Dramatic Monologues in not being addressed to a listener; but the
difference is more apparent than real; for the other person is in
plain view all the time, and the Soliloquy would have no point were
it not for the peaceful activities of Friar Lawrence. This poem,
while it deals ostensibly with the lives of only two monks, gives us
a glimpse into the whole monastic system. When a number of men
retired into a monastery and shut out the world forever, certain
sins and ambitions were annihilated, while others were enormously
magnified. All outside interests vanished; but sin remained, for it
circulates in the human heart as naturally as blood in the body. The
cloister was simply a little world, with the nobleness and meanness
of human nature exceedingly conspicuous. When the men were once
enclosed in the cloister walls, they knew that they must live in
that circumscribed spot till the separation of death. Naturally
therefore political ambitions, affections, envies, jealousies, would
be writ large; human nature would display itself in a manner most
interesting to a student, if only he could live there in a detached
way. This is just what Browning tries to do; he tries to live
imaginatively with the monks, and to practise his profession as the
Chronicler of Life.
The only way to realise what the monastic life really meant would be
to imagine a small modern college situated in the country, and the
passage of a decree that not a single student should leave the
college grounds until his body was committed to the tomb. The
outside interests of the world would quickly grow dim and eventually
vanish; and everything would be concentrated within the community. I
suppose that the passions of friendship, hatred, and jealousy would
be prodigiously magnified. There must have been friendships among
the monks of the middle ages compared to which our boasted college
friendships are thin and pale; and there must have been frightful
hatreds and jealousies. In all communities there are certain persons
that get on the nerves of certain others; the only way to avoid this
acute suffering is to avoid meeting the person who causes it. But
imagine a cloister where dwells a. man you simply can not endure:
every word he says, every motion he makes, every single mannerism of
walk and speech is intolerable. Now you must live with this man
until one of you dies: you must sit opposite to him at meals, you
can not escape constant contact. Your only resource is profane
soliloquies: but if you have a sufficiently ugly disposition, you
can revenge yourself upon him in a thousand secret ways.
Friar Lawrence unconsciously and innocently fans the flames of
hatred in our speaker's heart, simply because he does not dream of
the effect he produces. Every time he talks at table about the
weather, the cork-crop, Latin names, and other trivialities, the man
sitting opposite to him would like to dash his plate in his face:
every time Friar Lawrence potters around among his roses, the other
looking down from his window, with a face distorted with hate, would
like to kill him with a glance. Poor Lawrence drives our soliloquist
mad with his deliberate table manners, with his deliberate method of
speech, with his care about his own goblet and spoon. And all the
time Lawrence believes that his enemy loves him!
From another point of view, this poem resembles _My Last Duchess_ in
that it is a revelation of the speaker's heart. We know nothing
about Friar Lawrence except what his deadly enemy tells us; but it
is quite clear that Lawrence is a dear old man, innocent as a child;
while the speaker, simply in giving his testimony against him,
reveals a heart jealous, malicious, lustful; he is like a thoroughly
bad boy at school, with a pornographic book carefully concealed.
Just at the moment when his rage and hatred reach a climax, the
vesper bell sounds; and the speaker, who is an intensely strict
formalist and ritualist, presents to us an amusing spectacle; for
out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.
SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER
1842
I
Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
II
At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi_! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare me hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley_?"
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
III
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
IV
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
--Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
V
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp--
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.
VI
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
VII
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
VIII
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
IX
Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Him_ ...
'St, there's Vespers! _Plena gratiâ
Ave, Virgo_! Gr-r-r--you swine!
Everybody loves Browning's _Ghent to Aix_ poem. Even those who can
not abide the poet make an exception here; and your thorough-going
Browningite never outgrows this piece. It is the greatest horseback
poem in the literature of the world: compared to this, _Paul
Revere's Ride_ is the amble of a splayfooted nag. It sounds as
though it had been written in the saddle: but it was really composed
during a hot day on the deck of a vessel in the Mediterranean, and
written off on the flyleaf of a printed book that the poet held in
his hand. Poets are always most present with the distant, as Mrs.
Browning said; and Browning, while at sea, thought with irresistible
longing of his good horse eating his head off in the stable at home.
Everything about this poem is imaginary; there never had been any
such good news brought, and it is probable that no horse could cover
the distance in that time.
But the magnificent gallop of the verse: the change from moonset to
sunrise: the scenery rushing by: the splendid spirit of horse and man:
and the almost insane joy of the rider as he enters Aix--these are
more true than history itself. Browning is one of our greatest poets
of motion--whether it be the glide of a gondola, the swift running
of the Marathon professional Pheidippides, the steady advance of the
galleys over the sea in _Paracelsus_, the sharp staccato strokes of
the horse's hoofs through the Metidja, or the swinging stride of the
students as they carry the dead grammarian up the mountain. Not only
do the words themselves express the sound of movement; but the
thought, in all these great poems of motion, travels steadily and
naturally with the advance. It is interesting to compare a
madly-rushing poem like _Ghent to Aix_ with the absolute calm of
_Andrea del Sarto_. It gives one an appreciation of Browning's
purely technical skill.
