"Cristina." (Love as the special gain of life.) "Dramatic
Lyrics." 1842.
"Evelyn Hope." (Love as conquering Time.) "Dramatic Lyrics."
Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"Love among the Ruins." (Love as the one lasting reality.)
"Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"A Lover's Quarrel." (Love as the great harmony which triumphs
over smaller discords.) "Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men
and Women." 1855.
"By the Fireside." (Love in its ideal maturity.) "Dramatic
Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"Any Wife to any Husband." (Love in its ideal of constancy.)
"Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"Two in the Campagna." (Love as an unsatisfied yearning.)
"Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"Love in a Life." (Love as indomitable purpose.) "Dramatic
Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"Life in a Love." (Love as indomitable purpose.) "Dramatic
Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"The Lost Mistress." (Love as the completeness of
self-surrender.) "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.
"A Woman's last Word." (Love as the completeness of
self-surrender.) "Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.
"A Serenade at the Villa." (Love as the completeness of
self-surrender.) "Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.
"One Way of Love." (Love as the completeness of
self-surrender.) "Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.
"Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli." (Love as the completeness of
self-surrender.) "Men and Women." Published in "Dramatic
Lyrics." 1842.
"In Three Days." (Love as the intensity of expectant hope.)
"Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.
"In a Gondola." (Love as the intensity of a precarious joy.)
"Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.
"Porphyria's Lover." (Love as the tyranny of spiritual
appropriation.) "Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic
Lyrics." 1842.
"James Lee's Wife." (Love as saddened by the presentiment and
the consciousness of change.) "Dramatis Personæ." 1864
"The Worst of it." (Love as the completeness of
self-effacement.) "Dramatis Personnæ." 1864.
"Too Late." (Love as the sense of a loss which death has
rendered irrevocable.) "Dramatis Personæ." 1864.
The two first of these are inspired by the belief in the distinctness
and continuity of the soul's life; and represent love as a condition of
the soul with which positive experience has very little to do; but in
all the others it is treated as part of this experience, and subject for
the time being to its laws. The situation sketched--for it is nothing
more--in "CRISTINA" is that of a man and woman whom a glance has united,
and who both have recognized in this union the predestined object of
their life. The knowledge has only flashed on the woman's mind, to be
extinguished by worldly ambitions and worldly honours; and for her,
therefore, the union remains barren. But the existence of the man is
enriched and perfected by it. She has spiritually lost him, but _he_ has
gained _her_; for though she has drifted away from him, he retains her
soul. (This poetical paradox is the strong point of the poem.) It is
henceforth his mission to test their blended powers; and when that has
been accomplished, he will have done, he says, with this world.
"EVELYN HOPE" is the utterance of a love which has missed its fruition
in this life, but confidently anticipates it for a life to come. The
beloved is a young girl. The lover is three times her age, and was a
stranger to her; she is lying dead. But God, he is convinced, creates
love to reward love: and no matter what worlds must be traversed, what
lives lived, what knowledge gained or lost, before that moment is
reached, Evelyn Hope will, in the end, be given to him.
"LOVE AMONG THE RUINS" depicts a pastoral solitude in which are buried
the remains of an ancient city, fabulous in magnificence and in
strength. A ruined turret marks the site of a mighty tower, from which
the king of that city overlooked his domains, or, with his court,
watched the racing chariots as they encircled it in their course. In
that turret, in the evening grey, amidst the tinkling of the sheep, a
yellow-haired maiden is waiting for him she loves; and as they bury
sight and speech in each other's arms, he bids the human heart shut in
the centuries, with their triumphs and their follies, their glories and
their sins, for "Love is best."
"A LOVER'S QUARREL" describes, not the quarrel itself, but the
impression it leaves on him who has unwittingly provoked it: one of
amazement as well as sorrow, that such a thing could have occurred. The
speaker, apostrophizing his absent love, reminds her how happy they have
been together, with no society but their own; no pleasures but those of
sympathy; no amusements but those which their common fancy supplied; and
he asks her if it be possible that so perfect a union can be destroyed
by a hasty word with which his deeper self has had nothing to do. He
believes this so little that he is sure she will, in some way, come back
to him; and then they will part no more.
A vein of playfulness runs through this monologue, which represents the
lovers before their quarrel as more like children enjoying a long
holiday, than a man and a woman sharing the responsibilities of life. It
conveys, nevertheless, a truth deeply rooted in the author's mind: that
the foundation of a real love can never be shaken.
"BY THE FIRESIDE" is a retrospect, in which the speaker is carried from
middle-age to youth, and from his, probably English, fireside to the
little Alpine gorge in which he confessed his love; and he summons the
wife who received and sanctioned the avowal to share with him the joy of
its remembrance. He describes the scene of his declaration, the
conflict of feeling which its risks involved, the generous frankness
with which she cut the conflict short. He dwells on the blessings which
their union has brought to him, and which make his youth seem barren by
the richness of his maturer years; and he asks her if there exist
another woman, with whom he could thus have retraced the descending path
of life, and found nothing to regret in what he had left behind. He
declares that their mutual love has been for him that crisis in the life
of the soul to which all experience tends--the predestined test of its
quality. It is his title to honour as well as his guarantee of
everlasting joy.
The subtler realities of life and love are reflected throughout the poem
in picturesque impressions often no less subtle, and the whole is
dramatic, i.e., imaginary, as far as conception goes; but the obvious
genuineness of the sentiment is confirmed by the allusion to the
"perfect wife" who,
"Reading by firelight, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it," (vol. vi. p. 132.)
is known to all of us.
"ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND" might be the lament of any woman about to die,
who believes that her husband will remain true to her in heart, but will
lack courage to be so in his life. She anticipates the excuses he will
offer for seeking temporary solace in the society of other women; but
these all, to her mind, resolve themselves into a confession of
weakness; and it grieves her that such a confession should proceed from
one, in all other respects, so much stronger than she. "Were she the
survivor, it would be so easy to her to be faithful to the end!" Her
grief is unselfish. The wrong she apprehends will be done to his
spiritual dignity far more than to his love for her, though with a touch
of feminine inconsistency she identifies the two; and she cannot resign
herself to the idea that he whose earthly trial is "three parts"
overcome will break down under this final test. She accepts it, however,
as the inevitable.
"TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA." The sentiment of this poem can only be rendered
in its concluding words:
"Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn." (vol. vi. p. 153.)
For its pain is that of a heart both restless and weary: ever seeking to
grasp the Infinite in the finite, and ever eluded by it. The sufferer is
a man. He longs to rest in the affection of a woman who loves him, and
whom he also loves; but whenever their union seems complete, his soul is
spirited away, and he is adrift again. He asks the meaning of it
all--where the fault lies, if fault there be; he begs her to help him to
discover it. The Campagna is around them, with its "endless fleece of
feathery grasses," its "everlasting wash of air;" its wide suggestions
of passion and of peace. The clue to the enigma seems to glance across
him, in the form of a gossamer thread. He traces it from point to point,
by the objects on which it rests. But just as he calls his love to help
him to hold it fast, it breaks off, and floats into the invisible. His
doom is endless change. The tired, tantalized spirit must accept it.
"LOVE IN A LIFE" represents the lover as inhabiting the same house with
his unseen love; and pursuing her in it ceaselessly from room to room,
always catching the flutter of her retreating presence, always sure that
the next moment he will overtake her.
"LIFE IN A LOVE" might be the utterance of the same person, when he has
grasped the fact that the loved one is determined to elude him. She may
baffle his pursuit, but he will never desist from it, though it absorb
his whole life.
"THE LOST MISTRESS" is the farewell expression of a discarded love which
has accepted the conditions of friendship. Its tone is full of manly
self-restraint and of patient sadness.
"A WOMAN'S LAST WORD" is one of moral and intellectual self-surrender.
She has been contending with her husband, and been silenced by the
feeling, not that the truth is on his side, but that it was not worth
the pain of such a contention. What, she seems to ask herself, is the
value of truth, when it is false to her Divinity; or knowledge, when it
costs her her Eden? She begs him whom she worships as well as loves, to
mould her to himself; but she begs also the privilege of a few tears--a
last tribute, perhaps, to her sacrificed conscience, and her lost
liberty.
