Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

by Robert Browning

  House

  Published Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper: with Other Poems, 1876. It is the plainest statement of Browning’s lifelong disavowal of autobiographical or confessional poetry (there are of course many exceptions in passages and whole poems, including, by a necessary irony, ‘House’ itself; for a good example of the principle in action, see the next poem, ‘Saint Martin’s Summer’). The poem revives the young Browning’s dislike of Wordsworth (see note to ‘The Lost Leader’) in its rebuttal of Wordsworth’s ‘Scorn not the Sonnet’, which opens: ‘Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, / Mindless of its just honours; with this key / Shakespeare unlocked his heart.’ In his essay on Shelley (1852), Browning on the contrary praises Shakespeare as the type of the ‘objective’ (non-confessional) poet. Browning himself wrote notably few sonnets and published none in volume form; one of the few is a sonnet in praise of Shakespeare, ‘The Names’ (see p. 293). 3. pelf Possessions. 29. goodman Householder or husband.

  Saint Martin’s Summer

  Published Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper: with Other Poems, 1876. Saint Martin’s Summer’, or ‘Indian Summer’, refers to the period of fine weather thought to occur often in mid-autumn (Saint Martin’s day is 11 November); in the poem it stands for the second flowering of love. The poem may have been influenced by the break between Browning and Louisa, Lady Ashburton, in 1869, after he refused her proposal of marriage, but it is not directly autobiographical. 1. protesting In the sense of ‘protestations’ (of love); also 1.67.7–8. mansion … bower Metaphors (elaborated in the following lines) for commitment to a stable and would-be permanent relationship as against a more transient affair. 71–2. Penelope, Ulysses Types of wisdom and prudence in Homer’s Odyssey.

