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

0

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

2

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,

0

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

3

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

4

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,"

5

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

70

75

80

85

90

95

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,

6

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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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

1

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;

2

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

3

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

4

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,

5

But vaster. We are fools and slight;

JO

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

0

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

5

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.

6

One writes, that "Other friends remain,"

That "Loss is common to the race"—

And common is the commonplace,

And vacant chaff

3

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,

IO

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.

9

Ye know no more than I who wrought

At that last hour to please him well;

1

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

0

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.

7

Dark house,

2

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.

8

A happy lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well,

Who 'lights

0

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

Simply glance at it, you grovel

60

Hand and foot in Belial's

0

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?

9

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

9

70

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

'St, there's Vespers!

2

Plena gratia.

Ave, Virgo!

3

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

2

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

1

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

2

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.

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T H E B I S H O P O R D E R S H I S T O M B / 1 2 5 9

9

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

50 Shook off both my jack boots, let go belt and all,

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

10

55 And all I remember is—friends flocking round

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

60 Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

ca. 1844 1845

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint

Praxed's Church'

Rome, 15—

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!

2

Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?

Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well—

She, men would have to be your mother once,

5 Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!

What's done is done, and she is dead beside,

Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,

And as she died so must we die ourselves,

And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream,

io Life, how and what is it? As here I lie

In this state chamber, dying by degrees,

Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.

Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;

15 And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought

With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:

—Old Gandolf cozened" me, despite my care;

cheated

1. In "Fra Lippo Lippi" Browning represents the

dawn of the Renaissance in Italy, with its fresh zest

for human experiences in this world. In this

monologue he portrays a later stage of the Renais-

sance when such worldliness, full-blown, had

infected some of the leading clergy of Italy. Brown-

ing's portrait of the dying bishop is, however, not

primarily a satire against corruption in the church.

It is a brilliant exposition of the workings of a mind,

a mind that has been conditioned by special his-

torical circumstances. The Victorian historian of

art John Ruskin said of this poem:

I know of no other piece of modern English,

prose or poetry, in which there is so much told.

as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—its

worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy,

ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of

good Latin. It is nearly all that 1 have said of the

central Renaissance in thirty pages of the Stones

of Venice,

put into as many lines, Browning's

also being the antecedent work.
St. Praxed's Church was named in honor of St.

Praxedes, a Roman virgin of the 2nd century who

gave her riches to poor Christians. Both the bishop

and his predecessor, Gandolf, are imaginary per-

sons.

2. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2.

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1 2 6 0 / R O B E R T B R O W N I N G

Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south

He graced his carrion with,

3

God curse the same!

20 Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle side,

4

And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,

And up into the aery dome where live

The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:

25 And I shall fill my slab of basalt

5

there,

And 'neath my tabernacle

6

take my rest,

With those nine columns round me, two and two,

The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

30 As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

7

—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,

8

Put me where I may look at him! True peach,

Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!

Draw close: that conflagration of my church

35 —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!

My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,

Drop water gently till the surface sink,

And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .

40 Bedded in store of rotten fig leaves soft,

And corded up in a tight olive-frail,

9

Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,

1

Big as a jew's head cut off at the nape,

2

Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .

45 Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,

That brave Frascati

3

villa with its bath,

So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,

Like God the Father's globe on both his hands

Ye worship in the Jesu Church

4

so gay,

50 For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:

5

Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?

Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black

6

—

'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else

55 Shall ye contrast my frieze

7

to come beneath?

The bas-relief

8

in bronze ye promised me,

Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot° of, and perchance know

3. Bishop Gandolf shrewdly chose a prize spot in

the southern corner of the church for his huriai

place. The tomb that the speaker is ordering will

also be inside the church, as was common for

important people in this era.

4. The Epistles of the New Testament are read

from the right-hand side of the altar (as one faces

it).

5. Dark-colored igneous rock.

6. Stone canopy or tentlike roof, presumably sup-

ported by the "nine columns" under which the

sculptured effigy of the bishop would lie on the

"slab of basalt."

7. A pulpy mash of fermented grapes from which

a strong wine might be poured off.

8. An inferior marble that peels in layers.

9. Basket for holding olives.

1. Valuable bright blue stone.

2. Perhaps a reference to the head of John the

Baptist, cut off at Salome's request (Matthew

14.6-11).

3. Suburb of Rome, used as a resort by wealthy

Italians.

4. II Gesu, a Jesuit church in Rome. In a chapel

in this church the figure of an angel (rather than

God) holds a huge lump of lapis lazuli in his hands.

5. Cf. Job 7.6.

6. I.e., black marble.

7. Continuous band of sculpture.

8. Sculpture in which the figures do not project

far from the background surface.

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T H E B I S H O P O R D E R S H I S T O M B / 1 2 6 1

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,

The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,

60 Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,

And Moses with the tables

9

. . . but I know

Ye mark

0

me not! What do they whisper thee, heed

Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope

65 To revel down my villas while I gasp

Bricked o'er with beggar's moldy travertine

0

Italian limestone

Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!

Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!

'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve

70 My bath must needs be left behind, alas!

One block, pure green as a pistachio nut,

There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world—

And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray

Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,

75 And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?

—That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,

Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's

1

every word,

No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line—

Tully, my masters? Ulpian

2

serves his need!

so And then how I shall lie through centuries,

And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,

And see God made and eaten all day long,

3

And feel the steady candle flame, and taste

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

85 For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,

Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,

0

bishop's staff

And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,

And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth,

4

drop

90 Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:

And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,

About the life before I lived this life,

And this life too, popes, cardinals, and priests,

95 Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,

5

Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,

And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,

And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet

—Aha,

ELUCESCEBAT

6

quoth our friend?

9. The sculpture would consist of a mixture of

pagan and Christian iconography. "Tripod": seat

on which the Oracle of Delphi made prophecies.

"Thyrsus": a staff twined with ivy that was carried,

according to Greek mythology, by Dionysus, god of

wine and fertility. "Glory": halo. "Tables": the stone

tablets on which the Ten Commandments were

written. Such intermingling of pagan and Chris-

tian traditions, characteristic of the Renaissance,

had been attacked in 1841 in Contrasts, a book on

architecture by A. W. Pugin, a Roman Catholic.

1 .

I.e., Marcus Tullius Cicero

( 1 0 6 - 4 3 B . C . E . ) ,

orator and statesman who was one of the great styl-

ists of classical Latin prose.

2. Late Latin author of legal commentaries (d.

228

C . E . ) ;

not a mode! of good style.

3. Reference to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

4. Rich cloth spread over a dead body or coffin.

5. The bishop is confusing St. Praxed (a woman)

with Jesus—an indication that his mind is wan-

dering.

6. He was illustrious (Latin); word from Gandolf's

epitaph. The bishop considers the form of the verb

to be in "gaudy" bad taste (line 78). If the epitaph

had been copied from Cicero instead of from

Ulpian, the word would have been elucebat.

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

100 No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!

Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.

7

All

lapis,

all, sons! Else I give the Pope

My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,

105 They glitter like your mother's for my soul,

Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,

Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase

With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,

8

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx

9

i io That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,

To comfort me on my entablature

1

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

us To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—

Gritstone,

2

a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—

And no more

lapis

to delight the world!

Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,

120 But in a row: and, going, turn your backs

—Aye, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers—

Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,

125 As still he envied me, so fair she was!

1844 1845

A Toccata of Galuppi's

1

Oh, Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;

But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,

Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

2

7. Cf. Genesis 47.9.

8. Statue of Terminus, the Roman god of bound-

aries, usually represented without arms. "Vizor":

part of a helmet, often represented in sculpture.

9. An animal that traditionally accompanied Bac-

chus.

1. Horizontal platform supporting a statue or

effigy-

2. Coarse sandstone.

1. For the main speaker of this poem, Browning

invents a 19th-century English scientist, who is lis-

tening to music by the Italian composer Baldassaro

Galuppi (1706—1785). The music evokes for the

scientist visions of 18th-century Venice, including

an imaginary scene of a party at which Galuppi

performs his composition for an audience. From

line 20 onward we hear snippets of conversation

from members of this audience as they respond to

the different moods of the piece, and then, in lines

3S—43, Galuppi's own imagined musings. "Toc-

cata": according to Grove's Dictionary of Music, a

"touch-piece, or a composition intended to exhibit

the touch and execution of the performer." The

same authority states that "no particular compo-

sition was taken as the basis of the poem."

2. An annual ceremony in which the doge, the

Venetian chief magistrate, threw a ring into the

water to symbolize the bond between his city, with

its maritime empire, and the sea.

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