The Poetry Of Robert Browning Part 7

As when a thundrous midnight, with black air That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell, Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed Shut unsuspected flower that h.o.a.rds and hides Immensity of sweetness.

And the last ill.u.s.tration, in which the Pope hopes that Guido's soul may yet be saved by the suddenness of his death, is one of the finest pieces of natural description in Browning, and reads like one of his own memories:

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible: There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.

After _The Ring and the Book_, poor Nature, as one of Browning's mistresses, was somewhat neglected for a time, and he gave himself up to ugly representations of what was odd or twisted in humanity, to its smaller problems, like that contained in _Fifine at the Fair_, to its fantastic impulses, its strange madnesses, its basenesses, even its commonplace crimes. These subjects were redeemed by his steady effort to show that underneath these evil developments of human nature lay immortal good; and that a wise tolerance, based on this underlying G.o.dlikeness in man, was the true att.i.tude of the soul towards the false and the stupid in mankind. This had been his att.i.tude from the beginning. It differentiates him from Tennyson, who did not maintain that view; and at that point he is a n.o.bler poet than Tennyson.

But he became too much absorbed in the intellectual treatment of these side-issues in human nature. And I think that he was left unprotected from this or not held back from it by his having almost given up Nature in her relation to man as a subject for his poetry. To love that great, solemn and beautiful Creature, who even when she seems most merciless retains her glory and loveliness, keeps us from thinking too much on the lower problems of humanity, on its ign.o.bler movements; holds before us infinite grandeur, infinite beauty, infinite order, and suggests and confirms within us eternal aspiration. Those intimations of the ideal and endless perfectness which are dimmed within us by the meaner aspects of human life, or by the sordid difficulties of thought which a sensual and wealth-seeking society present to us, are restored to us by her quiet, order and beauty. When he wrote _Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, and _The Inn Alb.u.m_, Nature had ceased to awaken the poetic pa.s.sion in him, and his poetry suffered from the loss.

Its interest lies in the narrow realm of intellectual a.n.a.lysis, not in the large realm of tragic or joyous pa.s.sion. He became the dissector of corrupt bodies, not the creator of living beings.

Nevertheless, in _Fifine at the Fair_ there are several intercalated ill.u.s.trations from Nature, all of which are interesting and some beautiful. The sunset over Sainte-Marie and the lie Noirmoutier, with the birds who sing to the dead, and the coming of the nightwind and the tide, is as largely wrought as the description of the mountain rill--the "infant of mist and dew," and its voyage to the sea is minute and delicate. There is also that magnificent description of a sunset which I have already quoted. It is drawn to ill.u.s.trate some remote point in the argument, and is far too magnificent for the thing it ill.u.s.trates. Yet how few in this long poem, how remote from Browning's heart, are these touches of Nature.

Again, in _The Inn Alb.u.m_ there is a description of an English elm-tree, as an image of a woman who makes marriage life seem perfect, which is interesting because it is the third, and only the third, reference to English scenery in the mult.i.tude of Browning's verses. The first is in _Pauline_, the second in that poem, "Oh, to be in England," and this is the third. The woman has never ceased to gaze

On the great elm-tree in the open, posed Placidly full in front, smooth hole, broad branch, And leaf.a.ge, one green plenitude of May.

... bosomful Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences, Sun-warmth, dew-coolness, squirrel, bee, bird, High, higher, highest, till the blue proclaims "Leave Earth, there's nothing better till next step Heavenward!"

This, save in one line, is not felt or expressed with any of that pa.s.sion which makes what a poet says completely right.