  Ned Bratts

  Published Dramatic Idyls, 1879. The poem, based on the story of ‘Old Tod’ in John Bunyan’s Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), is also a portrait of Bunyan himself, whom Browning regarded with ‘utmost admiration and reverence’; Browning freely changed the circumstances of Bunyan’s life and work in order to bring him personally into the story. 5. bibbing Tippling, 12. tag-rag and bobtail Rabble, riff-raff, a-bowsing Boozing. 17. Of a reek Reeking (with sweat). 18. forbye Besides. 20. they The ‘gentry’. 28. boggled Took fright. 29. Tom Styles … Jack Notes Conventional names (like ‘John Doe’); Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable differentiates between Tom as ‘the honest dullard’ and Jack as ‘the sharp, shrewd, active fellow’, which fits the context here, where Tom is being hanged for Jack’s crime. 32. frizzles Curls (of the judge’s wig). 33. fleered Rejoiced (at getting off ‘scot-free’); to ‘fleer’ in this context is to laugh coarsely. 35. rank puritans caught at prayer Worship outside the Church of England was forbidden under the Act of Uniformity, 1662, in force until the Toleration Act of 1689. ‘Puritans’ is here a catch-all term of abuse for any Nonconformist or Dissenting church. 43. Serjeant Judge; until 1873 common law judges were always chosen from barristers who had attained the degree of serjeant-at-law. 52. Publican Besides the literal meaning, recalling the biblical sense of ‘tax-gatherer’ and its associations (‘publicans and sinners’, Mark 2:16; ‘an heathen man and a publican’, Matthew 18:17). 64. javelineers Sheriff’s officers who provided the escort for judges at the assizes. 67. Dropped the baby down the well Killed an unwanted illegitimate child; left the tithesman in the lurch Evaded paying tax (‘tithes’) due to the Church. 71. in our Public ‘In our public house’, with a play on ‘in public, openly’: while the court meets to decide the fate of comparatively minor offenders, Ned Bratts and his wife have been carrying on their dual activities as criminals and informers with impunity. 78. quean Hussy. 79. pedlar Here, euphemism for ‘thief; noggin Mug (of ale). 82. midden Dunghill. 83. billet Wooden club. 86. (I’ve baulked a d—) By saying ‘lily-livered’ instead of ‘damned’, Ned Bratts avoids the sin of swearing. See also ll.92, 100, 104, 243. 89. not a stoppage to travel has chanced ‘Not a hold-up (by a highwayman) has occurred’. 92. Od’s ‘God’s’ (this oath has slipped by Ned’s guard). 96. He danced the jig that needs no floor One, of many similar euphemisms for hanging. 97. Twos Scroggs that houghed the mare! Smouch was hanged not for the theft of which he failed to give Ned Bratts and Tab their cut, but for an offence he did not commit, ‘houghing’ or hamstringing a horse. 98. Psalm 37:36 (Book of Common Prayer): ‘I myself have seen the ungodly in great power: and flourishing like a green bay-tree.’ 100. Zounds ‘God’s wounds’. 102. the Book Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (see I.111n.). 104. ’Sdeath ‘God’s death’. 111. Who wrote it in the Jail Bunyan was imprisoned in Bedford Jail for preaching without a licence, 1660–72, during which time he wrote most of Pilgrims Progres’s (not published however until 1678). 114. Gammer ‘Old woman’; the male equivalent is ‘Gaffer’ (I.119). 114–15. bobbing like a crab / On Yule-tide bowl Alluding to the traditional Christmas game where players with their hands tied duck for crab-apples floating in a bowl. 117. fuddling-cap To ‘fuddle one’s cap’ is to get drunk; ‘cap’ in this and cognate phrases means ‘head’, so Browning’s use of ‘fuddling-cap’ as an article of clothing is an error. 126. pad on, my prate-apace ‘Keep on talking, loudmouth.’ 129. Bunyan was a tinker by profession; in prison he made lace to support himself and his family. His blind daughter sold the lace (I–135 below). 130. twelve years ago Bunyan was arrested in 1660 (see l.111n.); this, and 1.315, therefore fix the date of the action as 1672; Bunyan was in fact released from prison in June of that year, a fact foreshadowed at II.307–12.156–7. a Dives … Charles ‘Dives’ in Latin means rich man, and is the name conventionally given to the rich man in the parable in Luke 16:19–31, who is damned while the beggar Lazarus is saved. ‘Charles’ is Charles II, who came to the throne at the restoration in 1660 (see ll.315–16); ‘Charles’s Wain [Wagon]’ is a name for the constellation of the Great Bear. 160. lump of leavened sin I Corinthians 5:6–8: ‘Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? … Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ 161. “ ‘Down on my marrow-bones! ‘I went down on my knees (to ask forgiveness).’ 164–70. A variant of the parable in Luke 13:7–9: ‘Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none; cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.’ 166. dreriment Dreariness or dismalness; Browning probably found this archaic form in Spenser, who coined it. 168. cloister In the (original, now obsolete) sense of an enclosed space; but the anti-Catholic Bunyan may also be punning on the word’s religious connotations. 172. stag-horns Bare upper branches; this nonce-use was probably influenced by the stag-horn beetle. 174. marie Soil; Milton’s ‘burning marl’ (Paradise Lost i 296) had associated the word with hell, and Browning may also have come across the phrase in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876). 178. Tophet Biblical name for Hell; used by Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress (see I.203n. below; also ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’, II.143n and 160n. 179. ‘Look unto me and be ye saved!’ Isaiah 45:22. 180. Alluding to Moses striking water from the rock in the wilderness (Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:11). outstreats out flows. In a footnote in the first edition, Browning cited Donne’s use of this word in ‘The Progress of the Soul’, a poem also alluded to admiringly in The Two Poets of Croisic (1878). 181–2. Isaiah 1:18: ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ 201. a just-lugged bear A bear that has just been tormented by having its fur pulled. 202. You had ‘You could have’. 203. Christmas Ned Bratts’s error for Christian, the hero of Pilgrim’s Progress. From this point the poem is saturated with specific allusions to famous episodes and characters from Pilgrim’s Progr
ess: Christian’s flight from the City of Destruction, abandoning his wife and children, the ‘burden’ (of original sin) from which he is released by grace, his entry through the ‘wicket-gate’ to the way of salvation, the Slough of Despond, the encounter with the fiend Apollyon, the martyrdom of Faithful in Vanity Fair, etc. 204–5. Joseph’s sack … which held the cup Ned Bratts’s confused recollection of Genesis 44, in which Joseph, sending his brothers back to Canaan with sacks of food, conceals his silver cup in the sack of his youngest brother, Benjamin, and then makes believe to accuse them of theft. 206. chine Backbone. 207. you pitched me as I flung ‘You gave as good as you got.’ 221. I had ‘I would have.’ 225. Compare the angel with his sickle in Revelation 14:19.229. thrid Thread, follow the course of. 231. The Delectable Mountains come into view towards the end of Christian’s journey; Faithful had taken ‘death’s short cut’ by his martyrdom. 243. Odds my life A minced oath, as at I.92. 246. Ned Bratts, wishing to flatter the judge’s wisdom, first addresses him as Master Worldly-Wiseman, and then, remembering that he is one of the villains of Pilgrim’s Progress, revises this to the genuinely wise Interpreter who helps Christian. 263. peach Inform. 270. Sackerson A celebrated Elizabethan bear, mentioned in Merry Wives of Windsor I i 269; Ned Bratts however speaks as though the bear were still alive. 271. Brawl Dance. 274–5. Where’s hope … light? John 3:20: ‘every one that doeth evil hateth the light’. The man in the iron cage (of despair) in Pilgrim’s Progress is said to have ‘sinned against the light of the word’. 288. I wis Or ‘iwis’, archaic term meaning ‘assuredly, indeed’. 289–90. ‘A Fox should not be of the Jury at a Goose’s trial’ (Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 116). 292. i’feggs A variant of ‘i’faith’. 298. though a fox confessed ‘Though you were an acknowledged villain’. 303. Amicus Curiae ‘Friend of the Court’ (a joke on the legal term, which is not literally applicable to Ned Bratts). 315–16. The restoration of the monarchy after the Civil War and the Interregnum took place with the accession of Charles II in 1660, celebrated in Dryden’s poem Astraea Redux. Astraea was the Roman goddess of Justice. 320. those two dozen odd The ‘rank Puritans’ of II.35–8.325–6. These lines were not in the first edition. 328. Bunyan’s Statue By Sir Joseph Boehm (1834–90), given to the town in 1874.