No one has ever, so far as I know, criticised _Ghent to Aix_
adversely except Owen Wister's Virginian; and his strictures are
hypercritical. As Roland threw his head back fiercely to scatter the
spume-flakes, it would be easy enough for the rider to see the
eye-sockets and the bloodfull nostrils. Every one has noticed how a
horse will do the ear-shift, putting one ear forward and one back at
the same moment. Browning has an imaginative reason for it. One ear
is pushed forward to listen for danger ahead; the other bent back,
to catch his master's voice. Was there ever a greater study in
passionate cooperation between man and beast than this splendid poem?
"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX"
1845
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit
'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"
"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
And all I remember is--friends flocking round
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
The monologue of the dying Bishop is as great a masterpiece as
_My Last Duchess_; it has not a superfluous word, and in only a
few lines gives us the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. Ruskin
said that Browning is "unerring in every sentence he writes about
the Middle Ages, always vital, right, and profound." He added,
"I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which
there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit."
Yet Browning had never seen Rome until a few months before this poem
was published. It is an example, not of careful study, but of the
inexplicable divination of genius. Browning permits a delirious old
Bishop to talk a few lines, and a whole period of history is written.
The church of Saint Prassede is in a dirty little alley in Rome,
hard by the great church of Saint Maria Maggiore. You push through
the group of filthy, importunate beggars, open a leather door, and
you drop from the twentieth to the sixteenth century. It is one of
the most ornate churches in Rome; the mosaic angels in the choir are
precisely as the poet describes them. The tomb of the imaginary
Gandolf may be identified with a Bishop's tomb on the south side of
the church, and the Latin inscription under it, while it does not
contain the form "elucescebat," is not pure Tully, but rather
belongs to the Latin of Ulpian's time. The recumbent figure is in
exact accord with the description by Browning.
Skeptics are essential to the welfare of the Church; it is only in
periods of sharp, skilful hostility that the Church becomes pure. In
the Middle Ages, when it ran riot with power, there were plenty of
churchmen as corrupt as our dying man. His love for a Greek
manuscript is as sensual as his love for his mistress; and having
lived a life of physical delight, it is natural that his last
thoughts should concern themselves with the abode of his body rather
than with the destination of his soul. Of course his mind is
wandering, or he would not speak with quite such shameless cynicism.
Browning has made him talk of Saint Praxed at _his_ sermon on the
mount, in order to prove the delirium. S. Praxed was a female saint.
The constant confusion of Greek mythology with the ritual of the
Christian church is a characteristic feature both of this poem and
of the period of history it represents.
Kipling is particularly fond of this work, and it will be remembered
what use he makes of it in _Stalky and Co_.
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH
ROME, 15--
1845
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews--sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well--
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
--Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
--Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my church
--What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! ...
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of _lapis lazuli_,
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ...
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father's globe on both his hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black--
'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables ... but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then!
Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world--
And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
--That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line--
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
--Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All _lapis_, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone--
Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through--
And no more _lapis_ to delight the world!
Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
--Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers--
Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!
Browning gives us a terrible study of jealousy in _The Laboratory_.
The chemist says nothing, but the contrast between the placid face
of the old scientist, intent only upon his work, and the wildly
passionate countenance of the little woman with him, is sufficiently
impressive. Those were the days when murder was a fine art. She
plans the public death of the woman she hates so that the lover will
never be able to forget the dying face. Radiant in queenly beauty,
with the smile of satisfaction that accompanies the inner assurance
of beauty and power--in a moment she will be convulsively rolling on
the floor, her swollen face purplish-black with the poison, her
mouth emitting foam like a mad dog. There is no doubt that the
little murderess intends to follow her rival to the tomb. She has
given the chemist her entire fortune as pay for the drop of poison;
he may kiss her, if he likes! All shame, all womanly reserve are gone:
what does anything matter now? It is a true study of jealousy,
because the little creature does not dream of attacking the _man_
who deserted her; all her hellish energy is directed against the
woman. Indeed the poison that she buys will not transform her rival
more completely than the dreadful poison of jealousy has already
transformed her from what she was to what she is.
The language and metre fit the thought. Tennyson passed a severe
judgment on the first line
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly
saying that it lacked smoothness, that it was a very difficult
mouthful. But is this not intentional and absolutely right? The
woman is speaking slowly with compressed lips, her voice convulsed
with terrible hatred and the terrible resolution for revenge.
THE LABORATORY
ANCIEN REGIME
1844
I
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy--
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
II
He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them!--I am here.
III
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,--I am not in haste!
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.
IV
That in the mortar--you call it a gum?
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
Sure to taste sweetly,--is that poison too?
V
Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!
VI
Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give,
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!
VII
Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim!
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!
VIII
What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me!
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes,--say, "no!"
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.
IX
For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!
X
Not that I bid you spare her the pain;
Let death be felt and the proof remain:
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace--
He is sure to remember her dying face!
XI
Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee!
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?
XII
Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it--next moment I dance at the King's!