Browning could not stay altogether in this condition, in which, moreover, his humour was also in abeyance; and in his next book, _Pacchiarotto, &c._, he broke away from these morbid subjects, and, with that recovery, recovered also some of his old love of Nature. The prologue to that book is poetry; and Nature (though he only describes an old stone wall in Italy covered with straying plants) is interwoven with his sorrow and his love. Then, all through the book, even in its most fantastic humour, Nature is not altogether neglected for humanity; and the poetry, which Browning seemed to have lost the power to create, has partly returned to him. That is also the case in _La Saisiaz_, and I have already spoken of the peculiar elements of the nature-poetry in that work. In the _Dramatic Idyls_, of which he was himself fond; and in _Jocoseria_, there is very little natural description. The subjects did not allow of it, but yet Nature sometimes glides in, and when she does, thrills the verse into a higher humanity. In _Ferishtah's Fancies_, a book full of flying charm, Nature has her proper place, and in the lyrics which close the stories she is not forgotten; but still there is not the care for her which once ran like a full river of delight through his landscape of human nature. He loved, indeed, that landscape of mankind the most, the plains and hills and woods of human life; but when he watered it with the great river of Nature his best work was done.

Now, as life grew to a close, that river had too much dried up in his poetry.

It was not that he had not the power to describe Nature if he cared. But he did not care. I have spoken of the invented descriptions of morn and noon and sunset in Gerard de Lairesse in the book which preceded _Asolando_. They have his trenchant power, words that beat out the scene like strokes on an anvil, but, curiously enough, they are quite unsuffused with human feeling; as if, having once divorced Nature from humanity, he never could bring them together again. Nor is this a mere theory. The Prologue to _Asolando_ supports it.

That sorrowful poem, written, it seems, in the year he died (1889), reveals his position towards Nature when he had lost the power of youth to pour fire on the world. It is full of his last thinking. "The poet's age is sad," he says. "In youth his eye lent to everything in the natural world the colours of his own soul, the rainbow glory of imagination:

And now a flower is just a flower: Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man-- Simply themselves, uncinct by dower Of dyes which, when life's day began, Round each in glory ran."

"Ah! what would you have?" he says. "What is the best: things draped in colour, as by a lens, or the naked things themselves? truth ablaze, or falsehood's fancy haze? I choose the first."

It is an old man's effort to make the best of age. For my part, I do not see that the things are the better for losing the colour the soul gives them. The things themselves are indifferent. But as seen by the soul, they are seen in G.o.d, and the colour and light which imagination gives them are themselves divine. Nor is their colour or light only in our imagination, but in themselves also, part of the glory and beauty of G.o.d. A flower is never only a flower, or a beast a beast. And so Browning would have said in the days when he was still a lover of Nature as well as of man, when he was still a faithful soldier in the army of imagination, a poet more than a philosopher at play. It is a sad business. He has not lost his eagerness to advance, to climb beyond the flaming walls, to find G.o.d in his heaven. He has not lost the great hopes with which he began, nor the ideals he nursed of old. He has not lost his fighting power, nor his cheerful cry that life is before him in the fulness of the world to come. The _Reverie_ and the _Epilogue_ to _Asolando_ are n.o.ble statements of his courage, faith, and joy. There is nothing sad there, nothing to make us beat the breast. But there is sadness in this abandonment of the imaginative glory with which once he clothed the world of Nature; and he ought to have retained it. He would have done so had he not forgotten Nature in anatomising man.

However, he goes on with his undying effort to make the best of things, and though he has lost his rapture in Nature, he has not lost his main theory of man's life and of the use of the universe. The end of this _Prologue_ puts it as clearly as it was put in _Paracelsus_. Nothing is changed in that.

"At Asolo," he continues, "my Asolo, when I was young, all natural objects were palpably clothed with fire. They mastered me, not I them.

Terror was in their beauty. I was like Moses before the Bush that burned. I adored the splendour I saw. Then I was in danger of being content with it; of mistaking the finite for the infinite beauty. To be satisfied--that was the peril. Now I see the natural world as it is, without the rainbow hues the soul bestowed upon it. Is that well? In one sense yes.

And now? The lambent flame is--where?

Lost from the naked world: earth, sky, Hill, vale, tree, flower--Italia's rare O'er-running beauty crowds the eye-- But flame?--The Bush is bare.

All is distinct, naked, clear, Nature and nothing else. Have I lost anything in getting down to fact instead of to fancy? Have I shut my eyes in pain--pain for disillusion? No--now I know that my home is not in Nature; there is no awe and splendour in her which can keep me with her. Oh, far beyond is the true splendour, the infinite source of awe and love which transcends her:

No, for the purged ear apprehends Earth's import, not the eye late dazed: The Voice said "Call my works thy friends!

At Nature dost thou shrink amazed?

G.o.d is it who transcends."

All Browning is in that way of seeing the matter; but he forgets that he could see it in the same fashion while he still retained the imaginative outlook on the world of Nature. And the fact is that he did do so in _Paracelsus_, in _Easter-Day_, in a host of other poems. There was then no need for him to reduce to naked fact the glory with which young imagination clothed the world, in order to realise that G.o.d transcended Nature. He had conceived that truth and believed it long ago. And this explanation, placed here, only tells us that he had lost his ancient love of Nature, and it is sorrowful to understand it of him.

Finally, the main contentions of this chapter, which are drawn from a chronological view of Browning's treatment of Nature, are perhaps worth a summary. The first is that, though the love of Nature was always less in him than his love of human nature, yet for the first half of his work it was so interwoven with his human poetry that Nature suggested to him humanity and humanity Nature. And these two, as subjects for thought and feeling, were each uplifted and impa.s.sioned, ill.u.s.trated and developed, by this intercommunion. That was a true and high position. Humanity was first, Nature second in Browning's poetry, but both were linked together in a n.o.ble marriage; and at that time he wrote his best poetry.

The second thing this chronological treatment of his Nature-poetry shows, is that his interest in human nature pushed out his love of Nature, gradually at first, but afterwards more swiftly, till Nature became almost non-existent in his poetry. With that his work sank down into intellectual or ethical exercises, in which poetry decayed.

It shows, thirdly, how the love of Nature, returning, but returning with diminished power, entered again into his love of human nature, and renewed the pa.s.sion of his poetry, its singing, and its health. But reconciliations of this kind do not bring back all the ancient affection and happiness. Nature and humanity never lived together in his poetry in as vital a harmony as before, nor was the work done on them as good as it was of old. A broken marriage is not repaired by an apparent condonation. Nature and humanity, though both now dwelt in him, kept separate rooms. Their home-life was destroyed. Browning had been drawn away by a Fifine of humanity. He never succeeded in living happily again with Elvire; and while our intellectual interest in his work remained, our poetic interest in it lessened. We read it for mental and ethical entertainment, not for ideal joy.

No; if poetry is to _be_ perfectly written; if the art is to be brought to its n.o.blest height; if it is to continue to lift the hearts of men into the realm where perfection lives; if it is to glow, an unwearied fire, in the world; the love of Nature must be justly mingled in it with the love of humanity. The love of humanity must be first, the love of Nature second, but they must not be divorced. When they are, when the love of Nature forms the only subject, or when the love of Man forms the only subject, poetry decays and dies.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Creatures accordant with the place?

[6] Browning, even more than Sh.e.l.ley, was fond of using the snake in his poetry. Italy is in that habit.

[7] There is a fine picture of the pa.s.sing of a hurricane in _Paracelsus_ (p. 67, vol i.) which ill.u.s.trates this inability to stop when he has done all he needs. Paracelsus speaks:

The hurricane is spent, And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather; But is it earth or sea that heaves below?

The gulf rolls like a meadow-swell, o'erstrewn With ravaged boughs and remnants of the sh.o.r.e; And now, some islet, loosened from the land, Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean: _And now the air is full of uptorn canes._ _Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks_ _Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them,_ _All high in the wind_. Even so my varied life Drifts by me.

I think that the lines I have italicised should have been left out. They weaken what he has well done.

CHAPTER IV

_BROWNING'S THEORY OF HUMAN LIFE_

_PAULINE AND PARACELSUS_

To isolate Browning's view of Nature, and to leave it behind us, seemed advisable before speaking of his work as a poet of mankind. We can now enter freely on that which is most distinctive, most excellent in his work--his human poetry; and the first thing that meets us and in his very first poems, is his special view of human nature, and of human life, and of the relation of both to G.o.d. It marks his originality that this view was entirely his own. Ancient thoughts of course are to be found in it, but his combination of them is original amongst the English poets. It marks his genius that he wrought out this conception while he was yet so young. It is partly shaped in _Pauline_; it is fully set forth in _Paracelsus_. And it marks his consistency of mind that he never changed it. I do not think he ever added to it or developed it. It satisfied him when he was a youth, and when he was an old man. We have already seen it clearly expressed in the _Prologue_ to _Asolando_.

That theory needs to be outlined, for till it is understood Browning's poetry cannot be understood or loved as fully as we should desire to love it. It exists in _Pauline_, but all its elements are in solution; uncombined, but waiting the electric flash which will mix them, in due proportions, into a composite substance, having a lucid form, and capable of being used. That flash was sent through the confused elements of _Pauline_, and the result was _Paracelsus_.

I will state the theory first, and then, lightly pa.s.sing through _Pauline_ and _Paracelsus_, re-tell it. It is fitting to apologise for the repet.i.tion which this method of treatment will naturally cause; but, considering that the theory underlies every drama and poem that he wrote during sixty years, such repet.i.tion does not seem unnecessary. There are many who do not easily grasp it, or do not grasp it at all, and they may be grateful. As to those who do understand it, they will be happy in their anger with any explanation of what they know so well.

He asks what is the secret of the world: "of man and man's true purpose, path and fate." He proposes to understand "G.o.d-and his works and all G.o.d's intercourse with the human soul."

We are here, he thinks, to grow enough to be able to take our part in another life or lives. But we are surrounded by limitations which baffle and r.e.t.a.r.d our growth. That is miserable, but not so much as we think; for the failures these limitations cause prevent us--and this is a main point in Browning's view--from being content with our condition on the earth. There is that within us which is always endeavouring to transcend those limitations, and which believes in their final dispersal. This aspiration rises to something higher than any possible actual on earth.

It is never worn out; it is the divine in us; and when it seems to decay, G.o.d renews it by spiritual influences from without and within, coming to us from nature as seen by us, from humanity as felt by us, and from himself who dwells in us.

But then, unless we find out and submit to those limitations, and work within them, life is useless, so far as any life is useless. But while we work within them, we see beyond them an illimitable land, and thirst for it. This battle between the dire necessity of working in chains and longing for freedom, between the infinite destiny of the soul and the baffling of its effort to realise its infinitude on earth, makes the storm and misery of life. We may try to escape that tempest and sorrow by determining to think, feel, and act only within our limitations, to be content with them as Goethe said; but if we do, we are worse off than before. We have thrown away our divine destiny. If we take this world and are satisfied with it, cease to aspire, beyond our limits, to full perfection in G.o.d; if our soul should ever say, "I want no more; what I have here--the pleasure, fame, knowledge, beauty or love of this world--is all I need or care for," then we are indeed lost. That is the last d.a.m.nation. The worst failure, the deepest misery, is better than contentment with the success of earth; and seen in this light, the failures and misery of earth are actually good things, the cause of a chastened joy. They open to us the larger light. They suggest, and in Browning's belief they proved, that this life is but the threshold of an infinite life, that our true life is beyond, that there is an infinite of happiness, of knowledge, of love, of beauty which we shall attain.

Our failures are prophecies of eternal successes. To choose the finite life is to miss the infinite Life! O fool, to claim the little cup of water earth's knowledge offers to thy thirst, or the beauty or love of earth, when the immeasurable waters of the Knowledge, Beauty and Love of the Eternal Paradise are thine beyond the earth.

Two things are then clear: (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our pa.s.sion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life. We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall be attained hereafter. Our destiny, the G.o.d within us, demands that. And we lose it, if we are content with our earthly life, even with its highest things, with knowledge, beauty, or with love.

Hence, the foundation of Browning's theory is a kind of Original Sin in us, a natural defectiveness deliberately imposed on us by G.o.d, which prevents us attaining any absolute success on earth. And this defectiveness of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, we know--that G.o.d will fulfil all n.o.ble desire in a life to come.