"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr." ("Dramatic Lyrics."
1842.)
"Meeting at Night." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Night"
in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"Parting at Morning." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as
"Morning" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.")
"The Patriot. An old Story." ("Dramatic Romances." Published
in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Instans Tyrannus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men
and Women." 1855.)
"Mesmerism." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)
"Time's Revenges." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"The Italian in England." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as
"Italy in England" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"Protus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)
"Apparent Failure." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)
"Waring." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic
Lyrics." 1842.) This poem is a personal effusion of feeling
and reminiscence, which can stand for nothing but itself.
_First Group._
"THE LOST LEADER" is a lament over the defection of a loved and honoured
chief. It breathes a tender regret for the moral injury he has inflicted
on himself; and a high courage, saddened by the thought of lost support
and lost illusions, but not shaken by it. The language of the poem shows
the lost "leader" to have been a poet. It was suggested by Wordsworth,
in his abandonment (with Southey and others) of the liberal cause.
"NATIONALITY IN DRINKS." A fantastic little comment on the distinctive
national drinks--Claret, Tokay, and Beer. The beer is being drunk off
Cape Trafalgar to the health of Nelson, and introduces an authentic and
appropriate anecdote of him. But the laughing little claret flask, which
the speaker has on another occasion seen plunged for cooling into a
black-faced pond, suggests to him the image of a "gay French lady,"
dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while
the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength,
seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting
and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at
once if the occasion requires.
"THE FLOWER'S NAME. Garden Fancies," I. A lover's reminiscence of a
garden in which he and his lady-love have walked together, and of a
flower which she has consecrated by her touch and voice: its dreamy
Spanish name, which she has breathed upon it, becoming part of the
charm.
"EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES." A sad and subtle little satire on the vaunted
permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The
words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records
how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is
quenched in winter's snow.
"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA." An utterance of patriotic pride and
gratitude, aroused in the mind of an Englishman, by the sudden
appearance of Trafalgar in the blood-red glow of the southern setting
sun.
"MY STAR" may be taken as a tribute to the personal element in love: the
bright peculiar light in which the sympathetic soul reveals itself to
the object of its sympathy.
"MISCONCEPTIONS" illustrates the false hopes which may be aroused in the
breast of any devoted creature by an incidental and momentary acceptance
of its devotion.
"A PRETTY WOMAN" is the picture of a simple, compliant, exquisitely
pretty, and hopelessly shallow woman: incapable of love, though a mere
nothing will win her liking. And the question is raised, whether such a
creature is not perfect in itself, and would not be marred by any
attempt to improve it, or extract from it a different use. The author
decides in the affirmative. A rose is best "graced," not by reproducing
its petals in precious stones for a king to preserve; not by plucking it
to "smell, kiss, wear," and throw away; but by simply leaving it where
it grows. A "pretty" woman is most appropriately treated when nothing is
asked of her, but to be so.
"IN A YEAR" is a wondering and sorrowful little comment on a man's
shallowness and inconstancy.
"WOMEN AND ROSES" is the impression of a dream, and both vague and
vivid, as such impressions are. The author _dreams_ of a "red
rose-tree," with three roses upon it: one withered, the second
full-blown, the third still in the bud; and, floating round each, a
generation of women: those famed in the past; the loved and loving of
the present; the "beauties yet unborn." He casts his passion at the feet
of the dead; but they float past him unmoved. He enfolds in it the
glowing forms of the living; but these also elude him. He pours it into
the budding life, which may thus respond to his own; but the procession
of maidens drifts past him too. They all circle unceasingly round their
own rose.
"BEFORE" and "AFTER" are companion poems, which show how differently an
act may present itself in prospect and in remembrance, whether regarded
in its abstract justification, or in its actual results. The question is
that of a duel; and "BEFORE" is the utterance of a third person to whom
the propriety of fighting it seems beyond a doubt. "A great wrong has
been done. The wronged man, who is also the better one, is bound to
assert himself in defence of the right. If he is killed, he will have
gained his heaven. For his slayer, hell will have begun: for he will
feel the impending judgment, in the earth which still offers its fruits;
in the sky, which makes no sign; in the leopard-like conscience[96]
which leers in mock obeisance at his side, ready to spring on him
whenever the moment comes. There has been enough of delay and
extenuation. Let the culprit acknowledge his guilt, or take its final
consequences."
