An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 21

'A Death in the Desert' appears to have been inspired by the controversies in regard to the historical foundations of Christianity, and, more especially, in regard to the character and the authorship of the Fourth Gospel--controversies which received their first great impulse from the 'Leben Jesu'

of David Friedrich Strauss, first published in 1835.

An English translation of the fourth edition, 1840, by Marian Evans (George Eliot), was published in London, in 1846.

The immediate occasion of the composition of 'A Death in the Desert'

was, perhaps, the publication, in 1863, of Joseph Ernest Renan's 'Vie de Jesus'. 'A Death in the Desert' was included in the poet's 'Dramatis Personae', published in the following year.

"In style, the poem a little recalls 'Cleon'; with less of harmonious grace and clear cla.s.sic outline, it possesses a certain stilled sweetness, a meditative tenderness, all its own, and beautifully appropriate to the utterance of the 'beloved disciple'."--Arthur Symons.

During a persecution of the Christians, the aged John of Patmos has been secretly conveyed, by some faithful disciples, to a cave in the desert, where he is dying. Revived temporarily by the tender ministrations of his disciples, he is enabled to tell over his past labors in the service of his beloved Master, to refute the Antichrist already in the world, and to answer the questions which, with his far-reaching spiritual vision, he foresees will be raised in regard to Christ's nature, life, doctrine, and miracles, as recorded in the Gospel he has written.

These services he feels to be due from him, in his dying hour, as the sole survivor of Christ's apostles and intimate companions.

This is the only composition in which Browning deals directly with historical Christianity; and its main purpose may, in brief, be said to be, to set forth the absoluteness of Christianity, which cannot be affected by any a.s.saults made upon its external, historical character.

The doctrine of the trinal unity of man (the what Does, what Knows, what Is) ascribed to John (vv. 82-104), and upon which his discourse may be said to proceed, leads up the presentation of the final stage of the Christian life on earth--that stage when man has won his way to the kingdom of the "what Is" within himself, and when he no longer needs the outward supports to his faith which he needed before he pa.s.sed from the "what Knows". Christianity is a religion which is only secondarily a doctrine addressed to the "what Knows".

It is, first of all, a religion whose fountain-head is a Personality in whom all that is spiritually potential in man, was realized, and in responding to whom the soul of man is quickened and regenerated.

And the Church, through the centuries, has been kept alive, not by the letter of the New Testament, for the letter killeth, but by a succession of quickened and regenerated spirits, "the n.o.ble Living and the n.o.ble Dead", through whom the Christ has been awakened and developed in other souls.

POEMS.

Wanting is--What?

Wanting is--what?

Summer redundant, Blueness abundant, --Where is the spot?

Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, {5} --Framework which waits for a picture to frame: What of the leaf.a.ge, what of the flower?

Roses embowering with nought they embower!

Come then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer! {10} Breathe but one breath Rose-beauty above, And all that was death Grows life, grows love, Grows love! {15}

-- 4. spot: defect, imperfection.

9. O Comer: o' e'rxo/menos, Matt. 3:11; 11:3; 21:9; 23:39; Luke 19:38; John 1:15; 3:31; 12:13. Without love, the Christ-spirit, the spirit of the Comer, man sees, at best, only dynamic action, blind force, in nature; but

"love greatens and glorifies Till G.o.d's a-glow, to the loving eyes, In what was mere earth before."

James Lee's Wife (Along the Beach).

My Star.

All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, {5} 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: {10} 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.

-- 10. Then it stops like a bird: it beats no longer with emotion responsive to loving eyes, but stops, as a bird stops its song when disturbed.

The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess.

1.

You're my friend: I was the man the Duke spoke to; I helped the d.u.c.h.ess to cast off his yoke, too: So, here's the tale from beginning to end, My friend! {5}

-- 2. I was the man: see vv. 440 and 847. He's proud of the honor done him.

2.

Ours is a great wild country: If you climb to our castle's top, I don't see where your eye can stop; For when you've pa.s.sed the corn-field country, Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed, {10} And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract, And cattle-tract to open-chase, And open-chase to the very base O' the mountain where, at a funeral pace, Round about, solemn and slow, One by one, row after row, Up and up the pine-trees go, So, like black priests up, and so Down the other side again To another greater, wilder country, {20} That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain, Branched through and through with many a vein Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt; Look right, look left, look straight before,-- Beneath they mine, above they smelt, Copper-ore and iron-ore, And forge and furnace mould and melt, And so on, more and ever more, Till at the last, for a bounding belt, Comes the salt sand h.o.a.r of the great seash.o.r.e, {30} --And the whole is our Duke's country.

3.

I was born the day this present Duke was-- (And O, says the song, ere I was old!) In the castle where the other Duke was-- (When I was happy and young, not old!) I in the kennel, he in the bower: We are of like age to an hour.

My father was huntsman in that day: Who has not heard my father say, That, when a boar was brought to bay, {40} Three times, four times out of five, With his huntspear he'd contrive To get the killing-place transfixed, And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?

And that's why the old Duke would rather He lost a salt-pit than my father, And loved to have him ever in call; That's why my father stood in the hall When the old Duke brought his infant out To show the people, and while they pa.s.sed {50} The wondrous bantling round about, Was first to start at the outside blast As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn, Just a month after the babe was born.

"And," quoth the Kaiser's courier, "since The Duke has got an heir, our Prince Needs the Duke's self at his side": The Duke looked down and seemed to wince, But he thought of wars o'er the world wide, Castles a-fire, men on their march, {60} The toppling tower, the crashing arch; And up he looked, and a while he eyed The row of crests and shields and banners Of all achievements after all manners, And "Ay", said the Duke with a surly pride.

The more was his comfort when he died At next year's end, in a velvet suit, With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot In a silken shoe for a leather boot, Petticoated like a herald, {70} In a chamber next to an ante-room, Where he breathed the breath of page and groom, What he called stink, and they, perfume: --They should have set him on red Berold Mad with pride, like fire to manage!

They should have got his cheek fresh tannage Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!

Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!

(Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!

Oh for a n.o.ble falcon-lanner {80} To flap each broad wing like a banner, And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!) Had they broached a cask of white beer from Berlin!

--Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine, Put to his lips when they saw him pine, A cup of our own Moldavia fine, Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel And ropy with sweet,--we shall not quarrel.

-- 74. Berold: the old Duke's favorite hunting-horse.

78. merlin: a species of hawk.

80. falcon-lanner: a long-tailed species of hawk, 'falco laniarius'.

4.