her neck; her cheek once more
  Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
    I propped her head up as before,
    Only, this time my shoulder bore
  Her head, which droops upon it still;
    The smiling rosy little head,
  So glad it has its utmost will,
    That all it scorned at once is fled,
    And I, its love, am gained instead!
  Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
    Her darling one wish would be heard.
  And thus we sit together now,
    And all night long we have not stirred,
    And yet God has not said a word!

What is the meaning of that last enigmatical line? Does it mean that
the expected bolt from the sky has not fallen, that God approves of
the murder? Or does it mean that the man is vaguely disappointed,
that he had hoped to hear a voice from Heaven, saying, "This is my
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased"? Or does it mean that the
Power above is wholly indifferent, "when the sky, which noticed all,
makes no disclosure"?

In _Johannes Agricola_, Browning wrote a lyric setting forth the
strange and yet largely accepted doctrine that Almighty God before
the foundations of the earth were laid, predestined a few of the
coming population to everlasting bliss and the vast majority to
eternal torture. This is by no means a meditation in a madhouse cell,
as Browning first believed; but might logically be the reflections
of a nineteenth century Presbyterian clergyman, seated in his
comfortable library. It is the ecstatic mystical joy of one who
realises, that through no merit of his own, he is numbered among the
elect. Sir Thomas Browne quaintly pictured to himself the surprise
of the noble, upright men of antiquity, when they wake up in hell
simply because they did not believe on One of whom they had never
heard; so Johannes speculates on the ironical fate of monks, ascetics,
women and children, whose lives were full of innocence and purity,
who nevertheless reach ultimately the lake of fire. Praise God for it!
for if I could understand Him, I could not praise Him. How much more
noble this predestinating God is than one who should reward virtue,
and thus make eternal bliss a matter of calculation and bargain!




JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION

1836

  There's heaven above, and night by night
    I look right through its gorgeous roof;
  No suns and moons though e'er so bright
    Avail to stop me; splendour-proof
    I keep the broods of stars aloof:
  For I intend to get to God,
    For 'tis to God I speed so fast,
  For in God's breast, my own abode,
    Those shoals of dazzling glory passed,
    I lay my spirit down at last.
  I lie where I have always lain,
    God smiles as he has always smiled;
  Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
    Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled
    The heavens, God thought on me his child;
  Ordained a life for me, arrayed
    Its circumstances every one
  To the minutest; ay, God said
    This head this hand should rest upon
    Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun.
  And having thus created me,
    Thus rooted me, he bade me grow,
  Guiltless for ever, like a tree
    That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know
    The law by which it prospers so:
  But sure that thought and word and deed
    All go to swell his love for me,
  Me, made because that love had need
    Of something irreversibly
    Pledged solely its content to be.
  Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend,
    No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop!

  I have God's warrant, could I blend
    All hideous sins, as in a cup,
    To drink the mingled venoms up;
  Secure my nature will convert
    The draught to blossoming gladness fast:
  While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt,
    And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,
    As from the first its lot was cast.
  For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed
    By unexhausted power to bless,
  I gaze below on hell's fierce bed,
    And those its waves of flame oppress,
    Swarming in ghastly wretchedness;
  Whose life on earth aspired to be
    One altar-smoke, so pure!--to win
  If not love like God's love for me,
    At least to keep his anger in;
    And all their striving turned to sin.
  Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white
    With prayer, the broken-hearted nun,
  The martyr, the wan acolyte,
    The incense-swinging child,--undone
    Before God fashioned star or sun!
  God, whom I praise; how could I praise,
    If such as I might understand,
  Make out and reckon on his ways,
    And bargain for his love, and stand,
    Paying a price, at his right hand?

The religious exaltation of the opening lines

  There's heaven above, and night by night
    I look right through its gorgeous roof; ...
  For I intend to get to God,
    For 'tis to God I speed so fast,
  For in God's breast, my own abode,
  Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,
  I lay my spirit down at last

reminds one infallibly of Tennyson's beautiful dramatic lyric,
_St. Agnes' Eve_:

  Deep on the convent roof the snows
    Are sparkling to the moon:
  My breath to heaven like vapour goes,
    May my soul follow soon!

It is interesting to remember that the former was published in 1836,
the latter in 1837, and each in a periodical.

Perhaps Browning attempted to show the dramatic quality of his
lyrics by finally placing at the very beginning the _Cavalier Tunes_
and _The Lost Leader_; for the former voice in eloquent language the
hatred of democratic ideas, and the latter, in language equally
strenuous, is a glorification of democracy. Imagine Browning himself
saying what he places in the mouth of his gallant cavaliers--
"Hampden to hell!" In the second, _The Lost Leader_, nothing was
farther from Browning's own feelings than a personal attack on
Wordsworth, whom he regarded with reverence; in searching for an
example of a really great character who had turned from the popular
to the aristocratic party, he happened to think of the change from
radicalism to conservatism exhibited by Wordsworth. Love for the
lost leader is still strong in the breasts of his quondam followers
who now must fight him; in Heaven he will not only be pardoned, he
will be first there as he was always first here. In the following
lines, the prepositions are interesting:

  Shakespeare was _of_ us, Milton was _for_ us,
  Burns, Shelley, were _with_ us.

Shakespeare was indeed of the common people, but so far as we can
conjecture, certainly not for them; Milton was not of them, but was
wholly for them, being indeed regarded as an anarchist; Burns was a
peasant, and Shelley a blue-blood, but both were with the popular
cause. Browning himself, as we happen to know from one of his
personal sonnets, was an intense Liberal in feeling.




CAVALIER TUNES

1842


I. MARCHING ALONG


  I

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


  II

  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
  Till you're--
      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong_,
               _Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song_.


  III

  Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
  Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
  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_?


  IV

  Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
  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_!




