An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 26

That speck of white just on its marge Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow, How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow!

10.

On our other side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By bowlder-stones, where lichens mock The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block.

11.

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, And th.o.r.n.y b.a.l.l.s, each three in one, The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!

For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun, These early November hours,

12.

That crimson the creeper's leaf across Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped Elf-needled mat of moss,

13.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged Last evening--nay, in to-day's first dew Yon sudden coral nipple bulged, Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew Of toad-stools peep indulged.

14.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge That takes the turn to a range beyond, Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge, Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond Danced over by the midge.

15.

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, Blackish-gray and mostly wet; Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike.

See here again, how the lichens fret And the roots of the ivy strike!

16.

Poor little place, where its one priest comes On a festa-day, if he comes at all, To the dozen folk from their scattered homes, Gathered within that precinct small By the dozen ways one roams--

17.

To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts, Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread Their gear on the rock's bare juts.

18.

It has some pretension too, this front, With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise Set over the porch, Art's early wont: 'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise, But has borne the weather's brunt--

19.

Not from the fault of the builder, though, For a pent-house properly projects Where three carved beams make a certain show, Dating--good thought of our architect's-- 'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.

20.

And all day long a bird sings there, And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times; The place is silent and aware; It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, But that is its own affair.

-- St. 20. aware: self-conscious.

". . .in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, * * * * *

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone."

--Hood's 'Sonnet on Silence'.

21.

My perfect wife, my Leonor, O heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too, Whom else could I dare look backward for, With whom beside should I dare pursue The path gray heads abhor?

-- St. 21. He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, "What did I say?--that a small bird sings".

The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are, with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; "gray heads" must be understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor --gray heads who went along through their flowery youth as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love's true season, the happiness of their lives beyond youth's limit, "life's safe hem", which to cross without such insurance, is often fatal. And these, when they reach old age, shun retracing the path which led to the gulf wherein their youth dropped.

22.

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; Youth, flowery all the way, there stops-- Not they; age threatens and they contemn, Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, One inch from our life's safe hem!

23.

With me, youth led. . .I will speak now, No longer watch you as you sit Reading by firelight, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it, Mutely, my heart knows how--

-- St. 23. With me: the speaker continues, youth led:--we are told whither, in St. 25, v. 4, "to an age so blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead".

I will speak now: up to this point his reflections have been silent, his wife, the while, reading, mutely, by fire-light, his heart knows how, that is, with her heart secretly responsive to his own. The mutual responsiveness of their hearts is expressed in St. 24.

24.

When, if I think but deep enough, You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; And you, too, find without rebuff Response your soul seeks many a time, Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.

25.

My own, confirm me! If I tread This path back, is it not in pride To think how little I dreamed it led To an age so blest that, by its side, Youth seems the waste instead?

26.

My own, see where the years conduct!