Selections From The Poems And Plays Of Robert Browning Part 41

65. _Male-sapphires._ The male sapphire exhibits, through some peculiarity of crystalline structure, a star of bright rays. It is also known as "the star sapphire" and "the asteriated sapphire." The ruby shows a clear red light at the center.

76. _Locust-flesh._ In _Leviticus_, Chapter xi, are given the laws concerning "what beasts may and what may not be eaten." See verse 22 for the rule about locusts. Cf. _Matthew_ iii, 4 for the food of John the Baptist.

102. _The cherubim chariot._ The first chapter of _Ezekiel_ seems to be the source of this picture.

105. _Have ye seen_, etc. The simile in lines 104-115 could have been written only by one familiar with mountain regions. Browning knew the Alps and Apennines. Did David at any time live in a mountainous country?

124. _Slow pallid sunsets._ Note the character of the similitudes so far used in describing Saul. In his agony he is like the king-serpent. His rage is like the earthquake that may tear open the rock but at the same time sets the gold free. His final release from the evil spirit is described by the sudden fall of the avalanche from the mountain summit.

The look in his eyes as he comes back to life, yet seeing nothing in life to desire, is compared to pale autumn sunsets seen over the ocean, or to slow sunsets seen over a desolate hill country. All the figures contribute to our impression of Saul's power and majesty.

141. _Since my days_, etc. Compare this pa.s.sage with _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, Prologue, 104-113.

172. _Carouse in the past._ This line marks a change in the direction of David's thought. Up to stanza X it was the glorious past that he had been urging upon Saul's attention. But now he realizes that true inspiration comes not so much from a re-living of one's achievements, as from the thought of the permanence of one's fame and one's deeds.

192. _And behold while I sang._ At this point David is overcome by the memory of the sudden spiritual illumination that came to him in his interview with Saul. He had reached the summit of his endeavor (l. 191) and yet knew himself powerless to give the King new life. Then there flashed upon him the truth expressed in stanzas XVII-XIX. He breaks off in lines 192-205, going, in his strong feeling, ahead of his story and commenting on what is described in stanza XIX. In stanza XV he resumes his narrative.

204. _Hebron._ David watches the slow coming of the dawn over the hill on which is situated the town of Hebron.

205. _Kidron._ A brook near Jerusalem. It is fed by springs, and the amount of water in it is sensibly decreased by the extreme heat of the day.

214. _Ere error had bent._ In _I Samuel_, Chapter xv, is an account of Saul's disobedience and punishment. The choosing of Saul to be king is described in _I Samuel_, Chapters ix and x.

292. _Sabaoth._ The word means "hosts" and is ordinarily used in the phrase "The Lord of hosts." It represents the omnipotence of G.o.d.

303. _Nor leave up nor down_, etc. At the end of stanza xv, the thought that had come to David was that G.o.d had proved supreme in all the ways in which a human being could test knowledge and power, but that in the one way of love the creature might surpa.s.s the Creator. At line 302 he has come to believe in the infinitude of G.o.d's love as well as in the infinitude of His power. It is interesting to note that George Eliot in _Silas Marner_ gives to ignorant Dolly Winthrop an experience and a philosophy of life almost identical with those of Browning's David.

307-312. A prophecy of the revelation of the divine in the human, the coming of G.o.d in the person of Christ. It is the human in the divine that men seek and love. In the Old Testament days such an idea, though foretold and longed for, could be but vaguely conceived except in moments of especial insight in the minds of poet-prophets like David.

Mr. Herford (_Robert Browning_, p. 120) says of this pa.s.sage:

"David is occupied with no speculative question, but with the practical problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the situation, urges his thought along the lonely path of prophecy. The love for the old King, which prompted him to try all the hidden paths of his soul in quest of healing, becomes a lighted torch by which he tracks out the meaning of the world and the still unrevealed purposes of G.o.d; until the energy of thought culminates in vision and the Christ stands full before his eyes."

313-335. In this stanza David represents all existences, good and evil spirits, all animals, all forms of nature, as stirred by the great news of the future manifestation of the love of G.o.d as shown in Christ.

MY STAR

A love lyric generally supposed to refer to Mrs. Browning.

4. _The angled spar._ A prism. In looking at a prism the colors one sees are determined by the point of view. The idea of the poem is amplified in "One Word More," stanzas xvi-xviii.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA

The Campagna, a plain around the city of Rome, was in ancient times the seat of many cities; it is now dotted with ruins. "There is a solemnity and beauty about the Campagna entirely its own. To the reflective mind, this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion; its vast, almost limitless extent as it seems to the traveler; its abundant herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilization, fill the mind with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in the poem." (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 553.)

6. _I touched a thought._ The elusive thought which he fancifully pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (_Life of Browning_, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet a.s.suredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment."

IN THREE DAYS

"Another poem of waiting love is 'In Three Days.' And this has the spirit of a true love lyric in it. It reads like a personal thing; it breathes exaltation; it is quick, hurried, and thrilled. The delicate fears of chance and changes in the three days, or in the years to come, belong of right and nature to the waiting, and are subtly varied and condensed. It is, however, the thoughtful love of a man who can be metaphysical in love." (Stopford Brooke, _The Poetry of Robert Browning_, p. 253.)

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

_Fano._ This poem was written in the summer of 1848 after a visit of three days at Fano. It is addressed to Alfred Domett, one of Browning's warm friends, who was at that time in New Zealand on the Wairoa River.

For a vivid description of him see Browning's "Waring." The picture at Fano, the details of which are fully brought out in the poem, has been reproduced in _Ill.u.s.trations to Browning's Poems_, Part I, published by the Browning Society. Mrs. Browning (_Letters_ i, 380) speaks of it as "a divine picture of Guercino's worth going all that way to see."

6. _Another child for tending._ With a longing for guidance and protection Browning imagines himself as a child under the guardianship of the angel.

16. _Like that child._ The child in the picture looks into the heavens.

Browning would look only at the gracious face of the angel.

46. _My angel._ Cf. "My love," l. 54. Both refer to Mrs. Browning.

MEMORABILIA

_Pauline_ (1832) has many references to Sh.e.l.ley; note especially lines 151-229; 1020-1031. Browning's "Essay on Sh.e.l.ley" appeared in 1852.

"Memorabilia" was composed in 1853-4.

18-28. That later in life Browning "came to think unfavorably of Sh.e.l.ley as a man and to esteem him less highly as a poet" is shown by a letter written to Dr. Furnivall: "For myself I painfully contrast my notions of Sh.e.l.ley the _man_ and Sh.e.l.ley, well, even the _poet_, with what they were sixty years ago." (Quoted by Mr. Dowden: _Robert Browning_, p. 10.) Mr. Browning declined an invitation to be president of the Sh.e.l.ley Society. For a discussion of Sh.e.l.ley's influence on Browning see _Poet-Lore_, Volume VII, January, 1895.

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

Ratisbon, a city of Bavaria, was stormed by Napoleon in 1809. The story told in the poem is a true one, but its hero was a man, not a boy.

MY LAST d.u.c.h.eSS

The original t.i.tle in _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1842, was "Italy." It is a poem of the Italian Renaissance. Fra Pandolf and Claus of Innsbruck are, however, imaginary artists.

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL

There is no known original for the story of Theocrite, but it is in accord with the Roman Catholic belief that angels watch over human beings and are interested in their affairs. In the last line is the fundamental lesson of the poem. Compare the thought of Pippa in the song "All service ranks the same with G.o.d." See Leigh Hunt's "King Robert of Sicily" (in _A Jar of Honey_, ch. vi.) and Longfellow's "King Robert of Sicily" (in _Tales of a Wayside Inn_) for an a.n.a.logous legend.

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN

This poem was written to amuse little Willie Macready who was ill and wished a poem for which he could make ill.u.s.trations. There are many legends that deal with the refusal of a reward promised to a magician for some stipulated service. Mr. Berdoe (_Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 339) says that the story given here is based on an account by Verstegan in his _Rest.i.tution of Decayed Intelligence_ (1634). Verstegan gives "Bunting" as the name of the piper; the town, as Hamelin in Brunswick on the Weser; and the mountain into which the children were led as the Koppenberg.

THE FLIGHT OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS

When Mr. Browning was little more than a child he heard a woman one Guy Fawkes's Day sing, in the street a strange song whose burden was "Following the Queen of the Gypsies, O!" The singular refrain haunted his memory for many years, and out of it was ultimately born this poem.

6-31. The Duke's medieval castle was apparently in Northern Germany, near the sea.