The Poetry Of Robert Browning Part 6

How good some of that is; how bad it is elsewhere! How much it needs thought, concentration, and yet how vivid also and original! And the faults of it, of grammar, of want of clearness, of irritating parenthesis, of broken threads of thought, of inability to leave out the needless, are faults of which Browning never quite cleared his work. I do not think he ever cared to rid himself of them.

The next description is not an ill.u.s.tration of man by means of Nature.

It is almost the only set description of Nature, without reference to man, which occurs in the whole of Browning's work. It is introduced by his declaration (for in this I think he speaks from himself) of his power of living in the life of all living things. He does not think of himself as living in the whole Being of Nature, as Wordsworth or Sh.e.l.ley might have done. There was a certain matter of factness in him which prevented his belief in any theory of that kind. But he does transfer himself into the rejoicing life of the animals and plants, a life which he knows is akin to his own. And this distinction is true of all his poetry of Nature. "I can mount with the bird," he says,

Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree, Or like a fish breathe deep the morning air In the misty sun-warm water.

This introduces the description of a walk of twenty-four hours through various scenes of natural beauty. It is long and elaborate--the scenery he conceives round the home where he and Pauline are to live. And it is so close, and so much of it is repeated in other forms in his later poetry, that I think it is drawn direct from Nature; that it is here done of set purpose to show his hand in natural description. It begins with night, but soon leaves night for the morning and the noon. Here is a piece of it:

Morning, the rocks and valleys and old woods.

How the sun brightens in the mist, and here, Half in the air, like[5] creatures of the place, Trusting the elements, living on high boughs That sway in the wind--look at the silver spray Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract Amid the broken rocks! Shall we stay here With the wild hawks? No, ere the hot noon come Dive we down--safe! See, this is our new retreat Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down To a small pool whose waters lie asleep, Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants: And tall trees overarch to keep us in, Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts, And in the dreamy water one small group Of two or three strange trees are got together Wondering at all around--

This is nerveless work, tentative, talkative, no clear expression of the whole; and as he tries to expand it further in lines we may study with interest, for the very failures of genius are interesting, he becomes even more feeble. Yet the feebleness is traversed by verses of power, like lightning flashing through a mist upon the sea. The chief thing to say about this direct, detailed work is that he got out of its manner as fast as he could. He never tried it again, but pa.s.sed on to suggest the landscape by a few sharp, high-coloured words; choosing out one or two of its elements and flashing them into prominence. The rest was left to the imagination of the reader.

He is better when he comes forth from the shadowy woodland-pool into the clear air and open landscape:

Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods!

See, they part like a ruined arch: the sky!

Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden With light, like a dead whale that white birds pick, Floating away in the sun in some north sea.

Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air, The clear, dear breath of G.o.d that loveth us, Where small birds reel and winds take their delight!

The last three lines are excellent, but nothing could be worse than the sensational image of the dead whale. It does not fit the thing he desires to ill.u.s.trate, and it violates the sentiment of the scene he is describing, but its strangeness pleased his imagination, and he put it in without a question. Alas, in after times, he only too often, both in the poetry of nature and of the human soul, hurried into his verse ill.u.s.trations which had no natural relation to the matter in hand, just because it amused him to indulge his fancy. The finished artist could not do this; he would hear, as it were, the false note, and reject it.

But Browning, a natural artist, never became a perfect one.

Nevertheless, as his poetry went on, he reached, by natural power, splendid description, as indeed I have fully confessed; but, on the other hand, one is never sure of him. He is never quite "inevitable."

The attempt at deliberate natural description in _Pauline_, of which I have now spoken, is not renewed in _Paracelsus_. By the time he wrote that poem the movement and problem of the spirit of man had all but quenched his interest in natural scenery. Nature is only introduced as a background, almost a scenic background for the players, who are the pa.s.sions, thoughts, and aspirations of the intellectual life of Paracelsus. It is only at the beginning of Part II. that we touch a landscape:

Over the waters in the vaporous West The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold Behind the arm of the city, which between; With all the length of domes and minarets, Athwart the splendour, black and crooked runs Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.

That is all; nothing but an introduction. Paracelsus turns in a moment from the sight, and absorbs himself in himself, just as Browning was then doing in his own soul. Nearly two thousand lines are then written before Nature is again touched upon, and then Festus and Paracelsus are looking at the dawn; and it is worth saying how in this description Browning's work on Nature has so greatly improved that one can scarcely believe he is the same poet who wrote the wavering descriptions of _Pauline_. This is close and clear:

Morn must be near.

