Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

by Robert Browning

  She flung the weapon, and, with folded arms

  And mien defiant of such low alarms

  As death and doom beyond death, Bicé stood

  Passively statuesque, in quietude

  [320] Awaiting judgement.

  And out judgement burst

  With frank unloading of love’s laughter, first

  Freed from its unsuspected source. Some throe

  Must needs unlock love’s prison-bars, let flow

  The joyance.

  ‘Then you ever were, still are,

  And henceforth shall be – no occulted star

  But my resplendent Bicé, sun-revealed,

  Full-rondure! Woman-glory unconcealed,

  So front me, find and claim and take your own –

  My soul and body yours and yours alone,

  [330] As you are mine, mine wholly! Heart’s love, take –

  Use your possession – stab or stay at will

  Here – hating, saving – woman with the skill

  To make man beast or god!’

  And so it proved:

  For, as beseemed new godship, thus he loved,

  Past power to change, until his dying-day, –

  Good fellow! And I fain would hope – some say

  Indeed for certain – that our painter’s toils

  At fresco-splashing, finer stroke in oils,

  Were not so mediocre after all;

  [340] Perhaps the work appears unduly small

  From having loomed too large in old esteem,

  Patronized by late Papacy. I seem

  Myself to have cast eyes on certain work

  In sundry galleries, no judge needs shirk

  From moderately praising. He designed

  Correctly, nor in colour lagged behind

  His age: but both in Florence and in Rome

  The elder race so make themselves at home

  That scarce we give a glance to ceilingfuls

  [350] Of such like as Francesco. Still, one culls

  From out the heaped laudations of the time

  The pretty incident I put in rhyme.

  Spring Song

  Dance, yellows and whites and reds, –

  Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads

  Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds!

  There’s sunshine; scarcely a wind at all

  Disturbs starved grass and daisies small

  On a certain mound by a churchyard wall.

  Daisies and grass be my heart’s bedfellows

  On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:

  Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!

  Notes

  Porphyria’s Lover

  Published January 1836 in W. J. Fox’s liberal Unitarian journal, the Monthly Repository, with the title ‘Porphyria’. Fox had praised and promoted Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835). Immediately following ‘Porphyria’ was ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’, then called ‘Johannes Agricola’ (see below): these were the first dramatic monologues by Browning to appear in print. In Dramatic Lyrics (1842) the two poems lost their individual titles and became parts one and two of ‘Madhouse Cells’, with ‘Johannes Agricola’ now first in order. In Poems (1849) the two were given their final titles, though still linked as ‘Madhouse Cells’ I and II. In Poetical Works (1863) they were separated, and the ‘Madhouse Cells’ title was dropped; the two poems were placed in the section called ‘Dramatic Romances’. Finally, in Poetical Works (1868), ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’ was placed in the section called ‘Men and Women’.

  Johannes Agricola in Meditation

  For publication and title see above. The original publication in the Monthly Repository included an epigraph quoting (with minor errors) the entry on antinomianism in Defoe’s Dictionary of all Religions (1704):

  Antinomians, so denominated for rejecting the Law as a thing of no use under the Gospel dispensation: they say, that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc. are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth … that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification, etc. Potanus, in his Catalogue of Heresies, says John Agricola was the author of this sect, A.D. 1535.

  The Monthly Repository, with its Unitarian tendency, would have been favourable to this satire on extreme Protestantism.

  Song from Pippa Passes (‘The year’s at the spring’)

  Published 1841. Pippa Passes is a drama set in Asolo, a small town in north-east Italy which Browning visited in 1838. The concluding two lines express Pippa’s innocence, not Browning’s facile optimism, as the dramatic context makes clear (Pippa sings the song outside a room where, unknown to her, a woman and her lover are closeted together after killing the woman’s husband).

  Scene from Pippa Passes (‘There goes a swallow to Venice …’)

  The speakers, according to the stage direction, are ‘poor girls’, i.e., prostitutes, whiling away the time before nightfall. 22. deuzans Variety of apple said to keep two years (from French ‘deux ans’); junetings jennetings, a variety of early apple; leather-coats russet apples with rough skins.

  My Last Duchess

  Published Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. The Duke of Ferrara is speaking to an envoy negotiating his next marriage. The characters and story are not historical, but meant to be typical of the period of the Italian Renaissance.

  Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

  Published Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. 10. Sake tibi Latin greeting. 14. oak-galls Growths on oak leaves, used in the manufacture of ink. 16. Swine’s Snout Botanically, the dandelion; insultingly, Brother Lawrence. 39. the Arian Follower of Anus, fourth-century heretic who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. 49. Galatians St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. The ‘great text’ is imaginary. 56. Manichee Follower of the Manichean heresy, a dualist (believing that good and evil are of equal power in the universe). 60. Belial’s gripe Belial is one of the names of the Devil. ‘Belial came next, than whom a spirit more lewd / Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love / Vice for itself’ (Milton, Paradise Lost I 490–92). 64. sieve Basket. 70. Hy, Zy, Hine Opening words of a magic spell, interrupted by the bell for vespers. 71–2. Plena gratiâ / Ave, Virgo ‘Hail, Virgin [Mary] full of grace’ (Latin).

  The Pied Piper of Hamelin; A Child’s Story

  Published Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. ‘W. M. the Younger’ was the son of the actor-manager William Macready; Browning wrote the poem for him to illustrate while he was ill in bed. Line 10 is the second shortest in Browning’s poetry. The shortest is the first line of Pippa Passes: ‘Day!’ 123–6. Julius Caesar is said to have swum ashore after his ship was wrecked off Alexandria, carrying the manuscript of his history of the war with Gaul (‘his commentary’). 136. by harp or by psaltery Musical instruments associated with the Bible, e.g., Psalm 81:2, ‘the pleasant harp with the psaltery’. 138. drysaltery Shop selling oils, preserves, tinned meats etc. 139. nuncheon Snack. 141. puncheon Cask. 169. poke Purse. 182. stiver Coin of small value. 198, pitching and hustling Also ‘hustle-cap’, a game in which coins are tossed at a mark, then gathered in a cap and shaken out: the one whose coin landed nearest takes all the coins that fall out heads; the process is repeated with the next nearest until all the coins are gone. 258. A text Matthew 19:24. 279. tabor Drum. 296. trepanned Entrapped.

  ‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’

  Published Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845. Aix is besieged; the ‘good news’ is of help on the way. The episode is not historical. All the places except Aix (Aix-la-Chapelle, now Aachen in West Germany) are in Belgium. 10. pique ‘The old-fashioned projection in front of the military saddle on the Continent’ (Browning’s gloss). 22. stout galloper Stayer (as opposed to sprinter).

  The Lost Leader

  Published Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845.
The subject was Wordsworth’s defection from the radical cause; the poem was probably written after he became Poet Laureate in 1843.

  Meeting at Night

  Published Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845, with ‘Parting at Morning’, as a single poem in two parts, ‘Night and Morning’. In 1849 the poems were separated and given their present titles, but continued to be published together.

  Parting at Morning

  See preceding note for publication. The speaker of the poem is the man, not, as many readers have assumed (including the present editor when he first read it), the woman. ‘Him’ in 1.3 means the sun, as it does in 1.20 of ‘“How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” ’. Browning was asked in 1889 whether the fourth line was ‘an expression by her of her sense of loss of him, or the despairing cry of a ruined woman?’ He replied: ‘Neither: it is his confession of how fleeting is the belief (implied in the first part) that such raptures are self-sufficient and enduring – as for the time they appear.’

  Home-Thoughts, from Abroad.

  Published Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845.

  The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church

  Published Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany, March 1845, with the title ‘The Tomb at St. Praxed’s’; then Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. The present title dates from Poems, 1849. Browning visited Rome in 1844 and saw the church of Santa Prassede, but both Bishop and tomb are imaginary (necessarily so in the latter case, since the Bishop’s wishes are clearly not going to be fulfilled). Ruskin’s praise in vol. IV of Modern Painters (1856) is notable: ‘I know of no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told … of the Renaissance spirit, – its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin.’ 1. Ecclesiastes 1:2. ‘Vanity’ means ‘futility’. 31. onion-stone An inferior marble: ‘the grey cipollino – good for pillars and the like, bad for finer work, thro’ its being laid coat upon coat, onion-wise’ (Browning’s gloss). 41 frail Basket made of rushes. 47–9. Alluding to the monument of St Ignatius Loyola in the Gesu church in Rome, topped by a lapis lazuli globe; anachronistic, since it dates from 1690. 51–2. Job 7:6 and 14:10. 54. antique-blade It. antico-nero, a high-quality black marble. 64. Child of my bowels II Samuel 16:11 (David on the rebellion of his favourite son, Absalom). 66. travertine Hard white stone used for ordinary building. 77–9. Tully Cicero, a model of pure Latin style; Ulpian Domitius Ulpianus, lawyer and scholar of third century A.D. 89. mortcloth Funeral pall. 95. Santa Prassede is neither Christ nor male; ‘the blunder about the sermon is the result of the dying man’s haziness’ (Browning’s gloss). 99–100. The Bishop correctly identifies ‘elucescebat’ (he was illustrious) as a post-Ciceronian form; Cicero would have had ‘elucebat’. 101. Genesis 47:9. 111. entablature Marble block. 116. Gritstone Coarse sandstone.

  Love Among the Ruins

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The unnamed landscape owes something to the Roman campagna, and something to Browning’s reading about contemporary excavations of ancient cities; the draft title was ‘Sicilian Pastoral’. 21. Thebes in Egypt was known as ‘Hecatompylos’ on account of its hundred gates; Babylon also had one hundred gates. 73–8. Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (ed. 1823) records of Thebes in Egypt: ‘In the time of its splendour, it extended above twenty-three miles, and upon any emergency could send into the field by each of its hundred gates, 20, 000 fighting men, and 200 chariots.’

  A Lovers’ Quarrel

  Published Men and Women, 1855. Intense playful intimacy characterized the Brownings’ first months together at Pisa, 1846–7; disagreements (about Napoleon III and spiritualism) came later, but are not the source of the ‘quarrel’ here: Browning’s marriage therefore provided material for the poem but was not (in simple terms) its subject. 29–35. The Times attacked the extravagance of Napoleon Ill’s wedding, January 1853. 36. Pampas The grasslands of Argentina. 43–9. Elizabeth Barrett Browning reports such a seance, but not tête-à-tête with her sceptical husband. 90–91. Proverbs 18:21. 123. minor third The interval between the cuckoo’s notes increases as spring progresses; the ‘minor third’ is an interval of one and a halftones. See also ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, l.19.

  Up at a Villa – Down in the City

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The setting is Tuscany. 42. Pulcinello-trumpet Announcing a puppet show (Pulcinello is a Punch-figure). 44–6. Tuscany at the time was ruled by the Grand Duke Leopold II, with Austrian support: the ‘liberal thieves’ are Italian nationalists (with whom Browning, as opposed to the Catholic Church hierarchy, sympathized), and the ‘little new law’ a reactionary measure.

  Fra Lippo Lippi

  Published Men and Women, 1855. Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, a favourite book, supplied most of the details for the career of the Florentine painter Filippo Lippi (c. 1406–69); the episode related by the poem is imaginary. Lippi’s opinions coincide with Browning’s at several, but by no means all points. 17–18. Cosimo dei Medici (1389–1464) ruled Florence and was Lippi’s patron; his ‘house’ reappears in ‘The Statue and the Bust’ (ll. 33–9). 53–6. Imitations of the stornello, a three-line Tuscan popular song beginning with the name of a flower. 121. the Eight The magistrates of Florence. 130. antiphonary Book of choral songs. 189. Giotto Florentine painter and architect (1267–1337), praised in ‘Old Pictures in Florence’ (Men and Women; not in this edition). 196–7. Matthew 14:1–12, confusing Herodias with her daughter Salome; Browning took the error from Vasari, probably deliberately (contrast 11.273–80): it exposes the Prior’s ignorance or unease. 235–6. Fra Angilico (1387–1455), a Dominican friar; Lorenzo Monaco (c. 1370-c. 1425), a Camaldolese: see ll.139–40. 273–80. Tomasso Guidi (1401–28), called ‘Masaccio’ (clumsy), Lippi’s teacher, not pupil; Browning misread a note in his edition of Vasari. 307. cullion Rascal. 323. Saint Laurence A deacon of Pope Sixtus II, martyred in 258 by being roasted on a gridiron. 327. phiz Face. 347. They want a cast o’ my office They want an example of my work (with bawdy pun: they lack what I can give them). 348. The painting described in the following lines is ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. 354. Saint John the Baptist. 363. In Browning’s time this figure, kneeling in the right-hand bottom corner by a scroll reading ‘is perfecit opus’, was thought to be a self-portrait (‘he made the work’); it is now known to be a portrait of the benefactor who commissioned the painting (‘he made the work be’). Browning’s ‘Iste’ (1.377) is an error. 375. camel-hair Worn by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:4). 380. kirtles Skirts or petticoats. 381. hot cockles Lippi’s bawdy joke depends on knowing that the real rustic game of hot cockles is one in which a blindfolded player has to guess who strikes him; it cannot, therefore, be played by only two people!

  A Toccata of Galuppi’s

  Published Men and Women, 1855. In 1887 Browning commented: ‘As for Galuppi, I had once in my possession two huge manuscript volumes almost exclusively made up of his “Toccata-pieces” – apparently a slighter form of the Sonata to be “touched” lightly off.’ Browning’s memory may be at fault; Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85) composed many keyboard pieces but no toccatas; in any event the piece here is imaginary. 1. Baldassaro The spelling is Browning’s error. 6. Saint Mark’s is the Cathedral of Venice; the Doges (chief magistrates in the days when Venice was a republic) performed an annual ceremony in which a ring was cast into the Adriatic to ‘wed’ the state to the sea, the source of its military and commercial power. 8. Shy lock’s bridge The Rialto, ‘where merchants most do congregate’ (Merchant of Venice I iii 44). 11. masks Probably meaning masquerades or masked balls (see l.17); but it may mean masques, dramatic entertainments. 14. bell-flower Campanula 16. afford ‘Time’ is understood; ‘spare the time to listen to your music’. 18. clavichord Galuppi was a harpsichordist and composed for this instrument, not the clavichord; P. Turner, in his edition of Men and Women (OUP, 1972) says that the clavichord’s softer tone would be
‘almost inaudible against the noise of general conversation’, which may be why Browning substituted it; the lovers have to ‘break talk off’ to listen. 19–25. The extent of Browning’s musical knowledge, and the precise bearing of the terminology used here, are debatable; the general sense is clear, however: the speaker suggests a link between Galuppi’s technique as a composer and the ‘message’ of his music, as interpreted both by his contemporary audience and (11.34–43) by the speaker himself. 19. lesser thirds Minor thirds, as in ‘A Lovers’ Quarrel’, 1.123. sixths diminished A diminished sixth is technically a minor sixth chromatically reduced by one semitone, and has ‘little beyond a theoretical existence’ (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music); a commentator in 1887 remarked that ‘mentioning diminished sixths in this off-hand way is rather like casually speaking of breakfasting off roc’s egg as a matter of everyday occurrence’. J. Pettigrew and T. J. Collins (Robert Browning: the Poems, Harmondsworth, 1981) suggest that ‘diminished’ may be loosely used for ‘minor’. 20. Those suspensions, those solutions A suspension is the prolongation of a note from one chord into the following chord, producing a discord which is then resolved into a concord (the solution or resolution). 24–5. dominant’s persistence … octave struck the answer The dominant is the fifth note above the keynote; a chord formed on this note is normally resolved on to the chord of the keynote. ‘Octave’ presumably refers to the keynote struck in octaves ‘to stress its finality’ (Turner). 37–42. Galuppi’s music shakes the speaker’s faith both in a hierarchy of ‘souls’ (whose progress beyond the material world is determined by the ‘degree’ of their spirituality) and in the place of his own rational, scientific soul in such a hierarchy. ‘Butterflies’ (1.39) may refer literally to the creatures themselves, or figuratively to the Venetians, or to both; the butterfly was a traditional emblem of the soul. ‘Extinction’ (1.39) refers not to death, but to there being nothing after it. According to Christ’s teaching, those who are fulfilled on earth ‘have their reward’ (Matthew 6:2) and will not find salvation in the afterlife; here, it is not salvation that is at stake, but existence itself. ‘Mirth and folly’ (1.41) suggests Ecclesiastes 7:2–4: ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart … The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.’