  Clive

  Published Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. Robert Clive, later Baron Clive of Plassey (1725–74), one of the principal architects of British rule in India, did fight a duel in his youth, but Browning’s version of the story (which he recalled hearing over thirty years before he wrote the poem) differs considerably from the original, notably in the confession of Clive’s opponent that he did indeed cheat at cards, and Clive’s explanation that he was afraid, not that his opponent would kill him, but that he would contemptuously spare his life. The framing narrative of the father reminiscing to his son is Browning’s invention. Clive had been accused of corruption on his return from India in 1767; the story told by the poem’s narrator is set a week before his suicide in 1774. 8. Plassy The battle in 1757 which secured British control of north-east India. 11. thrids Threads. 12. this forthright, that meander Straight and crooked paths; from The Tempest 111 iii 3.13. rood A measure of 5½ yards. 16. rummer-glass A large drinking glass. 26. Scripture says John 10:1 is nearest: ‘He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’ Browning may also recall Milton’s Satan leaping over the wall of Paradise, Paradise Lost iv 178–83. 31. Poor as Job and meek as Moses Proverbial expressions, qualified in the following line: Job, made poor by his afflictions, is subsequently restored to prosperity: ‘So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning’ (Job 42:12); Moses, the meekest of all men (Numbers 12:3), nevertheless confronts Pharaoh and leads the Children of Israel out of bondage. 39–40. Clive was eighteen when he went to India in 1743 as a clerk with the East India Company; soon after he entered the army, and was a colonel when he took the city of Arcot in 1751.47. Too much bee’s-wing floats my figure? ‘Is my metaphor too complicated?’ Bee’s-wing is the crust that forms on old port wine. The sense of the ‘figure’ in the preceding lines, as of the one in the lines which follow, is that the narrator was better able to befriend Clive in his decline than when he was at the height of his fame. 65. drug-box Opium, to which Clive was addicted. 70. Pitt William Pitt the Elder (1708–78). 71. Frederick the Fierce Frederick the Great (1712–86), King of Prussia, 72. bore the bell away Carried off the prize. 76. mortal Mortal nature. 91. factor-days Days as a clerk. 92. Saint David’s A fort near Madras. 112. Thyrsis … Chloe Conventional names for pastoral lovers in classical and neo-classical literature. 183–4. Twenty-five / Years ago An approximation; actually twenty-eight. 190. Luke 11:24–6: ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.’

  [’Wanting is – what?’]

  Published Jocoseria, 1883, untitled.

  Donald

  Published Jocoseria, 1883. The poem, an attack on the philistinism and moral blindness of the advocates of blood-sports, is also a rebuke to Browning’s son Pen, a keen hunter; he and his friends at Oxford are almost certainly the models for the hearty, unthinking young men at the beginning of the poem. However, 11.41–4 distance the narrator from too close an identification with Browning himself, since they state that the narrator, too, went to Oxford and is a distinguished classical scholar (see Introduction). 5. bothy Hut, cottage. 12. Glenlivet A variety of Scotch whisky. 62. Mount … Ben … Ben is Scottish for ‘mount’; the narrator cannot remember the name which should follow. 76. burnie Small burn or stream. 79. an end in ich Characteristic of Gaelic names. 100. foils In the archaic sense of ‘treads, tramples on’. 103. callant Youth. 107. brig Bridge. 120. scouted Scorned. 136. Blondin Jules Blondin, French tightrope artist (1829–97), famous for his crossing of Niagara Falls in 1859. 182. pastern The part of the deer’s foot above the hoof. 206. clouted Patched up. 210. bracket To hang on the wall (as an ornamental lamp-holder, for example). 234–5. ‘within gate / Though teeth kept tongue’ ‘Although I kept quiet’ (as Browning remarks, a phrase adapted from Homer).

  Never the Time and the Place

  Published Jocoseria, 1883. 7. the house is narrow The grave, as in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, 1.216, ‘the narrow room’. 12–13. The enemy is the devil, who in the lover’s dream suggests that the death of the ‘loved one’ means final separation, a suggestion the ‘waking man’ repudiates.

  The Names

  Published 1884 in a booklet printed for the ‘Shakespearean Show’ at the Albert Hall, in aid of charity; not collected by Browning, who rarely wrote sonnets and never included them in his collections (see note to ‘House’). The poem alludes to the saying by Alexandre Dumas (the younger), ‘After God, Shakespeare has created most.’ 5–6. That which the Hebrew reads i With his soul only In orthodox Judaism it is forbidden to pronounce the name of God, Jahweh.

  Now

  Published Asolando, 1889.

  Beatrice Signorini

  Published Asolando, 1889. Founded on an anecdote in a source Browning frequently used, Filippo Baldinucci’s twenty-volume Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno (Florence, 1681–1728), concerning two seventeenth-century Italian painters, one a major figure, Artemisia Gentileschi (1597–c 1652), the other a minor artist, Francesco Romanelli (1617–62). Browning treated the material with his usual freedom (e.g., in Baldinucci the relationship between Francesco and Artemisia is ‘an innocent friendship’; the initiative for the joint painting is Francesco’s; Artemisia knows from the beginning that she is to be the subject of the central portrait; her border is of fruit, not flowers; Beatrice destroys the portrait in her husband’s absence, not to his face), and the psychol
ogy is very much his own. The poem is Browning’s last on the theme of painting, and the only one to refer to a woman painter. 2. Viterbo About forty miles north-west of Rome. 4–5. Cortona’s school … Berretini Pietro Berrettini [sic] da Cortona (1596–1669); Cortona is about thirty-five miles east of Siena. 16–24. Artemisia painted Desire (a nude figure) in honour of Michelangelo’s memory, and gave the painting to his family (‘Buonarotti’s house’); on Baldinucci’s advice the nudity was covered up. Browning’s scorn for Baldinucci’s prudishness and religious bigotry is also evident in two other poems (not in this edition): ‘Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial’ (Pacchiarotto, 1876) and ‘Parleying with Francis Furini’ (Parleying, 1887). 32. sphery Like the spheres, the heavenly bodies in ancient cosmology. 34. enjoint Embed. 79. Guido’s The painter Guido Reni (1575–1642). III. acromion The outer extremity of the shoulder-blade. 118. motors, flexors Muscles of motion and bending. 119–20. Ser Santi … pencil-prig’ The painter Santi di Tito (1536–1603), renowned for the precision of his drawing, was given his nickname by Titian. 145. Bicé Diminutive of Beatrice. 161. idlesse Leisure. 251–2. Calypso’s … Penelope At the start of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus is ‘prevented from returning to the home and wife he longed for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who wished him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave.’ 261–76. ‘Such spells … indulged Francesco’s internal monologue; he speaks aloud from 1.277. 262. sex The female sex. 298–9. Grey / Good mouse-ear ‘Mouse-ear’ is a name given to several plants; the nearest to ‘grey’ in colour would be chickweed, which has delicate white flowers. 299. auricula A species of primula; ‘formerly a great favourite with flower-fanciers … the corollas often powdered with white or grey’ (OED). 307. spilla Italian ‘pin’; glossed in the next line as the ‘dagger-plaything’ with which Beatrice pins her hair. 325. occulted star A star hidden from view by another passing in front of it. 348. the elder race Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo or Raphael.