The duel is fought, but it is the guilty one who falls; and "AFTER"
gives the words of his adversary--his boyhood's friend--struck with
bitter remorse for what he has done. As the man who wronged him lies
wrapped in the majesty of death, his offence dwindles into
insignificance; and the survivor can only feel how disproportionate has
been the punishment, and above all, how unavailing. "Would," he
exclaims, "that the past could be recalled, and they were boys again
together! It would be so easy then to endure!"
"MEMORABILIA" shows the perspective of memory in a tribute to the poet
Shelley. His fugitive contact with a commonplace life, like the trace of
an eagle's passage across the moor, leaves an illumined spot amidst
blankness.
"THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER" depicts the emotions of a ride, which a finally
dismissed lover has been allowed to take with his beloved. He has vainly
passed his youth in loving her. But as this boon is granted, she lies
for a moment on his breast. "She might have loved him more; she might
also have liked him less." As they ride away side by side, a sense of
resignation comes over him. His life is not alone in its failure. Every
one strives. Few or none succeed. The best success proves itself to be
shallow. And if it were otherwise--if the goal could be reached on
earth--what care would one take for heaven? Then the peace which is in
him absorbs the consciousness of reality. He fancies himself riding with
the loved one till the end of time; and he asks himself if his destined
heaven may not prove to be this.
"A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL" describes the rendering of the last honours to
one whose life has consumed itself in the pursuit of knowledge. The
knowledge pursued has been pedantic and minute, but for him it
represented a mighty truth; and he has refused to live, in the world's
sense, till he had mastered that truth, co-extensive, as he believed it,
with life everlasting. Like Sordello, though in a different way, he
would KNOW before he allowed himself to BE. He would realize the Whole;
he would not discount it. His disciples are bearing him to a
mountain-top, that the loftiness of his endeavour may be symbolized by
his last resting-place. He is to lie
"where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened." (vol. v. p. 159.)
where the new morning for which he waited will figuratively first break
upon him.
"JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION" is a glowing and fantastic description
of the privileges of the "elect," cast in the form of a monologue, and
illustrated in the person of the speaker. Johannes Agricola was a German
reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of
the Antinomians: a class of Christians who extended the Low Church
doctrine of the insufficiency of good works, and declared the children
of God to be exempt from the necessity of performing them; absolved from
doing right, because unable to do wrong; because no sin would be
accounted to them as such. Some authorities contend that he personally
rejected only the Mosaic, not the moral law; but Mr. Browning has
credited him with the full measure of Antinomian belief, and makes him
specially exult in the Divine assurance that the concentrated venom of
the worst committed sins can only work in him for salvation. He also
comments wonderingly on the state of the virtuous man and woman, and of
the blameless child, "undone," as he was saved, before the world began;
whose very striving is turned to sin; whose life-long prayer and
sacrifice can only end in damnation. But, as he declares, he praises God
the more that he cannot understand Him; that His ways are inscrutable,
that His love may not be bought.
"CONFESSIONS" is the answer of a dying man to the clergyman's question:
does he "view the world as a vale of tears?" His fancy is living through
a romance of past days, of which the scene comes back to him in the
arrangement of physic-bottles on a table beside him, while the curtain,
which may be green, but to his dying eyes is blue, makes the June
weather about it all. He is seeing the girl he loved, as watching for
him from a terrace near the stopper of that last and tallest bottle in
the row; and he is retracing the path by which he could creep, unseen by
any eyes but hers, to the "rose-wreathed" gate which was their
trysting-place. "No, reverend sir," is the first and last word of his
reply, "the world has been no vale of tears to me."
"MAY AND DEATH" expresses a mourner's wish, so natural to the egotism of
a deep sorrow, that the season which robbed him of his friend's life
should bury all its sweetness with him. The speaker retracts this wish,
in justice to the many pairs of friends who have each their right to
happiness. But there is, he says, one red-streaked plant which their May
might spare, since one wood alone would miss it. For its leaf is dashed
as with the blood of Spring; and whenever henceforth it grows in that
same place, the drop will have been drawn from his heart.[97]
"YOUTH AND ART" is a humorous, but regretful reminiscence of "Bohemian"
days, addressed by a great singer to a sculptor, also famous, who once
worked in a garret opposite to her own. They were young then, as well as
poor and obscure; and they watched and coquetted with each other, though
they neither spoke nor met; and perhaps played with the idea of a more
serious courtship. Caution and ambition, however, prevailed; and they
have reached the summit of their respective professions, and accepted
the social honours which the position insures. But she thinks of all
that might have been, if they had listened to nature, and cast in their
lot with each other; of the sighs and the laughter, the starvation and
the feasting, the despairs and the joys of the struggling artist's
career; and she feels that in its fullest and freest sense, their artist
life has remained incomplete.
"A LIKENESS" describes the feelings which are inspired by the familiar
or indifferent handling of any object sacred to our own mind. They are
illustrated by the idea of a print or picture, bought for the sake of a
resemblance; and which may be hanging against a wall, or stowed away in
a portfolio: and, in either case, provoke comment, contemptuous or
admiring, which will cause a secret and angry pain to its possessor.
"APPEARANCES," a little poem in two stanzas, illustrates the power of
association. Its contents can only be given in its own words.
"ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER" represents a lover, with his beloved, striving to
elude the memory of a former attachment, and finding himself cheated by
it. As the fires of a departed summer will glow once more, in the
countenance of the wintry year, so also has his past life projected
itself into the present, assuming its features as a mask. And when the
ghosts, from whom, figuratively, the young pair are hiding, rise from
their moss-grown graves; and the lover would disregard their remonstrant
procession as only "faint march-music in the air": he becomes suddenly
conscious that the past has withdrawn its gifts, and that the mere mask
of love remains to him.
The poem would seem intended to deny that a second love can be genuine:
were not its light tone and fantastic circumstance incompatible with
serious intention.
PROLOGUE TO "LA SAISIAZ," reprinted as "Pisgah-Sights," III., is a
fantastic little vision of the body and the soul, as disengaged from
each other by death: the soul wandering at will through the realms of
air; the body consigned to the
"Ferns of all feather,
Mosses and heather," (vol. xiv. p. 156.)
of its native earth.
_Second Group._
"CAVALIER TUNES" consists of three songs, with chorus, full of rousing
enthusiasm for the cause of King Charles, and of contemptuous defiance
for the Roundheads who are opposing him: I. "Marching Along." II. "Give
a Rouse." III. "Boot and Saddle."
"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX" is an imaginary
picture, which would gain nothing in force by being true. It is that of
three horsemen galloping to save the life of their town; galloping
without rest, from moonset to sunrise, from sunrise into the blaze of
noon; one horse dropping dead on the way, the second, within sight of
the goal; and the third, Roland, urged on by frantic exertions on his
rider's part--the blood filling his nostrils, and starting in red
circles round his eyes--galloping into the market-place of Aix; to rest
there with his head between his master's knees: while the last measure
of wine which the city contains is being poured down his throat.
"SONG" is a lover's assertion of his lady's transcendent charms, which
he challenges those even to deny who do not love her.
"INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP." A boy soldier of the army of Napoleon has
received his death wound in planting the Imperial flag within the walls
of Ratisbon. He contrives by a supreme effort to gallop out to the
Emperor--who has watched the storming of the city from a mound a mile or
two away--fling himself from the horse, and, holding himself erect by
its mane, announce the victory. No sign of pain escapes him. But when
Napoleon suddenly exclaims: "You are wounded," the soldier's pride in
him is touched. "I am killed, Sire," he replies; and, smiling, falls
dead at the Emperor's feet. The story is true; but its actual hero was a
man.
"COUNT GISMOND" is an imaginary episode of the days of chivalry. It
relates how a young girl had been chosen queen of a tournament; and how
a false knight, instigated by two cousins who were jealous of her
beauty, accused her, in the open field, of being unfit to bestow a
crown; how a true knight who loved her, killed the lie by a blow struck
at the liar's mouth; and then, mortally wounding him in single combat,
dragged him to retract it at the lady's feet; how he laid his protecting
arm around her, and led her away to the southern home where she is now
his proud and happy wife, with sons growing up to resemble him.
The fearless confidence with which she has awaited the result of the
duel, as bearing God's testimony to the truth, is very characteristic of
the time.
"THE BOY AND THE ANGEL" is an imaginary legend which presents one of Mr.
Browning's deepest convictions in a popular form. Theocrite was a poor
boy, who worked diligently at his craft, and praised God as he did so.
He dearly wished to become Pope, that he might praise Him better, and
God granted the wish. Theocrite sickened and seemed to die. And he awoke
to find himself a priest, and also, in due time, Pope. But God missed
the praise, which had gone up to Him from the boy craftsman's cell; and
the angel Gabriel came down to earth, and took Theocrite's former place.
And God was again not satisfied; for the angelic praise could not
replace for Him the human. "The silencing of that one weak voice had
stopped the chorus of creation." So Theocrite returned to his old self;
and the angel Gabriel became Pope instead of him.
"THE GLOVE" is the well-known story[98] of a lady of the Court of
Francis I., who, in order to test the courage of her suitor, threw her
glove into the enclosure in which a captive lion stood; and describes
the suitor--one De Lorge--as calmly rescuing the glove, but only to
fling it in the lady's face; this protest against her heartlessness and
vanity being endorsed by both the King and Court. But at this point Mr.
Browning departs from the usual version: for he takes the woman's part.
The supposed witness and narrator of the incident, the poet Ronsard,
sees a look in her face which seems to say that the experiment, if
painful, has been worth making; and he gives her the opportunity of
declaring so. She had too long, she explains, been expected to take
words for deeds, and to believe on his mere assertion, that her admirer
was prepared to die for her; and when the sight of this lion brought
before her the men who had risked their lives in capturing it, without
royal applause to sustain them, the moment seemed opportune for
discovering what this one's courage was worth. She marries a youth, so
the poet continues, whose love reveals itself at this moment of her
disgrace; and (he is disposed to believe) will live happily, though away
from the Court. De Lorge, rendered famous by the incident, woos and wins
a beauty who is admired by the King, and acquires practice in seeking
her gloves--where he is not meant to find them--at the moments in which
his presence is superfluous.
"THE TWINS" is a parable told by Luther in his "Table Talk," to show
that charity and prosperity go hand in hand: and that to those who cease
to give it will no longer be given. "Dabitur" only flourishes where
"Date" is well-fed.
"THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN" (Hameln)[99] is the story of a mysterious
piper who is said to have appeared at Hameln in the fourteenth century,
at a moment when the city was infested by rats. According to the legend,
he freed it from this nuisance, by shrill notes of his pipe which lured
the rats after him to the edge of the river Weser, where they plunged
in and were drowned; and then, to punish the corporation, which had
refused him the promised pay, enticed away all its children, by sweet
notes from his pipe; and disappeared with them into the Koppelberg, a
neighbouring mountain, which opened and then closed on them for ever.
The legend also asserts that these facts (to which Mr. Browning has made
some imaginative additions), were recorded on a church window, and in
the name of a street. But the assertion no longer finds belief.
"GOLD HAIR" is a true "Story of Pornic," which may be read in
guide-books to the place. A young girl of good family died there in
odour of sanctity; she seemed too pure and fragile for earth. But she
had one earthly charm, that of glorious golden hair; and one earthly
feeling, which was her apparent pride in it. As she lay on her deathbed,
she entreated that it might not be disturbed; and she was buried near
the high altar of the church of St. Gilles[100] with the golden tresses
closely swathed about her. Years afterwards, the church needed repair.
Part of the pavement was taken up. A loose coin drew attention to the
spot in which the coffin lay. Its boards had burst, and scattered about,
lay thirty double louis, which had been hidden in the golden hair. So
the saint-like maiden was a miser.
"HERVÉ RIEL" commemorates the skill, courage, and singleness of heart of
a Breton sailor, who saved the French squadron when beaten at Cape la
Hogue and flying before the English to St. Malo, by guiding it through
the shallows of the river Rance, in a manner declared impracticable by
the Maloese themselves; being all the while so unconscious of the
service he was rendering, that, when desired to name his reward, he
begged for a _whole day's holiday_, to run home and see his wife. His
home was Le Croisic.
_Third Group._
"THROUGH THE METIDJA TO ABD-EL-KADR" represents a follower of
Abd-el-Kadr hastening through the desert to join his chief. Mystic
fancies crowd upon him as he "rides" and "rides": his pulses quickened
by the end in view, and by the swift unresting motion of a horse which
never needs the spur; and as he describes his experience in his own
excited words, we receive not only the mental picture, but the physical
impression of it. This poem is a strong instance of Mr. Browning's power
of conveying sense by sound, when he sees occasion for doing so.
"MEETING AT NIGHT" is a glimpse of moonlight and repose; and of the
appropriate seclusion in the company of the one woman loved.
"PARTING AT MORNING" asserts the need of "men" and their "world," which
is born again with the sunshine.
"THE PATRIOT" tells, as its second title informs us, "an old story."
Only this day year, the "patriot" entered the city as its hero, amidst a
frenzy of gratitude and joy. To-day he passes out of it through
comparatively silent streets; for those for whom he has laboured last as
first, are waiting for him at the foot of the scaffold. No infliction of
physical pain or moral outrage is spared him as he goes. He is "safer
so," he declares. The reward men have withheld awaits him at the hand of
God.
"INSTANS TYRANNUS"[101] is the confession of a king, who has been
possessed by an unreasoning and uncontrolled hatred for one man. This
man was his subject, but so friendless and obscure that no hatred could
touch, so stupid or so upright that no temptation could lure him into
his enemy's power. The King became exasperated by the very smallness of
the creature which thus kept him at bay; drew the line of persecution
closer and closer; and at last ran his victim to earth. But, at the
critical moment, the man so long passive and cowering threw himself on
the protection of God. The King saw, in a sudden revulsion of feeling,
an Arm thrown out from the sky, and the "wretch" he had striven to
crush, safely enfolded in it Then he in his turn--was "afraid."
"MESMERISM" is a fanciful but vivid description of an act of mesmeric
power, which draws a woman, alone, in the darkness, and through every
natural obstacle, to the presence of the man who loves her.
"TIME'S REVENGES" is also a confession made in the form of a soliloquy.
The speaker has a friend whose devotion is equal to any test, and whose
love he barely repays with liking; and he has a lady-love by whom this
friend is avenged; for he has given up to his passion for her his body
and his soul, his peace and his renown, every laudable ambition, every
rational aim; and he knows she would let him roast by a slow fire if
this would procure her an invitation to a certain ball.
"THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND" is the supposed adventure of a leading Italian
patriot, told by himself in later years. He tells how he was hiding from
the Austrians, who had put a price upon his head, and were scouring the
country in pursuit of him; how, impelled by hunger, he disclosed his
place of concealment to a peasant girl--the last of a troop of villagers
who were passing by; and how she saved his life at the risk of her own,
and when she would have been paid in gold for betraying him. He relates
also that his first thought was to guard himself against betrayal by not
telling her who he was; but that her loyal eyes, her dignified form and
carriage (perhaps too, the consummate tact with which she had responded
to his signal) in another moment had put the thought to flight, and he
fearlessly placed his own, and his country's destiny in her hands. He is
an exile in England now. Friends and brothers have made terms with the
oppressor, and his home is no longer theirs. But among the wishes which
still draw him to his native land, is one, less acknowledged than the
rest and which perhaps lies deeper, that he may see that noble woman
once more; talk to her of the husband who was then her lover, of her
children, and her home; and, once more, as he did in parting from her,
kiss her hand in gratitude, and lay his own in blessing on her
head.[102]
"PROTUS" is a fragment of an imaginary chronicle: recording in the same
page and under the head of the same year, how the child-Emperor, Protus,
descended from a god, was growing in beauty and in grace, worshipped by
the four quarters of the known world; and how John, the Pannonian
blacksmith's bastard, came and took the Empire; but, as "some think,"
let Protus live--to be heard of later as dependent in a foreign court;
or perhaps to become the monk, whom rumour speaks of as bearing his
name, and who died at an advanced age in Thrace.
A fit comment on this Empire lost and won, is supplied by two busts,
also imaginary, one showing a "rough hammered" coarse-jawed head; the
other, a baby face, crowned with a wreath of violets.
"APPARENT FAILURE" is Mr. Browning's verdict on three drowned men, whose
bodies he saw exposed at the Morgue[103] in Paris, in the summer of
1856. He justly assumes that the death was suicide; and as he reads in
each face its special story of struggle and disappointment,
"Poor men, God made, and all for that!" (vol. vii. p. 247)
the conviction lays hold of him that their doom is not final, that the
life God blessed in the beginning cannot end accursed of Him; that even
a despair and a death like these, record only a seeming failure.
The poem was professedly written to save the memory of the Morgue, then
about to be destroyed.
The friend, to whom "WARING" refers, is a restless, aspiring, sensitive
person, who has planned great works, though he has completed none: who
feels his powers always in excess of his performance, and who is hurt if
those he loves refuse them credit for being so. He is gone now, no one
knows whither; and the speaker, who is conscious that his own friendship
has often seemed critical or cold, vainly wishes that he could recall
him. His fancy travels longingly to those distant lands, in one of which
Waring may be playing some new and romantic part; and back again to
England, where he tries to think that he is lying concealed, while
preparing to surprise the world with some great achievement in
literature or art. Then someone solves the problem by saying that he has
seen him--for one moment--on the Illyrian coast; seated in a light bark,
just bounding away into the sunset. And the speaker rejoins
"Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar!" (vol. v. p. 89.)
and, we conclude, takes comfort from the thought.