An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 13

The Last Ride Together.

"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', pa.s.s in review--statesmen, poets, sculptors, musicians--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.

--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" more fully set forth than in the poem, 'By the Fireside'.

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. Pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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, take the path again--but wait! Oh moment one and infinite! the west is tender, with its one star, the chrysolite! the sights and sounds, the lights and shades, make up a spell; a moment after, and unseen hands are hanging the night around them fast, but they know that a bar has been broken between life and life, that they are mixed at last in spite of the mortal screen.

"The forests had done it; there they stood; We caught for a moment the powers at play: They had mingled us so, for once and for good, Their work was done--we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood."

Browning everywhere lays great stress on those moments of exalted feeling, when the soul has an unchecked play and is revealed to itself. See in the section of the Introduction on Personality and Art, the pa.s.sage quoted from the Canon's Monologue in 'The Ring and the Book', and the remarks on conversion.

Mr. Nettles.h.i.+p, in his 'Essays on Browning's Poetry', has traced somewhat minutely the symbolical meaning which he sees in the scenery and circ.u.mstances of 'By the Fireside'.

Readers are referred to these Essays.

Prospice.

The speaker in this n.o.ble monologue is one who, having fought a good fight and finished his course, lived and wrought thoroughly in sense, and soul, and intellect, is now ready and eager to encounter the 'Arch-Fear', Death; and then he will clasp again his Beloved, the soul of his soul, who has gone before. He leaves the rest to G.o.d.

With this monologue should be read the mystical description, in 'The Pa.s.sing of Arthur' (Tennyson's Idylls of the King), of "the last, dim, weird battle of the west", beginning,--

"A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea."

Amphibian.

This poem is the Prologue to 'Fifine at the Fair'.

Amphibian is one who unites both lives within himself, the material and the spiritual, in complete concord and mutual subservience-- one who "lives and likes life's way", and can also free himself of tether, leave the solid land, and, unable to fly, swim "in the sphere which overbrims with pa.s.sion and thought",-- the sphere of poetry. Such an one may be said to be Browning's ideal man. "The value and significance of flesh" is everywhere recognized in his poetry. "All good things are ours," Rabbi Ben Ezra is made to say, "nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."

The full physical life, in its relation to the spiritual, was never more beautifully sung than it is sung by David, in the poem of 'Saul'. See the pa.s.sage beginning, "Oh! our manhood's prime vigor!" and the pa.s.sage in 'Balaustion's Adventure', descriptive of Hercules, as he returns, after his conflict with Death, leading back Alkestis.

James Lee's Wife.

The original t.i.tle in 'Dramatis Personae' (first published in 1864) was 'James Lee'.

The poem consists of a succession of soliloquies (rather than monologues*), separated, it must be supposed, by longer or shorter intervals of time, and expressive of subjective states induced in a wife whose husband's love, if it ever were love, indeed, gradually declines to apathy and finally entire deadness. What manner of man James Lee was, is only faintly intimated. The interest centres in, is wholly confined to, the experiences of the wife's heart, under the circ.u.mstances, whatever they were.

-- * For the distinction between the soliloquy and the monologue, see the pa.s.sage given in a note, from Rev. Prof.

Johnson's paper on 'Bishop Blougram's Apology', under the treatment of the monologue, p. 85 {part III of Intro.}.

The scene is a cottage on a "bitter coast of France".

I. 'James Lee's Wife speaks at the Window'.--The first misgivings of her heart are expressed; and these misgivings are responded to by the outer world. Summer has stopped. Will the summer of her husband's love stop too, and be succeeded by cheerless winter?

The revolt of her heart against such a thought is expressed in the third stanza.

II. 'By the Fireside'.--Here the faintly indefinite misgiving expressed in the first soliloquy has become a gloomy foreboding of ill; "the heart shrinks and closes, ere the stroke of doom has attained it."

The fire on the hearth is built of s.h.i.+pwreck wood, which tells of a "dim dead woe befallen this bitter coast of France", and omens to her foreboding heart the s.h.i.+pwreck of their home.

The ruddy shaft of light from the cas.e.m.e.nt must, she thinks, be seen by sailors who envy the warm safe house and happy freight.

But there are s.h.i.+ps in port which go to ruin,

"All through worms i' the wood, which crept, Gnawed our hearts out while we slept: That is worse."

Her mind reverts to the former occupants of their house, as if she felt an influence shed within it by some unhappy woman who, like herself, in Love's voyage, saw planks start and open h.e.l.l beneath.

III. 'In the Doorway'.--As she looks out from the doorway, everything tells of the coming desolation of winter, and reflects the desolation which, she feels, is coming upon herself.

The swallows are ready to depart, the water is in stripes, black, spotted white with the wailing wind. The furled leaf of the fig-tree, in front of their house, and the writhing vines, sympathize with her heart and her spirit:--

"My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled."

But there is to them two, she thinks, no real outward want, that should mar their peace, small as is their house, and poor their field. Why should the change in nature bring change to the spirit which should put life in the darkness and cold?

"Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold!

Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange."