First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 18632, 1868, 1872 (the only ed. in which it is not paired with In Three Days [III 5]), 1888. Our text is 1855.
This is one of a small number of poems in M & W written in the voice of a woman; cp. Any Wife to Any Husband (III 647), Woman’s Last Word (III 273), and Another Way of Love (III 677). Although each of these poems deals with unhappiness within a relationship, perhaps the closest parallel is with Another Way, which also attempts to articulate the feelings of a woman whose lover (or husband: see below) has turned against her; cp. also James Lee (p. 665).
The dramatic situation of the poem arises from the conversation reported in the fifth stanza (ll. 33–40). The man demanded an expression of complete love from the woman, one that matched his own feeling for her. Line 33 (‘Speak, I love thee best’) elliptically fuses his statement ‘I love thee best’ with his demand that she respond by saying it back to him. The woman, however, does not love the man as he loves her, and made the mistake of confessing as much. Line 35 means that the man would have to trust that his feeling would, in time, create a reciprocal feeling in her. She went on to plead with him that he should not blame her, but rather bear the burden for both of them (since true, faithful love leads to salvation, and since he is the only one of them who has it, if he fails they will both fail). In stanzas 6–7, the woman explains that she was so overwhelmed by the man’s supreme gift of love, although she could not return it, that she gave him everything else she could (‘wealth and ease, / Beauty, youth’). Moreover, the man himself had not, at first, demanded her love, but had seemed content with exchanging the ‘gold’ of his love for the ‘dust’ of her beauty and wealth.
The consequence of the woman’s honesty was disastrous; the man turned against her, and nothing she could do to repair the damage was of any use. It is at this point that the the poem begins, with the woman bitterly rueing the man’s alienation and recalling how happy they had been before she made the mistake of telling him the truth.
B. glossed this ending, as Oxford points out, in a letter to Edward Irenaeus Stevenson, published in The Independent of 27 Jan. 1887, and also reported in The Critic of 29 Jan. 1887, p. 54: ‘Mr. Browning says, in reply to the question whether the speaker in “In a Year” be wife or mistress, and the person referred to actually dead or only recreant: “The little poem was meant to express the feeling of a woman towards a hopelessly alienated lover—husband, if you will. The summing-up of the account between much endeavor and as constant a resistance to it, leaves the result a mere ‘clay-cold clod’ in the shape of a heart—to be ‘left’ finally and altogether; when ‘what comes next?’—as something must.” ’
The metre is trochaic (omitting the final unstressed syllable) in a line pattern of 3:2:4:2 beats, making two quatrains per stanza; the rhyme scheme, however (abcadbcd), runs over this metrical pattern, creating one of B.’s most unusual effects. No precedent has been found for this stanza, and B. never reused it; the closest parallel is with Saint Martin’s Summer (Pacchiarotto, 1876), also a poem about a broken relationship.
The poem follows In Three Days in all eds. except 1872, marking B.’s fondness for paired poems: see headnote to Love in a Life (III 1).
There are a number of verbal resemblances between this poem and EBB.’s Bianca Among the Nightingales (1861), which tells the story of an Italian woman who follows her lover Giulio to England, where he has been lured by an English girl. The poem’s speaker calls her rival a ‘worthless woman; mere cold clay / As all false things are: but so fair, / She takes the breath of men away / Who gaze upon her unaware’ (ll. 100–3), and criticizes her ‘white and pink’ complexion; cp. ll. 77, 70.
1
Never any more
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
5 Once his love grown chill, Mine may strive—
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
2
Was it something said,
10 Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun.
15 I as little understand
Love’s decay.
3
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sang,
20 —Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up his cheek the color sprang,
Then he heard.
25 Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed the air I breathed,
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
30 Touched the sweet:
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
5
“Speak, I love thee best!”
He exclaimed,
35 “Let thy love my own foretell,—”
I confessed:
“Clasp my heart on thine
Now unblamed,
Since upon thy soul as well
40 Hangeth mine!”
6
Was it wrong to own,
Being truth?
Why should all the giving prove
His alone?
45 I had wealth and ease,
Beauty, youth—
Since my lover gave me love,
I gave these.
7
That was all I meant,
50 —To be just.
To content.
Since he chose to change
Gold for dust,
55 If I gave him what he praised
Was it strange?
8
Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
60 —Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till, all gone,
He should smile “She never seemed
Mine before.
9
65 “What—she felt the while,
Must I think?
Love’s so different with us men,”
He should smile.
“Dying for my sake—
70 White and pink!
Can’t we touch these bubbles then
But they break?”
10
Dear, the pang is brief.
Do thy part,
75 Have thy pleasure. How perplext
Grows belief!
Well, this cold clay clod
Was man’s heart.
Crumble it—and what comes next?
80 Is it God?
7–8. Reversing the motif of reunion in In Three Days 5–7 (III 6).
8. single still: still essentially separate from each other.
14. love begun: elliptical: ‘had love begun’.
19–23. sang … sprang] sung … sprung (1863–88).
23. The rush of colour to the man’s cheek is a sign of his emotional response to the woman’s voice, before he makes out the words; cp. Waring 51 (p. 187).
27–8. ‘As long as he breathed the air I breathed, he was satisfied.’
27. the air] but air (1868–88).
29. brim: edge.
30. the sweet: ‘That which is pleasant to the mind or feelings; something that affords enjoyment or gratifies desire; (a) pleasure, (a) delight; the pleasant part of something.’ (OED) Cp. La Saisiaz (1878) 309–10: ‘Must the rose sigh “Pluck— I perish!” must the eve weep “Gaze—I fade!” / —Every sweet warn “ ’Ware my bitter!” every shine bid “Wait my shade?” ’
41. own: admit.
45–6. Implying that the man does not possess these attributes.
53. change: exchange.
67. On the differences between men’s and women’s views of love, see headnote to Any Wife to Any Husband (III 647).
71. bubbles: attractive but fragile things; cp. Lovers’ Quarrel 86 (p. 381).
77–80. For B.’s paraphrase of the meaning of these lines, see headnote.
79. Crumble it—] Crumble it, (1865–88).