Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

by Robert Browning

  An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is in John 11:1–44; the form, as the title and opening suggest, is a secular counterpart to the New Testament Epistles, especially St Paul’s (see also ‘Cleon’). Karshish, Abib, and their ‘lord the sage’ are invented characters. 1. The name ‘Karshish’ means ‘gatherer’ in Arabic. 28. Vespasian commanded the Roman troops against the Jewish rebellion in A.D. 66, three years before he became Emperor; his son Titus carried on the war and destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70.30. balls Eyeballs. 42. viscid choler Sticky bile. 43. tertians Tertian fevers (which recur every other day). 44. falling-sickness Epilepsy. 50. sublimate A medicinal powder. 55. gum-tragacanth A substance exuded from a shrub native to the Middle East, used in medicine as a vehicle for drugs. 82. exhibition Administration, 117. Matthew 18:2–3. 177. Greek fire A primitive explosive compound, first used by the Greeks of Byzantium. 228. affects Loves. 240. sublimed Intensified. 248–59. Karshish’s garbled version of the crucifixion, Matthew 27. 247. leech Physician.

  Mesmerism

  Published Men and Women, 1855. Mesmerism, founded on the teachings of the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), was a precursor of hypnotism, and was widely discussed in the 1840s and 1850s. Like spiritualism it was a topic of debate and disagreement between the Brownings. The term is used here loosely to indicate the exercise of occult power, though certain features (e.g. the use of the hands) are specifically associated with mesmerism. 44–5. Calotypes were an early form of photograph. 75. tractile Capable of being drawn out to a thread.

  A Serenade at the Villa

  Published Men and Women, 1855.

  ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’

  Published Men and Women, 1855. ‘I was conscious of no allegorical intention in writing it … Childe Roland came upon me as a kind of dream. I had to write it, then and there, and I finished it the same day, I believe. But it was simply that I had to do it. I did not know then what I meant beyond that, and I’m sure I don’t know now. But I’m very fond of it’ (Browning, 1887). A ‘childe’ is a young knight or candidate for knighthood. In the old Scottish ballad of Childe Roland, Roland, a son of King Arthur, rescues his sister from the castle of the King of Elfland. The subtitle refers to King Lear III iv 178–80, where Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom, quotes the ballad, along with the Giant’s words in the tale of Jack the Giant-Killer: ‘Child Rowland to the dark tower came, / His word was still “Fie, foh, and fum, / I smell the blood of a British man”.’ Browning carefully avoided ruling out an allegorical reading, only the conscious intention to write an allegory; readers who wish to try their hand should be warned that the enterprise strongly resembles carving a statue out of fog. 34. staves Verses (of the funeral psalm). 48. estray Legal term for stray animal. 66. Calcine Burn to ashes, utterly consume, with the additional sense of refine, purge. 68. bents Coarse grasses. 80. colloped The usual sense (‘having thick folds of flesh’) contradicts ‘gaunt’; perhaps ‘raw-looking’ (like a slice of meat). 106. howlet Owl. 114. bespate Bespattered (with suggestion of river ‘in full spate’). 130. pad Tread. 131. plash Marshy pool. 133. fell cirque Cruel, deadly amphitheatre (as in Roman circus). 141. brake Machine (in several possible senses, e.g. a toothed instrument to crush flax, a heavy harrow); can also mean ‘trap’ or ‘cage’. 143. Tophet Biblical name for Hell. See also ‘Ned Brans’, I. 178n. 160. Apollyon in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a ‘foul fiend’ with wings like a dragon (‘dragon-penned’), named after the ‘angel of the bottomless pit’ in Revelation 9:11.179. nonce Moment. 182. blind as the fool’s heart Psalm 14:1: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ 203. slug-hom A horn used in battle or to sound a challenge (Browning’s mistake, following Chatterton; the word is in fact a form of Anglo-Saxon ‘slogan’, battle-cry). The context recalls another Roland, the hero of Charlemagne’s time and subsequent legend, who sounded his horn (too late) at Roncesvalles.

  The Statue and the Bust

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The statue is real; the bust imaginary; the story mostly the latter, according to Browning: ‘the fiction in the poem … comprises everything but the (legendary) fact that the lady was shut up there by a jealous husband, and that the Duke commemorated his riding past her window by the statue’s erection … There are niches in the palace wall where such a bust might have been placed, “and if not, why not?”’ There is an analogy (though not a complete identification) with the story of Browning himself and Elizabeth Barrett; perhaps Browning also had in mind the twenty years waited by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor until the death of her husband allowed them to marry in 1851. 1–2. The equestrian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand de Medici (1549–1608) stands in the Piazza Annunziata, looking towards the Palazzo Antinori, a palace formerly owned by the Riccardi family (not, as Browning exasperatedly pointed out, the same as Duke Ferdinand’s own palace, described in ll.33–9; this was the palace built by Cosimo dei Medici, Fra Lippo Lippi’s patron, and from which the painter in Browning’s poem plays truant). 21. coal-black tree Ebony. 22. encolure Mane (B.’s coinage, from Fr., neck of a horse). 23. dissemble Imitate, match. 38–9. Probably alluding to the Cosimo of ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, in effect absolute ruler of Florence from 1434, though he preserved the forms of republican government, and the epithet ‘cursed’ applies more to his grandson Lorenzo than to his son Piero; P. Turner, in his edition of Men and Women (OUP, 1972), suggests instead Cosimo I (1519–74) and his son Francesco (1541–87). 57. catafalque Hearse. 94. Arno The river on which Florence stands. 95. Petraja In the hills to the north of Florence; Ferdinand had a villa there. 159. serpent’s tooth Of time and self-frustration (but obliquely alluding to the origin of the phrase in King Lear I iv 288–9, in the sense that the embittered lady is the ‘thankless child’ of her past self). 169. Robbia’s craft If the allusion is specific, it must (anachronistically) be to the sculptor Luca della Robbia (1400–1482); it may however be to Robbia ware generally. The cornice in Browning’s time was decorated in Robbia ware: 202. John of Douay The sculptor Giovanni da Bologna (1524–1608) was born at Douai in northern France. 232–43. Human integrity does not depend on the moral value of an action, but on the degree of conviction with which it is undertaken. In the metaphor, playing a game for real money (‘pelf’, ‘coin’) is equivalent to doing something virtuous; playing for ‘a button’, a ‘counter’ is equivalent to doing something wrong. Since the test is of integrity, not moral quality, it would be absurd (‘an epigram’) to demand the real coin of virtue when the ‘button’ of crime will do just as well. The ‘stamp of the very Guelph’ means British money; the royal family are Guelphs by descent. 247. Luke 12:35, with Matthew 12:1–13 (the wise and foolish virgins). 250. De te, fabula! ‘The story is about you’ (Horace, Satires I i 69–70).

  How It Strikes a Contemporary

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The title adapts that of a story by Jane Taylor (1783–1824), ‘How It Strikes a Stranger’, on which Browning drew much later for ‘Rephan’ (Asolando, 1889; not in this edition). Browning clearly used his own ideas, beliefs, and habits in the description of the poet here, but it is not simply a self-portrait. The real poet of the piece, after all, is the narrator who denies being one. 3. Valladolid A city in north-west Spain, about 160 km from Madrid. Browning had not visited it. 90. Corregidor Chief magistrate; the speaker goes on to identify him with the town crier, the point being that they metaphorically represent two kinds of poetry, one serious and authoritative (‘The town’s true master’, I.40), the other frivolous and gaudy. 96. memorized Memorialized. 115. Prado Fashionable promenade.

  The Patriot

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The poem is associated with the Risorgimento, the struggle for Italian liberation from Austrian rule, with which Browning strongly sympathized, but the action, as the subtitle indicates, is universal and recurrent, not local and specific. L.26 originally rea
d ‘Thus I entered Brescia’; the revision removes any allusion to the twelfth-century revolutionary Arnold of Brescia. 19. Shambles’ Gate The place of execution.

  Memorabilia

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The poem is founded on an incident which took place when Browning was a boy, soon after his first passionate discovery of Shelley’s poetry (recorded in Pauline, where Shelley is called ‘sun-treader’ – note the image of the eagle in the last two lines).

  Andrea del Sarto

  Published Men and Women, 1855. Said to have been written in response to a request by a friend for a copy of a painting in the Pitti Palace in Florence, believed at the time to be a self-portrait of Andrea (1486–1531) and his wife Lucrezia, and an expression of their unhappy relationship. The poem is set in 1525 (see l.105). As with Fra Lippo Lippi, Vasari was Browning’s main historical source for details of Andrea’s life and work: his marriage to the faithless and cold-hearted Lucrezia, who served as the model for many of his paintings, his return in 1519 at her instigation from the court of King Francis I where he had done some of his best work, his subsequent embezzlement of the King’s commission money in order to build a house for himself and Lucrezia, his neglect of his parents, his supreme technical skill, his falling short of the highest genius. He was called ‘del Sarto’ because his father was a tailor, and ‘II Pittore senza Errori’ because of his draughtsmanship. Vasari’s accuracy is disputed by modern scholarship; however, his biography gave Browning materials not for another biography, but for a poem. 15. Fiesole A town in the hills north-east of Florence. 76. Someone Michelangelo (1475–1574); see ll.183–93. 93. Morelk Mountain to the north of Florence. 105. Raphael, born at Urbino in 1483, died at Rome in 1520 (hence ‘The Roman’, l. 178). Contrary to l. 136, he did marry. 210. cue-owls Anglicizing the Italian ‘ciu’, the call of the scops owl. 263. Leonard Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

  In a Year

  Published Men and Women, 1855.

  Cleon

  Published Men and Women, 1855. Set in the first century, during the apostleship of Paul, with whom Cleon, like Karshish in ‘An Epistle’, is implicitly compared, and who is mentioned by name at the end of the poem. The epigraph refers to a saying by the Greek poet Aratus (fourth century B.C.) quoted by St Paul in his address to the Athenians: ‘as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his [God’s] offspring’ (Acts 17:28). Cleon and Protus are imaginary figures. 1. the sprinkled isles The Sporades in the Aegean. 16. sea-wools Dyed with purple from the murex. 41–2. Zeus, in Greek mythology king of the Gods; the ‘element of calm’ is the Olympian detachment from human concerns enjoyed by the gods, but (since Cleon does not believe in an afterlife) also a euphemism for oblivion. 47. Cleon’s epic poem has been engraved on gold tablets. 51. phare Lighthouse. 53. Poecile Since Cleon is an invented figure, the reference is not to the historical ‘stoa poikile’, the painted colonnade at Athens, but to a similar (imagined) building. 60. moods Modes (in ancient Greek music, scales differing in the sequence of intervals). 132. drupe Stone-fruit; here, the wild plum. 140. Terpander Musician and poet of seventh century B.C., credited with the invention of the seven-stringed lyre. 141. Phidias and his friend Phidias, Athenian sculptor of fifth century B.C.; ‘friend’ in this context means ‘fellow-artist’, and may refer to the Athenian painter Polygnotus, roughly contemporary with Phidias, or to Apelles, who lived about a century later. 252. Naiad Water-nymph. 258. what boots ‘How does it help’. 288. Phoebus Apollo, god of the sun and of poetry, and the type of male beauty. 341. one with him The same person; Cleon’s notion of Christianity, like that of Karshish, is vague and confused. (In another sense, of which Cleon is unaware, Paul is indeed ‘one with’ Christ: e.g., Galatians 2:20: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’.) 343. barbarian Jew Cleon is mistaken as well as prejudiced; besides being a Jew, Paul was a Roman citizen, a fact he knew how to turn to his advantage (Acts 22:24–9).

  Two in the Campagna

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The ‘Campagna’ (‘champaign’, I.21) is the idyllic countryside around Rome, where the Brownings spent ‘some exquisite hours’ (with friends) in May 1854. The poem is not in any simple sense confessional, but the dramatic projection of a state of mind.

  A Grammarian’s Funeral

  Published Men and Women, 1855. The ‘grammarian’ is a historical type; the ‘revival of learning in Europe’ (the Renaissance) began in the mid-fourteenth century in Italy. The grammarian’s students are carrying his body from the rural lowlands to a cemetery in a mountaintop town, and the poem represents their funeral dirge. 86. Calculus Stone (gall- or kidney-). 88. Tussis Cough. 95. soul-hydroptic Spiritually athirst (for knowledge). 124. Matthew 7:7. 129–31. Hoti, Oun, enclitic De The first two are Greek particles (‘that’, ‘then’); the third a suffix meaning ‘towards’: ‘That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated De meaning but, was the ‘doctrine’ which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it’ (Browning’s gloss).

  James Lee’s Wife

  Published Dramatis Personae, 1864, with the title ‘James Lee’. Section VI, II. 1–30, had been published May 1836 in the Monthly Repository (see above, note to ‘Porphyria’s Lover’). In Poetical Works (1868) the poem was given its final title. Section VIII was greatly expanded, with sixty-one new lines after 1.26. Browning described the couple as ‘people newly-married, trying to realize a dream of being sufficient to each other, in a foreign land (where you can try such an experiment) and finding it break up, – the man being tired first, – and tired precisely of the love’. The form and tone of the poem may owe something to Meredith’s Modern Love (1862). Grief at his wife’s death in 1861 may also have influenced Browning’s tone and treatment, but once again it must be stressed that the poem is not directly autobiographical. The setting is Brittany, where Browning spent the summer in 1862 and 1863. III, 72. bent Stalk of coarse grass. IV, 106. the Book The Bible. The allusion is to the Promised Land, as in this passage from Deuteronomy 9:7–8: ‘For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths … A land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive and honey.’ The phrase ‘rivers of oil and wine’ is not used in the Bible, but oil and wine are frequently linked, and the phrase ‘rivers of oil’ occurs in Job 29:6. V, 137. barded and chanfroned Armoured; bard = breastplate; chamfron (the usual form) = frontlet. 138. quixote-mage Whimsical magician. IX, 339. mutual flame ‘Here the anthem doth commence: / Love and constancy is dead; / Phoenix and the turtle fled / In a mutual flame from hence. // So they lov’d as love in twain / Had the essence but in one … ’ (Shakespeare, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, ll.21–6).

  Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic

  Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. The story is founded on a real event which took place in the eighteenth century. The girl’s ‘boasted name’ (I.4) is known, but I.5 asks for it not to be given. 16. flix Fur of an animal; here implying softness and fleeciness. 84. pelf Money, reward. 86–7. O cor / Humanum, pectora caeca Lucretius, De Rerum Natura II 14 (‘O human heart, and blind affections!’). 91–2. heard, / Marked, inwardly digested Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Second Sunday in Advent: ‘hear them [holy Scriptures], read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them’. 99. for the nonce For the purpose. 100. The three following stanzas were added in the second edition of Dramatis Personae (also 1864) at the instigation of George Eliot, in order to clarify the girl’s motive. 116. six times five The precise figure is Browning’s invention, allowing the allusion in stanza XXVI to the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed Christ. When Judas returned the money to the chief priests before hanging himself, they decided that since it was the ‘price of blood’ it could not be put in the Temple treasury; it was used to buy ‘the potter’s field, to bury strangers in’ (Matthew 27:3–7). 124–5. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heav
en … for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (Matthew 6:19–21). 132. Watch and pray! Christ’s injunction to the disciples, Matthew 26:41 (in the garden at Gethsemane), Mark 13:33 (for the Second Coming). 141. The candid Impartial judges. 143–5. Essays and Reviews, a Broad Church collection edited by H. B. Wilson, and including Jowett’s ‘The interpretation of Scripture’, was published in 1860, denounced for its liberalism by the Bishops in 1861, condemned in synod in 1864. John William Colenso (1814–83), Bishop of Natal, published commentaries on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1861) and the Pentateuch (vol. I, 1862) disputing the orthodox theology and historical authenticity of the Bible. 149–50. Original Sin, / The Corruption of Man’s Heart ‘Original Sin … is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is ingendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation’ (Article 9 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England); ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked’ (Jeremiah 17:9).

  Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de Nos Jours

  Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. The Latin is a tag from Virgil, Aeneid ii 428, ‘The gods thought otherwise’, meaning that they intervened to frustrate human hopes; but the implication of the poem is that human beings themselves are responsible for the failure of their lives’ fulfilment. The French means ‘The Byron of our days’: the man evoked in the poem is a poet who is lame (I.56) and ‘Famous … for verse and worse’ (1–57); like the Latin it is ironic, since the poet is old and, the poem suggests, a reduced version of his predecessor. The setting is once again Brittany. When the poem opens, the man has just told the woman that he came near to proposing marriage to her ten years ago. The poem is her bitter response to this information. Much of it consists of her guesswork as to what was going through the man’s mind on that occasion. She imagines him hesitating as to what to do, speculating about their respective thoughts if they were to marry, and deciding in the end not to take the risk. In II.82–5 the woman ‘quotes’ the man ‘quoting’ her ‘quoting’ him, the most complex example in Browning’s work of the nesting of voices within a dramatic monologue. 36. Franz Schumann (1810–56). 38. Jean-Marie Ingres (1780–1867), famous for his paintings of nudes. 40. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856); translations of six of his love lyrics appeared in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Last Poems (1862), which Browning edited. 42. votive frigate Carved model hung from the beam of the church as an offering to the Virgin Mary from local fishermen. 58. Sure of election to a vacant seat in the French Academy, which has forty members. 64. Three per Cents Government stock yielding a low but safe income.