and the invocation in lines 811-854 reveals the passionately religious
nature of the young poet. In _The Early Writings of Robert Browning_[1]
Mr. Gosse gives an account of the impression made by this poem upon men
so diverse as the Rev. William Johnson Fox, John Stuart Mill, and Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, to all of whom, in spite of its crudities and very
evident immaturity, it seemed a production of exceptional promise.
After an interval of two years Browning published, this time under his
own name, a second long poem. The subject, Paracelsus, had been
suggested by the friend, Amédeé de Ripert-Monclar, to whom the poem is
dedicated. In pursuance of his purposed rehabilitation of a vanished age
Browning made extensive researches in the British Museum into the
history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical
science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis
of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in
subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was
recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he
was admitted into the foremost literary circles of London. One of
his most distinguished new friends was Mr. Macready, the great actor. It
was at his house that Browning first met Mr. Forster, who had already
written favorable critiques of _Paracelsus_, one for _The Examiner_ and
one for _The New Monthly Magazine_. Other literary associates of this
period were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Sergeant Talfourd, Dickens, and
Walter Savage Landor. There were not infrequent dinners and suppers to
which the young poet was welcomed. He is described as being at this
period singularly handsome. "He looks and acts," said Mr. Macready,
"more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." He had
sculpturesque masses of dark wavy hair, a skin like delicate ivory,
deep-set, expressive eyes, and a sensitive mouth. He was slender,
graceful, and most attractive in manner, and he was something of a dandy
in his attention to dress. He is said to have made an especially good
impression on one occasion when the circumstances must have been as
trying as they were exhilarating. In May, 1836, a group of poets had
assembled at Mr. Talfourd's to celebrate Macready's successful
production of Talfourd's _Ion_. Browning sat opposite Macready, who was
between Wordsworth and Landor. When Talfourd proposed a toast, "The
Poets of England," he spoke in complimentary terms of Wordsworth and
Landor, but called for a response from "the youngest of the Poets of
England, the author of _Paracelsus_." Landor raised his cup to the young
man, and Wordsworth shook hands with him across the table, saying, "I am
proud to know you, Mr. Browning."
Browning's third literary venture was a tragedy, _Strafford_, dedicated
to Macready, at whose request it was written. The drama presents the
impeachment, condemnation, and execution of the Earl of Strafford, a
statesman who, according to the play, loved the unworthy King Charles
the First and sacrificed everything, even to life itself, in his blind
loyalty to a master who treacherously deserted him in the hour of need.
It was a topic to which Browning had already given much thought, for he
had the preceding year completed, from materials supplied by Mr. John
Forster, a _Life of Strafford_ begun by Forster for Lardner's _Eminent
British Statesmen_.[2] The question of the historic truthfulness of the
drama is discussed by the historian Gardiner in the Introduction to Miss
Emily H. Hickey's edition of _Strafford_. He shows that the play is in
its details and "even in the very roots of the situation" untrue to
fact, and yet he maintains that in the chief characters there is
essential truth of conception. "Every time that I read the play," says
Gardiner, "I feel more certain that Browning has seized the real
Strafford ... Charles, too, with his faults, perhaps exaggerated, is
nevertheless the real Charles." The play was produced at Covent Garden
Theater in May, 1837, with Macready as Strafford and Miss Helen Faucit
as Lady Carlisle, and was successful in spite of poor scenery and
costuming and poor acting in some of the parts. But owing to the
financial condition of the theater and the consequent withdrawal of one
of the important actors after the fifth night, the play had but a brief
run. It was presented again in 1886 under the auspices of the Browning
Society, and its power as an acting play "surprised and impressed" the
audience.
Before the composition of _Strafford_ Browning had begun a long poem,
_Sordello_, which he completed after his first visit to Italy in 1838,
and published in 1840. No one of his poems is more difficult to read,
and many are the stories told of the dismay occasioned by its various
perplexities. The effect of this poem on Browning's fame was disastrous.
In fact, after _Sordello_ there began a period, twenty years long, of
almost complete indifference in England to Browning's work. The
enthusiasm over the promise of his early poems died quite away. Late in
life Mr. Browning commented on this period of his literary career as a
time of "prolonged desolateness." Yet the years 1841-1846 are the years
in which he attained his poetic maturity, and years in which he did some
of his best work. During this period he brought out the series somewhat
fancifully called _Bells and Pomegranates_. The phrase itself comes from
_Exodus_ xxviii, 33, 34. As a title Browning explained it to mean
"something like a mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense,
poetry with thought." This cheap serial edition, the separate numbers of
which sold at first at sixpence and later at half a crown, included
_Pippa Passes_, _King Victor and King Charles_, _Dramatic Lyrics_, _The
Return of the Druses_, _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, _Colombe's Birthday_,
_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, _Luria_, and _A Soul's Tragedy_.
All of Browning's plays except _Strafford_ and _In a Balcony_ came out
of this series. The most beautiful of them all, _Pippa Passes_, appeared
in 1841. It is hardly a drama at all in the conventional sense, though
it has one scene, that between Ottima and Sebald, of the highest
dramatic power; but it has always been a favorite with readers. When it
was published Miss Barrett wrote to Mr. Browning that she found it in
her heart to covet the authorship of this poem more than any other of
his works, and he said in answer that he, too, liked _Pippa_ better than
anything else he had yet done. Mr. Sharp, while emphasizing the
undramatic quality of the play, counts it "the most imperishable because
the most nearly immaculate of Browning's dramatic poems." "It seems to
me," he adds, "like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough
for the sinking plummet of the most curious explorer of the depths of
life. It can be read, re-read, learned by heart, and the more it is
known the wider and more alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought
which it discloses. It has, more than any other long composition by its
author, that quality of symmetry, that _symmetria prisca_ recorded of
Leonardo da Vinci in the Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might
be expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called fundamental brain
work, is as luminous, depth within depth, as the morning air....
Everyone who knows Browning at all knows _Pippa Passes_."
Of the seven dramas published in _Bells and Pomegranates_ there is
comparatively little stage history to record. In spite of occasional
fairly successful productions it must be admitted that Browning's plays
have never achieved, probably never will achieve, popularity in the
shape of long runs in many cities.[3] They are too subjective, too
analytic, too psychological, for quick or easy understanding. But to the
reader they offer many delights. The stories are clear, coherent,
interesting; the characters strongly individualized; the crises of
experience stimulating; the interaction of personalities subtly
analyzed; the poetry noble and beautiful.
The two non-dramatic numbers of _Bells and Pomegranates_ were _Dramatic
Lyrics_ (No. 3, 1842) and _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (No. 7, 1845).
The first included such poems as "Cavalier Tunes," "In a Gondola,"
"Porphyria," and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; the second included "How
they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "The Lost Leader," "The
Tomb at St. Praxed's," "The Flight of the Duchess," "The Boy and the
Angel," and the first part of "Saul." These poems, together with the
dramas, make a remarkably rich body of poetry to be produced in the
short space of five years. And the character of the work, its variety
and beauty and strength and originality, were such that its meager and
grudging acceptance seems now inexplicable.
The most important event in the life of Browning during this period was
his acquaintance with Miss Elizabeth Barrett. In 1844 she brought out a
new volume of poems which he saw and greatly admired. He wrote to her
expressing delight in her work and asking permission to call; but Miss
Barrett, owing to long-continued invalidism, had lived in almost entire
seclusion, and she was not at first willing to receive Mr. Browning.
