Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 16

VIII

And you, great sculptor--so, you gave A score of years to Art, her slave, And that's your Venus, whence we turn To yonder girl that fords the burn!

You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

What, man of music, you grown grey With notes and nothing else to say, Is this your sole praise from a friend, "Greatly his opera's strains intend, Put in music we know how fashions end!"

I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

IX

Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate Proposed bliss here should sublimate My being--had I signed the bond-- Still one must lead some life beyond, Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try and test!

I sink back shuddering from the quest.

Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?

Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

X

And yet--she has not spoke so long!

What if heaven be that, fair and strong At life's best, with our eyes upturned Whither life's flower is first discerned, We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

What if we still ride on, we two With life for ever old yet new, Changed not in kind but in degree, The instant made eternity,-- And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

Browning's lovers, as has been ill.u.s.trated, are usually chivalrous, whether their pa.s.sions have or have not the sanction of law. The poem _In a Gondola_, which has been more often translated into foreign languages than perhaps any other of Browning's works, gives us a picture of a night in Venice. The fluent rhythms of the verse indicate the lazy glide of the gondola through the dark waters of the ca.n.a.l. The lovers speak, sing, and muse; and their conversation is full of the little language characteristic of those who are in complete possession of each other, soul and body. They delight in pa.s.sionate reminiscences: they love to recall their first chance meeting:

Ah, the autumn day I, pa.s.sing, saw you overhead!

The wind blew out the curtains of her apartment, and her pet parrot escaped, giving the man his opportunity. They rehea.r.s.e over again the advancing stages of their drama. She asks him to kiss her like a moth, then like a bee--in the attempt to recapture the first shy sweetness of their dawning pa.s.sion. They play little love-games. He pretends he is a Jew, carrying her away from her family to a tribal feast; then that they twain are spirits of stars, meeting in the thin air aloft. The intensity of their bliss is sharpened by the black cloud of danger in which they move: for if the Three, husband, father, and brother of the lady become aware of this secret liaison, there can be only one end to it--a tragedy of blood. The lighted taper held in the window by the trusted maid shows that they are "safe," and for the last time they play again their little comedy of formality. She pretends to be the formal _grande dame_, the lady with the colder breast than snow: he is the bashful gallant, who hardly dares touch the tips of her fingers. In this laughing moment, the dagger of the husband is driven deep into his back. Like all of Browning's lovers, he gives, even on the edge of the eternal darkness, no thought to himself, but only to her. Gathering his dying energies, he speaks in a loud tone, so that the conspirators, invisible in the Venetian night, may hear him:

Care not for the cowards! Care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt!

And in the last agony, he comforts her with the thought that all this, the joy of love and the separation by murder, have been ordained.

In _Love Among the Ruins_, with which _Men and Women_ originally opened, and which some believe to be Browning's masterpiece, Love is given its place as the supreme fact in human history. This is a scene in the Roman Campagna at twilight, and the picture in the first stanza reminds us of Gray's _Elegy_ in the perfection of its quiet silver tone. With a skill nothing short of genius, Browning has maintained in this poem a double parallel. Up to the fifth stanza, the contrast is between the present peace of the vast solitary plain, and its condition years ago when it was the centre of a city's beating heart: from the fifth stanza to the close, the contrast is between this same vanished civilisation and the eternal quality of Love. I do not remember any other work in literature where a double parallel is given with such perfect continuity and beauty; the first half of each stanza is in exact ant.i.thesis to the last. The parenthesis--_so they say_--is a delicate touch of dramatic irony.

No one would dream that this quiet plain was once the site of a great city, for no proofs remain: we have to take the word of the archaeologists for it. Some day a j.a.panese shepherd may pasture his sheep on Manhattan Island.

After a poetic discourse on the text _Sic transit gloria mundi_--the love motive is suddenly introduced in the fifth stanza; and now the contrast changes, and becomes a comparison between the ephemeral nature of civilisation and the permanent fact of Love. At the exact spot where the grandstand formerly stood at the finish of the horse-race, where the King, surrounded by courtiers, watched the whirling chariots, now remains motionless, breathless, a yellow-haired girl. The proud King's eyes looked over the stadium and beheld the domes and pinnacles of his city, the last word of civilisation; the girl's eager eyes look over the silent plain searching for the coming of her lover. And Browning would have us believe that this latter fact is far more important historically than the former.

Suppose an American professor of archaeology is working on the gra.s.sy expanse, collecting material for his new book; he looks up for a moment and sees a pair of rustic lovers kissing in the twilight; he smiles, and resumes what seems to him his important labor. Little does he imagine that this love-scene is more significant than all the broken bits of pottery he digs out of the ground; yet such is the fact. For all he can do at his very best is to reconstruct a vanished past, while the lovers are acting a scene that belongs to eternity. Love is best.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

1855

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop As they crop-- Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

II

Now,--the country does not even boast a tree As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of gra.s.s Never was!

Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads And embeds Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone-- Where a mult.i.tude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; l.u.s.t of glory p.r.i.c.ked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold.

IV

Now,--the single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the c.h.i.n.ks-- Marks the bas.e.m.e.nt whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games.

V

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away-- That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'

Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then, All the men!

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their G.o.ds a brazen pillar high As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force-- Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

Love is best.

In the poem _Respectability_ Browning gives us a more vulgar, but none the less vital aspect of love. This is no peaceful twilit harmony; this scene is set on a windy, rainy night in noisy Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Inst.i.tute of France. Two reckless lovers--either old comrades or picked-up acquaintances of this very night, it matters not which--come tripping along gaily, arm in arm. The man chaffs at worldly conventions, at the dullness of society, at the hypocrisy of so-called respectable people, and congratulates himself and his fair companion on the fun they are having. What fools they would have been had they waited through a long, formal courtship for the sanction of an expensive marriage! The world, he says, does not forbid kisses, only it says, you must see the magistrate first. My finger must not touch your soft lips until it is covered with the glove of marriage. Bah! what do we care for the world's good word?

At this moment they reach the lighted windows of the Inst.i.tute, and like a pair of sparrows, they glance within at the highly proper but terribly tedious company. What do they see? They see Guizot compelled by political exigency to shake hands hypocritically with his enemy Montalembert. But before them down a dim court shine three lamps, an all-night dance resort. Come on! run for it! that's the place for us! no dull formalities, no hypocrisies there! Something doing!

RESPECTABILITY

1855

I