Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 17

Dear, had the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim "I know you both, Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!"-- How many precious months and years Of youth had pa.s.sed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears?

II

How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their s.e.x, Society's true ornament,-- Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss?

III

I know! the world proscribes not love; Allows my finger to caress Your lips' contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove.

The world's good word!--the Inst.i.tute!

Guizot receives Montalembert!

Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!

In the list of _Dramatis Personae_, Browning placed _Confessions_ shortly after _A Death in the Desert_, as if to show the enormous contrast in two death-bed scenes. After a presentation of the last n.o.ble, spiritual, inspired moments of the apostle John, we have portrayed for us the dying delirium of an old sinner, whose thought travels back to the sweetest moments of his life, his clandestine meetings with the girl he loved. The solemn voice of the priest is like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?

Not much!

Like Matthew Arnold's _Wish_, the brother-doctor of the soul who is called in

To canva.s.s with official breath

is simply a nuisance in these last minutes of life. The row of medicine bottles, all useless now for practical purposes, represents to his fevered eyes the topography of the scene where the girl used to come running to meet him. "I know, sir, it's improper,"--I ought not to talk this way to a clergyman, my mind isn't right, I'm dying, and this is all I can think of.

How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!

CONFESSIONS

1864

What is he buzzing in my ears?

"Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"

Is the house o'ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune.

Only, there was a way ... you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge."

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"

And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir--used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!

We may close our considerations of the dramatic lyrics with three love-poems. Whenever in his later years Browning was asked to write a selection with his autograph, he used to say playfully that the only one of his poems that he could remember was _My Star_; hence more copies of this exist in ma.n.u.script than any other of his productions. It was of course a tribute to his wife; she shone upon his life like a star of various colors; but the moment the world attempted to pry into the secret of her genius, she shut off the light altogether. Let the world regard Saturn, the most wonderful star in the heavens. My star shines for me alone.

The first and best of the series of _Bad Dreams_ gives us again in Browning's last volume his doctrine of love. Love is its own reward: it may be sad not to have love returned, but the one unspeakable tragedy is to lose the capacity for loving. In a terrible dream, the face of the woman changes from its familiar tenderness to a glance of stony indifference, and in response to his agonised enquiry, she declares that her love for him is absolutely dead. Then comes a twofold bliss: one was in the mere waking from such desolation, but the other consisted in the fact that even if the dream were true, his love for her knew no diminution. Thank G.o.d, I loved on the same!

The most audacious poem of Browning's old age is _Summum Bonum_.

Since the dawn of human speculative thought, philosophers have asked this question, What is the highest good? It has been answered in various ways. Omar Khayyam said it was Wine: John Stuart Mill said it was the greatest happiness of the greatest number: the Westminster Catechism said it was to glorify G.o.d and enjoy Him forever. Browning says it is the kiss of one girl. This kiss is the concentrated essence of all the glory, beauty, and sweetness of life. In order to understand such a paradox, we must remember that in Browning's philosophy, Love is the engine of the whole universe. I have no doubt that Love meant to him more than it has ever meant to any other poet or thinker; just as I am sure that the word Beauty revealed to Keats a vision entirely beyond the range of even the greatest seers. Love is the supreme fact; and every manifestation of it on earth, from the Divine Incarnation down to a chance meeting of lovers, is more important than any other event or idea. Now we have seen that it is Browning's way invariably to represent an abstract thought by a concrete ill.u.s.tration. Therefore in this great and daring lyric we find the imaginary lover calling the kiss of the woman he loves the highest good in life.

MY STAR

1855

All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

BAD DREAMS

1889

Last night I saw you in my sleep: And how your charm of face was changed!

I asked "Some love, some faith you keep?"

You answered "Faith gone, love estranged."

Whereat I woke--a twofold bliss: Waking was one, but next there came This other: "Though I felt, for this, My heart break, I loved on the same."

SUMMUM BONUM

1889

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem: In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea: Breath and bloom, shade and shine,--wonder, wealth, and--how far above them-- Truth, that's brighter than gem, Trust, that's purer than pearl,-- Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe--all were for me In the kiss of one girl.