II. GIVE A ROUSE

  I

  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!


  II

  Who gave me the goods that went since?
  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?
             Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
             King Charles_!


  III

  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,
  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_!




III. BOOT AND SADDLE


  I

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


  II

  Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
  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_!"


  III

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



  IV

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





THE LOST LEADER

1845


  I

  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,
    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, honoured him,
    Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
  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,
    --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!


  II

  We shall march prospering,--not thro' 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:
  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!
    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;
  Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
    Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!


The poem _Cristina_ (1842), while not very remarkable as poetry, is
notable because it contains thus early in Browning's career, four of
his most important doctrines. The more one studies Browning, the
more one is convinced that the poet's astonishing mental vigor is
shown not in the number and variety of his ideas, but rather in the
number and variety of illustrations of them. I can not at this
moment think of any poet, dramatist or novelist who has invented so
many plots as Browning. He seems to present to us a few leading
ideas in a vast series of incarnations. Over and over again the same
thoughts, the same doctrines are repeated; but the scenery, the
situations, and the characters are never alike. Here is where he
remains true to the theory set forth in _Transcendentalism_; the poet
should not produce thoughts but rather concrete images of them; or,
as he says in the closing lines of _The Ring and the Book_, Art must
do the thing that breeds the thought.

In _Cristina_, four of Browning's fundamental articles of faith are
expressed: the doctrine of the elective affinities; the doctrine of
success through failure; the doctrine that time is measured not by
the clock and the calendar, but by the intensity of spiritual
experiences; the doctrine that life on earth is a trial and a test,
the result of which will be seen in the higher and happier
development when the soul is freed from the limitations of time and
space.

The expression "elective affinities" as applied to human beings was
first brought into literature, I believe, by no less a person than
Goethe, who in his novel, published in 1809, which he called _
Elective Affinities (Wahlverwandschaften_), showed the tremendous
force which tends to draw together certain persons of opposite sexes.
The term was taken from chemistry, where an elective affinity means
the "force by which the atoms of bodies of dissimilar nature unite";
elective affinity is then simply a chemical force.

In Goethe's novel, Charlotte thus addresses the Captain: "Would you
tell me briefly what is meant here by Affinities?" The Captain
replied, "In all natural objects with which we are acquainted, we
observe immediately that they have a certain relation." Charlotte:
"Let me try and see whether I can understand where you are bringing
me. As everything has a reference to itself, so it must have some
relation to others." Edward interrupts: "And that will be different
according to the natural differences of the things themselves.
Sometimes they will meet like friends and old acquaintances; they
will come rapidly together, and unite without either having to alter
itself at all--as wine mixes with water." Charlotte: "One can almost
fancy that in these simple forms one sees people that one is
acquainted with." The Captain: "As soon as our chemical chest arrives,
we can show you a number of entertaining experiments, which will
give you a clearer idea than words, and names, and technical
expressions." Charlotte: "It appears to me that if you choose to
call these strange creatures of yours related, the relationship is
not so much a relationship of blood as of soul or of spirit." The
Captain: "We had better keep to the same instances of which we have
already been speaking. Thus, what we call limestone is a more or
less pure calcareous earth in combination with a delicate acid,
which is familiar to us in the form of a gas. Now, if we place a
piece of this stone in diluted sulphuric acid, this will take
possession of the lime, and appear with it in the form of gypsum,
the gaseous acid at the same time going off in vapour. Here is a
case of separation: a combination arises, and we believe ourselves
now justified in applying to it the words 'Elective Affinity;' it
really looks as if one relation had been deliberately chosen in
preference to another." Charlotte: "Forgive me, as I forgive the
natural philosopher. I can not see any choice in this; I see a
natural necessity rather, and scarcely that. Opportunity makes
relations as it makes thieves: and as long as the talk is only of
natural substances, the choice appears to be altogether in the hands
of the chemist who brings the creatures together. Once, however, let
them be brought together, and then God have mercy on them." The
scientific conversation is summed up by their all agreeing that the
chemical term "elective affinities" can properly be applied in
analogy to human beings.

An elective affinity as applied to men and women may result in
happiness or misery; or may be frustrated by a still superior
prudential or moral force. The law of elective affinity being a force,
it is naturally unaware of any human artificial obstacles, such as a
total difference in social rank, or the previous marriage of one or
both of the parties. If two independent individuals meet and are
drawn together by the law of elective affinities, they may marry and
live happily forever after; if another marriage has already taken
place, as in Goethe's story, the result may be tragedy. In _Cristina_,
the elective affinities assert their force between a queen and a
private individual; the result is, at least temporarily, unfortunate
for the simple reason that the lady, although drawn toward the man
by the workings of this mysterious force, is controlled even more
firmly by the bondage of social convention; she behaves in a
contrary manner to that shown by the stooping lady in Maurice
Hewlett's story. This force needs only one moment, one glance, to
assert its power:

  She should never have looked at me
  If she meant I should not love her!

Love in Browning is often love at first sight; no prolonged
acquaintance is necessary; not even a spoken word, or any physical
contact.

                     Doubt you whether
  This she felt as, _looking at me_,
  Mine and her souls rushed together?

In Tennyson's _Locksley Hall_ (published the same year), contact was
important:

  And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

Browning's portrayal of love shows that it can be a wireless
telegraphy, that, in the instance of Cristina and her lover, exerted
its force across a crowded room; in _The Statue and the Bust_, it is
equally powerful across a public square in Florence. The glance, or
as Donne expresses it, the "twisted eye-beams," is an important
factor in Browning's poetry--sufficient to unite two souls
throughout all eternity, as it does in _Tristan und Isolde_. Browning
repeats his favorite doctrine of the elective affinities in _Evelyn
Hope_, _Count Gismond_, _In a Gondola_, _Dis Aliter Visum_, _Youth
and Art_, and other poems; and its noblest expression is perhaps in
that wonderful scene in the crowded theatre at Arezzo; whilst the
flippant audience are gazing at a silly musical comedy, the sad eyes
of Pompilia encounter the grave, serious regard of Caponsacchi, and
the two young hearts are united forever.

Another leading idea in Browning's philosophy is _Success in Failure_.
This paradox is indeed a corner-stone in the construction of his
thought. Every noble soul must fail in life, because every noble
soul has an ideal. We may be encouraged by temporary successes, but
we must be inspired by failure. Browning can forgive any daring
criminal; but he can not forgive the man who is selfishly satisfied
with his attainments and his position, and thus accepts compromises
with life. The soul that ceases to grow is utterly damned. The
damnation of contentment is shown with beauty and fervor in one of
Browning's earliest lyrics, _Over the Sea Our Galleys Went_. The
voyagers were weary of the long journey, they heeded not the voice
of the pilot Conscience, they accommodated their ideals to their
personal convenience. The reason why Browning could not forgive
Andrea was not because he was Andrea del Sarto, the son of a tailor;
it was because he was known as the Faultless Painter, because he
could actually realise his dreams. The text of that whole poem is
found in the line

  Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp.

In _Cristina_, the man's love is not rewarded here, he fails; but he
has aimed high, he has loved a queen. He will always love her--in
losing her he has found a guiding principle for his own life, which
will lead him ever up and on.

  She has lost me, I have gained her;
  Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect,
  I shall pass my life's remainder.

Her body I have lost: some other man will possess that: but her soul
I gained in the moment when our eyes met, and my life has reached a
higher plane and now has a higher motive. In failure I reach real
success.

This doctrine, illustrated repeatedly in Browning's works, is stated
explicitly in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_:

          For thence,--a paradox
            Which comforts while it mocks,--
  Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
            What I aspired to be,
            And was not, comforts me:
  A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

The thought that life is not measured by length of days is brought
out clearly in _Cristina_. We constantly read in the paper
interviews with centenarians, who tell us how to prolong our lives
by having sufficient sleep, by eating moderately, by refraining from
worry. But, as a writer in a southern journal expressed it, Why do
these aged curiosities never tell us what use they have made of this
prolonged existence? Mark Twain said cheerfully, "Methuselah lived
nine hundred and sixty-nine years; but what of that? There was
nothing doing." No drama on the stage is a success unless it has
what we call a supreme moment; and the drama of our individual lives
can not be really interesting or important unless it has some
moments when we live intensely, when we live longer than some
persons live in years; moments that settle our purpose and destiny.

  Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows!
    But not quite so sunk that moments,
  Sure, tho' seldom, are denied us,
    When the spirit's true endowments
  Stand out plainly from its false ones,
    And apprise it if pursuing
  Or the right way or the wrong way,
    To its triumph or undoing.
  There are flashes struck from midnights,
    There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
  Whereby piled-up honours perish,
    Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle.

An American public man who one day fell in public esteem as far as
Lucifer, said that it had taken him fifty years to build up a great
reputation, and that he had lost it all in one forenoon. The dying
courtier in _Paracelsus_ had such a moment.

Finally, in _Cristina_, we find that ardent belief in a future life
that lifts its head so often and so resolutely in Browning's poetry,
and on which, as we shall see later, his optimism is founded. Science
tells us that the matter of which the universe is composed is
indestructible; Browning believes even more strongly in the
permanence of spirit. Aspiration, enthusiasm, love would not be
given to us to have their purposes broken off, not if this is a
rational and economic universe; the important thing is not to have
our hopes fulfilled here, the important thing is to keep hoping.
Such love as the man had for Cristina must eventually find its full
satisfaction so long as it remains the guiding principle of his life,
which will serve as a test of his tenacity.

  Life will just hold out the proving
  Both our powers, alone and blended:
  And then, come next life quickly!
  This world's use will have been ended.

Precisely the same situation and the same philosophical result of it
are illustrated in the exquisite lyric, _Evelyn Hope_. The lover is
frustrated not by social distinctions, but by death. The girl is
lost to him here, but the power of love is not quenched nor even
lessened by this disaster. The man's ardor will steadily increase
during the remaining years of his earthly existence; and then his
soul will start out confident on its quest.

                               God above
    Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
  And creates the love to reward the love:
    I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
  Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
  Much is to learn, much to forget,
    Ere the time be come for taking you.

This doctrine, that earthly existence is a mere test of the soul to
determine its fitness for entering upon an eternal and freer stage
of development, is frequently set forth in Browning. The apostle John
makes it quite clear in _A Death in the Desert_; and in _Abt Vogler_,
the inspired musician sings

  And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
    For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?
  Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue
       thence?
    Why rushed the discords in but that harmony might be prized?

From the above discussion it should be plain that the short poem
_Cristina_ deserves patient and intense study, for it contains in
the form of a dramatic lyric, some of Browning's fundamental ideas.




CRISTINA

1842


  I

  She should never have looked at me
    If she meant I should not love her!
  There are plenty ... men, you call such,
    I suppose ... she may discover
  All her soul to, if she pleases,
    And yet leave much as she found them:
  But I'm not so, and she knew it
    When she fixed me, glancing round them.


  II

  What? To fix me thus meant nothing?
    But I can't tell (there's my weakness)
  What her look said!--no vile cant, sure,
    About "need to strew the bleakness
  Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed,
    That the sea feels"--no "strange yearning
  That such souls have, most to lavish
    Where there's chance of least returning."


  III

  Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows!
    But not quite so sunk that moments,
  Sure tho' seldom, are denied us,
    When the spirit's true endowments
  Stand out plainly from its false ones,
    And apprise it if pursuing
  Or the right way or the wrong way,
    To its triumph or undoing.


