What’s poetry except a power that makes?
And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest,
Pressing them all into its service; so
That who sees painting, seems to hear as well
The speech that’s proper for the painted mouth;
And who hears music, feels his solitude
Peopled at once […]
ROBERT BROWNING: Balaustion’s Adventure (1871)
Robert Browning’s love for Elizabeth Barrett was one of literature’s great romantic relationships. When she died, Browning inscribed a quote from Dante into her bible: ‘I believe and I declare – Certain I am – from this life I pass into a better, there where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul.’ (See the chapter on Elizabeth Barrett Browning for an account of the 33-year-old Browning’s courtship of the 39-year-old poetess, and their subsequent elopement.) And although Elizabeth feared that after her death Robert would indulge in some ‘feeble bigamy’, he remained devoted to her, despite some passionate involvements, for the rest of his life, even though they had grown apart while she still lived.
Browning’s father worked for the Bank of England and devoted his leisure hours to scholarly and artistic pursuits – his son grew up in a house whose library boasted 6,000 volumes. His immersion in poetry was such that as a small child he would reputedly walk on his hands around the dining-room table, reciting verse. He never attended school, dropped out of London University after one and a half terms, started to travel and often remarked: ‘Italy was my university.’ He resolved to become a poet in his early teens (his first collection, Incondita, was written by the age of twelve but largely destroyed) and his father financed his first three volumes of verse. In 1826, aged fourteen, he received a pirated edition of Shelley’s lyrics, and the impact was immediate and immense – Browning becoming a vegetarian and an atheist, at least for a period. But his mother’s influence – she was a committed evangelical Protestant – caused him to relent in his rebellion against religion – a battle that is treated in Pauline – A Fragment of a Confession (1833), which caused John Stuart Mill to remark: ‘the writer possesses a more intense and morbid self-consciousness than I ever knew in a sane human being.’ Browning published volumes of verse throughout his life, including: Paracelsus (1835), Sordello (1840), Bells and Pomegranates (1841–6), Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), Men and Women (1855), Dramatis Personae (1864), The Ring and the Book (1868–9), Balaustion’s Adventure (1871), Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871), Fifine at the Fair (1872), Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), Aristophanes’ Apology (1875), The Inn Album (1875), Pacchiarotto … With Other Poems (1876), Dramatic Idylls (1879), Jocoseria (1883), Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884) and Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887). Asolando (1889) was published on 12 December, the day of his death.
‘Who hears music, feels his solitude/Peopled at once’, we read in Balaustion’s Adventure. After Elizabeth’s death, he relied more and more on the consoling nature of music, frequented concert halls and, in a letter to Isa Blagden of 19 August 1864, wrote that ‘the infinitely best thing in London to me is the music – so good and so much of it.’ It is ironic, though, that Robert Browning, whose knowledge of music was profound (see such poems as ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, ‘Abt Vogler’, ‘Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha’, ‘Charles Avison’) should, compared to, say, Tennyson, have been set comparatively seldom. There is an obscurity in many of the poems that precludes successful song setting. Tennyson’s remark about Sordello is naughty but telling: he claimed that of many thousands of lines, he could understand only two – the first (‘Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told’) and the last (‘Who would has heard Sordello’s story told’) – and that both were lies. There is a colloquial and conversational energy about Browning’s poetry that is unparalleled, and his originality lies in the dramatic monologue, where the rhythms are more virtuoso, his language rougher and more colloquial than Tennyson’s, his syntax more convoluted – which has severely reduced the number of wholly satisfactory Browning settings. In the personal poems, however, where the celebrated contorted style disappears, he writes verse that lends itself much more readily to song composition. Browning died in Venice and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Fear death? – to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I 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,
Though 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 peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For 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!
(Boughton, Homer, Lehmann, Stanford, Vaughan Williams)
I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
In this my singing.
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice’ streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.
(Rorem)
Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right, –
Bear with a moment’s spite
When a mere mote threats the white!
The cycle was written for voice and piano, although the title-page of the autograph states that it was conceived for contralto and orchestra. Somervell arranged it in 1919 for piano and string quartet. The theme, from a woman’s perspective, is that of lost love: the narrator’s husband has fallen out of love, and she has lost her beauty. In the original she decides to leave him and, in the last poem, ‘On deck’, we see her alone in France, looking back on the sterile relationship. Unfortunately, Somervell chose only five of Browning’s nine poems – with the result that this tale of lost love loses something of its narrative clarity and concludes with the seventh poem (‘Among the rocks’), which ends with an optimism that’s absent in the final poem, which Somervell chose not to set. Browning described the couple as ‘people newly-married, trying to realize a dream of being sufficient to each other, in a foreign land (where you can try such an experiment) and finding it break up, – the man being tired first, – and tired precisely of the love’. The poem is partly biographical: Robert and Elizabeth had as newly-weds decided to build a life in Italy, and there is a sense in which James Lee’s Wife explores an alternative ending to their own story – although their marriage survived. The poem is set in Brittany, where Browning spent the summer in 1862 and 1863, immediately after Elizabeth’s death – which perhaps explains the disconsolate tone of the poem.
Ah, Love, but a day
And the world has changed!
The sun’s away,
And the bird estranged;
The wind has dropped,
And the sky’s deranged:
Summer has stopped.
