Browning's England Part 1

Browning's England.

by Helen Archibald Clarke.

CHAPTER I

ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS

To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Sh.e.l.ley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:

I

"Ah, did you once see Sh.e.l.ley plain, And did he stop and speak to you And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems and new!

II

"But you were living before that, And also you are living after; And the memory I started at-- My starting moves your laughter!

III

"I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world, no doubt, Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about:

IV

"For there I picked up on the heather And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!

Well, I forget the rest."

It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative pa.s.sage in "Pauline."

"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!

Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful, Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise, But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties, Like mighty works which tell some spirit there Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, Till, its long task completed, it hath risen And left us, never to return, and all Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.

The air seems bright with thy past presence yet, But thou art still for me as thou hast been When I have stood with thee as on a throne With all thy dim creations gathered round Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them, And with them creatures of my own were mixed, Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.

But thou art still for me who have adored Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name Which I believed a spell to me alone, Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!

As one should worship long a sacred spring Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long gra.s.ses cross, And one small tree embowers droopingly-- Joying to see some wandering insect won To live in its few rushes, or some locust To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air: And then should find it but the fountain-head, Long lost, of some great river washing towns And towers, and seeing old woods which will live But by its banks untrod of human foot, Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering In light as some thing lieth half of life Before G.o.d's foot, waiting a wondrous change; Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay Its course in vain, for it does ever spread Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on, Being the pulse of some great country--so Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!

And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret That I am not what I have been to thee: Like a girl one has silently loved long In her first loneliness in some retreat, When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet To see her thus adored, but there have been Moments when all the world was in our praise, Sweeter than any pride of after hours.

Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams, I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me, To see thee for a moment as thou art."

Browning was only fourteen when Sh.e.l.ley first came into his literary life. The story has often been told of how the young Robert, pa.s.sing a bookstall one day spied in a box of second-hand volumes, a shabby little edition of Sh.e.l.ley advertised "Mr. Sh.e.l.ley's Atheistical Poems: very scarce." It seems almost incredible to us now that the name was an absolutely new one to him, and that only by questioning the bookseller did he learn that Sh.e.l.ley had written a number of volumes of poetry and that he was now dead. This accident was sufficient to inspire the incipient poet's curiosity, and he never rested until he was the owner of Sh.e.l.ley's works. They were hard to get hold of in those early days but the persistent searching of his mother finally unearthed them at Olliers' in Vere Street, London. She brought him also three volumes of Keats, who became a treasure second only to Sh.e.l.ley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley

"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever."]

The question of Sh.e.l.ley's influence on Browning's art has been one often discussed. There are many traces of Sh.e.l.leyan music and idea in his early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by Sh.e.l.ley. Upon Browning's personal development Sh.e.l.ley exerted a short-lived though somewhat intense influence. We see the young enthusiast professing the atheism of his idol as the liberal views of Sh.e.l.ley were then interpreted, and even becoming a vegetarian. As time went on the discipleship vanished, and in its place came the recognition on Browning's part of a poetic spirit akin yet different from his own.

The last trace of the disciple appears in "Sordello" when the poet addresses Sh.e.l.ley among the audience of dead great ones he has mustered to listen to the story of Sordello:

--"Stay--thou, spirit, come not near Now--not this time desert thy cloudy place To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!

I need not fear this audience, I make free With them, but then this is no place for thee!

The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown Up out of memories of Marathon, Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech Braying a Persian shield,--the silver speech Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin, Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in The Knights to tilt,--wert thou to hear!"

Sh.e.l.ley appears in the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on Sh.e.l.ley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Sh.e.l.ley's order. The paragraph is as follows:

"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the subjective poet of modern cla.s.sification. He, gifted like the objective poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what G.o.d sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak.

Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."

Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.

Keats' lesser but a.s.sured place in the poet's affections comes out in the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in him, but the allusion to Keats shows him to have been the fuse that fired this mild explosion against the dullards who pa.s.s by unknowing and uncaring of a genius, though he pluck with one hand thoughts from the stars, and with the other fight off want.

POPULARITY

I

Stand still, true poet that you are!

I know you; let me try and draw you.

Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

II

My star, G.o.d's glow-worm! Why extend That loving hand of his which leads you, Yet locks you safe from end to end Of this dark world, unless he needs you, Just saves your light to spend?

III

His clenched hand shall unclose at last, I know, and let out all the beauty: My poet holds the future fast, Accepts the coming ages' duty, Their present for this past.

IV

That day, the earth's feast-master's brow Shall clear, to G.o.d the chalice raising; "Others give best at first, but thou Forever set'st our table praising, Keep'st the good wine till now!"

V

Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand, With few or none to watch and wonder: I'll say--a fisher, on the sand By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, A netful, brought to land.

VI

Who has not heard how Tyrian sh.e.l.ls Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes Whereof one drop worked miracles, And colored like Astarte's eyes Raw silk the merchant sells?

VII

And each bystander of them all Could criticise, and quote tradition How depths of blue sublimed some pall --To get which, p.r.i.c.ked a king's ambition; Worth sceptre, crown and ball.

VIII

Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whispered!

Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh As if they still the water's lisp heard Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.