Tennyson and Browning

1 138 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

70 He cometh not," she said;

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,

The slow clock ticking, and the sound

75 Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound

Her sense; but most she loathed the hour

When the thick-moted sunbeam lay

Athwart the chambers, and the day

so Was sloping toward his western bower.

Then, said she, "I am very dreary,

He will not come," she said;

She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,

Oh God, that I were dead!"

1830

The Lady of Shalott'

Part 1

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold° and meet the sky;

rolling plain

And through the field the road runs by

5 To many-towered Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

bloom

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott.

io Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs forever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

15 Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veiled,

20 Slide the heavy barges trailed

By slow horses; and unhailed

The shallop

flitteth silken-sailed

light open boat

1. The story of the Lady of Shalott is a version of

the tale of "Elaine the fair maid of Astolat," which

appears in book 18 of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte

Darthur

(1470). Tennyson, however, claimed he

did not know Malory's version when he wrote his

draft in 1832, identifying his source as a 14th-

century tale about "la Damigella di Scalot": "I met

the story first in some Italian novelle: but the web,

mirror, island, etc., were my own. Indeed, I doubt

whether I should ever have put it in that shape if

I had been aware of the Maid of Astolat in Morte

Arthur."

Tennyson subjected this poem to numer-

ous revisions over the years.

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T H E LADY O F S H A L O T T / 1 1 1 5

Skimming down to Camelot:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?

25 Or at the casement seen her stand?

Or is she known in all the land,

The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early

In among the bearded barley,

30 Hear a song that echoes cheerly

From the river winding clearly,

Down to towered Camelot;

And by the moon the reaper weary,

Piling sheaves in uplands airy,

35 Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy

Lady of Shalott."

Part 2

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colors gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

40 A curse is on her if she stay

pause

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

45 The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

There she sees the highway near

50 Winding down to Camelot;

There the river eddy whirls,

And there the surly village churls,

peasants

And the red cloaks of market girls,

Pass onward from Shalott.

55 Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,°

eas)-paced horse

Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,

Or long-haired page in crimson clad,

Goes by to towered Camelot;

60 And sometimes through the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

65 To weave the mirror's magic sights,

For often through the silent nights

2. Weavers used mirrors, placed facing their looms, to see the progress of their work.

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A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, went to Camelot;

Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed:

"I am half sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

Part 3

A bowshot from her bower eaves,

He rode between the barley sheaves,

The sun came dazzling through the leaves,

And flamed upon the brazen greaves

Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight forever kneeled

To a lady in his shield,

That sparkled on the yellow field,

Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glittered free,

Like to some branch of stars we see

Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle bells rang merrily

As he rode down to Camelot;

And from his blazoned baldric

slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,

And as he rode his armor rung,

Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather

Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather,

The helmet and the helmet-feather

Burned like one burning flame together,

As he rode down to Camelot;

As often through the purple night,

Below the starry clusters bright,

Some bearded meteor, trailing light,

Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;

On burnished hooves his war horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flowed

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

As he rode down to Camelot.

From the bank and from the river

He flashed into the crystal mirror,

"Tirra lirra,"

by the river

Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces through the room,

1 1 3 8 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

100

105

110

3. Armor protecting the leg below the knee.

4. A belt worn diagonally from one shoulder to the

opposite hip, supporting a sword or bugle. "Bla-

zoned": painted with a heraldic device.

5. Cf. Autolycus's song in Shakespeare's The Win-

ter's Tale

4.3.9.

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T H E LADY O F S H A L O T T / 1 1 1 7

She saw the water lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She looked down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

115 The mirror cracked from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me," cried

The Lady of Shalott.

Part 4

In the stormy east wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

Over towered Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat

Beneath a willow left afloat,

And round about the prow she wrote

The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance—

With a glassy countenance

Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right—

The leaves upon her falling light—

Through the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot;

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darkened wholly,

Turned to towered Camelot.

For ere she reached upon the tide

The first house by the waterside,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

6. In the 1832 version this line read: "And her smooth face sharpened slowly." George Eliot informed

Tennyson that she preferred the earlier version.

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1 138 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

This 1857 engraving, created by Dante Gabriel Rossetti for publisher Edward Moxon's illus-

trated collection of Tennyson's poetry, shows Lancelot musing "a little space" on the Lady of

Shalott in her boat.

Under tower and balcony,

155 By garden wall and gallery,

A gleaming shape she floated by,

Dead-pale between the houses high,

Silent into Camelot.

Out upon the wharfs they came,

160 Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

And round the prow they read her name,

The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?

And in the lighted palace near

165 Died the sound of royal cheer;

And they crossed themselves for fear,

All the knights at Camelot:

But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, "She has a lovely face;

170 God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott."

1831-32

1832, 1842

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T I T H O N U S / 1 1 2 5

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

70 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

1833 1842

Tithonus

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapors weep their burthen to the ground,

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan.

5 Me only cruel immortality

Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,

Here at the quiet limit of the world,

A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream

The ever-silent spaces of the East,

io Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of mom.

Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man—

So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,

Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed

To his great heart none other than a God!

15 I asked thee, "Give me immortality."

Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,

Like wealthy men who care not how they give.

But thy strong Hours indignant worked their wills,

And beat me down and marred and wasted me,

20 And though they could not end me, left me maimed

To dwell in presence of immortal youth,

Immortal age beside immortal youth,

And all I was in ashes. Can thy love,

Thy beauty, make amends, though even now,

25 Close over us, the silver star,

thy guide,

Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears

To hear me? Let me go; take back thy gift.

Why should a man desire in any way

To vary from the kindly race of men,

30 Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance'

Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes

A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.

Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals

35 From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,

And bosom beating with a heart renewed.

Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,

Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,

Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team

1. A Trojan prince loved by the goddess of the

dawn, Eos or Aurora, who obtained for him the gift

of living forever but neglected to ask for the gift of

everlasting youth.

2. Some species of swans live for at least fifty

years.

3. Aurora's arms.

4. The morning star that precedes the dawn.

5. What is decreed or ordained as human destiny.

6. The horses that draw Aurora's chariot into the

sky at daybreak.

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1 138 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

40 Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,

And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,

And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.

Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful

In silence, then before thine answer given

45 Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,

And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,

In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?

"The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."

50 Ay me! ay me! with what another heart

In days far-off, and with what other eyes

I used to watch—if I be he that watched—

The lucid outline forming round thee; saw

The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;

55 Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood

Glow with the glow that slowly crimsoned all

Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,

Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm

With kisses balmier than half-opening buds

60 Of April, and could hear the lips that kissed

Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,

Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,

While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not forever in thine East;

65 How can my nature longer mix with thine?

Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold

Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet

Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam

Floats up from those dim fields about the homes

70 Of happy men that have the power to die,

And grassy barrows

of the happier dead.

burial mounds

Release me, and restore me to the ground.

Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave;

Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn,

75 I earth in earth forget these empty courts,

And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

1 8 3 3 , 1 8 5 9 I 8 6 0

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

5 O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

7. The walls of Troy ("Ilion") were supposed to have been built to the strains of the god Apollo's music.

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1 1 3 8 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

In M e m o r i a m A. H. H. When Arthur Hallam died suddenly at the age of

twenty-two, probably of a stroke, Tennyson felt that his life had been shattered. Hal-

lam was not only Tennyson's closest friend, and his sister's fiance, but a critic and

champion of his poetry. Widely regarded as the most promising young man of his

generation, Hallam had written a review of Tennyson's first book of poetry that is still

one of the best assessments of it. When Tennyson lost Hallam's love and support, he

was overwhelmed with doubts about his own life and vocation and about the meaning

of the universe and humankind's place in it, doubts reinforced by his study of geology

and other sciences. To express the variety of his feelings and reflections, he began to

compose a series of lyrics. Tennyson later arranged these "short swallow-flights of

song," as he called them, written at intervals over a period of seventeen years, into

one long elegy. Although the resulting poem has many affinities with traditional ele-

gies like Milton's "Lycidas" (1638) and Shelley's Adonais (1821), its structure is strik-

ingly different. It is made up of individual lyric units that are seemingly self-contained

but take their full meaning from their place in the whole. As T. S. Eliot has written,

"It is unique: it is a long poem made by putting together lyrics, which have only the

unity and continuity of a diary, the concentrated diary of a man confessing himself."

Though intensely personal, the elegy expressed the religious doubts of his age. It is

also a love poem. Like Shakespeare's sonnets, to which the poem alludes, In Memo-

riam

vests its most intense emotion in male relationships.

The sections of the poem record a progressive development from despair to some

sort of hope. Some of the early sections of the poem resemble traditional pastoral

elegies, including those portraying the voyage during which Hallam's body was

brought to England for burial (sections 9 to 15 and 19). Other early sections por-

traying the speaker's loneliness, in which even Christmas festivities seem joyless (sec-

tions 28 to 30), are more distinctive. The poem's internal chronology covers a span

of around three years, and with the passage of time, indicated by anniversaries and

by recurring changes of the seasons, the speaker comes to accept the loss and to

assert his belief in life and in an afterlife. In particular the recurring Christmases

(sections 28, 78, 104) indicate the stages of his development, yet the pattern of

progress in the poem is not a simple unimpeded movement upward. Dramatic con-

flicts recur throughout. Thus the most intense expression of doubt occurs not at the

beginning of In Memoriam but as late as sections 54, 55, and 56.

The quatrain form in which the whole poem is written is usually called the "In

Memoriam

stanza," although it had been occasionally used by earlier poets. So rigid

a form taxed Tennyson's ingenuity in achieving variety, but it is one of several means

by which the diverse parts of the poem are knitted together.

The introductory section, consisting of eleven stanzas, is commonly referred to as

the "Prologue," although Tennyson did not assign a title to it. It was written in 1849

after the rest of the poem was complete.

FROM

I N M E M O R I A M A . H . H .

OBIIT MDCCCXXXII1

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,

Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

By faith, and faith alone, embrace,

Believing where we cannot prove;

1. He died 1833 (Latin).

2. Cf. John 20.24—29, in which Jesus rebukes

Thomas for his doubts concerning the Resurrec-

tion: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet

have believed."

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I N M E M O R I A M , E P I L O G U E / 1 1 3 9

5 Thine are these orbs

of light and shade;

Thou madest Life in man and brute;

Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

10 Thou madest man, he knows not why,

He thinks he was not made to die;

And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou.

15 Our wills are ours, we know not how;

Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems

have their day;

They have their day and cease to be;

They are but broken lights of thee,

20 And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know,

For knowledge is of things we see;

And yet we trust it comes from thee,

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

25 Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;

We mock thee when we do not fear:

But help thy foolish ones to bear;

Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seemed my sin in me,

What seemed my worth since I began;

35 For merit lives from man to man,

And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,

Thy creature, whom I found so fair.

I trust he lives in thee, and there

40 I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,

Confusions of a wasted

youth; desolated

Forgive them where they fail in truth,

And in thy wisdom make me wise.

1849

3. The sun and moon (according to Tennyson's 4. Of religion and philosophy,

note). 5. As in the days of fixed religious faith.

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1 1 3 8 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

5 But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds," I'll wrap me o'er, mourning garments

10 Like coarsest clothes against the cold;

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

One writes, that "Other friends remain,"

That "Loss is common to the race"—

And common is the commonplace,

And vacant chaff

well meant for grain. husks

5 That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter, rather more:

Too common! Never morning wore

To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest" now thy gallant son; toasts

A shot, ere half thy draft be done,

Hath stilled the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor—while thy head is bowed,

is His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud

Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought

At that last hour to please him well;

Who mused on all I had to tell,

20 And something written, something thought;

Expecting still his advent home;

And ever met him on his way

With wishes, thinking, "here today,"

Or "here tomorrow will he come."

9. Sailors buried at sea were often wrapped in

their own hammocks. "Heavy-shotted": heavily

weighted.

1. According to his son, Tennyson discovered that

he had been writing a letter to Hallam during the

very hour in which his friend died.

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I N M E M O R I A M , E P I L O G U E / 1 1 4 3

25 O somewhere, meek, the unconscious dove,

That sittest ranging

golden hair; arranging

And glad to find thyself so fair,

Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father's chimney glows

30 In expectation of a guest;

And thinking "this will please him best,"

She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on tonight;

And with the thought her color burns;

35 And, having left the glass, she turns

Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turned, the curse

Had fallen, and her future Lord

Was drowned in passing through the ford,

40 Or killed in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?

And what to me remains of good?

To her, perpetual maidenhood,

And unto me no second friend.

Dark house,

by which once more I stand

Here in the long unlovely street,

Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

5 A hand that can be clasped no more—

Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away

io The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly through the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

A happy lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well,

Who 'lights

and rings the gateway bell, alights

And learns her gone and far from home;

2. The house on Wimpole Street, in London, where Haliam had lived.

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1 138 / A L F R E D , L O R D T E N N Y S O N

5 That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyed,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;

10 That not a moth with vain desire

Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,

Or but° subserves another's gain.

only

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

is At last—far off—at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?

An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light,

20 And with no language but a cry.

The wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave,

Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

5 Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life,

That I, considering everywhere

io Her secret meaning in her deeds,

And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

15 Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope through darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

20 And faintly trust the larger hope.

1. According to Tennyson, the "innerconscience—

the divine in man."

2. As expressed in lines 1 and 2.

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I N M E M O R I A M , 1 1 8 / 1 1 5 9

115

"So careful of the type?" but no.

From scarped

cliff and quarried stone

She° cries, "A thousand types are gone; Nature

I care for nothing, all shall go.

s "Thou makest thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death;

The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,

io Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes

of fruitless prayer, temples

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law—

15 Though Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shrieked against his creed—

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

20 Or sealed within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

primeval age

That tare

each other in their slime, tore (archaic)

Were mellow music matched with

him. compared to

25 O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer, or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil.

Peace; come away: the song of woe

Is after all an earthly song.

Peace; come away: we do him wrong

To sing so wildly: let us go.

5 Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;

Methinks my friend is richly shrined;

But half my life I leave behind.

But I shall pass, my work will fail.

3. Cut away so that the strata are exposed.

4. Preserved like fossils in rock.

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1 2 5 2 / R O B E R T B R O W N I N G

Gerard Manley Hopkins described Browning as "a man bouncing up from table with
his mouth full of bread and cheese and saying that he meant to stand no blasted
nonsense." This buoyancy imparts a creative vitality to all of Browning's writings.

Porphyria's Lover

The rain set early in tonight,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

5 I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

10 Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

And, last, she sat down by my side

is And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

20 And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me—she

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,

To set its struggling passion free

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

25 And give herself to me forever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

For love of her, and all in vain:

30 So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshiped me: surprise

Made my heart swell, and still it grew

35 While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

40 Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

1. One of a pair of monologues originally published as "Madhouse Cells." a title that emphasized the

speakers abnormal state of mind.

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S O L I L O Q U Y O F T H E S P A N I S H C L O I S T E R / 1 2 5 3

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

45 Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

I propped her head up as before,

50 Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

That all it scorned at once is fled,

55 And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

And all night long we have not stirred,

60 And yet God has not said a word!

1 8 3 4 1 8 3 6 , 1 8 4 2

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

Gr-r-r—there go, my heart's abhorrence!

Water your damned flowerpots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

God's blood,

would not mine kill you!

5 What? your myrtle bush wants trimming?

Oh, that rose has prior claims—

Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together:

io Salve tibi!

I must hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather,

Sort of season, time of year:

Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely

Dare we hope oak-galls,

I doubt:

15 What 's the Latin name for "parsley"?

What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,

Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,

20 And a goblet for ourself,

1. An oath (archaic). 3. Abnormal outgrowths on oak trees, used for

2. Hail to thee! (Latin); i.e., "your health!" This tanning.

and other speeches in italics in this stanza are the 4. Dandelion (19th-century use),

words of Brother Lawrence.

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1 2 5 4 / R O B E R T B R O W N I N G

Rinsed like something sacrificial

Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps

jaws

Marked with L. for our initial!

(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

25 Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores

Squats outside the Convent bank

With Sanchicha, telling stories,

Steeping tresses in the tank,

Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,

30 —Can't I see his dead eye glow,

Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

(That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,

dinner

Knife and fork he never lays

35 Cross-wise, to my recollection,

As do I, in Jesu's praise.

I the Trinity illustrate,

Drinking watered orange pulp—

In three sips the Arian

frustrate;

40 While he drains his at one gulp.

Oh, those melons? If he's able

We're to have a feast! so nice!

One goes to the Abbot's table,

All of us get each a slice.

45 How go on your flowers? None double?

Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,

Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,

so Once you trip on it, entails

Twenty-nine distinct damnations,

One sure, if another fails:

If I trip him just a-dying,

Sure of heaven as sure can be,

55 Spin him round and send him flying

Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel

On gray paper with blunt type!

5. Pirate of the Barbary Coast of northern Africa,

renowned for fierceness and lechery.

6. Heretical follower of Arius (256—336), who

denied the doctrine of the Trinity.

7. The speaker hopes to obtain Lawrence's dam-

nation by luring him into a heresy when he may

prove unable to interpret "Galatians" in an

unswervingly orthodox way. In Galatians 5.15—23

St. Paul specifies an assortment of "works of the

flesh" that lead to damnation, which could make

up a total of "twenty-nine" (line 51).

8. A heretic, a follower of Mani (3rd century), Per-

sian religious leader.

http://www.englishworld2011.info/

M Y L A S T D U C H E S S / 1 2 5 5

Simply glance at it, you grovel

Hand and foot in Belial's

gripe:

the devil's

If I double down its pages

At the woeful sixteenth print,

When he gathers his greengages,

Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

65 Or, there's Satan!—one might venture

Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave

Such a flaw in the indenture

As he'd miss till, past retrieve,

Blasted lay that rose-acacia

We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine'

'St, there's Vespers!

Plena gratia.

Ave, Virgo!

Gr-r-r—you swine!

ca. 1839 1842

My Last Duchess'

Ferrara

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's

hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

5 Will't please you sit and look at her? I said

"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

io The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

is Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps

Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff

20 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

9. The speaker would pledge his own soul to Satan

in return for blasting Lawrence and his "rose-

acacia," but the pledge would be so cleverly worded

that the speaker would not have to pay his debt to

Satan. There would be an escape clause ("flaw in

the indenture") for himself.

1. Perhaps the opening of a mysterious curse

against Lawrence.

2. Evening prayers.

3. Full of grace, Hail, Virgin! (Latin). The

speaker's twisted state of mind may he reflected in

his mixed-up version of the prayer to Mary: "Ave,

Maria, gratia plena."

1. The poem is based on incidents in the life of

Alfonso II. Duke of Ferrara in Italy, whose first

wife, Lucrezia, a young woman, died in 1561 after

three years of marriage. Following her death, the

duke negotiated through an agent to marry a niece

of the Count of Tyrol. Browning represents the

duke as addressing this agent.

2. Friar Pandolf, an imaginary painter.

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1 2 5 6 / R O B E R T B R O W N I N G

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

25 Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each

30 Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

35 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let

40 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse

— E ' e n then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

45 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. W i l l ' t please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence

50 Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

55 Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck' cast in bronze for me!

1 8 4 2 1 8 4 2

The Lost Leader

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband' to stick in his c o a t —

Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,

3. An unidentified or imaginary sculptor. The

Count of Tyrol had his capital at Innsbruck.

1. William Wordsworth, who had been an ardent

libera! in his youth, had become a political con-

servative in later years. In old age, when he

accepted a grant of money from the government

and the office ol poet laureate, he alienated some

of his young admirers such as Browning, whose

liberalism was then as passionate as Wordsworth's

had once been.

2. Browning here alludes to the "thirty pieces of

silver" for which Judas betrayed lesus (Matthew

26.14-16).

3. Symbol of the office of poet laureate.

http://www.englishworld2011.info/

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