Poems and plays

Front matter

Class _^i?Ai.

Book

fiopyriglif}] "

Prefatory Note

This volume has been planned for the less experienced reader of Browning; the more advanced reader is satisfied only with the complete edition. The Introduction, therefore, aims merely to suggest briefly an approach to Browning, to point out such difiiculties as often perplex one who reads Browning for the first time, and to state simply a few of the poet's fundamental ideas. Allusions in the text are annotated only where ignorance might come between the reader and the meaning of the poem; critical and interpretative notes have been omitted altogether, in the behef that most of the intellectual stimulus Browning has to offer is lost if the reader's thinking is done for him in advance. As accounts of Browning's life are easily accessible, it has seemed unnecessary to include any biographical material, but a brief reading list has been appended to the introduction.

H. E. J,

Contents

The large capitals are the titles of the volumes in the complete edition of Browning.

POEMS

PAGE

Introduction

In his first published work, Pauline, written when he was only twenty, Browning stated his theory of poetry in the lines

And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one Who chronicled the stages of all life.

To this theory he held unwaveringly throughout his Kterary career of more than half a century, and can therefore be placed among the English poets who beUeved that the poet should be first of all an interpreter of life. And it is man's inner life, the life of his soul, how man thinks and feels, his ideas and emotions, the reasons for his actions rather than the actions themselves that interested Browning. He went so far as to say of man's soul: ^'Nothing else is worth study.'' To hold the mirror up to human nature and to show the relation of the individual soul to eternal truth was Browning's chief aim and all but constant practice.

Such a conception of the highest aim of poetry seems at first thought all inclusive and gives the poet an ideal utterly impossible of attainment. Taken literally, it is. No poet, even a Shakespeare, can hope to "chronicle the stages of all life." But it is characteristic of Browning that he defined his art, even in his youth, in terms of what soon became one of his strongest beliefs: that the ideal of any man, no matter what his particular work may be, must be unattainable, so that his life, be it short or long, may always be one of progress. Interpreted in the light of other conceptions of poetic art. Browning's conception seems even limited in its scope. It makes no mention of beauty, of rhythm, of any appeal to the senses or to the imagination, which for most readers are the essentials of poetry. It resulted in Browning's relegating to a place of secondary importance many of the quaUties; for which we ordinarily call poets great. As he said himself,. it makes strong rather than sweet verse. Nevertheless, the^ statement, frequently made, that Browning was incapable of writing musically usually comes from those who do not really know him; and it can easily be disproved by many xiv INTRODUCTION

passages and whole poems; but taken as a whole, his work is an attempt to interpret man^s soul, beautiful or ugly, strong or weak, noble or base, and it is only occasionally that he puts primary importance upon anything else. To conclude that his best work is careless in composition, that he handled meter, stanza and rhyme indifferently, is to speak from only partial knowledge of his work. In variety of meter and stanza form few poets have surpassed him, and he is an acknowledged master of rhyme. But his technique is nearly always subordinate to his main purpose: to find the meaning of life through the soul of man.

From Browning's conception of poetry and his constant attempt to approximate his ideal arise two of the more serious difficulties which confront the inexperienced reader. In attempting to live up to his theory Browning goes to every nook and corner of Uterature and history; and as he was one of the most widely read and scholarly of the English poets, the inexperienced reader often finds himself lacking in the background necessary to the enjoyment, if not to the actual understanding, of the poem in question. Much of the difficulty of reading Browning's poems comes from his tacit assumption that the reader is as well informed about out of the way characters as he — and very few are. The long poem Sordello, one of the most difficult pieces of literature in any language, long a byword for obscurity even to the most erudite, owes its difficulty largely to the fact that Browning assumed that the reader could bring to the poem a knowledge sufficient to make Sordello's character and ideas comprehensible. Unfortunately not one reader in a million has such a background ; it might almost be said that Browning alone was really prepared to read the poem. To a lesser degree the same assumption is made in many of the shorter and less difficult poems. Familiarity with little known as well as with famous characters is taken for granted; a knowledge of art, music, philosophy and literature, to mention but a few of the fields into which he goes, led by his desire to see the soul in all sorts of environments, may be brought with advantage to the reading of his greater poems. This is no reason, however, for looking upon Browning as a poet for the mature scholar alone. Many a reader, ambitious to extend his own cultural and intellectual horizon, has found, as one by-product of his reading, that the poetry of Browning

INTRODUCTION xv

is an incentive to further study in many and varied fields of learning. He usually avoided subjects of merely local or contemporary interest; thoroughly English, he writes seldom of England; living enthusiastically and fully in his own age, with hosts of friends, he chooses his characters, as a rule, from the past. This emphasis on the fundamentals in human nature, which are not materially affected by place or time, makes possible a more lasting appeal than can be found in poetry limited in its scope by here and now. Further, the very fact that Browning does write of poets, painters, musicians, politicians, theologians, patriots — the list, if extended, would be surprisingly complete — offers something for readers differing widely in tastes and interests, and makes this poet of theso-called^^narrow'* Victorian era one w^hose appeal, so far as his subject matter is concerned, is all but universal. Genuine familiarity with Browning can result in a great extension of general information for the ambitious reader.

The second difficulty which the unwarned reader is almost certain to find in Browning comes from his use of a highly individual and rather unusual medium for portraying human nature, namely the so-called dramatic monologue, a form of verse not actually original with him, but so frequently and powerfully used, and so stamped with his vigorous personality, that it seldom suggests any other poet. Failure to realize that Browning^s poems are monologues, that he wrote almost always in the first person but that he seldom speaks in his own person, often causes much difficulty which might have been avoided.

The dramatic monologue as Browning uses it — the term may be extended to include practically all the poems in this volume — is a lyric or narrative poem in which a single speaker reveals characteristic traits as they are brought out in a situation perhaps highly critical, perhaps deeply significant, perhaps even casual. Frequently the speaker is the chief actor; sometimes he is merely an onlooker. In some of the dramatic monologues the speaker merely soliloquizes; but more commonly Browning suggests, even in a short poem, one or more characters — in addition to the speaker — who are necessary for the situation and set in a background as vivid to the imaginative reader as a picture or a stage setting. Take, for example, one of Browning^s best dramatic monologues, My Last Duchess, That it is a monologue is xvi INTRODUCTION

obvious at once — ^'There^s my last duchess — ^ But if the reader is not famihar with Browning's method, he is apt to proceed without taking the hints, some of them rather subtle, by which the poet suggests the characters of the duke and his last duchess, her tragic marriage, and the rich but heartless setting of Renaissance Italy. By means of his under-^ standing of human nature and his sympathetic imagination Browning has thought and felt himself into the mind and soul of the Duke of Ferraraand haslet him speak for himself.

And so it is with most of the poems in this book; the poet becomes for the time being Fra Lippo Lippi or Pheidippides, Caliban or Rabbi Ben Ezra, Johannes Agricola or Cleon, and lets each speak for himself and reveal his soul, and often, in addition, a philosophy of life or the spirit of an age. Some of the poems, like Aht Vogler or A Death in the Desert J ^,TQ meditative and quiet; others, like The Laboratory or The Coniessional, are filled with activity and excitement. So varied are the characters and situations that it is impossible to generalize satisfactorily about them; but there are few poems which do not exemplify Browning's poetic creed and few that are not dramatic monologues.

It might seem as if poems of the sort just mentioned, simply because they are dramatic, would give the poet little opportunity for expressing his own ideas and emotions. And yet Browning's poetry is charged with his deepest feelings and thoughts; and his fundamental beliefs about the great issues of life can be brought together and formulated into a definite creed rather more easily and completely than those of most of the other English poets. Even in a poem in which the prevailing mood or the ideas are quite at variance with Browning's own, we are always conscious of his personality. Occasionally he lays aside the mask and speaks in his own person, as at the end of The Statue and the Bust, and notably in One Word More, but as a rule he is true to his belief that the poet should be a mouthpiece for human nature rather than for his own ideas and experiences. It is chiefly through his characters that we learn the poet's own beliefs.

The intelligent reader seldom cares to have a poet's ideas explained and analysed in detail for him in advance; but in. the case of Browning, whose material is varied and frequently

INTRODUCTION xvii

unfamiliar, whose poetic medium and style are unusual, and whose poems, consequently, seem difficult at first, a statement merely in broad outline of the foundations of his philosophy may at once help to stimulate interest and supply some background against which to place individual poems.

Browning's observations of human nature were based upon extensive reading and upon many actual human contacts, for he was both scholarly and social in his tastes. His long experience con\dnced him that certain beliefs about God and man were incontrovertibly true. As a result we find in his complete works essentially one philosophy of hfe, satisfying him from first to last, mth far less change from youth to maturity to old age than is found in most other poets. Under this philosophy lie a few comparatively simple truths — as he saw them — which may be briefly set forth.