  IV

  There are flashes struck from midnights,
    There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
  Whereby piled-up honours perish,
    Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle,
  While just this or that poor impulse,
    Which for once had play unstifled,
  Seems the sole work of a life-time
    That away the rest have trifled.


  V

  Doubt you if, in some such moment,
    As she fixed me, she felt clearly,
  Ages past the soul existed,
    Here an age 'tis resting merely,
  And hence fleets again for ages,
    While the true end, sole and single,
  It stops here for is, this love-way,
    With some other soul to mingle?


  VI

  Else it loses what it lived for,
    And eternally must lose it;
  Better ends may be in prospect,
    Deeper blisses (if you choose it),
  But this life's end and this love-bliss
    Have been lost here. Doubt you whether
  This she felt as, looking at me,
    Mine and her souls rushed together?


  VII

  Oh, observe! Of course, next moment,
    The world's honours, in derision,
  Trampled out the light for ever:
    Never fear but there's provision
  Of the devil's to quench knowledge
    Lest we walk the earth in rapture!
  --Making those who catch God's secret
    Just so much more prize their capture!


  VIII

  Such am I: the secret's mine now!
    She has lost me, I have gained her;
  Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect,
    I shall pass my life's remainder.
  Life will just hold out the proving
    Both our powers, alone and blended:
  And then, come the next life quickly!
    This world's use will have been ended.





SONG FROM _PARACELSUS_

1835

  Over the sea our galleys went,
  With cleaving prows in order brave
  To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,
    A gallant armament:
  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,
  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
  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,
    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,
  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,
  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:
  So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,
  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:
  "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;
  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 harbour thus,
  With pomp and paean glorious.

  A hundred shapes of lucid stone!
    All day we built its shrine for each,
  A shrine of rock for every one,
  Nor paused till in the westering sun
    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
  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
  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:
    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,





EVELYN HOPE

1855


  I

  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;
    Little has yet been changed, I think:
  The shutters are shut, no light may pass
    Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.


  II

  Sixteen years old when she died!
    Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
  It was not her time to love; beside,
    Her life had many a hope and aim,
  Duties enough and little cares,
    And now was quiet, now astir,
  Till God's hand beckoned unawares,--
    And the sweet white brow is all of her.


  III

  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--
  And, just because I was thrice as old
    And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
  Each was nought to each, must I be told?
    We were fellow mortals, nought beside?


  IV

  No, indeed! for God above
    Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
  And creates the love to reward the love:
    I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
  Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
  Much is to learn, much to forget
    Ere the time be come for taking you.


  V

  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,
    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.


  VI

  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,
    Either I missed or itself missed me:
  And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
    What is the issue? let us see!


  VII

  I loved you, Evelyn, all the while.
    My heart seemed full as it could hold?
  There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,
    And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
  So, hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep:
    See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
  There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
    You will wake, and remember, and understand.

The dramatic lyric in two parts called _Meeting at Night_ and
_Parting at Morning_ contains only sixteen lines and is a flawless
masterpiece. Of the four dimensions of mathematics, one only has
nothing to do with poetry. The length of a poem is of no importance
in estimating its value. I do not fully understand what is meant by
saying that a poem is too long or too short. It depends entirely on
the art with which the particular subject is treated. A short poem
of no value is too long; a long poem of genius is not too long.
Richardson's _Clarissa_ in eight volumes is not too long, as is
proved by the fact that the numerous attempts to abridge it are all
failures; whereas many short stories in our magazines are far too
long. Browning's _Night and Morning_ is not too short, because it
contains in sixteen lines everything necessary; _The Ring and the
Book_ is not too long, because the twenty thousand and odd lines are
all needed to make the study of testimony absolutely complete. But
whilst the mathematical dimension of length is not a factor in poetry,
the dimensions of breadth and depth are of vital importance, and the
mysterious fourth dimension is the quality that determines whether
or not a poem is a work of genius. Poems of the highest imagination
can not be measured at all except in the fourth dimension. The first
part of Browning's lyric is notable for its shortness, its breadth
and its depth; the second part possesses these qualities even more
notably, and also takes the reader's thoughts into a world entirely
outside the limits of time and space.

Browning has often been called a careless writer and although he
maintained that the accusation was untrue, the condition of some of
the manuscripts he sent to the press--notably _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_
--is proof positive that he did not work at each one of his poems at
his highest level of patient industry. He was however in general a
fastidious artist; much more so than is commonly supposed. He was one
of our greatest impromptu poets, like Shakespeare, writing hot from
the brain; he was not a polisher and reviser, like Chaucer and
Tennyson. But he studied with care the sound of his words. Many
years ago, Mrs. Le Moyne, who has done so much to increase the
number of intelligent Browning lovers in America, met the poet in
Europe, and told him she would like to recite to him one of his own
poems. "Go ahead, my dear." So she began to repeat in her beautiful
voice _Meeting at Night_; she spoke the third line

  And the little startled waves that leap

"Stop!" said Browning, "that isn't right." She then learned from him
the sharp difference between "little startled waves" as she read it,
and "startled little waves" as he wrote it. He was trying to produce
the effect of a warm night on the beach with no wind, where the tiny
wavelets simply crumble in a brittle fashion on the sand. "Startled
little waves" produces this effect; "little startled waves" does not.

The impressionistic colors in this poem add much to its effect; the
grey sea, the black land, the yellow moon, the fiery ringlets, the
blue spurt of the match, the golden light of morning. The sounds and
smells are realistic; one hears the boat cut harshly into the slushy
sand; the sharp scratch of the match; one inhales the thick, heavy
odor radiating from the sea-scented beach that has absorbed all day
the hot rays of the sun.

It is probable that the rendezvous is not at dusk, as is commonly
supposed, but at midnight. Owen Wister, in his fine novel, _The
Virginian_, speaks of the lover's journey as taking place at dusk.
Now the half-moon could not scientifically be low at that early hour,
and although most poets care nothing at all for the moon except as a
decorative object, Browning was generally precise in such matters. An
American poet submitted to the _Century Magazine_ a poem that was
accepted, the last line of each stanza reading

  And in the west the waning moon hangs low.

One of the editorial staff remembered that the waning moon does not
hang low in the west; he therefore changed the word to "weary,"
which made the poet angry. He insisted that he was a poet, not a man
of science, and vowed that he would place his moon exactly where he
chose. The editors replied, "You can have a waning moon in the west
in some magazines, perhaps, but you can not have it there in the
_Century_." So it was published "weary," as any one may see who
has sufficient time and patience.

Furthermore the contrast in this poem is not between evening and
morning, but between night and morning. The English commonly draw a
distinction between evening and night that we do not observe in
America. _Pippa Passes_ is divided into four sections, Morning, Noon,
Evening, Night. Furthermore the meeting is a clandestine one; not the
first one, for the man's soliloquy of his line of march shows how
often he has travelled this way before, and now his eager mind,
leaping far ahead of his feet, repeats to him each stage of the
journey. The cottage is shrouded in absolute darkness until the
lover's tap is heard; then comes the sound and the sight of the match,
and the sudden thrill of the mad embrace, when the wild heart-beats
are louder than the love-whispers.

The dramatic contrast in this poem is between the man's feelings at
night, and his mood in the morning. Both parts of the lyric,
therefore, come from the man's heart. It is absurd to suppose, as
many critics seem to think, that the second part is uttered by the
woman. Such a mistake could never have arisen if it had not been for
the word "him" in the penultimate line, which does not of course,
refer to the man, but to the sun. To have the woman repeat in her
heart these lines not only destroys the true philosophy of life set
forth in the lyric, but the last reflection,

  And the need of a world of men for me

would seem to make her taste rather catholic for an ideal sweetheart.

The real meaning of the poem is simply this: The passionate
intensity of love can not be exaggerated; in the night's meeting all
other thoughts, duties, and pleasures are as though they were not;
but with the day comes the imperious call of life and even if the
woman could be content to live forever with her lover in the lonely
cottage, he could not; he loves her honestly with fervor and
sincerity, but he simply must go out into the world where men are,
and take his share of the excitement and the struggle; he would soon
be absolutely miserable if marooned from life, even with the woman
he loves. Those novels that represent a man as having no interest in
life but love are false to human nature. In this poem Browning
represents facts as they are; it is not simply that the man wants to
go out and live among other men, it is a natural law that he must,
as truly a natural law as gravitation.

  And straight was a path of gold for him,
  And the need of a world of men for me.

Just as the sun must take his prescribed course through the sky, so
must I run my circle of duties in the world of men. It is not a
moral call of duty; it is the importunate pull of necessity.

There is still the possibility of another interpretation of the last
line, though I think the one just given is correct, "I need the
world of men; it is a natural law." Now it is just possible that we
could interpret "need" in another sense, with an inversion;
"the world of men needs me, and I must go to do my share." This
would make the man perhaps nobler, but surely not so natural; indeed
it would sound like a priggish excuse to leave his mistress. I have
never quite surrendered to the cavalier's words

  I could not love thee, dear, so much,
  Loved I not Honour more.

Are we sure it is honor, and not himself, he loves more?

It is impossible to improve on the Cowboy's comment on these lines
in Mr. Wister's _Virginian_; after Molly has read them aloud to the
convalescing male, he remarks softly, "That is very, very true."
Molly does not see why the Virginian admires these verses so much
more than the others. "I could scarcely explain," says he, "but that
man does know something." Molly wants to know if the lovers had
quarrelled. "Oh, no! he will come back after he has played some more
of the game." "The game?" "Life, ma'am. Whatever he was adoin' in
the world of men. That's a bed-rock piece, ma'am."

The Virginian is much happier in his literary criticism of this
lyric than he is of the _Good News_ or of the _Incident of the
French Camp_; in the latter instance, he misses the point altogether.
The boy was not a poseur. The boy was so happy to think he had
actually given his life for his master that he smilingly corrected
Napoleon's cry "You're wounded!" It is as though one should
congratulate an athletic contestant, and say "My felicitations! you
won the second prize!" "No, indeed: I won the First."

_Night and Morning_ suggests so many thoughts that we could
continue our comments indefinitely; but time suffices for only one
more. The nature picture of the dawn is absolutely perfect.

  Round the cape of a sudden came the sea.

He does not say that finally the cape became visible, but that the
sea suddenly came round the cape. Any one who has stood on the
ocean-shore before dawn, and gazed along the indented coast in the
grey light, has observed the precise effect mentioned in these words.
At first one sees only the blur of land where the cape is, and
nothing beyond it; suddenly the light increases, and the sea
actually appears to come around the point.




MEETING AT NIGHT

1845

  The grey 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,
  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,
  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.

It is interesting to remember that Browning, of all poets most
intellectual, should be so predominantly the poet of Love. This
passion is the motive power of his verse, as he believed it to be
the motive power of the universe. He exhibits the love of men and
women in all its manifestations, from baseness and folly to the
noblest heights of self-renunciation. It is natural that the most
masculine and the most vigorous and the most intellectual of all our
poets should devote his powers mainly to the representation of love.
For love is the essence of force, and does not spring from
effeminate weakness or febrile delicacy. Any painter can cover a huge
canvas, but, as has been observed, only the strong hand can do the
fine and tender work. To discuss at length the love-poems of
Browning would take us far beyond the limits of this volume; but
certain of the dramatic lyrics may be selected to illustrate salient
characteristics. As various poets in making portraits emphasise what
is to them the most expressive features, the eyes or the lips, so
Browning, the poet of the mind, loves best of all in his women and
men, the Brow.