Look in my eyes!
Wilt thou change too?
Should I fear surprise?
Should I find aught new
In the good and true,
With the changing year?
Thou art a man,
But I am thy love.
For the lake, its swan;
For the dell, its dove;
And for thee – (oh, haste!)
Me, to bend above,
Me, to hold embraced.
(Beach)
Is all our fire of shipwreck wood,1
Oak and pine?
Oh, for the ills half-understood,
The dim dead woe
Long ago
Befallen this bitter coast of France!
Well, poor sailors took their chance;
I take mine.
A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot
O’er the sea:
Do sailors eye the casement – mute,
Drenched and stark,
From their bark –
And envy, gnash their teeth for hate
O’ the warm safe house and happy freight
God help you, sailors, at your need!
Spare the curse!
For some ships, safe in port indeed,
Rot and rust,
Run to dust,
All through worms i’ the wood, which crept,
Gnawed our hearts out while we slept:
That is worse.
[Who lived here before us two?
Old-world pairs.
Did a woman ever – would I knew! –
Watch the man
With whom began
Love’s voyage full-sail, – (now, gnash your teeth!)
When planks start, open hell beneath
Unawares?]
The swallow has set her six young on the rail,
And looks sea-ward:
The water’s in stripes like a snake, olive-pale
To the leeward, –
On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind.
‘Good fortune departs, and disaster’s behind,’ –
Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!
[Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled
Her five fingers,
Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world
Where there lingers
No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake:
How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake!
My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled.
Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough,
With the field there,
This house of four rooms, that field red and rough,
Though it yield there,
For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent;
If a magpie alight now, it seems an event;
And they both will be gone at November’s rebuff.]
But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change
To the spirit,
God meant should mate his with an infinite range,
And inherit
His power to put life in the darkness and cold?
Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold!
Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!
I leaned on the turf,
I looked at a rock
Left dry by the surf;
For the turf, to call it grass were to mock:
Dead to the roots, so deep was done
The work of the summer sun.
And the rock lay flat
As an anvil’s face:
No iron like that!
Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace:
Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,
Death’s altar by the lone shore.
On the turf, sprang gay
With his films of blue,
No cricket, I’ll say,
But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned1 too,
The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight,
On the rock, they scorch
Like a drop of fire
From a brandished torch,
Fall two red fans of a butterfly:
No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,
See, wonderful blue and red!
Is it not so
With the minds of men?
The level and low,
The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then
With such a blue and red grace, not theirs, –
Love settling unawares!
Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i’ the sun, and thrust out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
Make the low nature better by your throes!
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
Somervell constructed his eight-song cycle for baritone and piano from five of Browning’s collections. ‘Such a starved bank of moss’ from The Two Poets of Croisic (1878); ‘Meeting at night’ and ‘Song’ from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845); ‘My star’ and ‘After’ from Men and Women; ‘The worst of it’ from Dramatis Personae; ‘Easter-Day’ from Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day; and ‘The year’s at the spring’ from Pippa Passes. There is no traditional narrative but the eight songs are connected, since they examine various aspects of the poet’s love. The first four songs praise the man’s beloved. ‘The worst of it’ shows him addressing a monologue to his absent beloved, who has been unfaithful (‘Would it were I had been false, not you!’). ‘After’ reveals that she has been unfaithful with the man’s friend, whom he has killed in a duel. Somervell directs the singer to sing the final ‘Cover the face!’ with a shudder. The seventh song looks back to events of the past as the singer attempts to regain his equilibrium – which he achieves in the final song.
Such a starved bank of moss
Till that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!
Sky – what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud
Splendid, a star!
World – how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God’s own smile came out:
That was thy face!
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles1 the red and the blue!
Then it stops, like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
(Bantock, Beach, Homer)
Nay but you, who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught – speak truth – above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?
Because, you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over:
Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught – speak truth – above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!
(Toye)
Would it were I had been false, not you!
I that am nothing, not you that are all:
I, never the worse for a touch or two
On my speckled hide; not you, the pride
Of the day, my swan, that a first fleck’s fall
On her wonder of white must unswan, undo! […]
But what will God say? Oh, my sweet,
Think, and be sorry you did this thing!
Though earth were unworthy to feel your feet,
There’s a heaven above may deserve your love:
[Should you forfeit heaven for a snapt gold ring
And a promise broke, were it just or meet?] […]
Dear, I look from my hiding-place.
Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes?
Be happy! Add but the other grace,
Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt?
I knew you once: but in Paradise,
If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face.
Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold:
His outrage, God’s patience, man’s scorn
Were so easily borne!
I stand here now, he lies in his place:
Cover the face!
[And I cowered deprecatingly –]
‘Thou Love of God! Or let me die,
‘Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!
‘Let me not know that all is lost,
‘Though lost it be – leave me not tied
‘To this despair, this corpse-like bride!
‘Let that old life seem mine – no more –
‘With limitation as before,
‘With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
‘Be all the earth a wilderness!
‘Only let me go on, go on,
‘Still hoping ever and anon
‘To reach one eve the Better Land!’
The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world!
(Bantock, Beach, Ives, Marzials, Rorem, Vaughan Williams)
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever walks in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower –
– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!