39  One Word More

To E. B. B.

Text and publication

First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855, the concluding poem; repr. 1863 (see below, note to title), 1865² (considerably shortened, and with no section numbers), 1868, 1888. Our text is 1855. The fair-copy MS (5 pp.) used by the printer is in Morgan (MA 930); the MS title is ‘A Last Word. | To E. B. B.’ but the change must have been made at an early stage, since it is not rec. in H proof. Texas has a marked-up copy of 1865 intended for 1865², together with a proof of 1865², with no significant variants. We give a complete collation of all MS variants, including del. readings where recoverable. The poem posed B. particular problems, both with regard to its inclusion in a volume of selections, and more generally with regard to revision carried out after EBB.’s death.

Composition and revision

The poem was written as B. was completing the proof sheets of M & W; the MS is dated at the end: ‘London, Sept 22. 1855’. EBB. wrote that the volume was to be dedicated to her in a letter of 3 October 1855, the date on which the last of the M & W proofs was despatched to the printer (EBB to Arabella ii 178).

The change in the title from ‘A Last Word’ was perhaps made in order to avoid too direct an echo of Woman’s Last Word (III 273); the phrase ‘one word more’ also plays a part in the courtship correspondence, notably EBB.’s letter to B. of 31 August 1845 (Correspondence xi 54), entreating him not to renew his declaration of love for her: ‘Therefore we must leave this subject—& I must trust you to leave it without one word more’, and B.’s last letter to EBB. before their departure to Italy: ‘Write to me one word more’ (18 Sept. 1846, Correspondence xiii 379). The phrase ‘one word more’ is common in Shakespeare, notably being used several times in The Tempest I ii, as when Miranda is attempting to inter-cede with Prospero on behalf of Ferdinand: ‘Silence! One word more / Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What / An advocate for an impostor! Hush!’ (ll. 475–7). It seems, however, to have been in common use in the mid-nineteenth century; see (e.g.) Anne Brontë’s preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848): ‘One word more, and I have done’.

Sources and contexts

(i) Raphael’s sonnets

The tradition that Raphael addressed a ‘century of sonnets’ to his mistress ‘La Fornarina’ is alluded to in one of B.’s habitual sources, Baldinucci (see headnote to Andrea del Sarto, pp. 388–9); Baldinucci states that when Guido Reni died certain items of value disappeared from his house: ‘Persesi però, con una collana d’oro, ed alcune argenterie, il famoso libro de’ cento sonetti di mano di Raffaello, che Guido aveva comperati [sic] in Roma, e ciò non senza qualche sussurro, quantunque poco fondato, che il tutto fosse stato rapito da un suo domes-tico’ [Along with a gold necklace and various items of silverware, the famous book of one hundred sonnets from the hand of Raphael went missing, not without some (albeit ill-founded) murmurs that these things had been stolen by one of his [i.e. Guido’s] domestic servants]. See Frederick Page, TLS xxxix (25 May 1940) 255. Thomas states: ‘Of Raphael’s “century of sonnets” only four are claimed by Browning scholars to be extant … One of these sonnets is written on some sketches for Raphael’s fresco of the Disputa, in the Vatican’ (p. 204).

The association of the sonnet form with intimate self-revelation became increasingly marked throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. In ‘Scorn not the Sonnet’ Wordsworth calls it the ‘key’ with which ‘Shakespeare unlocked his heart’ (ll. 2–3); and in his 1825 essay Thomas Babington Macaulay describes Milton’s sonnets as ‘simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been’ (Critical and Historical Essays [London 1859] i 14). EBB. had of course contributed to this link with her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), widely recognized as an autobiographical account of her relationship with B. For B.’s ambivalence towards the sonnet in general, and the autobiographical uses of the form in particular, see House (Pacchiarotto, 1876): ‘Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself? / Do I live in a house you would like to see? … No, thanking the public, I must decline. / A peep through my window, if folk prefer; / But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!’ (ll. 1–2, 10–12).

Along with Michelangelo, Raphael was the type for B., as for many other Victorians, of the undisputed genius of Renaissance painting: see, in this volume, Andrea 103 ff. (p. 395 ff ), and Fifine (1872) 512–77 (sects. 35–36).

(ii) Dante’s angel

In La Vita Nuova, section xxxiv, Dante tells how he drew a picture of an angel to commemorate the first anniversary of Beatrice’s death (on 9 June 1291):

In quello giorno nel quale si compiea l’anno che questa donna era fatta de li cittadini di vita eterna, io mi sedea in parte ne la quale, ricordandomi di lei, disegnava uno angelo sopra certe tavolette; e mentre io lo disegnava, volsi li occhi, e vidi lungo me uomini a li quali si convenia di fare onore. E’ riguardavano quello che io facea; e secondo che me fu detto poi, elli erano stati già alquanto anzi che io me ne accorgesse. Quando li vidi, mi levai, e salutando loro dissi: ‘Altri era testé meco, però pensava’. Onde partiti costoro, ritornaimi a la mia opera, cioè del disegnare figure d’angeli[.]