The first of these is the direct result of Browning's conception of work and its relationship to life here and hereafter, and is a paradox: that success in this world consists not of outward and \dsible attainment, of that which the "low world can value in a trice," as he makes Rabbi Ben Ezra say, but rather of spiritual development through constant effort to reach an unattainable ideal, of aspiration rather than of actual realization, of what man strives to be rather than of what he is. Success, as the world commonly conceives it, may mean to Browning only dismal failure, the result of low ideals easily reached; failure in the eyes of the world, on the other hand, may mean spiritual success, and may be an earnest of ultimate attainment in a future life. Perhaps the most striking illustration of this idea is in A7idrea del Sarto. Andrea's title, the ^^ faultless painter,'' suggests professional and artistic success; to Browning it is an indication of pathetic failure. With flawless technique, but without real inspiration, Andrea could go no further :

All is silver-gray Placid and perfect with my art; the worse.

And his sense of failure is deepened by his realization that there are innumerable artists who ''have the truer light of God in them" but who lack skill, of which he has full measure, to make their inspirations live on canvass. ''A man's xviii INTRODUCTION

reach must exceed his grasp" says Andrea, and the worst failure is an easy success.

Along with such a conception goes a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, a belief which never gave way even under the attacks made upon it during the greater part of Browning^s mature life. His conception of the future life was not, however, the conventional one. Believing firmly in the potentialities of man's soul, and that genuine aspiration cannot, by its very nature, be realized here, he felt that there must be a life after death, to give opportunity for realizing earthly ideals, and even for still further development. ^^Man has forever '' chant those who carry the scholar, in A Grammarian^ s Funeral ^ to his grave on the mountain-top; and in Abt Vogler belief in ultimate attainment and in the fulfilment of human aspiration, is expressed in the lines

There shall never be one lost good. What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round.

Our failure here is but a triumph's evidence for the fullness of the days, to adapt a statement from the same poem. Suffering and hardship, as is pointed out in Rabbi Ben Ezra, are not arbitrarily inflicted upon men but are offered as means by which they may grow spiritually and become fit for another life. ''The best is yet to be.''

Such a philosophy of development here and attainment hereafter presupposes a master mind, planning and working for man's ultimate welfare. Browning's conception of God caYi hardly be treated briefly; suffice it to say that he shows, through his various characters, the growth of man's conception of the Deity, from the anthropomorphic Setebos of Caliban to the purely spiritual God, revealed in Christ, in A Death in the Desert, From the reading of his poetry as a whole one can readily feel his personal faith in God, and in Christ as the highest symbol of divine love the world has yet seen. Love, the summum bonum to Browning, is virtually

INTRODUCTION xix

a sjnionym for God. ^'He at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God^' he wrote of himself in 1877, echoing what he had written in Paracelsus over forty years earlier.

Though his faith was emotional rather than intellectual, he never feared to submit it to the test. In La Saisiaz, a long poem of a decidedly personal nature, written late in life, he gives his reasons for the faith that is in him. God and the Soul, he says, are the only facts for him.

Prove them facts? that they overpass my power of

proving, proves them such: Fact it is I know I know not something which is fact

as much.

In the face of rationalism he turned for proof to the voice within him rather than to his mind; by no means hostile to the rapidly advancing scientific thought of his day, though his poetry has comparatively little to say of it, he was never engulfed by it. In an age of doubt he dared to call his soul his own.

Belief in man's development through conflict and failure, unshakable faith in God and immortality, resulted inevitably in a thorough-going optimism, the keynote of Bro^Miing's poetry. Surely he lets Fra Lippo Lippi speak for him when he says

This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

Browning's is not an ignorant optimism, refusing to face the sterner and uglier sides of life, but one based upon a philosophy in which God makes use of evil for the final good of man. Accept tliis philosophy or not, the modern reader whose inherent curiosity about life has not ''faded into the light of common day" will at least find stimulating food for thought, and will feel a certain satisfaction in coming to know an original mind revealing itself, as a rule, in an original way, vigorous, seldom superficial, sure of human nature's possibilities and of its eventual triumph in a future life which will somehow, under the guidance of supreme Mind and Love, combine perfection with still further development.

XX INTRODUCTION

But Browning is by no means always so serious as that. To chronicle all life is to show the lighter side as well as the deeper, and we find in Browning's best poetry, usually dramatic and therefore dealing concretely rather than abstractly with human nature, much that will satisfy the common desire for emotional appeal and for excitement. An understanding of his serious commentary on life is necessary to anything like full appreciation even of selected poems; but he generally keeps his philosophy in the background to be brought forth only when character and situation afford natural opportunity.

