1.
I said—Then, dearest, since ’tis so,Since now at length my fate I know,Since nothing all my love avails,Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,Since this was written and needs must be—My whole heart rises up to blessYour name in pride and thankfulness!Take back the hope you gave,—I claimOnly a memory of the same,—And this beside, if you will not blame,Your leave for one more last ride with me.
— St. 1. Browning has no moping melancholy lovers. His lovers generally reflect his own manliness; and when their passion is unrequited, they acknowledge the absolute value of love to their own souls. As Mr. James Thomson, in his ‘Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning’, remarks (‘B. Soc. Papers’, Part II., p. 246), “Browning’s passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle, and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited {George Meredith} has defined passion as ‘noble strength on fire’; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; … Browning’s passion is of utter self-sacrifice, self-annihilation, self-vindicated by its irresistible intensity. So we read it in ‘Time’s Revenges’, so in the scornful condemnation of the weak lovers in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, so in ‘In a Balcony’, and ‘Two in the Campagna’, with its
“‘Infinite passion and the painOf finite hearts that yearn.’
Is the love rejected, unreturned? No weak and mean upbraidings of the beloved, no futile complaints; a solemn resignation to immitigable Fate; intense gratitude for inspiring love to the unloving beloved. So in ‘A Serenade at the Villa’; so in ‘One Way of Love’, with its
“‘My whole life long I learned to love.This hour my utmost art I proveAnd speak my passion.—Heaven or Hell?She will not give me Heaven? ’Tis well!Lose who may—I still can say,Those who win Heaven, blest are they!’
So in ‘The Last Ride Together’, with its
“‘I said—Then, dearest, since ’tis so,’” etc.
2.
My mistress bent that brow of hers;Those deep dark eyes where pride demursWhen pity would be softening through,Fixed me a breathing-while or twoWith life or death in the balance: right!The blood replenished me again;My last thought was at least not vain:I and my mistress, side by side,Shall be together, breathe and ride,So, one day more am I deified.Who knows but the world may end to-night?
3.
Hush! if you saw some western cloudAll billowy-bosomed, over-bowedBy many benedictions—sun’sAnd moon’s and evening-star’s at once—And so, you, looking and loving best,Conscious grew, your passion drewCloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,Down on you, near and yet more near,Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fearThus lay she a moment on my breast.
4.
Then we began to ride. My soulSmoothed itself out, a long-cramped scrollFreshening and fluttering in the wind.Past hopes already lay behind.What need to strive with a life awry?Had I said that, had I done this,So might I gain, so might I miss.Might she have loved me? just as wellShe might have hated, who can tell!Where had I been now if the worst befell?And here we are riding, she and I.
5.
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?Why, all men strive and who succeeds?We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,Saw other regions, cities new,As the world rushed by on either side.I thought,—All labor, yet no lessBear up beneath their unsuccess.Look at the end of work, contrastThe petty done, the undone vast,This present of theirs with the hopeful past!I hoped she would love me: here we ride.
6.
What hand and brain went ever paired?What heart alike conceived and dared?What act proved all its thought had been?What will but felt the fleshy screen?We ride and I see her bosom heave.There’s many a crown for who can reach.Ten lines, a statesman’s life in each!The flag stuck on a heap of bones,A soldier’s doing! what atones?They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.My riding is better, by their leave.
7.
What does it all mean, poet? Well,Your brains beat into rhythm, you tellWhat we felt only; you expressedYou hold things beautiful the best,And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.’Tis something, nay ’tis much: but then,Have you yourself what’s best for men?Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—Nearer one whit your own sublimeThan we who have never turned a rhyme?Sing, riding’s a joy! For me, I ride.
8.
And you, great sculptor—so, you gaveA score of years to Art, her slave,And that’s your Venus, whence we turnTo yonder girl that fords the burn!You acquiesce, and shall I repine?What, man of music, you grown grayWith notes and nothing else to say,Is this your sole praise from a friend,“Greatly his opera’s strains intend,But in music we know how fashions end!”I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
9.
Who knows what’s fit for us? Had fateProposed bliss here should sublimateMy 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.
10.
And yet—she has not spoke so long!What if heaven be that, fair and strongAt life’s best, with our eyes upturnedWhither life’s flower is first discerned,We, fixed so, ever should so abide?What if we still ride on, we two,With life forever old yet new,Changed not in kind but in degree,The instant made eternity,—And heaven just prove that I and sheRide, ride together, forever ride?