"A SERENADE AT THE VILLA" has a tinge of melancholy humour, which makes
it the more pathetic. A lover has been serenading the lady of his
affections through a sultry night, in which Earth seemed to turn
painfully in her sleep, and the silent darkness was unbroken, except by
an occasional flash of lightning, and a few drops of thundery rain. He
wishes his music may have told her that whenever life is dark or
difficult there will be one near to help and guide her: one whose
patience will never tire, and who will serve her best when there are
none to witness his devotion. But her villa looks very dark; its closed
windows are very obdurate. The gate ground its teeth as it let him pass.
And he fears she only said to herself, that if the silence of a thundery
night was oppressive, such noise was a worse infliction.
"ONE WAY OF LOVE." This lover has strewn the roses of a month's
gathering on his lady's path, only for the chance of her seeing them: as
he has conquered the difficulties of the lute, only for the chance of
her liking its sound; thrown his whole life into a love, which is hers
to accept or reject. She cares for none of these things. So the roses
may lie, the lute-string break. The lover can still say, "Blest is he
who wins her."
"RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI" is a pathetic declaration, in which the
lover compares himself to a sunflower, and proclaims it as his badge.
The French poet Rudel loves the "Lady of Tripoli;"[69] and she is dear
to him as is the sun to that foolish flower, which by constant
contemplation has grown into its very resemblance. And he bids a pilgrim
tell her that, as bees bask on the sunflower, men are attracted by his
song; but, as the sunflower looks ever towards the sun, so does he,
disregarding men's applause, look towards the East, and her.
"IN THREE DAYS" is a note of joyful expectation, and doubtless a pure
lyric, though classed as dramatic-lyrical. The lover will see his love
in three days; and his complex sense of the delay, as meaning both _all_
this time, and _only_ this, is leavened by the joyful consciousness that
the reunion will be as absolute as the union has been. He knows that
life is full of chance and change. The possibilities of three days are a
great deal to encounter, very little to have escaped. Unsuspected
dangers may lurk in the coming year. But--he will see her in three days;
and in that thought he can laugh all misgiving and all fear to scorn.
"IN A GONDOLA" is a love scene, beginning with a serenade from a
gondola, and continued by the two lovers in it, after the Venetian
fashion of the olden time. They are escaping, as they think, the
vigilance of a certain "Three"--one of whom we may conjecture to be the
lady's husband or father--and have already regained her home, and fixed
the signal for to-morrow's meeting, when the lover is surprised and
stabbed. As they glide through the canals of the city, by its dark or
illuminated palaces, each concealing perhaps some drama of love or
crime--the sense of danger never absent from them,--the tense emotion
relieves itself in playful though impassioned fancies, in which the man
and the woman vie with each other. But when the blow has fallen, the
light tone gives way, on the lover's side, to one of solemn joy in the
happiness which has been realized.
"... The Three, I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived: but I
Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss)--can die!"
(vol. v. p. 77.)
"PORPHYRIA'S LOVER" is an episode which, with one of the poems of "Men
and Women," "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," first appeared under the
head of "Madhouse Cells."[70] Porphyria is deeply attached to her
"lover," but has not courage to break the ties of an artificial world,
and give herself to him; and when one night love prevails, and she
proves it by a voluntary act of devotion, he murders her in the act,
that her nobler and purer self may be preserved. Such a crime might be
committed in a momentary aberration, or even intense excitement, of
feeling. It is characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which
is its sign of madness. The distinction, however, is subtle; and we can
easily guess why this and its companion poem did not retain their
title. A madness which is fit for dramatic treatment is not sufficiently
removed from sanity.
"JAMES LEE'S WIFE" is the study of a female character developed by
circumstances, and also impressing itself on them; the circumstances
being those of an unfortunate marriage, in which the love has been
mutual, but the constancy is all on the woman's side. "James Lee" is (as
we understand) a man of shallow nature, whose wife's earnestness repels
him when its novelty has ceased to charm. The "Wife" is keenly alive to
his change of feeling towards her: and even anticipates it, in
melancholy forebodings which probably hasten its course.