A poet who speaks optimistically of human nature while recognizing its faults and weaknesses; who speaks with faith and conviction of a supreme Mind, which is also a supreme Love, back of the universe; who can make all sorts of interesting people tell an amazing variety of interesting experiences of mind, soul, and body; who always writes with vigor and sometimes with great beauty; who can stimulate the mind as few Enghsh poets have been able to do, and can stir nearly all the emotions, surely has something of interest to offer this or any age. Especially to an age of post-war doubt and disillusionment. Browning can give, over and above mere casual enjoyment, not, perhaps, a completely satisfactory answer to every query, but at least the proof that an original and curious mind, thinking and living in an age of doubt and skepticism, was able to find joy and peace in living and in watching life.

A BROWNING READING LIST

Berdoe, Edward. The Browning Cyclopaedia. 1890. Brooke, Stopford. The Poetry of Robert Browning.

1902.

Chesterton, G. K. Browning. (English Men of Letters

Series.) 1908.

GossE, Edmund. Robert Browning: Personalia. 1890. Griffin, W. H., and Minchin, H. C. The Life of Robert

Browning. 1910.

Orr, Mrs. S. A Handbook to the Works of Browning.

1902; Life and Letters of Robert Browning. 1908. Phelps, W. L. Browning: How to Know Him. 1915. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett

Browning. 1899.

POEMS

SONGS FROM PARACELSUS

I hear a voice, perchance I heard '[a

Long ago, but all too low.

So that scarce a care it stirred

If the voice were real or no:

I heard it in my youth when first

The waters of my life outburst:

But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear

That voice, still low, but fatal-clear —

As if all poets, God ever meant

Should save the world, and therefore lent

Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused

To do his work, or lightly used

Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,

So, mourn cast off by him forever, —

As if these leaned in airy ring

To take me; this the song they sing.

"Lost, lost! yet come.

With our wan troup make thy home.

Come, come! for we Will not breathe, so much as breathe Reproach to thee,

Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.

So sank we in those old years.

We who bid thee, come! thou last Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast. And altogether we, thy peers, Will pardon crave for thee, the last Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast With those who watch but work no more, Who gaze on life but Hve no more.

Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak The message which our lips, too weak, Refused to utter, — shouldst redeem

Our fault: such trust, and all a dream! Yet we chose thee a birthplace Where the richness ran to flowers: Couldst not sing one song for grace? Nor make one blossom man's and ours? Must one more recreant to his race Die with unexerted powers, And join us, leaving as he found The world, he was to loosen^ bound?

Anguish! ever and forever; Still beginning, ending never.

Yet, lost and last one, come!

How couldst understand, alas, What our pale ghosts strove to say, As their shades did glance and pass Before thee night and day?

Thou wast blind as we were dumb: Once more, therefore, come, come!

How should we clothe, how arm the spirit Shall next thy post of life inherit — How guard him from thy speedy ruin?

Tell us of thy sad undoing Here, where we sit, ever pursuing Our weary task, ever renewing Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave ^Our powers, and man they could not savel'*

II Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair: such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud

Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud

From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long dead, was young.

Ill

Over the sea our galleys went.

With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,

A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree

Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black-bull hides, Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, To bear the playful billows' game: So, each good ship was rude to see.

Rude and bare to the outward view,

But each upbore a stately tent Where cedar pahs in scented row Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine, And an awning drooped the mast below, In fold on fold of the purple fine.

That neither noontide nor starshine Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,

Might pierce the regal tenement.

When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad We set the sail and plied the oar; But when the night-wind blew like breath, For joy of one day's voyage more.

We sang together on the wide sea.

Like men at peace on a peaceful shore; Each sail was loosed to the wind so free. Each helm made sure by the twilight star, And in a sleep as calm as death.

We, the voyagers from afar.

Lay stretched along, each weary crew In a circle round its wondrous tent Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent.

And with light and perfume, music too: So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past.

And at morn we started beside the mast, And still each ship was sailing fast.

Now, one mom, land appeared — a speck

Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky: "Avoid it," cried our pilot, "check

The shout, restrain the eager eye!"

But the heaving sea was black behind For many a night and many a day, And land, though but a rock, drew nigh; So, we broke the cedar pales away, Let the purple awning flap in the wind.

And a statue bright was on every deck! We shouted, every man of us, And steered right into the harbour thus, With pomp and paean glorious.

A hundred shapes of lucid stone!

All day we built its shrine for each, A shrine of rock for every one.

Nor paused till in the westering sun

We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done.

When To! what shouts and merry songs ; What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs Of gentle islanders!

"Our isles are just at hand," they cried,

"Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping; Our temple-gates are opened wide,

> Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping For these majestic forms"— they cried. Oh, then we awoke with sudden start From our deep dream, and knew, too late, How bare the rock, how desolate, Which had received our precious freight;

Yet we called out — "Depart!

Our gifts, once given, must here abide.

Our work is done; we have no heart To mar our work," — we cried.