Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (36 page)

[310] And – woe to all inside the coronal!

Stab followed stab, – cut, slash, she ruined all

The masterpiece. Alack for eyes and mouth

And dimples and endearment – North and South,

East, West, the tatters in a fury flew:

There yawned the circlet. What remained to do?

She flung the weapon, and, with folded arms

And mien defiant of such low alarms

As death and doom beyond death, Bicé stood

Passively statuesque, in quietude

[320] Awaiting judgement.

                And out judgement burst

With frank unloading of love’s laughter, first

Freed from its unsuspected source. Some throe

Must needs unlock love’s prison-bars, let flow

The joyance.

              ‘Then you ever were, still are,

And henceforth shall be – no occulted star

But my resplendent Bicé, sun-revealed,

Full-rondure! Woman-glory unconcealed,

So front me, find and claim and take your own –

My soul and body yours and yours alone,

[330] As you are mine, mine wholly! Heart’s love, take –

Use your possession – stab or stay at will

Here – hating, saving – woman with the skill

To make man beast or god!’

                        And so it proved:

For, as beseemed new godship, thus he loved,

Past power to change, until his dying-day, –

Good fellow! And I fain would hope – some say

Indeed for certain – that our painter’s toils

At fresco-splashing, finer stroke in oils,

Were not so mediocre after all;

[340] Perhaps the work appears unduly small

From having loomed too large in old esteem,

Patronized by late Papacy. I seem

Myself to have cast eyes on certain work

In sundry galleries, no judge needs shirk

From moderately praising. He designed

Correctly, nor in colour lagged behind

His age: but both in Florence and in Rome

The elder race so make themselves at home

That scarce we give a glance to ceilingfuls

[350]
Of such like as Francesco. Still, one culls

From out the heaped laudations of the time

The pretty incident I put in rhyme.

Spring Song

Dance, yellows and whites and reds, –

Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads

Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds!

There’s sunshine; scarcely a wind at all

Disturbs starved grass and daisies small

On a certain mound by a churchyard wall.

Daisies and grass be my heart’s bedfellows

On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:

Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!

Notes

Porphyria’s Lover

Published January 1836 in W. J. Fox’s liberal Unitarian journal, the
Monthly Repository
, with the title ‘Porphyria’. Fox had praised and promoted
Pauline
(1833) and
Paracelsus
(1835). Immediately following ‘Porphyria’ was ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’, then called ‘Johannes Agricola’ (see below): these were the first dramatic monologues by Browning to appear in print. In
Dramatic Lyrics
(1842) the two poems lost their individual titles and became parts one and two of ‘Madhouse Cells’, with ‘Johannes Agricola’ now first in order. In
Poems
(1849) the two were given their final titles, though still linked as ‘Madhouse Cells’
I and II. In
Poetical Works
(1863) they were separated, and the ‘Madhouse Cells’ title was dropped; the two poems were placed in the section called ‘Dramatic Romances’. Finally, in
Poetical Works
(1868), ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’ was placed in the section called ‘Men and Women’.

Johannes Agricola in Meditation

For publication and title see above. The original publication in the
Monthly Repository
included an epigraph quoting (with minor errors) the entry on antinomianism in Defoe’s
Dictionary of all Religions
(1704):

Antinomians, so denominated for rejecting the Law as a thing of no use under the Gospel dispensation: they say, that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc. are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth … that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification, etc. Potanus, in his Catalogue of Heresies, says John Agricola was the author of this sect, A.D. 1535.

The
Monthly Repository
, with its Unitarian tendency, would have been favourable to this satire on extreme Protestantism.

Song from
Pippa Passes
(‘The year’s at the spring’)

Published 1841.
Pippa Passes
is a drama set in Asolo, a small town in north-east Italy which Browning visited in 1838. The concluding two lines express Pippa’s innocence, not Browning’s facile optimism, as the dramatic context
makes clear (Pippa sings the song outside a room where, unknown to her, a woman and her lover are closeted together after killing the woman’s husband).

Scene from
Pippa Passes
(‘There goes a swallow to Venice …’)

The speakers, according to the stage direction, are ‘poor girls’, i.e., prostitutes, whiling away the time before nightfall. 22.
deuzans
Variety of apple said to keep two years (from French ‘deux ans’);
junetings
jennetings, a variety of early apple;
leather-coats
russet apples with rough skins.

My Last Duchess

Published
Dramatic Lyrics
, 1842. The Duke of Ferrara is speaking to an envoy negotiating his next marriage. The characters and story are not historical, but meant to be typical of the period of the Italian Renaissance.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Published
Dramatic Lyrics
, 1842. 10.
Sake tibi
Latin greeting. 14.
oak-galls
Growths on oak leaves, used in the manufacture of ink. 16.
Swine’s Snout
Botanically, the dandelion; insultingly, Brother Lawrence. 39.
the Arian
Follower of Anus, fourth-century heretic who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
49
.
Galatians
St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. The ‘great text’ is imaginary.
56
.
Manichee
Follower of the Manichean heresy, a dualist (believing that good and evil are of equal power in the universe).
60
.
Belial’s gripe
Belial is one of the names of the Devil. ‘Belial came next, than whom a spirit more lewd / Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love / Vice for itself’ (Milton,
Paradise Lost
I 490–92).
64
.
sieve
Basket.
70
.
Hy, Zy, Hine
Opening words of a magic spell, interrupted by the bell for vespers. 71–2.
Plena gratiâ / Ave, Virgo
‘Hail, Virgin [Mary] full of grace’ (Latin).

The Pied Piper of Hamelin;
A Child’s Story

Published
Dramatic Lyrics
, 1842. ‘W. M. the Younger’ was the son of the actor-manager William Macready; Browning wrote the poem for him to illustrate while he was ill in bed. Line 10 is the second shortest in Browning’s poetry. The shortest is the first line of
Pippa Passes
: ‘Day!’ 123–6. Julius Caesar is said to have swum ashore after his ship was wrecked off Alexandria, carrying the manuscript of his history of the war with Gaul (‘his commentary’).
136
.
by harp or by psaltery
Musical instruments associated with the Bible, e.g., Psalm 81:2, ‘the pleasant harp with the psaltery’.
138
.
drysaltery
Shop selling oils, preserves, tinned meats etc.
139
.
nuncheon
Snack.
141
.
puncheon
Cask.
169
.
poke
Purse.
182
.
stiver
Coin of small value.
198
,
pitching and hustling
Also ‘hustle-cap’, a game in which coins are tossed at a mark, then gathered in a cap and shaken out: the one whose coin landed nearest takes all the coins that fall out heads; the process is repeated with the next nearest until all the coins are gone.
258
.
A text
Matthew 19:24.
279
.
tabor Drum
.
296
.
trepanned
Entrapped.

‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’

Published
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
, 1845. Aix is besieged; the ‘good news’ is of help on the way. The episode is not historical. All the places except Aix (Aix-la-Chapelle, now Aachen in West Germany) are in Belgium. 10.
pique
‘The old-fashioned projection in front of the military saddle on the Continent’ (Browning’s gloss). 22.
stout galloper
Stayer (as opposed to sprinter).

The Lost Leader

Published
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
, 1845. The subject was Wordsworth’s defection from the radical cause; the poem was probably written after he became Poet Laureate in 1843.

Meeting at Night

Published
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
, 1845, with ‘Parting at Morning’, as a single poem in two parts, ‘Night and Morning’. In 1849 the poems were separated and given their present titles, but continued to be published together.

Parting at Morning

See preceding note for publication. The speaker of the poem is the man, not, as many readers have assumed (including the present editor when he first read it), the woman. ‘Him’ in 1.3 means the sun, as it does in 1.20 of ‘“How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” ’. Browning was asked in 1889 whether the fourth line was ‘an expression by her of her sense of loss of him, or the despairing cry of a ruined woman?’ He replied: ‘Neither: it is
his
confession of how fleeting is the belief (implied in the first part) that such raptures are self-sufficient and enduring – as for the time they appear.’

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad.

Published
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
, 1845.

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church

Published
Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany
, March 1845, with the title ‘The Tomb at St. Praxed’s’; then
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
. The present title dates from
Poems
, 1849. Browning visited Rome in 1844 and saw the church of Santa Prassede, but both Bishop and tomb are imaginary (necessarily so in the latter case, since the Bishop’s wishes are clearly not going to be fulfilled). Ruskin’s praise in vol. IV of
Modern Painters
(1856) is notable: ‘I know of no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told … of the Renaissance spirit, – its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin.’ 1. Ecclesiastes 1:2. ‘Vanity’ means ‘futility’.
31.
onion-stone
An inferior marble: ‘the grey cipollino – good for pillars and the like, bad for finer work, thro’ its
being laid coat upon coat, onion-wise’ (Browning’s gloss).
41
frail
Basket made of rushes.
47
–
9
. Alluding to the monument of St Ignatius Loyola in the Gesu church in Rome, topped by a lapis lazuli globe; anachronistic, since it dates from 1690.
51
–
2
. Job 7:6 and 14:10.
54
.
antique-blade
It.
antico-nero
, a high-quality black marble.
64
.
Child of my bowels
II Samuel 16:11 (David on the rebellion of his favourite son, Absalom).
66
.
travertine
Hard white stone used for ordinary building. 77–9.
Tully
Cicero, a model of pure Latin style;
Ulpian
Domitius Ulpianus, lawyer and scholar of third century A.D.
89
.
mortcloth
Funeral pall.
95
. Santa Prassede is neither Christ nor male; ‘the blunder about the sermon is the result of the dying man’s haziness’ (Browning’s gloss).
99
–
100
. The Bishop correctly identifies ‘elucescebat’ (he was illustrious) as a post-Ciceronian form; Cicero would have had ‘elucebat’. 101. Genesis 47:9. 111.
entablature
Marble block. 116.
Gritstone
Coarse sandstone.

Love Among the Ruins

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The unnamed landscape owes something to the Roman campagna, and something to Browning’s reading about contemporary excavations of ancient cities; the draft title was ‘Sicilian Pastoral’. 21. Thebes in Egypt was known as ‘Hecatompylos’ on account of its hundred gates; Babylon also had one hundred gates. 73–8. Lemprière’s
Classical Dictionary
(ed. 1823) records of Thebes in Egypt: ‘In the time of its splendour, it extended above twenty-three miles, and upon any emergency could send into the field by each of its hundred gates, 20, 000 fighting men, and 200 chariots.’

A Lovers’ Quarrel

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. Intense playful intimacy characterized the Brownings’ first months together at Pisa, 1846–7; disagreements (about Napoleon III and spiritualism) came later, but are not the source of the ‘quarrel’ here: Browning’s marriage therefore provided material for the poem but was not (in simple terms) its subject.
29
–
35
.
The Times
attacked the extravagance of Napoleon Ill’s wedding, January 1853.
36
.
Pampas
The grasslands of Argentina.
43
–
9
. Elizabeth Barrett Browning reports such a seance, but not tête-à-tête with her sceptical husband.
90
–
91
. Proverbs 18:21.
123
.
minor third
The interval between the cuckoo’s notes increases as spring progresses; the ‘minor third’ is an interval of one and a halftones. See also ‘
A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, l.19
.