By the Fireside.
1.
How well I know what I mean to doWhen the long dark autumn evenings come;And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life’s November too!
— St. 1, v. 3. is: present used for the future, shall then be.
2.
I shall be found by the fire, suppose,O’er a great wise book, as beseemeth age;While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!
—St. 2. Not verse now, only prose: he shall have reachedthe “years which bring the philosophic mind”.
3.
Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,“There he is at it, deep in Greek:Now then, or never, out we slipTo cut from the hazels by the creekA mainmast for our ship!”
4.
I shall be at it indeed, my friends!Greek puts already on either sideSuch a branch-work forth as soon extendsTo a vista opening far and wide,And I pass out where it ends.
— St. 4. Greek puts already such a branch-work forth as will soon extend to a vista opening far and wide, and he will pass out where it ends and retrace the paths he has trod through life’s pleasant wood.
5.
The outside frame, like your hazel-trees—But the inside-archway widens fast,And a rarer sort succeeds to these,And we slope to Italy at lastAnd youth, by green degrees.
6.
I follow wherever I am led,Knowing so well the leader’s hand:Oh woman-country, wooed not wed,Loved all the more by earth’s male-lands,Laid to their hearts instead!
— St. 5, 6. He will pass first through his childhood, in England, represented by the hazels, and on, by green degrees, to youth and Italy, where, knowing so well the leader’s hand, and assured as to whither she will conduct him, he will follow wherever he is led.
7.
Look at the ruined chapel againHalf-way up in the Alpine gorge!Is that a tower, I point you plain,Or is it a mill, or an iron forgeBreaks solitude in vain?
—St. 7. Look: to be construed with “follow”.
8.
A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;The woods are round us, heaped and dim;From slab to slab how it slips and springs,The thread of water single and slim,Through the ravage some torrent brings!
9.
Does it feed the little lake below?That speck of white just on its margeIs Pella; see, in the evening-glow,How sharp the silver spear-heads chargeWhen Alp meets heaven in snow!
10.
On our other side is the straight-up rock;And a path is kept ‘twixt the gorge and itBy bowlder-stones, where lichens mockThe marks on a moth, and small ferns fitTheir teeth to the polished block.
11.
Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,And thorny balls, each three in one,The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!For the drop of the woodland fruit’s begun,These early November hours,
12.
That crimson the creeper’s leaf acrossLike a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,O’er a shield else gold from rim to boss,And lay it for show on the fairy-cuppedElf-needled mat of moss,
13.
By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulgedLast evening—nay, in to-day’s first dewYon sudden coral nipple bulged,Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crewOf toad-stools peep indulged.
14.
And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridgeThat takes the turn to a range beyond,Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge,Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pondDanced over by the midge.
15.
The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,Blackish-gray and mostly wet;Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike.See here again, how the lichens fretAnd the roots of the ivy strike!
16.
Poor little place, where its one priest comesOn a festa-day, if he comes at all,To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,Gathered within that precinct smallBy the dozen ways one roams—
17.
To drop from the charcoal-burners’ huts,Or climb from the hemp-dressers’ low shed,Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spreadTheir gear on the rock’s bare juts.
18.
It has some pretension too, this front,With its bit of fresco half-moon-wiseSet over the porch, Art’s early wont:’Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,But has borne the weather’s brunt—
19.
Not from the fault of the builder, though,For a pent-house properly projectsWhere three carved beams make a certain show,Dating—good thought of our architect’s—‘Five, six, nine, he lets you know.
20.
And all day long a bird sings there,And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;The place is silent and aware;It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,But that is its own affair.
—St. 20. aware: self-conscious.
“…in green ruins, in the desolate wallsOf antique palaces, where Man hath been,…There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.”—Hood’s ‘Sonnet on Silence’.
21.
My perfect wife, my Leonor,O heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too,Whom else could I dare look backward for,With whom beside should I dare pursueThe path gray heads abhor?
— St. 21. He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, “What did I say?—that a small bird sings”. The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are, with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; “gray heads” must be understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor —gray heads who went along through their flowery youth as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love’s true season, the happiness of their lives beyond youth’s limit, “life’s safe hem”, which to cross without such insurance, is often fatal. And these, when they reach old age, shun retracing the path which led to the gulf wherein their youth dropped.
