Life of Robert Browning [17]
through its rustling foliage
"look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird,
"leaping airily his pyramid of leaves and twisted boughs of some
tall mountain-tree;" or be a fish, breathing the morning air in the misty
sun-warm water. Close following this is another memorable passage,
that beginning "Night, and one single ridge of narrow path;"
which has a particular interest for two notes of a deeper and broader music
to be evolved long afterwards. For, as it seems to me, in
"Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell
Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts ----"
(where, by the way, should be noticed the subtle correspondence
between the conceptive and the expressional rhythm) we have a hint
of that superb scene in "Pippa Passes", where, on a sinister night of July,
a night of spiritual storm as well as of aerial tempest,
Ottima and Sebald lie amid the lightning-searcht forest,
with "the thunder like a whole sea overhead." Again,
in the lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan picture of morning,
over "the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with the high boughs
swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists,
and the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks,
whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion,
an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music
in the poet's penultimate volume, beginning --
"But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight
Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree
Stir themselves from the stupor of the night,
And every strangled branch resumes its right
To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free
In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge,
While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge,
Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see,
Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc.
Who that has ever read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry
descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines beginning
"Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and green"?
There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice here.
"And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there;
The wild mice cross them dry-shod" . . . .
What lovelier image in modern poetry than that depictive of the forest-pool in
depths of savage woodlands, unvisited but by the shadows of passing clouds, --
"the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl."
How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and true in Browning,
finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover
speaks of the blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing,
while her neck is as "marble misted o'er with love-breath," and
". . . her delicious eyes as clear as heaven,
When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans."
In the quotations I have made, and in others that might be selected
(e.g., "Her fresh eyes, and soft hair, and `lips which bleed like
a mountain berry'"), it is easy to note how intimate an observer of nature
the youthful poet was, and with what conscious but not obtrusive art
he brings forward his new and striking imagery. Browning, indeed,
is the poet of new symbols.
"Pauline" concludes with lines which must have been in the minds of many
on that sad day when the tidings from Venice sent a thrill of startled,
half-incredulous, bewildered pain throughout the English nations --
"Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth,
And love; . . .
. . . but chiefly when I die . . .
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me,
Know my last state is happy -- free from doubt,
Or touch of fear."
Never again was Browning to write a poem with such conceptive crudeness,
never again to tread the byways of thought so falteringly or so negligently:
"look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird,
"leaping airily his pyramid of leaves and twisted boughs of some
tall mountain-tree;" or be a fish, breathing the morning air in the misty
sun-warm water. Close following this is another memorable passage,
that beginning "Night, and one single ridge of narrow path;"
which has a particular interest for two notes of a deeper and broader music
to be evolved long afterwards. For, as it seems to me, in
"Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell
Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting
Of thy soft breasts ----"
(where, by the way, should be noticed the subtle correspondence
between the conceptive and the expressional rhythm) we have a hint
of that superb scene in "Pippa Passes", where, on a sinister night of July,
a night of spiritual storm as well as of aerial tempest,
Ottima and Sebald lie amid the lightning-searcht forest,
with "the thunder like a whole sea overhead." Again,
in the lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan picture of morning,
over "the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with the high boughs
swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists,
and the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks,
whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion,
an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music
in the poet's penultimate volume, beginning --
"But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight
Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree
Stir themselves from the stupor of the night,
And every strangled branch resumes its right
To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free
In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge,
While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge,
Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see,
Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc.
Who that has ever read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry
descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines beginning
"Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and green"?
There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice here.
"And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there;
The wild mice cross them dry-shod" . . . .
What lovelier image in modern poetry than that depictive of the forest-pool in
depths of savage woodlands, unvisited but by the shadows of passing clouds, --
"the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl."
How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and true in Browning,
finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover
speaks of the blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing,
while her neck is as "marble misted o'er with love-breath," and
". . . her delicious eyes as clear as heaven,
When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans."
In the quotations I have made, and in others that might be selected
(e.g., "Her fresh eyes, and soft hair, and `lips which bleed like
a mountain berry'"), it is easy to note how intimate an observer of nature
the youthful poet was, and with what conscious but not obtrusive art
he brings forward his new and striking imagery. Browning, indeed,
is the poet of new symbols.
"Pauline" concludes with lines which must have been in the minds of many
on that sad day when the tidings from Venice sent a thrill of startled,
half-incredulous, bewildered pain throughout the English nations --
"Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth,
And love; . . .
. . . but chiefly when I die . . .
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me,
Know my last state is happy -- free from doubt,
Or touch of fear."
Never again was Browning to write a poem with such conceptive crudeness,
never again to tread the byways of thought so falteringly or so negligently: