Chapter 9

What does it all mean, poet? Well, Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell What we felt only; you expressed You hold things beautiful the best, And pace them in rhyme so, side by side. 'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then, Have you yourself what's best for men? Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time-- Nearer one whit your own sublime Than we who never have turned a rhyme? Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

VIII

And you, great sculptor--so, you gave A score of years to Art, her slave, And that's your Venus, whence we turn To yonder girl that fords the burn! You acquiesce, and shall I repine? What, man of music, you grown grey With notes and nothing else to say, Is this your sole praise from a friend, "Greatly his opera's strains intend, Put in music we know how fashions end!" I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

IX

Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate Proposed bliss here should sublimate My being--had I signed the bond-- Still one must lead some life beyond, Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try and test! I sink back shuddering from the quest. Earth being so good, would heaven seem best? Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

X

And yet--she has not spoke so long! What if heaven be that, fair and strong At life's best, with our eyes upturned Whither life's flower is first discerned, We, fixed so, ever should so abide? What if we still ride on, we two With life for ever old yet new, Changed not in kind but in degree, The instant made eternity,-- And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

Browning's lovers, as has been illustrated, are usually chivalrous, whether their passions have or have not the sanction of law. The poem _In a Gondola_, which has been more often translated into foreign languages than perhaps any other of Browning's works, gives us a picture of a night in Venice. The fluent rhythms of the verse indicate the lazy glide of the gondola through the dark waters of the canal. The lovers speak, sing, and muse; and their conversation is full of the little language characteristic of those who are in complete possession of each other, soul and body. They delight in passionate reminiscences: they love to recall their first chance meeting:

Ah, the autumn day I, passing, saw you overhead!

The wind blew out the curtains of her apartment, and her pet parrot escaped, giving the man his opportunity. They rehearse over again the advancing stages of their drama. She asks him to kiss her like a moth, then like a bee--in the attempt to recapture the first shy sweetness of their dawning passion. They play little love-games. He pretends he is a Jew, carrying her away from her family to a tribal feast; then that they twain are spirits of stars, meeting in the thin air aloft. The intensity of their bliss is sharpened by the black cloud of danger in which they move: for if the Three, husband, father, and brother of the lady become aware of this secret liaison, there can be only one end to it--a tragedy of blood. The lighted taper held in the window by the trusted maid shows that they are "safe," and for the last time they play again their little comedy of formality. She pretends to be the formal _grande dame_, the lady with the colder breast than snow: he is the bashful gallant, who hardly dares touch the tips of her fingers. In this laughing moment, the dagger of the husband is driven deep into his back. Like all of Browning's lovers, he gives, even on the edge of the eternal darkness, no thought to himself, but only to her. Gathering his dying energies, he speaks in a loud tone, so that the conspirators, invisible in the Venetian night, may hear him:

Care not for the cowards! Care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt!

And in the last agony, he comforts her with the thought that all this, the joy of love and the separation by murder, have been ordained.

In _Love Among the Ruins_, with which _Men and Women_ originally opened, and which some believe to be Browning's masterpiece, Love is given its place as the supreme fact in human history. This is a scene in the Roman Campagna at twilight, and the picture in the first stanza reminds us of Gray's _Elegy_ in the perfection of its quiet silver tone. With a skill nothing short of genius, Browning has maintained in this poem a double parallel. Up to the fifth stanza, the contrast is between the present peace of the vast solitary plain, and its condition years ago when it was the centre of a city's beating heart: from the fifth stanza to the close, the contrast is between this same vanished civilisation and the eternal quality of Love. I do not remember any other work in literature where a double parallel is given with such perfect continuity and beauty; the first half of each stanza is in exact antithesis to the last. The parenthesis--_so they say_--is a delicate touch of dramatic irony. No one would dream that this quiet plain was once the site of a great city, for no proofs remain: we have to take the word of the archæologists for it. Some day a Japanese shepherd may pasture his sheep on Manhattan Island.

After a poetic discourse on the text _Sic transit gloria mundi_--the love motive is suddenly introduced in the fifth stanza; and now the contrast changes, and becomes a comparison between the ephemeral nature of civilisation and the permanent fact of Love. At the exact spot where the grandstand formerly stood at the finish of the horse-race, where the King, surrounded by courtiers, watched the whirling chariots, now remains motionless, breathless, a yellow-haired girl. The proud King's eyes looked over the stadium and beheld the domes and pinnacles of his city, the last word of civilisation; the girl's eager eyes look over the silent plain searching for the coming of her lover. And Browning would have us believe that this latter fact is far more important historically than the former.