22.
For it leads to a crag’s sheer edge with them;Youth, flowery all the way, there stops—Not they; age threatens and they contemn,Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,One inch from our life’s safe hem!
23.
With me, youth led…I will speak now,No longer watch you as you sitReading by firelight, that great browAnd the spirit-small hand propping it,Mutely, my heart knows how—
— St. 23. With me: the speaker continues, youth led:—we are told whither, in St. 25, v. 4, “to an age so blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead”. I will speak now: up to this point his reflections have been silent, his wife, the while, reading, mutely, by fire-light, his heart knows how, that is, with her heart secretly responsive to his own. The mutual responsiveness of their hearts is expressed in St. 24.
24.
When, if I think but deep enough,You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;And you, too, find without rebuffResponse your soul seeks many a time,Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.
25.
My own, confirm me! If I treadThis path back, is it not in prideTo think how little I dreamed it ledTo an age so blest that, by its side,Youth seems the waste instead?
26.
My own, see where the years conduct!At first, ’twas something our two soulsShould mix as mists do; each is suckedIn each now: on, the new stream rolls,Whatever rocks obstruct.
27.
Think, when our one soul understandsThe great Word which makes all things new,When earth breaks up and heaven expands,How will the change strike me and youIn the house not made with hands?
28.
Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine,Your heart anticipate my heart,You must be just before, in fine,See and make me see, for your part,New depths of the divine!
—St. 28. “The conviction of the eternity of marriage meets usagain and again in Browning’s poems; e.g., ‘Prospice’,‘Any Wife to any Husband’, ‘The Epilogue to Fifine’.”The union between two complementary souls cannot be dissolved.“Love is all, and Death is nought!”
29.
But who could have expected thisWhen we two drew together firstJust for the obvious human bliss,To satisfy life’s daily thirstWith a thing men seldom miss?
30.
Come back with me to the first of all,Let us lean and love it over again,Let us now forget and now recall,Break the rosary in a pearly rain,And gather what we let fall!
31.
What did I say?—that a small bird singsAll day long, save when a brown pairOf hawks from the wood float with wide wingsStrained to a bell: ’gainst noonday glareYou count the streaks and rings.
— St. 31. Here he returns to the subject broken off at St. 21.
32.
But at afternoon or almost eve’Tis better; then the silence growsTo that degree, you half believeIt must get rid of what it knows,Its bosom does so heave.
33.
Hither we walked then, side by side,Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,And still I questioned or replied,While my heart, convulsed to really speak,Lay choking in its pride.
34.
Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,And pity and praise the chapel sweet,And care about the fresco’s loss,And wish for our souls a like retreat,And wonder at the moss.
35.
Stoop and kneel on the settle under,Look through the window’s grated square:Nothing to see! For fear of plunder,The cross is down and the altar bare,As if thieves don’t fear thunder.
36.
We stoop and look in through the grate,See the little porch and rustic door,Read duly the dead builder’s date;Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,Take the path again—but wait!
37.
Oh moment one and infinite!The water slips o’er stock and stone;The West is tender, hardly bright:How gray at once is the evening grown—One star, its chrysolite!
38.
We two stood there with never a third,But each by each, as each knew well:The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,The lights and the shades made up a spellTill the trouble grew and stirred.
— St. 37, 38. “Mr. Browning’s most characteristic feeling for nature appears in his rendering of those aspects of sky, or earth, or sea, of sunset, or noonday, or dawn, which seem to acquire some sudden and passionate significance; which seem to be charged with some spiritual secret eager for disclosure; in his rendering of those moments which betray the passion at the heart of things, which thrill and tingle with prophetic fire. When lightning searches for the guilty lovers, Ottima and Sebald {in ‘Pippa Passes’}, like an angelic sword plunged into the gloom, when the tender twilight with its one chrysolite star, grows aware, and the light and shade make up a spell, and the forests by their mystery, and sound, and silence, mingle together two human lives forever {‘By the Fireside’}, when the apparition of the moon-rainbow appears gloriously after storm, and Christ is in his heaven {‘Christmas Eve’}, when to David the stars shoot out the pain of pent knowledge and in the grey of the hills at morning there dwells a gathered intensity {‘Saul’},—then nature rises from her sweet ways of use and wont, and shows herself the Priestess, the Pythoness, the Divinity which she is. Or rather, through nature, the Spirit of God addresses itself to the spirit of man.”—Edward Dowden.
