ÀҾ˹éÒ˹ѧÊ×Í
PDF
ePub

Or fondle this the other while malice aches
Both teach, both learn detestability!

Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot! Pay that back,
That smatch o' the slaver blistering on your lip —
By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ—
Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine!
Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth
O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise!
The cockatrice is with the basilisk!

There let him grapple, denizens o' the dark,
Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound,
In their one spot out of the ken of God

Or care of man for ever and ever more!"

[ocr errors]

Browning has distinctly indicated the standard by which he estimates art-work, in the closing paragraph of his Essay On the Poet objective and subjective; on the latter's aim; on Shelley as man and poet.'

“I would rather,” he says, "consider Shelley's poetry as a sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal, than I would isolate and separately appraise the worth of many detachable portions which might be acknowledged as utterly perfect in a lower moral point of view, under the mere conditions of art. It would be easy to take my stand on successful instances of objectivity in Shelley: there is the unrivalled 'Cenci'; there is the 'Julian and Maddalo' too; there is the magnificent 'Ode to Naples': why not regard, it may be said, the less organized matter as the radiant elemental foam and solution, out of which would have been evolved, eventually, creations as perfect even as those? But I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high,—and, seeing it, I hold by it. There is surely enough of the work 'Shelley' to be known enduringly among men, and, I believe, to be accepted of God, as human work may; and around the imperfect proportions of such, the most elaborated productions of ordinary art must arrange themselves as inferior illustrations."

The italics are mine. I would say, but without admitting imperfect art on the part of Browning, for I regard him as one of the greatest of literary artists, that he must be estimated by the standard presented in this passage, by the "presentment," everywhere in his poetry, "of the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal.”

The same standard is presented in 'Andrea del Sarto,' in 'Old Pictures in Florence,' and in other of his poems.

[blocks in formation]

OVE, the soul of soul, within the soul," the Christ-spirit, the

[ocr errors]

incompletion, reanimates that which without it is dead, and admits to a fellowship with the soul of things; Ubi caritas, ibi claritas. See passage from 'Fifine at the Fair,' quoted under 'My Star.'

MY STAR.

The following passage from 'Fifine at the Fair,' § 55, is an expansion of the idea involved in 'My Star,' and is the best commentary which can be given on it :

[ocr errors]

"I search but cannot see

What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries
Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories

Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own
For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known
The gain of every life. Death reads the title clear-
What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:
Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert, —
And nought i' the world, which, save for soul that sees, inert
Was, is, and would be ever, - stuff for transmuting — null
And void until man's breath evoke the beautiful —

But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle, its tongue
Of elemental flame, no matter whence flame sprung

1It has not been thought necessary, in these Arguments, to use quotation marks wherever expressions from the poems are incorporated; and especially where they are adapted in construction to the place where they are introduced.

From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness,
So long as soul has power to make them burn, express
What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,
Howe'er the chance: if soul be privileged to find

Food so soon that, at first snatch of eye, suck of breath,
It shall absorb pure life: " etc.

THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS.

In 'The Flight of the Duchess' we are presented with a generous soul-life, as exhibited by the sweet, glad Duchess, linked with fossil conventionalism and medievalism, and an inherited authority which brooks no submissiveness, as exhibited by the Duke, her husband, "out of whose veins ceremony and pride have driven the blood, leaving him but a fumigated and embalmed self." The scene of the poem is a "rough north land," subject to a Kaiser of Germany. The story is so plainly told that no prose summary of it could make it plainer. Its deeper meaning centres in the incantation of the old gypsy woman, in which is mystically shadowed forth the long and painful discipline through which the soul must pass before being fully admitted to the divine arcanum, "how love is the only good in the world."

The poem is one which readily lends itself to an allegorical interpretation. For such an interpretation, the reader is referred to Mrs. Owen's paper, read before the Browning Society of London, and contained in the Society's Papers, Part IV., pp. 49* et seq. It is too long to be given here.

[blocks in formation]

"The speaker is a man who has to give up the woman he loves; but his love is probably reciprocated, however inadequately, for his appeal for 'a last ride together' is granted. The poem reflects his changing moods and thoughts as 'here we are riding, she and I.' Fail I alone in words and deeds? Why, all men strive, and who succeeds?' Careers, even careers called 'successful,' pass in review-statesmen, poets, sculptors, musicians

[ocr errors]

each fails in his ideal, for ideals are not attainable in this life of incompletions. But faith gains something for a man. He has loved this woman. That is something gained. If this life gave all, what were there to look forward to? Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.' Again,- and this is his closing reflection,"What if heaven be, that, fair and strong,'" etc.

666

etc.)

-Browning Soc. Papers, V., 144.*

BY THE FIRESIDE.

Perhaps in no other of Mr. Browning's poems are the spiritual uses of "the love of wedded souls the poem, 'By the Fireside.'

more fully set forth than in

The Monologue is addressed by a happy husband to his "perfect wife, my Leonor." He looks forward to what he will do when the long, dark autumn evenings come-the evenings of declining age, when the pleasant hue of his soul shall have dimmed, and the music of all its spring and summer voices shall be dumb in life's November. In his "waking dreams" he will "live o'er again" the happy life he has spent with his loved and loving companion. Passing out where the backward vista ends, he will survey, with her, the pleasant wood through which they have journeyed together. To the hazel-trees of England, where their childhood passed, succeeds a rarer sort, till, by green degrees, they at last slope to Italy, and youth,-Italy, the woman-country, loved by earth's male-lands. She being the trusted guide, they stand at last in the heart of things, the heaped and dim woods all around them, the single and slim thread of water slipping from slab to slab, the ruined chapel perched half-way up in the Alpine gorge, reached by the one-arched bridge where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond, where all day long a bird sings, and a stray sheep drinks at times. Here, where at afternoon, or almost eve, the silence grows conscious to that degree, one half feels it must get rid of what it knows, they walked side by side, arm in arm, and cheek to cheek; cross silent the crumbling bridge, pity and praise the sweet chapel, read the dead builder's date, 'five, six, nine, recross the bridge,

« ¡è͹˹éÒ´Óà¹Ô¹¡ÒõèÍ
 »