[On that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life, remembering me of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived them. Perceiving whom, I arose for salutation, and said: ‘Another was with me.’

Afterwards, when they had left me, I set myself again to mine occupation, to wit, to the drawing figures of angels(.)]

(Transl. D. G. Rossetti, ‘The New Life’, in The Early Italian Poets, ed. Sally Purcell [1981], p. 200. Rossetti relegates the second part of Dante’s reply—‘però pensava’ [And therefore was I in thought]—to a footnote on the grounds that ‘the shorter speech is perhaps the more forcible and pathetic.’)

B.’s partial translation of this passage (ll. 46–9) implies that the ‘people of importance’ prevent Dante from finishing the drawing; but the passage makes clear that Dante returns to his work after they have left. B.’s alteration of the passage brings it closer to the story of the ‘person from Porlock’ who interrupted Coleridge during the composition of Kubla Khan, an idea which haunted B. as an emblem of the inevitable discrepancy between conception and performance; see headnotes to Artemis Prologuizes (II 106) and Transcendentalism (III 641). The title of B.’s late collection Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day (1887) is taken from his translation of this passage.

B.’s admiration for Dante was of long standing: see headnote to Sordello (I 363–6). In the 1850s this predilection would have been strengthened by that of the Pre-Raphaelite group of younger writers and painters with whom he became friendly, esp. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, for whom the Vita Nuova was a seminal work.

The link between the stories of Raphael and Dante is that both are attempting to express their deepest feelings by using an art form with which they are unfamiliar. Such attempts are presented as proof of the absolute sincerity of the artist’s desire to articulate his own feelings for once; see below ll. 58–72. Paradoxically, of course, B. is using his ‘art familiar’ in this poem, but claiming to do so in a subtly different (because personal) way; see ll. 117–18n., and note that the metre, too, is unique in his work (see below). B. seems to have enjoyed drawing and making music, contrasting his own lack of pleasure in the physical act of writing with what he imagined to be EBB.’s enjoyment of it: ‘But I think you like the operation of writing as I should like that of painting, or making music, do you not?’ (B. to EBB. 11 March 1845, Correspondence x 121).

(iii) Poetics

The link between poetry and prophecy which is affirmed by the parallel with Moses in ll. 73–108 forms part of a strongly Carlylean image of the artist as hero or ‘great man’, divinely inspired and battling against the ignorance or ill will of those who should follow him. The pessimism of the poem, however, and its apparent retreat into a personal relationship whose ecstatic privacy compensates for public rejection, may owe more to the influence of a younger contemporary, Matthew Arnold, whose Empedocles on Etna (1852) B. admired: see headnote to Cleon (pp. 563–4). Arnold’s Empedocles resembles B.’s poet-prophet who ‘bears an ancient wrong about him’ (l. 90); B. implies that EBB. has rescued him from the isolation and despair which afflict the artist who is alienated from his contemporaries. See also headnote to By the Fire-Side (p. 458) for the possible influence of Arnold’s ‘Resignation: to Fausta’ on another M & W poem connected with B.’s love for EBB. The poem stands in striking contrast to statements in which B. affirms the necessary alienation, or at least detachment, of the artist, as he does in How It Strikes (p. 435) and in his letter to Ruskin (Appendix B, pp. 881–2).

Metre

The poem is unique in B.’s work in its employment of trochaic pentameter. This metre is rarely used in English poetry, although there is a strikingly similar example in W. E. Aytoun’s translation of Goethe’s ‘The Doleful Lay of the Wife of Asan Aga’, first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in July 1844:

What is yon so white beside the greenwood?

Is it snow or flight of cygnets resting?

Were it snow, ere now it had been melted;

Were it swans, ere now the flock had left us.

Like B., Aytoun makes extensive use of repetition and syntactic parallelism: ‘And they halted by the once-loved dwelling, / And she gave the weeping children presents, / Gave each boy a cap with gold embroider’d, / Gave each girl a gay and costly garment’ (ll. 76–9).

Parallels in B.

Although the poem claims to be unique as a first-person utterance, there are in fact many other poems by B. which are clearly autobiographical, including a number in M & W itself, e.g. Guardian-Angel (which refers directly to EBB. at l. 46: see III 19) and Old Pictures (p. 404). It may be claimed that the first person of these poems is a dramatic character, but the same might apply to One Word More, esp. since the imagery of the poem is shared with other fictional or dramatized lovers (esp. the moon imagery which dominates the poem from sect. 16 onwards: see notes). Similarly, the ideas of the poem (about poetry, and about what it means to be a poet), although here expressed in the poet’s own voice, are not unique in B.’s work; in particular the fraught relationship between the artist-prophet and his ungrateful audience outlined in ll. 73–95 is a staple theme: see, in this volume, Popularity (p. 446). The Epilogue (‘The poets pour us wine’) to Pacchiarotto (1876) is an esp. significant example because B. uses a line from one of EBB.’s poems as the starting point for a ferocious attack on the stupidity and laziness of the reading public.