This was in January, 1845, and many letters passed between them before
the first interview in the following May. Mr. Browning's love for Miss
Barrett found almost immediate expression and she was soon conscious of
an equally strong love for him, but for a considerable time she
persistently refused to marry him. To her mind the obstacles were almost
insurmountable. Of these her ill-health was chief. She could not
consent, she said, to dim the prosperities of his career by a union with
her future, which she characterized as a precarious thing, a thing for
making burdens out of--but not for his carrying. In exchange for the
"noble extravagancies" of his love she could bring him only "anxiety and
more sadness than he was born to." This obstacle of ill-health was
unexpectedly modified by a very mild winter and by the new physical
vigor brought in the train of new happiness. From this point of view the
marriage, though hazardous, was practicable by the end of the summer of
1846. A second obstacle lay in the nature and opinions of Miss Barrett's
father, who governed even his grown-up children by "an incredible system
of patriarchal absolutism." By what was variously termed an obliquity of
the will, an eccentricity, a monomania, he had decided that none of his
children should marry, and on this point he demanded "passive
obedience." It was perfectly clear that Miss Barrett could not gain his
consent to her marriage, and so, after long hesitation and much
unhappiness, she decided to marry Mr. Browning without that consent. In
order to save her family and close friends from the blame sure to fall
upon them for the remotest sanction of her marriage, her plans were kept
an absolute secret. She met Mr. Browning at Marylebone Church on
September 12, 1846, and they were married there, Mrs. Browning returning
at once to her own home, where she remained till a week later, when she
started for Italy with her husband. The wedding was then announced.
Throughout her father's life Mrs. Browning endeavored to placate him,
for she devotedly loved him and she had been his favorite child, but in
vain. He would never see her again, he returned her letters unopened,
and he would not allow her to be spoken of in his presence.
After resting a week in Paris Mr. and Mrs. Browning went on to Pisa,
where they remained nearly seven months. The "miracle" of the Pisa life
was Mrs. Browning's gain in health. "You are not _improved_, you are
_transformed_," was Mrs. Jameson's exclamation. It was at Pisa that Mr.
Browning came to know of the sonnets his wife had written during the
progress of their courtship and engagement. In _Critical Kit-Kats_
(1896) Mr. Gosse tells the story as Mr. Browning gave it to him: "One
day, early in 1847, their breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went
upstairs, while her husband stood at the window watching the street till
the table could be cleared. He was presently aware of someone behind
him, although the servant had gone. It was Mrs. Browning who held him by
the shoulder to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time
pushed a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to
read that and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled
again to her room." Mr. Browning felt at once that he had no right to
keep such poetry as a private possession. "I dared not," he said,
"reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since
Shakespeare's." They were accordingly published in 1850, under the
intentionally mystifying title, _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.
The Brownings reached Florence April 20, 1847. After several changes
they were, in May, 1848, established in the home in which they remained
during Mrs. Browning's life. It was a suite of rooms on the second floor
of the Palazzo Guidi. Of the practical side of this early Florentine
life, Mrs. Browning wrote, "My dear brothers have the illusion that
nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how
preposterous it does seem to me! We scarcely spend three hundred, and I
have every luxury I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up,
at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged
itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get
into pecuniary difficulties his sympathies always go with the butchers
and the bakers." In accordance with this horror of owing five shillings
five days, the furnishings of the new home, "the rococo chairs, spring
sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the rest," were
accumulated at a pace dictated by the bank account, but for all that it
was not long before the rooms began to take on an aspect as beautiful as
it was homelike.
By preference the Brownings lived very quietly. At the end of fifteen
months Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has not been out an evening of the
fifteen months; but what with music and books and writing and talking,
we scarcely know how the days go, it's such a gallop on the grass."
March 9, 1849, was born Wiedemann, later known as "Penini" or "Pen"
Browning. Coincident with this joy was the grief caused by the death of
Browning's mother, a sorrow from which he rallied but slowly. The
Florentine life was occasionally varied by summers at Bagni di Lucca,
winters in Paris or Rome, and several visits to England. There was also
an increasing social life. Americans were especially welcome to the
Brownings because, while England was still indifferent to Browning's
work, America had given it an appreciative welcome. In March, 1861, Mrs.
Browning wrote, "I don't complain for myself of an unappreciative
public. _I have no reason_. But just for _that_ reason I complain more
about Robert.... In America he is a power, a writer, a poet--he is read,
he lives in the hearts of the people."[4]
Among the Americans associated with the Brownings for longer or shorter
periods during their life in Florence were two distinguished women,
Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1847, George
William Curtis spent two days with the Brownings at Vallombrosa, a visit
later described in his _Easy Chair_. Mr. Field, who had brought out the
American reprint of the two-volume edition of Browning's poems in 1849,
was a guest at Casa Guidi in 1852. Charles Sumner writes of "delicious
Tuscan evenings" with the Brownings and the Storys in 1859. Mr.
Browning's interests in art led to friendships with American artists,
among whom were Mr. Page, who painted a successful portrait of Browning;
Miss Harriet Hosmer, to whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning finally consented to
sit for the "Clasped Hands"; and Hiram Powers. The dearest American
friends were, however, Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Story.
Music and art were among Browning's chief delights in Florence. George
William Curtis in describing the trip to Vallombrosa says that it was
part of their pleasure to sit in the dusky convent chapel while Browning
at the organ "chased a fugue of Master Hughes of Saxe Gotha, or dreamed
out upon twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi's." Modeling
in clay was even more satisfying as a personal resource. In the autumn
of 1860 Mrs. Browning wrote, "Robert has taken to modeling under Mr.
Story (at his studio) and is making extraordinary progress, turning to
account his studies in anatomy. He has copied already two busts, the
young Augustus and the Psyche, and is engaged on another, enchanted with
his new trade, working six hours a day." Some months later she added,
"The modeling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he
has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has
exulted and been happy--'_no, nothing ever made him so happy before_.'"
He found, also, an unfailing pleasure in the study of great pictures.
And he was a buyer of pictures with a collector's delight in hunting out
the work of the unappreciated early Tuscan artists. Mrs. Orr says that
he owned at least one picture by each of the obscure artists mentioned
in "Old Pictures in Florence."
Mrs. Browning sometimes expressed regret that Browning should give
himself so unreservedly in so many directions, because she felt that he
had thus too little time and energy left for poetry. Her fear was not
without justification, for after the richly productive period from 1841
to 1846, we come upon a space of nine years the only publications of
which are, in 1850, _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, a long poem in two
parts giving the arguments in favor of Christianity; and, in 1852, an
introduction to a collection of letters then supposed to be by Shelley,
but since found to be spurious. The essay is nevertheless of importance
as an exposition of Browning's theory of poetry, and as an interesting
study of Shelley.
In 1855, at the close of this period of nine years, there appeared a
collection of fifty-one poems entitled _Men and Women_. In "fundamental
brain power," insight, beauty, and mastery of style, these poems show
Browning at the highest level of his poetic achievement. It is in these
remarkable poems that he brought to perfection a poetic form which he
practically invented, the dramatic monologue, a form in which there is
but one speaker but which is essentially dramatic in effect. The
dramatic quality arises partly from the implied presence of listeners
whose expressions of assent or dissent determine the progress or the
abrupt changes of direction of the speaker's words. In "Andrea del
Sarto," for example, Lucrezia's smiles and frowns and gestures of
impatience are a constant influence, and the poem presents as vivid an
interplay of personalities as any scene in a drama. But the implied
listener is hardly more than a secondary dramatic element, the chief one
being that the speaker talks, as do the characters in a play, out of the
demands of the immediate experience, gradually and casually disclosing
all the tangled web of influence, all the clashes of will with destiny,
of desire with convention, that have led to the crisis depicted. Fra
Lippo Lippi gives no consecutive history of his life, only such snatches
of it as partially account for his present mad freak, but the strife
between his own nature and instinct on the one hand and the conventions
and traditions of religious art on the other could hardly be more
vividly presented. _In a Balcony_, the one drama in _Men and Women_, has
but a fragment of a plot, but in intensity, reality, and passion it
excels most of Browning's dramas, and, in spite of its long speeches,
has proved effective on the stage.[5] In variety of theme,
subject-matter, and verse-form, the poems of _Men and Women_ defy
classification. Whatever page one turns, there is something novel,
stimulating, captivating. All of Browning's Florentine interests are
represented here--his love of old pictures and little-known music, his
delight in Florence, Venice, Rome, in all Italy, her skies and her
landscapes, the vagrants of her streets, her religious ceremonies, her
church dignitaries, her scholars. Then there are love-poems in all
tones and tempers, the noblest of them all, "One Word More," being
Browning's most direct and personal tribute to his wife. And we see in
its keenest form his intellectual delight in subtle disquisition. The
doctrine of immortality as it appeals to the mind of the cultured,
dissatisfied pagan Cleon; the miracle of Lazarus as it is brooded over
by the Arab physician Karshish; the balancing of faith and doubt in the
clever casuistry of Bishop Blougram--these are topics to Browning's
taste and are treated with skill and mastery. Taken all in all these
poems give to the reader a full impression of Browning's characteristic
force, the darting, penetrating power of his phrase, the rush and energy
and leap of his thought. It is by _Men and Women_, the somewhat similar
_Dramatis Personæ_, and the earlier _Dramatic Lyrics_ and _Dramatic
Romances_, that Browning is most widely and most favorably known.
