An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 27

At first, 'twas something our two souls Should mix as mists do; each is sucked In each now: on, the new stream rolls, Whatever rocks obstruct.

27.

Think, when our one soul understands The great Word which makes all things new, When earth breaks up and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you In the house not made with hands?

28.

Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine, Your heart antic.i.p.ate my heart, You must be just before, in fine, See and make me see, for your part, New depths of the divine!

-- St. 28. "The conviction of the eternity of marriage meets us again and again in Browning's poems; e.g., 'Prospice', 'Any Wife to any Husband', 'The Epilogue to Fifine'."

The union between two complementary souls cannot be dissolved.

"Love is all, and Death is nought!"

29.

But who could have expected this When we two drew together first Just for the obvious human bliss, To satisfy life's daily thirst With a thing men seldom miss?

30.

Come back with me to the first of all, Let us lean and love it over again, Let us now forget and now recall, Break the rosary in a pearly rain, And gather what we let fall!

31.

What did I say?--that a small bird sings All day long, save when a brown pair Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings Strained to a bell: 'gainst noonday glare You count the streaks and rings.

-- St. 31. Here he returns to the subject broken off at St. 21.

32.

But at afternoon or almost eve 'Tis better; then the silence grows To that degree, you half believe It must get rid of what it knows, Its bosom does so heave.

33.

Hither we walked then, side by side, Arm in arm and cheek to cheek, And still I questioned or replied, While my heart, convulsed to really speak, Lay choking in its pride.

34.

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, And pity and praise the chapel sweet, And care about the fresco's loss, And wish for our souls a like retreat, And wonder at the moss.

35.

Stoop and kneel on the settle under, Look through the window's grated square: Nothing to see! For fear of plunder, The cross is down and the altar bare, As if thieves don't fear thunder.

36.

We stoop and look in through the grate, See the little porch and rustic door, Read duly the dead builder's date; Then cross the bridge that we crossed before, Take the path again--but wait!

37.

Oh moment one and infinite!

The water slips o'er stock and stone; The West is tender, hardly bright: How gray at once is the evening grown-- One star, its chrysolite!

38.

We two stood there with never a third, But each by each, as each knew well: The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, The lights and the shades made up a spell Till the trouble grew and stirred.

-- St. 37, 38. "Mr. Browning's most characteristic feeling for nature appears in his rendering of those aspects of sky, or earth, or sea, of sunset, or noonday, or dawn, which seem to acquire some sudden and pa.s.sionate significance; which seem to be charged with some spiritual secret eager for disclosure; in his rendering of those moments which betray the pa.s.sion at the heart of things, which thrill and tingle with prophetic fire. When lightning searches for the guilty lovers, Ottima and Sebald {in 'Pippa Pa.s.ses'}, like an angelic sword plunged into the gloom, when the tender twilight with its one chrysolite star, grows aware, and the light and shade make up a spell, and the forests by their mystery, and sound, and silence, mingle together two human lives forever {'By the Fireside'}, when the apparition of the moon-rainbow appears gloriously after storm, and Christ is in his heaven {'Christmas Eve'}, when to David the stars shoot out the pain of pent knowledge and in the grey of the hills at morning there dwells a gathered intensity {'Saul'},--then nature rises from her sweet ways of use and wont, and shows herself the Priestess, the Pythoness, the Divinity which she is. Or rather, through nature, the Spirit of G.o.d addresses itself to the spirit of man."--Edward Dowden.

39.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

And the little less, and what worlds away!

How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, And life be a proof of this!

40.

Had she willed it, still had stood the screen So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her: I could fix her face with a guard between, And find her soul as when friends confer, Friends--lovers that might have been.

41.

For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, Wanting to sleep now over its best.

Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, But bring to the last leaf no such test!

"Hold the last fast!" runs the rhyme.

42.

For a chance to make your little much, To gain a lover and lose a friend, Venture the tree and a myriad such, When nothing you mar but the year can mend: But a last leaf--fear to touch!

43.

Yet should it unfasten itself and fall Eddying down till it find your face At some slight wind--best chance of all!

Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place You trembled to forestall!