In personal terms, the most significant parallels come in poems and passages of poems written after EBB.’s death, often taking the form of prologues and epilogues: the invocation ‘O lyric Love’ in bk. i of Ring (ll. 1391–416), the Prologue (Amphibian) and Epilogue (The Householder) to Fifine at the Fair (1872), the Prologue (‘O the old wall here!’) to Pacchiarotto, 1876), Never the Time and the Place ( Jocoseria, 1883), the Epilogue (‘Oh, Love, no, Love’) to Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884), and Dubiety and Speculative (Asolando, 1889).

1

There they are, my fifty men and women

Naming me the fifty poems finished!

Take them, Love, the book and me together.

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

2

5  Rafael made a century of sonnets,

Made and wrote them in a certain volume

Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil

Else he only used to draw Madonnas:

These, the world might view—but One, the volume.

10  Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.

Did she live and love it all her life-time?

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow

Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,

15  Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving—

Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,

Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?

3

You and I would rather read that volume,

(Taken to his beating bosom by it)

20  Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,

Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—

Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,

Her, that visits Florence in a vision,

Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre—

25  Seen by us and all the world in circle.

4

You and I will never read that volume.

Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple

Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.

Guido Reni dying, all Bologna

30  Cried, and the world with it, “Ours—the treasure!”

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

5

Dante once prepared to paint an angel:

Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.”

While he mused and traced it and retraced it,

35  (Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,

When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,

Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,

Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment,

40  Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,

Let the wretch go festering thro’ Florence)—

Dante, who loved well because he hated,

Hated wickedness that hinders loving,

Dante standing, studying his angel,—

45  In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

Says he—“Certain people of importance”

(Such he gave his daily, dreadful line to)

Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.

Says the poet—“Then I stopped my painting.”

6

50  You and I would rather see that angel,

Painted by the tenderness of Dante,

Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno.

7

You and I will never see that picture.

While he mused on love and Beatrice,

55  While he softened o’er his outlined angel,

In they broke, those “people of importance:”

We and Bice bear the loss forever.

8

What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture?

9

This: no artist lives and loves that longs not

60  Once, and only once, and for One only,

(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—

Using nature that’s an art to others,

Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature.

65  Ay, of all the artists living, loving,

None but would forego his proper dowry—

Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,—

Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,

Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,

70  Once, and only once, and for One only,

So to be the man and leave the artist,

Save the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.

10

Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!

He who smites the rock and spreads the water,

75  Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,

Even he, the minute makes immortal,

Proves, perchance, his mortal in the minute,

Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.

While he smites, how can he but remember,

80  So he smote before, in such a peril,

When they stood and mocked—“Shall smiting help us?”

When they drank and sneered—“A stroke is easy!”

When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,

Throwing him for thanks—“But drought was pleasant.”

85  Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;

Thus the doing savours of disrelish;

Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;

O’er importuned brows becloud the mandate,

Carelessness or consciousness, the gesture.

90  For he bears an ancient wrong about him,

Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,

Hears, yet one time more, the ’customed prelude—

“How should’st thou, of all men, smite, and save us?”

Guesses what is like to prove the sequel—

95  “Egypt’s flesh-pots—nay, the drought was better.”

11

Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!

Theirs, the Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance,

Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat.

Never dares the man put off the prophet.

12

100  Did he love one face from out the thousands,

(Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely,

Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave,)

He would envy yon dumb patient camel,

Keeping a reserve of scanty water

105  Meant to save his own life in the desert;

Ready in the desert to deliver

(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)

Hoard and life together for his mistress.

13

I shall never, in the years remaining,

110  Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

Make you music that should all-express me;

So it seems: I stand on my attainment.

This of verse alone, one life allows me;

Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

115  Other heights in other lives, God willing—

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

14

Yet a semblance of resource avails us—

Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it.

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,

120  Lines I write the first time and the last time.

He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush.

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,

Makes a strange art of an art familiar,

125  Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets.

He who blows thro’ bronze, may breathe thro’ silver,

Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.

He who writes, may write for once as I do.

15

Love, you saw me gather men and women,

130  Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,

Enter each and all, and use their service,

Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem.

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,

Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:

135  I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s,

Karshook, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.

Let me speak this once in my true person,

Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence—

140  Pray you, look on these my men and women,

Take and keep my fifty poems finished;

Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!

Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

16

Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!

145  Here in London, yonder late in Florence,

Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.

Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,

Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,

Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.

150  Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,

Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,

Perfect till the nightingales applauded.

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,

Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,

155  Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,

Goes dispiritedly,—glad to finish.

17

What, there’s nothing in the moon note-worthy?

Nay—for if that moon could love a mortal,

Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)

160  All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos)

She would turn a new side to her mortal,

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,

Blind to Galileo on his turret,

165  Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!

Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—

When she turns round, comes again in heaven,

Opens out anew for worse or better?

Proves she like some portent of an ice-berg

170  Swimming full upon the ship it founders,

Hungry with huge teeth of splintered chrystals?

Proves she as the paved-work of a sapphire

Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu

175  Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,

Stand upon the paved-work of a sapphire.

Like the bodied heaven in his clearness

Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved-work,

When they ate and drank and saw God also!

18

180  What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.

Only this is sure—the sight were other,

Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,

Dying now impoverished here in London.

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures

185  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

One to show a woman when he loves her.

19

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!

This to you—yourself my moon of poets!

Ah, but that’s the world’s side—there’s the wonder—

190  Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you,

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.

But the best is when I glide from out them,

Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,

195  Come out on the other side, the novel

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,

Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

20

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,

Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,

200  Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it,

Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!

Title.] A Last Word / To E. B. B. (MS) One Word More.⋆ / TO E.B.B. / London, September, 1855. (1863, 1865, 1868, except that there is no full stop after ‘More’ in 1868); Adapted from “One Word More. / To E.B.B. / London, September, 1855.” (1865²); One Word More.⋆ / TO E.B.B. / 1855. (1888). The asterisk in 1863, 1865, and 1868–88 refers to a footnote: ‘Originally appended to the collection of Poems called “Men and Women,” the greater portion of which has now been, more correctly, distributed under the other titles of this volume [1868–88: edition].’ As the opening lines state, the first edition of M & W consisted of fifty poems; for details of their redistribution, see Appendix D, III 747.

1–2.] not 1865².

2. finished!] finished: (MS, H proof ).

3. Love] love (1868–88). See ll. 116, 187. and me together.] and me together— (MS); and me together: (1863–88).

4. the heart lies] the heart is (MS, H proof ). The original reading strengthens the resemblance (noted by Oxford) to Matthew vi 21: ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’; cp. l. 142 below.

5–31. For the story of Raphael’s missing sonnets, see headnote, Sources.

5. century of sonnets: a collection of a hundred sonnets.

6. made: composed (as distinct from ‘wrote’: see next line).

7. silver-pointed pencil: silver-point is a technique in which a silver pencil is used on specially prepared paper (OED).

9. but One] one eye, (MS first reading, corr. to ‘but one’, the reading of H proof; see also next line). ‘But’ here means ‘only’. the volume.] the volume: (MS).

10. Who that one] Whose that eye (MS first reading).

11. her life-time?] her life-time—(MS).

12–17. B. imagines that the lady outlives Raphael (who died young): on her deathbed she lets the volume ‘drop beside her pillow’, where it ‘lay’ (=had lain) as a token of her exceptional relationship with him. The book has been a substitute for Raphael’s ‘cheek’ which would have rested on the pillow; the image (delicately but unequivocally) implies sexual love, but B. goes on to make the point that the lady has been, so to speak, sleeping with the private Raphael, the poet not the painter; to most people, a work by Raphael on one’s pillow would signify the presence of his ‘glory’, whereas for her it signifies his ‘duteous and loving’ devotion to her.

12. lady of the sonnets: Raphael painted a number of likenesses of the lady who is supposed to have inspired his sonnets, including ‘La Velata’ in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and ‘La Fornarina’ in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.

19. To read the sonnets would be to gain access to Raphael’s ‘heart’, to his innermost feelings of love: see headnote, Sources on the link between such intimate knowledge and the sonnet form. The syntax of taken to his beating bosom by it suggests that we, the readers, would be conveyed by means of the book to (or into) Raphael’s bosom; but B. may also want to evoke the idiom ‘to take someone to one’s bosom’ as though, in reading his poems, we were embraced by Raphael himself.

20. list: listen to.

22–5. The first two Madonnas are the Sistine Madonna, now in Dresden, and the Madonna di Foligno in the Vatican Museum. The last two were identified by B. in a letter to William Rolfe, one of his earliest American editors: ‘The Madonna at Florence is that called del Granduca, which represents her “as appearing to a votary in a vision”—so say the describers; it is in the earlier manner and very beautiful … about the one in the Louvre I think I meant La Belle Jardinière—but am not sure—from the picture in the Louvre’ (Rolfe and Hersey eds., Select Poems of Robert Browning [New York 1886] 196; cited Thomas 206). 27. Guido Reni: Bolognese painter (1575–1642): the tradition that he owned the book containing Raphael’s ‘century of sonnets’ comes from Baldinucci (see head-note, Sources).

30. with it,] cried too, (1863–88); B. noted this reading in his letter to D. G. Rossetti about the ‘blunders’ in 1855 (LH 42), and in the list of ‘Errata’ he sent to his American publisher James T. Fields (B to Fields 194); but it is clearly a revision, not a correction, and we have not emended 1855.

32–49. See headnote. Dante Gabriel Rossetti produced a pen-and-ink drawing of ‘The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice’ in 1849, but it is not known if B. was aware of it.

33. Beatrice: four syllables, with the Italian pronunciation (‘Bay-a-tree-chay’).

35–41. Dante’s practice of placing living citizens of Florence in Hell in the Inferno is imaged as a physical branding; the gesture of l. 37 comes from Inferno xxxii 97–9 when Dante seizes the traitor Bocca degli Abati by the hair in order to make him reveal his name: ‘Allor lo presi per la cuticagna / e dissi: “El converrà che tu ti nomi, / O che capel qui su non ti rimagna” ’ [Then I seized him by the hair at the nape of his neck, and said: ‘You had better name yourself, or you won’t have a single hair left here’]. The action of placing a ‘stigma’ in the brow of the guilty person recalls Genesis iv 15 where God ‘set[s] a mark upon Cain’. 35. (Peradventure] Peradventure (MS, H proof ). See also l. 41.

41. Florence)—] Florence—(MS, H proof ).

42–3. The concept of righteous hatred has biblical authority: cp., e.g., Psalms cxxxix 22: ‘Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? … I hate them with perfect hatred’; the link with love is made in Psalms xcvii 10 (‘Ye that love the Lord, hate evil’) and Amos v 15 (‘Hate the evil, and love the good’). In turn B. repeats this sentiment many times in his work, e.g. Fifine at the Fair (1872) 1513–14: ‘Life means—learning to abhor / The false, and love the true’ and La Saisiaz (1877) 285: ‘life’s lesson, hate of evil, love of good’.

42. Dante, who loved well] Dante then, who loved (MS); Dante, then, who loved (H proof; H proof ² does not rec. a comma after ‘then’).

44. standing, studying] stood and studied thus (MS first reading).

46. “Certain people of importance”: B.’s translation of ‘uomini a li quali si convenia di fare onore’. “Certain people] “certain people (MS first reading); see headnote, Sources.

48. seize, forsooth,] see, forsooth, (MS first reading, corr. to ‘sieze’); seize forsooth, (1865²). the poet.] the poet: (MS).

49.] no quotation marks in MS. The words in quotation marks are not in fact a translation of the relevant passage in Vita Nuova; on B.’s transformation of this passage, see headnote, Sources.

49^50.] there was originally no line space in MS. B. drew a line across the page between the two lines and wrote ‘N.P.6’ in the left margin; either he decided to do this in copying ll. 50–2, since the section number, ‘7’ (at ll. 52^53) is perfectly clear, or it represents a slip in copying from the rough draft. See also below, ll. 95^96 and 156^157.

53. that picture] the picture (MS first reading).

54. love and Beatrice] heaven and on Bice (MS first reading).

57. Bice: ‘Bee-chay’; diminutive of Beatrice; cp. Beatrice Signorini (Asolando, 1889) 145 ff., where the same contraction is used.

58–64. See headnote for the idea of the artist turning to a different medium to express himself more intimately and personally than usual.

58–9.] In 1863–88 line 58 does not form a separate section; line 59 is the second line of section viii, with no line space between them, and from this point on the section numbers in 1863–88 are one behind those of 1855. (In 1865², which has no section numbers, there is no line space and line 58 begins a new verse paragraph.)

60. for One only] but once only (MS); for one only (1868–88); see also l. 70.

64. Not, this one time, art] Not, this time, an art (MS).

65. Ay, of all] Out of all (MS).

66. proper dowry,—] proper dowry, (MS), i.e. his own gift or endowment (for one particular art).

67. Does he]—Does he (MS). a poem,—] a poem, (MS).

68. Does he]—Does he (MS).

70. for One only] for one only (MS, 1868–88).

72. Save] Gain (1863–88).

73–108.] not 1865². The poet attempts to explain why he (like Raphael and Dante) would prefer to use an ‘alien’ art form to address his beloved. He uses an extended comparison between the artist and Moses; cp. Sordello iii 800–4 and notes (I 580–2). The biblical allusion is to Exodus xvii, in which Moses is ‘chided’ by the people for having led them into the desert, whereupon God says to him: ‘Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink’ (v. 6). Cp. Aurora Leigh ii 168–72, where Romney Leigh identifies Moses not with the artist (who merely celebrates great deeds) but with the doer of those deeds: ‘Who has time … to sit upon a bank / And hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands? / When Egypt’s slain, I say, let Miriam sing!— / Before—where’s Moses?’ It is impossible to know whether or not this was written before One Word More. B.’s identification of the poet with Moses is anticipated in Hazlitt’s discussion of Wordsworth in The Spirit of the Age (1825): ‘He gathers manna in the wilderness; he strikes the barren rock for the gushing moisture’ (Collected Works, ed. A. R. Waller and A. Glover [1902] iv 272).

73.] Ah,—for heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement. (MS). ‘Heaven’s gift is limited or reduced in value by earthly conditions’; cp. the last line of Pictor Ignotus (p. 231): ‘Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?’

75. beneath him,] beneath him (MS).

76. Even he]—Even he (MS). he, the minute: ‘he, whom the minute’.

77. Proves, perchance, his mortal] Brings, perchance, his mortal (MS); Proves, perchance, but mortal (1865–88). This is the only verbal revision to originate in 1865. The phrase ‘his mortal’ means ‘his state of being mortal, his mortality’.

78. belike: ‘in all likelihood’ (becoming archaic in the period; cp. the use of ‘like’ in l. 94).

79. but remember,] but remember (MS).

80. So he smote] So I smote (MS first reading). See also l. 84.

81–2.] single quotation marks in MS.

82. When they drank] Then they drank (MS first reading). and sneered] and smiled (MS).

83. When they wiped] Last they wiped (MS).

84.] single quotation marks in MS. Throwing him] Throwing me (MS first reading).

85. Thus old memories] So past memories (MS first reading).

86. Thus the doing] So the doing (MS first reading). disrelish;] disrelish, (MS). Cp. Milton’s description of the punishment of the rebel angels after the Fall, as fruit turns to ashes in their mouths: ‘With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws / With soot and cinders filled’ (PL x 569–70).

87. Thus achievement] So achievement (MS first reading).

88. The prophet, beset by anxiety, struggles to discern his own divine mission; presumably the ‘importuning’ comes from the prophet’s followers, otherwise the implication would be that God was ‘beclouding’ his own ‘mandate’. importuned: three syllables, with the stress falling on the second.

89. consciousness: self-consciousness, embarrassment. the gesture.] the gesture—(MS); the dash goes with the deleted line which follows in MS.

89^90.] Make precipitate or mar retarding, (MS first reading). See also ll. 192^193.

90. an ancient wrong] an ancient grudge (MS), i.e. his awareness of the people’s former ingratitude.

91. phalanxed faces] faces phalanxed (MS first reading), in the sense of a compact group of people, resembling the ‘phalanx’ of ancient military organization: OED cites Byron, Childe Harold I lxxx: ‘Though now one phalanxed host should meet the foe’. B. uses ‘phalanx’ in Sordello iv 197 (I 604), Ring ix 389, and Echetlos (DI², 1880) 16.

92.] Hears yet one time more the customed prelude—(MS); ‘’customed’ is a contraction of ‘accustomed’.

93. should’st thou] shouldst thou (MS, 1863–88). smite,] smite (MS).

94. like: likely.

95. The ungrateful people are so unwilling to acknowledge their benefactor that they claim to have preferred slavery (‘Egypt’s flesh-pots’) and drought: cp. Exodus xvi 3: ‘Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ 95^96.] there was originally no line space in MS. B. drew a line across the page between the two lines and wrote ‘N.P.11’ in the left margin. As with the previous instance at ll. 49^50, B. may have made the decision to introduce a new section here while copying the following lines, since the next section number, ‘12’ (at ll. 99^100) is clearly written, or it may represent a slip in copying from the rough draft. See also ll. 156^157.

97. Sinai-forehead’s] prophet-forehead’s (MS first reading). This change was probably made after the insertion of line 99 (see below). W. H. French suggests that the phrase ‘Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance’ may recall the Vulgate’s use of the word ‘cornuta’ (‘horned’) to describe Moses’ face in Exodus xxxiv 29, mistranslating the Hebrew for ‘shone’: see MLN lvi (March 1946) 188, and note B.’s translation of a sonnet by Giovanni Zappi, Moses of Michael Angelo (III 150). 98.] Right arm’s rod-sweep and tongue’s regal fiat. (MS; the full stop was corrected to a dash after the insertion of line 99). The ‘right-arm’s rod-sweep’ refers to the smiting of the rock; the ‘tongue’s imperial fiat’ refers to Moses’ status as lawgiver and transmitter of God’s commandments. A ‘fiat’ (noun) is a formal command, derived from the imperative form of the Latin irregular verb ‘esse’ (to be), as in Genesis i 3, ‘fiat lux’, ‘let there be light’. The noun ‘fiat’ does not appear in the Latin translation of the Bible (the ‘Vulgate’) and would remind most educated Victorian readers of ancient Rome rather than the Bible; this association would have been strengthened by the revision of ‘regal’ to ‘imperial’. But ‘regal’ was an awkward choice for a different reason, namely that the Israelites had no kings until Saul, long after Moses, and to God’s express displeasure.

99.] this line is written in a smaller hand and cramped at the bottom of the page in MS, suggesting that it was added late, triggering the revision in l. 97 above. The sense is: ‘A man must claim supernatural powers in order to get his message across to the crowd.’ In B.’s play Return of the Druses (1843), the hero Djabal colludes in his followers’ belief that he is a divine figure; but his assumption that the people must have such an ‘emphatic warrant’ is undercut by the play’s outcome, in which his pretence is exposed and he himself is killed.

100–8. If the artist were in love, he would prefer to be a ‘dumb patient camel’ sacrificing its own meagre stock of water and its own life to save its mistress than the benefactor who brings plentiful supplies of water to an ungrateful humanity.

100. Did he love: conditional: ‘if he loved’.

101–2. (Were she … bondslave.) ] no brackets in MS.

101. Jethro’s daughter: Moses’ wife Zipporah; Exodus ii 16, 21.

102. Aethiopian bondslave: Moses’ ‘Ethiopian’ wife; see Numbers xii 1. Cp. also Brabantio’s comment on Othello’s elopement with Desdemona in Othello I ii 98–9: ‘For if such actions may have passage free, / Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be’.

103. He would envy] Why, he’d envy (MS). The words ‘He would’ are in italic in H proof, a misprint probably resulting from the printer misunderstanding B.’s indication of this revision. patient camel,] patient camel (MS).

104. Keeping a reserve] Dowered with his reserve (MS first reading); Gifted a reserve (MS second reading). scanty water] scanty drinking (MS first reading).

105. the desert;] the desert, (MS).

106.] Ready in the desert—might he yield it—(MS first reading); Ready in the desert to be yielded, (MS).

107.] the parentheses were an afterthought in MS, replacing a dash at the end of the line.

108. for his mistress] to his mistress (MS first reading).

111. all-express me;] all-express me. (MS).

112. my attainment.] my attainment: (MS).

113. verse alone,] verse alone (MS).

114. give you.] give you, (MS); give you; (H proof ).

115. God willing—] God willing: (1865–88).

116. your own, Love!] your own, love! (1868–75); see ll. 3, 187.

117–18. The sense is that although B. cannot work in another medium, his modification of his own medium is his only ‘resource’; and this modification is so subtle that it requires ‘love’s sense’ to apprehend it.

119. Take these lines] Take this verse (MS).

120. Lines I write] Verse I write (MS).

121–5. This poem is the equivalent of a fresco artist used to working on a large scale using a ‘hair-brush’ to produce tiny elegant drawings for his mistress.

121. a hair-brush] a paint-brush (MS first reading); an oil-brush (MS).

122. the liberal hand] the callous hand (MS first reading).

125. missal-marge: an irreverent gloss is supplied by Byron, Don Juan I xlvi: ‘The Missal too (it was the family Missal) / Was ornamented in a sort of way / Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all / Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they, / Who saw those figures on the margins kiss all, / Could turn their optics to the text and pray / Is more than I know …’ Cp. also the young Lippo drawing faces ‘within the antiphonary’s marge’ (Fra Lippo 130, p. 492).

126. Contrasting the music of brass instruments, e.g. trumpets, traditionally associated with public or ceremonial occasions with the intimacy of silver, i.e. woodwind instruments, and esp. the flute, often manufactured from silver. Cp. the late poem Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment (Asolando, 1889), a dialogue which begins with one speaker’s assumption that the music comes from ‘some heart which purely / Secretes globuled passion’ (ll. 7–8).

127. A more positive image than in Serenade at the Villa (III 487); and the fairy-tale ‘slumbrous princess’ contrasts with the ‘novice-queen’ who is entertained by the poet in the guise of an ‘archimage’ in Sordello iii 580–91 (I 562–4).

128. for once as I do] emended in agreement with MS and 1865–88 from ‘for once, as I do’ in 1855 and 1863; in MS the comma was originally present, then del.; its reappearance in proof may be a misprint.

128^129.] in 1865² line 128 ends a page, and since there are no section numbers the division between verse paragraphs is not evident.

130. I.e. real people, either living or dead; or imaginary ones. Examples of the former would include Bishop Blougram (modelled on Cardinal Wiseman) and historical figures such as Andrea del Sarto or Fra Lippo Lippi; examples of the latter would include Karshish, Cleon and Childe Roland.

131. use their service] claim their service (MS first reading).

135. all men’s,] all men’s. (1865²; the reason for this change is the deletion of the next line).

136.] not 1865². Karshook] Karshish (1870–88). We have not emended 1855 because, although ‘Karshook’ is clearly an error for ‘Karshish’, it is an authorial mistake rather than a misprint; for B.’s comment on the mistake when it was pointed out to him by F. J. Furnivall, see headnote to Ben Karshook (III 659). Karshish is the ‘author’ of An Epistle (p. 507); Cleon the ‘author’ of the eponymous poem (p. 563); Norbert is one of the characters in In a Balcony (III 401). These figures, together with those in l. 138, form a group of the most substantial poems in M & W.

138.] not 1865².

139–40. this sentence— / Pray you,] this sentence / —Pray you, (MS). ‘Sentence’ here means ‘a pithy or pointed saying’ (OED); consciously ironic, since the speaker is simply repeating his own plain words from the start of the poem.

140–1.] Pray you, take and keep my men and women, (1865²).

142. my heart lies] my heart is (MS, H proof ).

143. ‘Let the fact that I am addressing you in my own person compensate for the deficiencies of my art.’

143^144.] in 1865² line 143 ends a page, and since there are no section numbers the division between verse paragraphs is not evident.

145. The Brownings left Florence in June 1855, and arrived in London on 12 July. They spent most of the following year in Paris, only returning to Florence in late 1856. Florence,] Florence—(MS).

146. thrice-transfigured: a reference to the three states of the moon: new, full and old.

147. imbrued: soaked or drenched. with colour,] with colours (MS, H proof ).

148. Drifted over] Drifted us o’er (MS first reading). Fiesole: A hilltop village to the north of Florence, situated in mountains said to resemble a crescent moon; see Andrea 15n. (p. 391).

150. she flared it: the construction is akin to ‘flaunted it’; B.’s use of the word ‘flare’ is almost always pejorative, even sinister: cp. Fra Lippo 172 (p. 495), Bishop Blougram 573 (p. 316), Heretic’s Tragedy 88 (III 226), and Respectability 23 (p. 347, noting ‘lampions’). lamping: illuminating. Samminiato: the hilltop church of San Miniato al Monte, just outside the city wall of Florence; the moon which is ‘over’ Fiesole is seen as illuminating this church to the south of the city.