During the first ten years that the Brownings were in Florence Mrs.
Browning's health was so good that she was able to enjoy social and
outdoor pleasures to a degree that would have been thought impossible
before her marriage. She had also kept up her literary work. A new
edition of her poems appeared in 1849; in 1851 she published _Casa Guidi
Windows_, poems illustrative of her ardent interest in all that
pertained to the fight for Italian freedom; and in 1856 her long-planned
verse novel _Aurora Leigh_ was completed and published. But soon after
this her strength began insensibly to fail and during the last three
years of her life she suffered much from repeated bronchial attacks.
However, her death, in June, 1861, was entirely unexpected. The
Florentines had loved her deeply and had appreciated her utterances in
behalf of a free Italy. She was, accordingly, buried in Florence, with
"extraordinary demonstrations of respect," and the house where she had
lived was marked by the municipality with a commemorative tablet.
Browning's wish was to leave Florence at once and to make the new life
as unlike the old as possible. He went to London, and after some delay
established himself in a house at Warwick Crescent, where he lived till
1887. The first portion of his life in England was one of "unbearable
loneliness." He took care of his son, busied himself with a new edition
of his wife's poems, read and studied and wrote with feverish intensity,
and avoided people. But with the spring of 1863, says Mr. Gosse, "a
great change came over Browning's habits. He had shunned all invitations
into society, but ... it suddenly occurred to him that this mode of life
was morbid and unworthy," and thereupon he entered into the social,
literary, musical, and artistic life of London.
The nine years following 1855 were again a period of small productivity.
_Dramatis Personæ_ was a slender volume to represent so many years, even
though it contained such great poems as "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "A Death in
the Desert," and "Abt Vogler." But during this period a long poem, _The
Ring and the Book_, had been maturing. In 1860, while still at Casa
Guidi, Browning had found at a book-stall the now famous "square old
yellow Book," containing the legal record of a famous Roman murder case.
He read the account on the way home, and before night had so mastered
the details that, as he paced up and down on the terrace in the
darkness, he saw the tragedy unfold before him in picture after picture.
It was not, however, till 1864 that he definitely set to work on the
composition of the poem. It was published in four volumes of three parts
each, in the winter and spring of 1868-9. The poem has a novel
structure. The story is retold ten times by different persons and with
such variations of fact and opinions and style as are dictated by the
knowledge and the character of the speaker. The monologues of Count
Guido, who murdered his wife, of Pompilia the young wife, of Caponsacchi
the "soldier saint" who endeavored to save her, and of the old Pope, are
by far the most interesting portions of the poem, but the whole of it is
remarkable, and it justly takes rank as one of England's greatest poems.
With the appearance of this book Browning's genius received adequate
recognition in high places. _The Athenæum_ called it "the _opus magnum_
of the generation, not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic
achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual
treasure that England has possessed since the days of Shakespeare."
The last ten or twelve years of Browning's life were so crowded with
interests, occupations, publications, friends, honors, that not even a
summary of them can be undertaken here. Mr. Sharp says of this period:
"Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he did his best to gratify
Everybody. He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself
acquainted with the leading contents of the journals and magazines;
conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian
books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Æschylus; knew all the
gossip of the literary clubs, the salons, and the studios; was a
frequenter of afternoon tea parties; and then, over and above it, he was
Browning--the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in
poetry since Shakespeare."
Mr. Henry James in commenting on Browning's rich and ample London period
with "its felicities and prosperities of every sort," says that in
contemplating "the wonderful Browning ... the accomplished, saturated,
sane, sound man of the London world and the world of culture," it was
impossible not to believe that "he had arrived somehow, for his own deep
purposes, at the enjoyment of a double identity," so dissociated were
the poet and the "member of society." Phillips Brooks, who met Browning
in England in 1865-6, was impressed by his fullness of life and said he
was "very like some of the best of Thackeray's London men." In public
and on ordinary social occasions Browning is said to have been frank,
charming, friendly--"more agreeable," Mary Anderson said, "than
distinguished." With intimate friends, however, the poet had quite
another sort of charm. "To a single listener," says Mr. Gosse, with whom
he was on familiar terms, "the Browning of his own study was to the
Browning of a dinner party as a tiger cat is to a domestic cat. In such
conversation his natural strength came out. His talk assumed the volume
and the tumult of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to a
whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational melody. Those whom
he was expecting will never forget his welcome, the loud trumpet-note
from the other end of the passage, the talk already in full flood at a
distance of twenty feet. Then, in his own study or drawing-room, what he
loved was to capture his visitor in a low armchair's 'sofa-lap of
leather,' and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk
around the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving
magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now groveling on
the floor to find some reference in a folio, talking all the while, a
redundant turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences flowing from
those generous lips."
Elsewhere Mr. Gosse summed up his personal impressions of Mr. Browning,
as follows:
"I am bound to tell you that I saw a different Browning from the hero
of all the handbooks and 'gospels' which are now in vogue. People are
beginning to treat this vehement and honest poet as if he were a sort of
Marcus Aurelius and John the Baptist rolled into one. I have just seen a
book in which it is proposed that Browning should supersede the Bible,
in which it is asserted that a set of his volumes will teach religion
better than all the theologies in the world. Well, I did not know that
holy monster.... What I saw was an unostentatious, keen, active man of
the world, one who never failed to give good practical advice in matters
of business and conduct, one who loved his friends and certainly hated
his enemies; a man alive in every eager passionate nerve of him; a man
who loved to discuss people and affairs, and a bit of a gossip; a bit of
a partisan, too, and not without his humorous prejudices. He was simple
to a high degree, simple in his scrupulous dress, his loud, happy voice,
his insatiable curiosity."
Browning's London life was varied by many summer journeyings to French
sea-coast towns, to Wales, and to Scotland. But it was seventeen years
after the death of his wife before he could bring himself to revisit
Italy. Even then he avoided Florence. He took his sister to Northern
Italy; and Asolo and Venice became the towns around which their
affections centered. Two American friends, Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, and
Mrs. Arthur Bronson,[6] contributed to the happiness of these Italian
sojourns. In 1888 Browning's son, who had married an American girl,
bought the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice, so that Browning had an
additional personal reason for his trip to Venice in 1889. He was well,
and he took great pleasure in his son's admirably planned restoration of
the old Venetian palace. He worked, walked, talked with nearly normal
vigor. But a bronchial attack proved more than his weakened heart could
withstand, and he died peacefully, almost painlessly, in his son's home
on December 12, 1889. On the day of his death his last book, _Asolando_,
was published, so that his brave-hearted "Epilogue" was really his
valediction to this and his heroic greeting to another world. He could
"greet the unseen with a cheer," because in thought and act he was
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey on the last day of the year.
The most pathetic element of the imposing ceremonies was the singing of
Mrs. Browning's poem, "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep."