LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

1855

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop As they crop— Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war.

II

Now,—the country does not even boast a tree As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads And embeds Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone— Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold.

IV

Now,—the single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games.

V

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades, All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then, All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high As the sky, Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force— Gold, of course. Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.

In the poem Respectability Browning gives us a more vulgar, but none the less vital aspect of love. This is no peaceful twilit harmony; this scene is set on a windy, rainy night in noisy Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Institute of France. Two reckless lovers—either old comrades or picked-up acquaintances of this very night, it matters not which—come tripping along gaily, arm in arm. The man chaffs at worldly conventions, at the dullness of society, at the hypocrisy of so-called respectable people, and congratulates himself and his fair companion on the fun they are having. What fools they would have been had they waited through a long, formal courtship for the sanction of an expensive marriage! The world, he says, does not forbid kisses, only it says, you must see the magistrate first. My finger must not touch your soft lips until it is covered with the glove of marriage. Bah! what do we care for the world's good word? At this moment they reach the lighted windows of the Institute, and like a pair of sparrows, they glance within at the highly proper but terribly tedious company. What do they see? They see Guizot compelled by political exigency to shake hands hypocritically with his enemy Montalembert. But before them down a dim court shine three lamps, an all-night dance resort. Come on! run for it! that's the place for us! no dull formalities, no hypocrisies there! Something doing!

RESPECTABILITY

1855

I

Dear, had the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim "I know you both, Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!"— How many precious months and years Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears?

II

How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their sex, Society's true ornament,— Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss?

III

I know! the world proscribes not love; Allows my finger to caress Your lips' contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove. The world's good word!—the Institute! Guizot receives Montalembert! Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!

In the list of Dramatis Personae, Browning placed Confessions shortly after A Death in the Desert, as if to show the enormous contrast in two death-bed scenes. After a presentation of the last noble, spiritual, inspired moments of the apostle John, we have portrayed for us the dying delirium of an old sinner, whose thought travels back to the sweetest moments of his life, his clandestine meetings with the girl he loved. The solemn voice of the priest is like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?

Not much!

Like Matthew Arnold's Wish, the brother-doctor of the soul who is called in

To canvass with official breath

is simply a nuisance in these last minutes of life. The row of medicine bottles, all useless now for practical purposes, represents to his fevered eyes the topography of the scene where the girl used to come running to meet him. "I know, sir, it's improper,"—I ought not to talk this way to a clergyman, my mind isn't right, I'm dying, and this is all I can think of.

How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

CONFESSIONS

1864

What is he buzzing in my ears? "Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?" Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether" Is the house o'ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune.

Only, there was a way … you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge."

What right had a lounger up their lane? But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir—used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

We may close our considerations of the dramatic lyrics with three love-poems. Whenever in his later years Browning was asked to write a selection with his autograph, he used to say playfully that the only one of his poems that he could remember was My Star; hence more copies of this exist in manuscript than any other of his productions. It was of course a tribute to his wife; she shone upon his life like a star of various colors; but the moment the world attempted to pry into the secret of her genius, she shut off the light altogether. Let the world regard Saturn, the most wonderful star in the heavens. My star shines for me alone.

The first and best of the series of Bad Dreams gives us again in Browning's last volume his doctrine of love. Love is its own reward: it may be sad not to have love returned, but the one unspeakable tragedy is to lose the capacity for loving. In a terrible dream, the face of the woman changes from its familiar tenderness to a glance of stony indifference, and in response to his agonised enquiry, she declares that her love for him is absolutely dead. Then comes a twofold bliss: one was in the mere waking from such desolation, but the other consisted in the fact that even if the dream were true, his love for her knew no diminution. Thank God, I loved on the same!

The most audacious poem of Browning's old age is Summum Bonum. Since the dawn of human speculative thought, philosophers have asked this question, What is the highest good? It has been answered in various ways. Omar Khayyam said it was Wine: John Stuart Mill said it was the greatest happiness of the greatest number: the Westminster Catechism said it was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Browning says it is the kiss of one girl. This kiss is the concentrated essence of all the glory, beauty, and sweetness of life. In order to understand such a paradox, we must remember that in Browning's philosophy, Love is the engine of the whole universe. I have no doubt that Love meant to him more than it has ever meant to any other poet or thinker; just as I am sure that the word Beauty revealed to Keats a vision entirely beyond the range of even the greatest seers. Love is the supreme fact; and every manifestation of it on earth, from the Divine Incarnation down to a chance meeting of lovers, is more important than any other event or idea. Now we have seen that it is Browning's way invariably to represent an abstract thought by a concrete illustration. Therefore in this great and daring lyric we find the imaginary lover calling the kiss of the woman he loves the highest good in life.

MY STAR

1855

All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.