151. Rounder ’twixt the cypresses] Round a-top the cypress-walk (MS first reading); Rounded ’twixt the cypresses (MS).

156.] All dispirited and glad to finish. (MS).

156^157.] there was originally no line space in MS. B. drew a line across the page between the two lines and wrote ‘N.P.17’ in the left margin. It is difficult to tell when he decided to make this change, because the next section number, at ll. 179^180, is wrongly written ‘16’, i.e. repeating the number at ll. 143^144, and the section number after that, at ll. 186^187, is written ‘17’. We suggest that B. made the change here instantaneously but that, in copying from his draft, he forgot to alter the subsequent section numbers, which would in any case have been one behind the correct order because of the added section number at ll. 95^96. 158–65. The ‘old sweet mythos’ (myth) is the story of Diana (the moon) and Endymion, the young shepherd with whom she falls in love; B.’s mention of Keats suggests that he is thinking of Endymion (1818), esp. since the word ‘sweet’ is a crucial Keatsian word. B.’s variation on the myth is to imagine that the goddess’s gift to her beloved would be a sight no other mortal could have, namely the side of the moon invisible from earth.

159. Use, to charm him] Have to grace him (MS first reading); Use to charm him (MS).

160. All her magic] All her pleasure (MS first reading).

162. herdsman, huntsman, steersman: people who routinely work by moonlight or use the moon to calculate their position. herdsman, hunstman] shepherd, huntsman (MS first reading).

163. Zoroaster: the founder (589–513 BC) of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, associated with astronomical observation; cp. one of the lines added to Paracelsus in Poems (1849): ‘Oh Persic Zoroaster, lord of stars! (v 174–5n., I 280).

164. Galileo: Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), astronomer, inventor of the telescope, and native of Tuscany (born in Pisa); he is associated with observation of the moon, and with the landscape around Florence, in PL i 287–91, where Satan’s shield is compared to ‘the moon, whose orb / Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views / At evening from the top of Fesole, / Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, / Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe’. Cp. also EBB.’s Casa Guidi Windows i 1178–82, which alludes to the sights she and B. have seen at ‘Tuscan Bellosguardo … standing on the actual blessed sward / Where Galileo stood at nights to take / The vision of the stars’.

165. A ‘Hymn to the Moon’, believed to be by Homer at the time, was translated by Shelley; for Keats see ll. 158–65n.

167.] What turns round and comes again in heaven, (MS first reading).

169.] Proves it some white portent of an ice-berg (MS).

170. founders: a verb, ‘causes to founder’.

171. splintered chrystals] splintered crystals (1863–88). B. requested the singular ‘chrystal’ in the list of ‘Errata’ he sent to his American publisher James T. Fields (B to Fields 194), but the change was not made in any edition.

172–9. Cp. Exodus xxiv 9–11: ‘Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.’

172–3.] Proves she as when Moses climbed the mountain, / Saw the paved-work of a stone, a sapphire, (MS, which has ‘it’ for ‘she’ as a first reading). Line 173 in MS looks like an afterthought—it is squeezed between ll. 172 and 174.

173. the mountain?] the mountain—(H proof ).

174. Moses]—Moses (MS). Abihu] Abihu, (MS).

176. a sapphire.] a sapphire: (MS).

177. his clearness] his clearness—(MS first reading).

178.] this line was added as an afterthought in MS, squeezed between ll. 177 and 179. that paved-work,] that paved work,—(MS first reading).

179. When] There (MS first reading).

180. What were seen? ‘What would be seen (if we could see the dark side of the moon)?’ What] Which (MS first reading).

182–3. Alluding to the composition in London of the final poem of a collection ‘born late in Florence’. Cp. the conclusion to Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873): ‘Can what Saint-Rambert flashed me in a thought, / Good gloomy London make a poem of ?’ (ll. 4239–40); also La Saisiaz (1878) 629–30: ‘So the poor smile played, that evening: pallid smile long since extinct / Here in London’s mid-November!’

186. when he loves her.] if he loves her. (MS first reading).

187. you, Love!] you, love! (1868 only). See ll. 3, 116.

188–98. Reversing the negative image of the beloved as ‘my everybody’s moon’ in Andrea 29–32 (p. 392).

189.] Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder, (1863–88).

192. Out of my own self: the poet places himself in the position of the world, temporarily denying himself his more intimate knowledge of the ‘hidden’ side of EBB. self, I dare to phrase it.] self—I dare to phrase it, (MS first reading); self (I dare to phrase it) (MS). The full stop in 1855 is explained by the del. line in MS which follows.

192^193.] Seeing—mine with all the eyes—our wonder. (MS). Unlike the del. line at ll. 89^90, this line was not removed until the poem was in proof (at an earlier stage than that represented by H proof ).

197. with silence] with beauty (MS).

197^198.] there is no line space in MS and no section number ‘20’.

201. Drew] Made (MS conjectural first reading). In 1863–88 the poem is signed ‘R. B.’, aligned right. In 1855 the poem is followed by ‘The End’, centred below l. 201; 1863–65: ‘End of Vol. I.’ 1868: ‘End of Vol. V.’ 1888: ‘End of the Fourth Volume.’