Introduction to Robert Browning [52]
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 hell 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."
IV. `Along the Beach'. -- It does not appear that she anywhere in the poem addresses her husband, face to face. It is soliloquy throughout. In this section it does appear, more than in the others, that she is directly addressing him; but it's better to understand it as a mental expostulation. He wanted her love, and got it, in its fulness; though an expectation of all harvest and no dearth was not involved in that fulness of love.
Though love greatens and even glorifies, she knew there was much in him waste, with many a weed, and plenty of passions run to seed, but a little good grain too. And such as he was she took him for hers; and he found her his, to watch the olive and wait the vine of his nature; and when rivers of oil and wine came not, the failure only proved that he was her whole world, all the same. But he has been averse to, and has resented, the tillage of his nature to which she has lovingly devoted herself, feeling it to be a bondage; "And 'tis all an old story, and my despair Fit subject for some new song:" such as the one with which she closes this soliloquy, representing a love which cares only for outside charms (which, later in the poem, we learn she has not) and looks not deeper.
V. `On the Cliff'. -- Leaning on the barren turf, which is dead to the roots, and looking at a rock, flat as an anvil's face, and left dry by the surf, with no trace of living thing about it (Death's altar by the lone shore), she sees a cricket spring gay, with films of blue, upon the parched turf, and a beautiful butterfly settle and spread its two red fans, on the rock. And then there is to her, wholly taken up, as she is, with their beauty, "No turf, no rock; in their ugly stead, See, wonderful blue and red!"
and they symbolize to her, Love settling unawares upon men, the level and low, the burnt and bare, in themselves (as are the turf and the rock).
VI. `Reading a Book, under the Cliff'. -- The first six stanzas of this section she reads from a book. *
-- * They were composed by Mr. Browning when in his 23d year, and published in 1836, in `The Monthly Repository', vol. x., pp. 270, 271, and entitled simply `Lines'. They were revised and introduced into this section of `James Lee', which was published in `Dramatis Personae' in 1864. --
Her experiences have carried her beyond what these Lines convey, and she speaks of them somewhat sarcastically and ironically. This "young man", she thinks, will be wiser in time, "for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of pain, mature the mind:" and then the wind, when it begins among the vines, so low, so low, will have for him another language; such as this: -- "Here is the change beginning, here the lines Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss The limit time assigns."
This is the language SHE has learned: We cannot
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 hell 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."
IV. `Along the Beach'. -- It does not appear that she anywhere in the poem addresses her husband, face to face. It is soliloquy throughout. In this section it does appear, more than in the others, that she is directly addressing him; but it's better to understand it as a mental expostulation. He wanted her love, and got it, in its fulness; though an expectation of all harvest and no dearth was not involved in that fulness of love.
Though love greatens and even glorifies, she knew there was much in him waste, with many a weed, and plenty of passions run to seed, but a little good grain too. And such as he was she took him for hers; and he found her his, to watch the olive and wait the vine of his nature; and when rivers of oil and wine came not, the failure only proved that he was her whole world, all the same. But he has been averse to, and has resented, the tillage of his nature to which she has lovingly devoted herself, feeling it to be a bondage; "And 'tis all an old story, and my despair Fit subject for some new song:" such as the one with which she closes this soliloquy, representing a love which cares only for outside charms (which, later in the poem, we learn she has not) and looks not deeper.
V. `On the Cliff'. -- Leaning on the barren turf, which is dead to the roots, and looking at a rock, flat as an anvil's face, and left dry by the surf, with no trace of living thing about it (Death's altar by the lone shore), she sees a cricket spring gay, with films of blue, upon the parched turf, and a beautiful butterfly settle and spread its two red fans, on the rock. And then there is to her, wholly taken up, as she is, with their beauty, "No turf, no rock; in their ugly stead, See, wonderful blue and red!"
and they symbolize to her, Love settling unawares upon men, the level and low, the burnt and bare, in themselves (as are the turf and the rock).
VI. `Reading a Book, under the Cliff'. -- The first six stanzas of this section she reads from a book. *
-- * They were composed by Mr. Browning when in his 23d year, and published in 1836, in `The Monthly Repository', vol. x., pp. 270, 271, and entitled simply `Lines'. They were revised and introduced into this section of `James Lee', which was published in `Dramatis Personae' in 1864. --
Her experiences have carried her beyond what these Lines convey, and she speaks of them somewhat sarcastically and ironically. This "young man", she thinks, will be wiser in time, "for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of pain, mature the mind:" and then the wind, when it begins among the vines, so low, so low, will have for him another language; such as this: -- "Here is the change beginning, here the lines Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss The limit time assigns."
This is the language SHE has learned: We cannot