39.
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!And the little less, and what worlds away!How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,Or a breath suspend the blood’s best play,And life be a proof of this!
40.
Had she willed it, still had stood the screenSo slight, so sure, ‘twixt my love and her:I could fix her face with a guard between,And find her soul as when friends confer,Friends—lovers that might have been.
41.
For my heart had a touch of the woodland time,Wanting to sleep now over its best.Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime,But bring to the last leaf no such test!“Hold the last fast!” runs the rhyme.
42.
For a chance to make your little much,To gain a lover and lose a friend,Venture the tree and a myriad such,When nothing you mar but the year can mend:But a last leaf—fear to touch!
43.
Yet should it unfasten itself and fallEddying down till it find your faceAt some slight wind—best chance of all!Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-placeYou trembled to forestall!
44.
Worth how well, those dark gray eyes,That hair so dark and dear, how worthThat a man should strive and agonize,And taste a veriest hell on earthFor the hope of such a prize!
45.
You might have turned and tried a man,Set him a space to weary and wear,And prove which suited more your plan,His best of hope or his worst despair,Yet end as he began.
46.
But you spared me this, like the heart you are,And filled my empty heart at a word.If two lives join, there is oft a scar,They are one and one, with a shadowy third;One near one is too far.
47.
A moment after, and hands unseenWere hanging the night around us fast;But we knew that a bar was broken betweenLife and life: we were mixed at lastIn spite of the mortal screen.
48.
The forests had done it; there they stood;We caught for a moment the powers at play:They had mingled us so, for once and good,Their work was done—we might go or stay,They relapsed to their ancient mood.
49.
How the world is made for each of us!How all we perceive and know in itTends to some moment’s product thus,When a soul declares itself—to wit,By its fruit, the thing it does!
— St. 49. “Those periods of life which appear most full of moral purpose to Mr. Tennyson, are periods of protracted self-control, and those moments stand eminent in life in which the spirit has struggled victoriously in the cause of conscience against impulse and desire. With Mr. Browning the moments are most glorious in which the obscure tendency of many years has been revealed by the lightning of sudden passion, or in which a resolution that changes the current of life has been taken in reliance upon that insight which vivid emotion bestows; and those periods of our history are charged most fully with moral purpose, which take their direction from moments such as these… In such a moment the somewhat dull youth of ‘The Inn Album’ rises into the justiciary of the Highest; in such a moment Polyxena with her right woman’s-manliness, discovers to Charles his regal duty, and infuses into her weaker husband, her own courage of heart {‘King Victor and King Charles’}; and rejoicing in the remembrance of a moment of high devotion which determined the issues of a life, the speaker of ‘By the Fireside’ exclaims,— ‘How the world is made for each of us!’” etc.—Edward Dowden.
50.
Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit,It forwards the general deed of man,And each of the Many helps to recruitThe life of the race by a general plan;Each living his own, to boot.
51.
I am named and known by that moment’s feat;There took my station and degree;So grew my own small life complete,As nature obtained her best of me—One born to love you, sweet!
52.
And to watch you sink by the fireside nowBack again, as you mutely sitMusing by fire-light, that great browAnd the spirit-small hand propping it,Yonder, my heart knows how!
53.
So, earth has gained by one man the more,And the gain of earth must be heaven’s gain too;And the whole is well worth thinking o’erWhen autumn comes: which I mean to doOne day, as I said before.
Prospice.
— * ‘Prospice’ (look forward) is a challenge to spiritual conflict, exultant with the certainty of victory, glowing with the prospective joy of reunion with one whom death has sent before.—Mrs. Orr. —
Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,The mist in my face,When the snows begin, and the blasts denoteI am nearing the place,The power of the night, the press of the storm,The post of the foe;Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,Yet the strong man must go:For the journey is done and the summit attained,And the barriers fall, 10Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,The reward of it all.I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,The best and the last!I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,And bade me creep past.No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peersThe heroes of old,Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrearsOf pain, darkness, and cold. 20For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,The black minute’s at end,And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,Shall dwindle, shall blend,Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,Then a light, then thy breast,O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,And with God be the rest! — 25. first a peace out of pain: original reading, “first a peace, then a joy”.