Suppose an American professor of archæology is working on the grassy expanse, collecting material for his new book; he looks up for a moment and sees a pair of rustic lovers kissing in the twilight; he smiles, and resumes what seems to him his important labor. Little does he imagine that this love-scene is more significant than all the broken bits of pottery he digs out of the ground; yet such is the fact. For all he can do at his very best is to reconstruct a vanished past, while the lovers are acting a scene that belongs to eternity. Love is best.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

1855

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop As they crop-- Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

II

Now,--the country does not even boast a tree As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads And embeds Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone-- Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold.

IV

Now,--the single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks-- Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games.

V

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away-- That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then, All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-- Gold, of course. Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.

In the poem _Respectability_ Browning gives us a more vulgar, but none the less vital aspect of love. This is no peaceful twilit harmony; this scene is set on a windy, rainy night in noisy Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Institute of France. Two reckless lovers--either old comrades or picked-up acquaintances of this very night, it matters not which--come tripping along gaily, arm in arm. The man chaffs at worldly conventions, at the dullness of society, at the hypocrisy of so-called respectable people, and congratulates himself and his fair companion on the fun they are having. What fools they would have been had they waited through a long, formal courtship for the sanction of an expensive marriage! The world, he says, does not forbid kisses, only it says, you must see the magistrate first. My finger must not touch your soft lips until it is covered with the glove of marriage. Bah! what do we care for the world's good word? At this moment they reach the lighted windows of the Institute, and like a pair of sparrows, they glance within at the highly proper but terribly tedious company. What do they see? They see Guizot compelled by political exigency to shake hands hypocritically with his enemy Montalembert. But before them down a dim court shine three lamps, an all-night dance resort. Come on! run for it! that's the place for us! no dull formalities, no hypocrisies there! Something doing!

RESPECTABILITY

1855

I

Dear, had the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim "I know you both, Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!"-- How many precious months and years Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears?

II

How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their sex, Society's true ornament,-- Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss?

III

I know! the world proscribes not love; Allows my finger to caress Your lips' contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove. The world's good word!--the Institute! Guizot receives Montalembert! Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!

In the list of _Dramatis Personae_, Browning placed _Confessions_ shortly after _A Death in the Desert_, as if to show the enormous contrast in two death-bed scenes. After a presentation of the last noble, spiritual, inspired moments of the apostle John, we have portrayed for us the dying delirium of an old sinner, whose thought travels back to the sweetest moments of his life, his clandestine meetings with the girl he loved. The solemn voice of the priest is like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?

Not much!

Like Matthew Arnold's _Wish_, the brother-doctor of the soul who is called in

To canvass with official breath

is simply a nuisance in these last minutes of life. The row of medicine bottles, all useless now for practical purposes, represents to his fevered eyes the topography of the scene where the girl used to come running to meet him. "I know, sir, it's improper,"--I ought not to talk this way to a clergyman, my mind isn't right, I'm dying, and this is all I can think of.

How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!

CONFESSIONS

1864

What is he buzzing in my ears? "Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?" Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether" Is the house o'ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune.

Only, there was a way ... you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge."

What right had a lounger up their lane? But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir--used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!

We may close our considerations of the dramatic lyrics with three love-poems. Whenever in his later years Browning was asked to write a selection with his autograph, he used to say playfully that the only one of his poems that he could remember was _My Star_; hence more copies of this exist in manuscript than any other of his productions. It was of course a tribute to his wife; she shone upon his life like a star of various colors; but the moment the world attempted to pry into the secret of her genius, she shut off the light altogether. Let the world regard Saturn, the most wonderful star in the heavens. My star shines for me alone.

The first and best of the series of _Bad Dreams_ gives us again in Browning's last volume his doctrine of love. Love is its own reward: it may be sad not to have love returned, but the one unspeakable tragedy is to lose the capacity for loving. In a terrible dream, the face of the woman changes from its familiar tenderness to a glance of stony indifference, and in response to his agonised enquiry, she declares that her love for him is absolutely dead. Then comes a twofold bliss: one was in the mere waking from such desolation, but the other consisted in the fact that even if the dream were true, his love for her knew no diminution. Thank God, I loved on the same!

The most audacious poem of Browning's old age is _Summum Bonum_. Since the dawn of human speculative thought, philosophers have asked this question, What is the highest good? It has been answered in various ways. Omar Khayyam said it was Wine: John Stuart Mill said it was the greatest happiness of the greatest number: the Westminster Catechism said it was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Browning says it is the kiss of one girl. This kiss is the concentrated essence of all the glory, beauty, and sweetness of life. In order to understand such a paradox, we must remember that in Browning's philosophy, Love is the engine of the whole universe. I have no doubt that Love meant to him more than it has ever meant to any other poet or thinker; just as I am sure that the word Beauty revealed to Keats a vision entirely beyond the range of even the greatest seers. Love is the supreme fact; and every manifestation of it on earth, from the Divine Incarnation down to a chance meeting of lovers, is more important than any other event or idea. Now we have seen that it is Browning's way invariably to represent an abstract thought by a concrete illustration. Therefore in this great and daring lyric we find the imaginary lover calling the kiss of the woman he loves the highest good in life.

