An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 29

5.

A handbreadth over head!

All of the sea my own, It owned the sky instead; Both of us were alone.

6.

I never shall join its flight, For naught buoys flesh in air.

If it touch the sea--goodnight!

Death sure and swift waits there.

7.

Can the insect feel the better For watching the uncouth play Of limbs that slip the fetter, Pretend as they were not clay?

8.

Undoubtedly I rejoice That the air comports so well With a creature which had the choice Of the land once. Who can tell?

9.

What if a certain soul Which early slipped its sheath, And has for its home the whole Of heaven, thus look beneath,

10.

Thus watch one who, in the world, Both lives and likes life's way, Nor wishes the wings unfurled That sleep in the worm, they say?

11.

But sometimes when the weather Is blue, and warm waves tempt To free one's self of tether, And try a life exempt

12.

From worldly noise and dust, In the sphere which overbrims With pa.s.sion and thought,--why, just Unable to fly, one swims!

13.

By pa.s.sion and thought upborne, One smiles to one's self--"They fare Scarce better, they need not scorn Our sea, who live in the air!"

14.

Emanc.i.p.ate through pa.s.sion And thought, with sea for sky, We subst.i.tute, in a fashion, For heaven--poetry:

-- St. 14. for: instead of.

15.

Which sea, to all intent, Gives flesh such noon-disport As a finer element Affords the spirit-sort.

16.

Whatever they are, we seem: Imagine the thing they know; All deeds they do, we dream; Can heaven be else but so?

17.

And meantime, yonder streak Meets the horizon's verge; That is the land, to seek If we tire or dread the surge:

-- St. 17. We can return from the sea of pa.s.sion and thought, that is, poetry, or a deep spiritual state, to the solid land again, of material fact.

18.

Land the solid and safe-- To welcome again (confess!) When, high and dry, we chafe The body, and don the dress.

-- St. 18. Man, in his earth life, cannot always be "high contemplative", and indulge in "brave translunary things"; he must welcome again, it must be confessed, "land the solid and safe". "Other heights in other lives, G.o.d willing"

('One Word More').

19.

Does she look, pity, wonder At one who mimics flight, Swims--heaven above, sea under, Yet always earth in sight?

-- St. 19. does she: the "certain soul" in 9th St., "which early slipped its sheath".

James Lee's Wife.

I. James Lee's Wife speaks at the Window.

-- * In the original ed., 1864, the heading to this section was 'At the Window'; changed in ed. of 1868.