FESTUS. Best ope the cas.e.m.e.nt: see, The night, late strewn with clouds and flying stars, Is blank and motionless: how peaceful sleep The tree-tops all together! Like an asp[6]

The wind slips whispering from bough to bough.

PARACELSUS. See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems Diluted, grey and clear without the stars; The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if Some snake, that weighed them down all night, let go His hold; and from the East, fuller and fuller, Day, like a mighty river, flowing in; But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold.

That is good, clear, and sufficient; and there the description should end. But Browning, driven by some small demon, adds to it three lines of mere observant fancy.

Yet see how that broad p.r.i.c.kly star-shaped plant, Half-down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves, All thick and glistening with diamond dew.

What is that for? To give local colour or reality? It does neither. It is mere childish artistry. Tennyson could not have done it. He knew when to stay his hand.[7]

The finest piece of natural description in _Paracelsus_ is of the coming of Spring. It is full of the joy of life; it is inspired by a pa.s.sionate thought, lying behind it, concerning man. It is still more inspired by his belief that G.o.d himself was eternal joy and filled the universe with rapture. Nowhere did Browning reach a greater height in his Nature poetry than in these lines, yet they are more a description, as usual, of animal life than of the beauty of the earth and sea:

Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, pa.s.ses Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; The gra.s.s grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain--and G.o.d renews His ancient rapture.

Once more, in _Paracelsus_, there is the lovely lyric about the flowing of the Mayne. I have driven through that gracious country of low hill and dale and wide water-meadows, where under flowered banks only a foot high the slow river winds in gentleness; and this poem is steeped in the sentiment of the scenery. But, as before, Browning quickly slides away from the beauty of inanimate nature into a record of the animals that haunt the stream. He could not get on long with mountains and rivers alone. He must people them with breathing, feeling things; anything for life!

Thus the Mayne glideth Where my Love abideth.

Sleep's no softer; it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, Though the n.i.g.g.ard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving gra.s.ses To view the river as it pa.s.ses, Save here and there a scanty patch Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee.

And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Naught disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, Whom the shy fox from the hill Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.

"My heart, they loose my heart, those simple words," cries Paracelsus, and he was right. They tell of that which to see and love is better, wiser, than to probe and know all the problems of knowledge. But that is a truth not understood, not believed. And few there be who find it. And if Browning had found the secret of how to live more outside of his understanding than he did, or having found it, had not forgotten it, he would not perhaps have spoken more wisely for the good of man, but he would have more continuously written better poetry.

The next poem in which he may be said to touch Nature is _Sordello_.

_Strafford_ does not count, save for the charming song of the boat in music and moonlight, which the children sing. In _Sordello_, the problem of life, as in _Paracelsus_, is still the chief matter, but outward life, as not in _Paracelsus_, takes an equal place with inward life. And naturally, Nature, its changes and beauty, being outward, are more fully treated than in _Paracelsus_. But it is never treated for itself alone.

It is made to image or reflect the sentiment of the man who sees it, or to ill.u.s.trate a phase of his pa.s.sion or his thought. But there is a closer grip upon it than before, a clearer definition, a greater power of concentrated expression of it, and especially, a fuller use of colour. Browning paints Nature now like a Venetian; the very shadows of objects are in colour. This new power was a kind of revelation to him, and he frequently uses it with a personal joy in its exercise. Things in Nature blaze in his poetry now and afterwards in gold, purple, the crimson of blood, in sunlit green and topaz, in radiant blue, in dyes of earthquake and eclipse. Then, when he has done his landscape thus in colour, he adds more; he places in its foreground one drop, one eye of still more flaming colour, to vivify and inflame the whole.

The main landscape of _Sordello_ is the plain and the low pine-clad hills around Mantua; the half-circle of the deep lagoon which enarms the battlemented town; and the river Mincio, seen by Sordello when he comes out of the forest on the hill, as it enters and leaves the lagoon, and winds, a silver ribbon, through the plain. It is the landscape Vergil must have loved. A long bridge of more than a hundred arches, with towers of defence, crosses the marsh from the towered gateway of the walls to the mainland, and in the midst of the lagoon the deep river flows fresh and clear with a steady swiftness. Scarcely anywhere in North Italy is the upper sky more pure at dawn and even, and there is no view now so mystic in its desolation. Over the lagoon, and puffing from it, the mists, daily encrimsoned by sunrise and sunset, continually rise and disperse.

The character and the peculiarities of this landscape Browning has seized and enshrined in verse. But his descriptions are so arranged as to reflect certain moments of crisis in the soul of Sordello. He does not describe this striking landscape for its own sake, but for the sake of his human subject. The lines I quote below describe noon-day on the lagoon, seen from the golden woods and black pines; and the vision of the plain, city and river, suddenly opening out from the wood, symbolises the soul of Sordello opening out from solitude "into the veritable business of mankind."

Then wide Opened the great mora.s.s, shot every side With flashing water through and through; a-shine, Thick-steaming, all-alive. Whose shape divine Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced Athwart the flying herons? He advanced, But warily; though Mincio leaped no more, Each footfall burst up in the marish-floor A diamond jet.

And then he somewhat spoils this excellent thing by a piece of detail too minute for the largeness of the impression. But how clear and how full of true sentiment it is; and how the image of Palma rainbowed in the mist, and of Sordello seeing her, fills the landscape with youthful pa.s.sion!

Here is the same view in the morning, when Mincio has come down in flood and filled the marsh:

Mincio, in its place, Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face, And, where the mists broke up immense and white I' the steady wind, burned like a spilth of light Out of the crashing of a million stars.

It were well to compare that brilliant piece of light with the grey water-sunset at Ferrara in the beginning of Book VI.

While eve slow sank Down the near terrace to the farther bank, And only one spot left from out the night Glimmered upon the river opposite-- breadth of watery heaven like a bay, A sky-like s.p.a.ce of water, ray for ray, And star for star, one richness where they mixed As this and that wing of an angel, fixed, Tumultuary splendours folded in To die.

As usual, Spring enchants him. The second book begins with her coming, and predicates the coming change in Sordello's soul.

The woods were long austere with snow; at last Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes, Brightened, as in the slumbrous heart of the woods Our buried year, a witch, grew young again To placid incantations, and that stain About were from her cauldron, green smoke blent With those black pines.

Nor does he omit in _Sordello_ to recall two other favourite aspects of nature, long since recorded in _Pauline_, the ravine and the woodland spring. Just as Turner repeated in many pictures of the same place what he had first observed in it, so Browning recalled in various poems the first impressions of his youth. He had a curious love for a ravine with overhanging trees and a thin thread of water, looping itself round rocks. It occurs in the _Fireside_, it is taken up in his later poems, and up such a ravine Sordello climbs among the pines of Goito:

He climbed with (June at deep) some close ravine Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen, Over which, singing soft, the runnel slipped Elate with rains.

Then, in _Sordello_, we come again across the fountain in the grove he draws in _Pauline_, now greatly improved in clearness and word-brightness--a real vision. Fate has given him here a fount

Of pure loquacious pearl, the soft tree-tent Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail At bottom--

where the impulse of the water sends up the sand in a cone--a solitary loveliness of Nature that Coleridge and Tennyson have both drawn with a finer pencil than Browning. The other examples of natural description in _Sordello_, as well as those in _Balaustion_ I shall reserve till I speak of those poems. As to the dramas, they are wholly employed with humanity. In them man's soul has so overmastered Browning that they are scarcely diversified half a dozen times by any ill.u.s.trations derived from Nature.

We now come, with _The Ring and the Book_, to a clear division in his poetry of Nature. From this time forth Nature decays in his verse. Man masters it and drives it out. In _The Ring and the Book_, huge as it is, Nature rarely intrudes; the human pa.s.sion of the matter is so great that it swallows up all Browning's interest. There is a little forky flashing description of the entrance to the Val d'Ema in Guido's first statement.

Caponsacchi is too intensely gathered round the tragedy to use a single ill.u.s.tration from Nature. The only person who does use ill.u.s.trations from Nature is the only one who is by age, by his life, by the apartness of his high place, capable of sufficient quiet and contemplation to think of Nature at all. This is the Pope.

He ill.u.s.trates with great vigour the way in which Guido destroyed all the home life which clung about him and himself remained dark and vile, by the burning of a nest-like hut in the Campagna, with all its vines and ivy and flowers; till nothing remains but the blackened walls of the malicious tower round which the hut had been built.

He ill.u.s.trates the sudden event which, breaking in on Caponsacchi's life, drew out of him his latent power and his inward good, by this vigorous description: