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.