In _Evelyn Hope_,

  And the sweet white brow is all of her.

In _The Last Ride Together_,

  My mistress bent that brow of hers.

In _By the Fireside_,

  Reading by firelight, that great brow
  And the spirit-small hand propping it.

In _The Statue and the Bust_,

  Hair in heaps lay heavily
  Over a pale brow spirit-pure.

In _Count Gismond_,

  They, too, so beauteous! Each a queen
  By virtue of her brow and breast.

And the wonderful description of Pompilia by Caponsacchi:

  Her brow had not the right line, leaned too much,
  Painters would say; they like the straight-up Greek:
  This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible crown
  Of martyr and saint, not such as art approves.

In _Eurydice_,

  But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!

In _Count Gismond_,

  Our elder boy has got the clear
  Great brow.

In _The Statue and the Bust_,

  On his steady brow and quiet mouth.

His ideally beautiful women generally have yellow hair. The lady
_In a Gondola_ had coiled hair, "a round smooth cord of gold." In
_Evelyn Hope_, the "hair's young gold:" in _Love Among the Ruins_,
"eager eyes and yellow hair:" in _A Toccata_,

  Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
  Used to hang and brush their bosoms?

And we must not forget his poem, _Gold Hair_. His descriptions of
women's faces are never conventional, rosy cheeks and bright eyes,
but always definite and specific. In _Time's Revenges_, the
unfortunate lover is maddened by the vision of the girl's face:

  So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
  Filled full, eaten out and in
  With the face of her, the eyes of her,
  The lips, the little chin, the stir
  Of shadow round her mouth.

Browning's rejected lovers are such splendid fellows that one
wonders at their ill luck. Tennyson's typical lovers, as seen in
_Locksley Hall_, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_, and the first part of
_Maud_, behave in a manner that quite justifies the woman. They
whine, they rave, and they seem most of all to be astonished at the
woman's lack of judgment in not recognising their merits. Instead of
a noble sorrow, they exhibit peevishness; they seem to say,
"You'll be sorry some day." Browning's rejected lovers never think
of themselves and their own defeat; they think only of the woman,
who is now more adorable than ever. It never occurs to them that the
woman is lacking in intelligence because of her refusal; nor that
the man she prefers is a lowbrowed scoundrel. They are chivalrous;
they do their best to win. When they lose, they would rather have
been rejected by this woman than accepted by any other; and they are
always ready to congratulate the man more fortunate than they. They
are in fact simply irresistible, and one can not help believing in
their ultimate success. In _The Lost Mistress_, which Swinburne said
was worth a thousand _Lost Leaders_, the lover has just been rejected,
and instead of thinking of his own misery, he endeavours to make the
awkward situation easier for the girl by small-talk about the
sparrows and the leaf-buds. She has urged that their friendship
continue; that this episode need not put an end to their meetings,
and that he can come to see her as often as he likes, only there
must be no nonsense; he must promise to be sensible, and treat her
only as a friend. Instead of rejecting this suggestion with scorn, he
accepts, and agrees to do his best.

  Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
    May I take your hand in mine?
  Mere friends are we ...
  Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
    Or only a thought stronger;
  I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
    Or so very little longer!

"I will do my best to please you, but remember I'm made of flesh and
blood."

In _One Way of Love_, the same kind of man appears. Pauline likes
flowers, music, and fine speeches. He is just a mere man, who has
never noticed a flower in his life, who is totally indifferent to
music, and never could talk with eloquence. But if Pauline likes
these things, he must endeavor to impress her, if not with his skill,
at all events with his devotion. He sends her a beautiful bouquet;
she does not even notice it. For months he tries to learn the
instrument, until finally he can play "his tune." She does not even
listen; he throws the lute away, for he cares nothing for music
except for her sake. At last comes the supreme moment when he makes
his declaration, on which the whole happiness of his life depends.

  This hour my utmost art I prove
  And speak my passion-heaven or hell?

Many lovers, on being rejected, would simply repeat the last word
just quoted. This fine sportsmanlike hero remarks,

  She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well
  Lose who may--I still can say,
  Those who win heaven, blest are they!

"I can not reproach myself, for I did my best, and lost: still less
can I reproach her; all I can say is, the man who gets her is lucky."

Finally, the same kind of character appears in one of the greatest
love-poems in all literature, _The Last Ride Together_. The
situation just before the opening lines is an exact parallel to that
of _The Lost Mistress_. Every day this young pair have been riding
together. The man has fallen in love, and has mistaken the girl's
camaraderie for a deeper feeling. He has just discovered his error,
and without minimising the force of the blow that has wrecked his
life's happiness, this is what he says:

  Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
  Since now at length my fate I know,
  Since nothing all my love avails,
  Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
  Since this was written and needs must be--
  My whole heart rises up to
      (curse, oh, no!)
          rises up to bless
  Your name in pride and thankfulness!
  Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
  Only a memory of the same,
  --And this beside, if you will not blame,
  Your leave for one more last ride with me.

What does the rejected lover mean by such brave words as "pride" and
"thankfulness"? He means that it is a great honor to be rejected by
such a woman, as Mr. Birrell says it is better to be knocked down by
Doctor Johnson than to be picked up by Mr. Froude. He is thankful,
too, to have known such a wonderful woman; and to show that he can
control himself, and make the situation easier for her, he requests
that to-day for the last time they ride just as usual--indeed they
had met for that purpose, are properly accoutred, and were about to
start, when he astonished her with his sudden and no longer
controllable declaration. Right! We shall ride together. I am not
yet banished from the sight of her. Perhaps the world will end
to-night.

In the course of this poem, Browning develops one of his favorite
ideas, that Life is always greater than Art. A famous poet may sit
at his desk, and write of love in a way to thrill the hearts of his
readers; but we should place him lower than rustic sweethearts
meeting in the moonlight, because they are having in reality
something which exists for the poet only in dreams. The same is true
of sculpture and all pictorial art; men will turn from the greatest
masterpiece of the chisel or the brush to look at a living woman.

  And you, great sculptor,--so, you gave
  A score of years to Art, her slave,
  And that's your Venus, whence we turn
  To yonder girl that fords the burn!

I was once seated in the square room in the gallery at Dresden that
holds the most famous picture in the world, Rafael's Sistine Madonna.
A number of tourists were in the place, and we were all gazing
steadfastly at the immortal Virgin, when a pretty, fresh-colored
young American girl entered the room. Every man's head twisted away
from the masterpiece of art, and every man's eyes stared at the
commonplace stranger, because she was alive! I was much amused, and
could not help thinking of Browning's lines.

This doctrine, that Life is greater than Art, is repeated by
Browning in _Cleon_, and it forms the whole content of Ibsen's last
drama, _When We Dead Awaken_.

The lover's reasoning at the close of Browning's poem, that
rejection may be better for him because now he has an unrealised
ideal, and that the race itself is better than the victor's garland,
reminds us of Lessing's noble saying, that if God gave him the
choice between the knowledge of all truth and the search for it, he
would humbly take the latter.

  One must lead some life beyond,
  Have a bliss to die with, _dim_-descried.




BROWNING'S REJECTED LOVERS


  THE LOST MISTRESS
  1845

  All's over, then; does truth sound bitter
    As one at first believes?
  Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
    About your cottage eaves!

  And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
    I noticed that, to-day;
  One day more bursts them open fully
    --You know the red turns gray.

  To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
    May I take your hand in mine?
  Mere friends are we,--well, friends the merest
    Keep much that I resign:

  For each glance of the eye so bright and black
    Though I keep with heart's endeavour,--
  Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
    Though it stay in my soul forever!--

  Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
    Or only a thought stronger;
  I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
    Or so very little longer!





  ONE WAY OF LOVE
  1855


  I

  All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
  Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
  And strew them where Pauline may pass.
  She will not turn aside? Alas!
  Let them lie. Suppose they die?
  The chance was they might take her eye,


  II.

  How many a month I strove to suit
  These stubborn fingers to the lute!
  To-day I venture all I know.
  She will not hear my music? So!
  Break the string; fold music's wing:
  Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!


  III.

  My whole life long I learned to love.
  This hour my utmost art I prove
  And speak my passion--heaven or hell?
  She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
  Lose who may--I still can say,
  Those who win heaven, blest are they!




  THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

  1855

  I

  I said--Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
  Since now at length my fate I know,
  Since nothing all my love avails,
  Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
    Since this was written and needs must be--
  My whole heart rises up to bless
  Your name in pride and thankfulness!
  Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
  Only a memory of the same,
  --And this beside, if you will not blame,
    Your leave for one more last ride with me.


  II

  My mistress bent that brow of hers;
  Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
  When pity would be softening through,
  Fixed me a breathing-while or two
    With life or death in the balance: right!
  The blood replenished me again;
  My last thought was at least not vain:
  I and my mistress, side by side
  Shall be together, breathe and ride,
  So, one day more am I deified.
    Who knows but the world may end to-night?


  III

  Hush! if you saw some western cloud
  All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
  By many benedictions--sun's
  And moon's and evening-star's at once--
    And so, you, looking and loving best,
  Conscious grew, your passion drew
  Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
  Down on you, near and yet more near,
  Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!--
  Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear!
    Thus lay she a moment on my breast.


  IV

  Then we began to ride. My soul
  Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
  Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
  Past hopes already lay behind.
    What need to strive with a life awry?
  Had I said that, had I done this,
  So might I gain, so might I miss.
  Might she have loved me? just as well
  She might have hated, who can tell!
  Where had I been now if the worst befell?
    And here we are riding, she and I.


  V

  Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
  Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
  We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
  Saw other regions, cities new.
    As the world rushed by on either side.
  I thought,--All labour, yet no less
  Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
  Look at the end of work, contrast
  The petty done, the undone vast,
  This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
    I hoped she would love me; here we ride.


  VI

  What hand and brain went ever paired?
  What heart alike conceived and dared?
  What act proved all its thought had been?
  What will but felt the fleshly screen?
    We ride and I see her bosom heave.
  There's many a crown for who can reach.
  Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
  The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
  A soldier's doing! what atones?
  They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
    My riding is better, by their leave.


  VII

  What does it all mean, poet? Well,
  Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
  What we felt only; you expressed
  You hold things beautiful the best,
    And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
  'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
  Have you yourself what's best for men?
  Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time--
  Nearer one whit your own sublime
  Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
    Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.


  VIII

  And you, great sculptor--so, you gave
  A score of years to Art, her slave,
  And that's your Venus, whence we turn
  To yonder girl that fords the burn!
    You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
  What, man of music, you grown grey
  With notes and nothing else to say,
  Is this your sole praise from a friend,
  "Greatly his opera's strains intend,
  Put in music we know how fashions end!"
    I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.


  IX

  Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
  Proposed bliss here should sublimate
  My being--had I signed the bond--
  Still one must lead some life beyond,
    Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
  This foot once planted on the goal,
  This glory-garland round my soul,
  Could I descry such? Try and test!
  I sink back shuddering from the quest.
  Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
    Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.


  X

  And yet--she has not spoke so long!
  What if heaven be that, fair and strong
  At life's best, with our eyes upturned
  Whither life's flower is first discerned,
    We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
  What if we still ride on, we two
  With life for ever old yet new,
  Changed not in kind but in degree,
  The instant made eternity,--
  And heaven just prove that I and she
    Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

Browning's lovers, as has been illustrated, are usually chivalrous,
whether their passions have or have not the sanction of law. The
poem _In a Gondola_, which has been more often translated into
foreign languages than perhaps any other of Browning's works, gives
us a picture of a night in Venice. The fluent rhythms of the verse
indicate the lazy glide of the gondola through the dark waters of the
canal. The lovers speak, sing, and muse; and their conversation is
full of the little language characteristic of those who are in
complete possession of each other, soul and body. They delight in
passionate reminiscences: they love to recall their first chance
meeting:

  Ah, the autumn day
  I, passing, saw you overhead!

The wind blew out the curtains of her apartment, and her pet parrot
escaped, giving the man his opportunity. They rehearse over again
the advancing stages of their drama. She asks him to kiss her like a
moth, then like a bee--in the attempt to recapture the first shy
sweetness of their dawning passion. They play little love-games. He
pretends he is a Jew, carrying her away from her family to a tribal
feast; then that they twain are spirits of stars, meeting in the
thin air aloft. The intensity of their bliss is sharpened by the
black cloud of danger in which they move: for if the Three, husband,
father, and brother of the lady become aware of this secret liaison,
there can be only one end to it--a tragedy of blood. The lighted
taper held in the window by the trusted maid shows that they are
"safe," and for the last time they play again their little comedy of
formality. She pretends to be the formal _grande dame_, the lady
with the colder breast than snow: he is the bashful gallant, who
hardly dares touch the tips of her fingers. In this laughing moment,
the dagger of the husband is driven deep into his back. Like all of
Browning's lovers, he gives, even on the edge of the eternal darkness,
no thought to himself, but only to her. Gathering his dying energies,
he speaks in a loud tone, so that the conspirators, invisible in the
Venetian night, may hear him:

        Care not for the cowards! Care
  Only to put aside thy beauteous hair
  My blood will hurt!

And in the last agony, he comforts her with the thought that all this,
the joy of love and the separation by murder, have been ordained.

In _Love Among the Ruins_, with which _Men and Women_ originally
opened, and which some believe to be Browning's masterpiece, Love is
given its place as the supreme fact in human history. This is a
scene in the Roman Campagna at twilight, and the picture in the
first stanza reminds us of Gray's _Elegy_ in the perfection of its
quiet silver tone. With a skill nothing short of genius, Browning
has maintained in this poem a double parallel. Up to the fifth stanza,
the contrast is between the present peace of the vast solitary plain,
and its condition years ago when it was the centre of a city's
beating heart: from the fifth stanza to the close, the contrast is
between this same vanished civilisation and the eternal quality of
Love. I do not remember any other work in literature where a double
parallel is given with such perfect continuity and beauty; the first
half of each stanza is in exact antithesis to the last. The
parenthesis--_so they say_--is a delicate touch of dramatic irony.
No one would dream that this quiet plain was once the site of a
great city, for no proofs remain: we have to take the word of the
archæologists for it. Some day a Japanese shepherd may pasture his
sheep on Manhattan Island.

After a poetic discourse on the text _Sic transit gloria mundi_--the
love motive is suddenly introduced in the fifth stanza; and now the
contrast changes, and becomes a comparison between the ephemeral
nature of civilisation and the permanent fact of Love. At the exact
spot where the grandstand formerly stood at the finish of the
horse-race, where the King, surrounded by courtiers, watched the
whirling chariots, now remains motionless, breathless, a
yellow-haired girl. The proud King's eyes looked over the stadium
and beheld the domes and pinnacles of his city, the last word of
civilisation; the girl's eager eyes look over the silent plain
searching for the coming of her lover. And Browning would have us
believe that this latter fact is far more important historically
than the former.

Suppose an American professor of archæology is working on the grassy
expanse, collecting material for his new book; he looks up for a
moment and sees a pair of rustic lovers kissing in the twilight; he
smiles, and resumes what seems to him his important labor. Little
does he imagine that this love-scene is more significant than all
the broken bits of pottery he digs out of the ground; yet such is the
fact. For all he can do at his very best is to reconstruct a
vanished past, while the lovers are acting a scene that belongs to
eternity. Love is best.




  LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

  1855


  I

  Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
    Miles and miles
  On the solitary pastures where our sheep
    Half-asleep
  Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
    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
  Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
    Peace or war.


  II

  Now,--the country does not even boast a tree
    As you see,
  To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
    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
  O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
        Bounding all,
  Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
        Twelve abreast.


  III

  And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
        Never was!
  Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
        And embeds
  Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
        Stock or stone--
  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
        Bought and sold.


  IV

  Now,--the single little turret that remains
        On the plains,
  By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
        Overscored,
  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 round, the chariots traced
        As they raced,
  And the monarch and his minions and his dames
        Viewed the games.


  V

  And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
              Smiles to leave
  To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
              In such peace,
  And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
              Melt away--
  That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
              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.


  VI

  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,
              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,
  Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
              Each on each.


  VII

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

In the poem _Respectability_ Browning gives us a more vulgar, but
none the less vital aspect of love. This is no peaceful twilit
harmony; this scene is set on a windy, rainy night in noisy Paris,
on the left bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Institute of
France. Two reckless lovers--either old comrades or picked-up
acquaintances of this very night, it matters not which--come
tripping along gaily, arm in arm. The man chaffs at worldly
conventions, at the dullness of society, at the hypocrisy of
so-called respectable people, and congratulates himself and his fair
companion on the fun they are having. What fools they would have
been had they waited through a long, formal courtship for the
sanction of an expensive marriage! The world, he says, does not
forbid kisses, only it says, you must see the magistrate first. My
finger must not touch your soft lips until it is covered with the
glove of marriage. Bah! what do we care for th

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