MY STAR

1855

All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

BAD DREAMS

1889

Last night I saw you in my sleep: And how your charm of face was changed! I asked "Some love, some faith you keep?" You answered "Faith gone, love estranged."

Whereat I woke--a twofold bliss: Waking was one, but next there came This other: "Though I felt, for this, My heart break, I loved on the same."

SUMMUM BONUM

1889

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem: In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea: Breath and bloom, shade and shine,--wonder, wealth, and--how far above them-- Truth, that's brighter than gem, Trust, that's purer than pearl,-- Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe--all were for me In the kiss of one girl.

V

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES

Although Browning was not a failure as a dramatist--_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ and _In a Balcony_ are the greatest verse tragedies in the language since the Elizabethans--he found the true channel for his genius in the Dramatic Monologue. He takes a certain critical moment in one person's life, and by permitting the individual to speak, his character, the whole course of his existence, and sometimes the spirit of an entire period in the world's history are revealed in a brilliant searchlight. With very few exceptions, one of which will be given in our selections, a dramatic monologue is not a meditation nor a soliloquy; it is a series of remarks, usually confessional, addressed either orally or in an epistolary form to another person or to a group of listeners. These other figures, though they do not speak, are necessary to the understanding of the monologue; we often see them plainly, and see their faces change in expression as the monologue advances. At the dinner table of Bishop Blougram, the little man Gigadibs is conspicuously there; and Lucrezia is so vividly before us in _Andrea del Sarto_, that a clever actress has actually assumed this silent rôle on the stage, and exhibited simply by her countenance the effect of Andrea's monologue. This species of verse is perhaps the highest form of poetic art, as it is the most difficult; for with no stage setting, no descriptions, no breaks in the conversation, the depths of the human heart are exposed.

One of the greatest dramatic monologues in all literature is _My Last Duchess_, and it is astounding that so profound a life-drama should have been conceived and faultlessly expressed by so young a poet. The whole poem contains only fifty-six lines, but it could easily be expanded into a three-volume novel. Indeed it exhibits Browning's genius for condensation as impressively as _The Ring and the Book_ proves his genius for expansion. The metre is interesting. It is the heroic couplet, the same form exactly in which Pope wrote his major productions. Yet the rime, which is as evident as the recurring strokes of a tack-hammer in Pope, is scarcely heard at all in _My Last Duchess_. Its effect is so muffled, go concealed, that I venture to say that many who are quite familiar with the poem, could not declare offhand whether it were written in rime or in blank verse. This technical trick is accomplished by what the French call overflow, the running on of the sense from one line to another, a device so dear to the heart of Milton. Some one has well said that Dryden's couplets are links in a chain, whilst Pope's are pearls on a string. Pope enclosed nearly every couplet, so that they are quite separate, which is one reason why he has given us such a vast number of aphorisms. To see how totally different in effect the heroic couplet is when it is closed and when it is open, one may compare almost any selection from Pope with the opening lines of Keats's _Endymion_, and then silently marvel that both poems are written in exactly the same measure.

POPE

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise.

KEATS

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth.

One has only to glance at the printed page of _My Last Duchess_, and see how few of the lines end in punctuation points, to discover the method employed when a poet wishes to write a very strict measure in a very free manner.

I have sometimes thought that George Eliot took a hint from this poem in the composition of _Daniel Deronda_, for the relations between Grandcourt and Gwendolen are exactly the same as existed between the Duke and his late wife; a more recent, though not so great an example, may be found in Mrs. Burnett's novel, _The Shuttle_. The poem is a study in cold, systematic torture of a warm human soul by an icy-hearted tyrant.

Browning adopts one of his favorite methods of character-revelation here. All that we know of the Duchess is the testimony given by her worst enemy, her husband; and yet, in attempting to describe her, he has succeeded in painting only his own narrow and hideous heart. Slander is often greater in the recoil than in the discharge; when a man attempts to give an unfavorable portrait of another, he usually gives us an exact likeness of himself. Pope meant his picture of Addison to be correct; but although he made the picture with immortal art, it is no more like Addison than it resembles St. Francis; it is, however, an absolutely faithful image of Pope himself. This is one reason why slander is such an exceedingly dangerous weapon to handle.