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Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

Page 22

by Robert Browning


  He but retained their rule so long as these

  Lingered in pupilage, — and last, no mode

  Apparent else of keeping safe the road

  From Germany direct to Lombardy

  For Friedrich, — none, that is, to guarantee

  The faith and promptitude of who should next

  Obtain Sofia’s dowry, — sore perplexed —

  (Sofia being youngest of the tribe

  Of daughters, Ecelin was wont to bribe

  The envious magnates with — nor, since he sent

  Henry of Egna this fair child, had Trent

  Once failed the Kaiser’s purposes — ”we lost

  “Egna last year, and who takes Egna’s post —

  “Opens the Lombard gate if Friedrich knock?”)

  Himself espoused the Lady of the Rock

  In pure necessity, and, so destroyed

  His slender last of chances, quite made void

  Old prophecy, and spite of all the schemes

  Overt and covert, youth’s deeds, age’s dreams,

  Was sucked into Romano. And so hushed

  He up this evening’s work that, when ‘t was brushed

  Somehow against by a blind chronicle

  Which, chronicling whatever woe befell

  Ferrara, noted this the obscure woe

  Of “Salinguerra’s sole son Giacomo

  “Deceased, fatuous and doting, ere his sire,”

  The townsfolk rubbed their eyes, could but admire

  Which of Sofia’s five was meant.

  The chaps

  Of earth’s dead hope were tardy to collapse,

  Obliterated not the beautiful

  Distinctive features at a crash: but dull

  And duller these, next year, as Guelfs withdrew

  Each to his stronghold. Then (securely too

  Ecelin at Campese slept; close by,

  Who likes may see him in Solagna lie,

  With cushioned head and gloved hand to denote

  The cavalier he was) — then his heart smote

  Young Ecelin at last; long since adult.

  And, save Vicenza’s business, what result

  In blood and blaze? (So hard to intercept

  Sordello till his plain withdrawal!) Stepped

  Then its new lord on Lombardy. I’ the nick

  Of time when Ecelin and Alberic

  Closed with Taurello, come precisely news

  That in Verona half the souls refuse

  Allegiance to the Marquis and the Count —

  Have cast them from a throne they bid him mount,

  Their Podestà, thro’ his ancestral worth.

  Ecelin flew there, and the town henceforth

  Was wholly his — Taurello sinking back

  From temporary station to a track

  That suited. News received of this acquist,

  Friedrich did come to Lombardy: who missed

  Taurello then? Another year: they took

  Vicenza, left the Marquis scarce a nook

  For refuge, and, when hundreds two or three

  Of Guelfs conspired to call themselves “The Free,”

  Opposing Alberic, — vile Bassanese, —

  (Without Sordello!) — Ecelin at ease

  Slaughtered them so observably, that oft

  A little Salinguerra looked with soft

  Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper age

  To get appointed his proud uncle’s page.

  More years passed, and that sire had dwindled down

  To a mere showy turbulent soldier, grown

  Better through age, his parts still in repute,

  Subtle — how else? — but hardly so astute

  As his contemporaneous friends professed;

  Undoubtedly a brawler: for the rest,

  Known by each neighbour, and allowed for, let

  Keep his incorrigible ways, nor fret

  Men who would miss their boyhood’s bugbear: “trap

  “The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap

  “A battered pinion!” — was the word. In fine,

  One flap too much and Venice’s marine

  Was meddled with; no overlooking that!

  She captured him in his Ferrara, fat

  And florid at a banquet, more by fraud

  Than force, to speak the truth; there ‘s slender laud

  Ascribed you for assisting eighty years

  To pull his death on such a man; fate shears

  The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine threads

  You fritter: so, presiding his board-head,

  The old smile, your assurance all went well

  With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell!)

  In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends,

  Made some pretence at fighting, some amends

  For the shame done his eighty years — (apart

  The principle, none found it in his heart

  To be much angry with Taurello) — gained

  Their galleys with the prize, and what remained

  But carry him to Venice for a show?

  — Set him, as ‘t were, down gently — free to go

  His gait, inspect our square, pretend observe

  The swallows soaring their eternal curve

  ‘Twixt Theodore and Mark, if citizens

  Gathered importunately, fives and tens,

  To point their children the Magnifico,

  All but a monarch once in firm-land, go

  His gait among them now — ”it took, indeed,

  “Fully this Ecelin to supersede

  “That man,” remarked the seniors. Singular!

  Sordello’s inability to bar

  Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly brought

  About by his strange disbelief that aught

  Was ever to be done, — this thrust the Twain

  Under Taurello’s tutelage, — whom, brain

  And heart and hand, he forthwith in one rod

  Indissolubly bound to baffle God

  Who loves the world — and thus allowed the thin

  Grey wizened dwarfish devil Ecelin,

  And massy-muscled big-boned Alberic

  (Mere man, alas!) to put his problem quick

  To demonstration — prove wherever’s will

  To do, there’s plenty to be done, or ill

  Or good. Anointed, then, to rend and rip —

  Kings of the gag and flesh-hook, screw and whip,

  They plagued the world: a touch of Hildebrand

  (So far from obsolete!) made Lombards band

  Together, cross their coats as for Christ’s cause,

  And saving Milan win the world’s applause.

  Ecelin perished: and I think grass grew

  Never so pleasant as in Valley Rù

  By San Zenon where Alberic in turn

  Saw his exasperated captors burn

  Seven children and their mother; then, regaled

  So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed

  To death through raunce and bramble-bush. I take

  God’s part and testify that ‘mid the brake

  Wild o’er his castle on the pleasant knoll,

  You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll —

  The earthquake spared it last year, laying flat

  The modern church beneath, — no harm in that!

  Chirrups the contumacious grasshopper,

  Rustles the lizard and the cushats chirre

  Above the ravage: there, at deep of day

  A week since, heard I the old Canon say

  He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst

  And Alberic’s huge skeleton unhearsed

  Only five years ago. He added, “June ‘s

  “The month for carding off our first cocoons

  “The silkworms fabricate” — a double news,

  Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose!

  And Naddo gone, all’s gone; not Eglamor!

  Believe,
I knew the face I waited for,

  A guest my spirit of the golden courts!

  Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports,

  Disuse, some wear of years, that face retained

  Its joyous look of love! Suns waxed and waned,

  And still my spirit held an upward flight,

  Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and light

  More and more gorgeous — ever that face there

  The last admitted! crossed, too, with some care

  As perfect triumph were not sure for all,

  But, on a few, enduring damp must fall,

  — A transient struggle, haply a painful sense

  Of the inferior nature’s clinging — whence

  Slight starting tears easily wiped away,

  Fine jealousies soon stifled in the play

  Of irrepressible admiration — not

  Aspiring, all considered, to their lot

  Who ever, just as they prepare ascend

  Spiral on spiral, wish thee well, impend

  Thy frank delight at their exclusive track,

  That upturned fervid face and hair put back!

  Is there no more to say? He of the rhymes —

  Many a tale, of this retreat betimes,

  Was born: Sordello die at once for men?

  The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen

  Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti saved

  Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved —

  Who thus, by fortune ordering events,

  Passed with posterity, to all intents,

  For just the god he never could become.

  As Knight, Bard, Gallant, men were never dumb

  In praise of him: while what he should have been,

  Could be, and was not — the one step too mean

  For him to take, — we suffer at this day

  Because of: Ecelin had pushed away

  Its chance ere Dante could arrive and take

  That step Sordello spurned, for the world’s sake:

  He did much — but Sordello’s chance was gone.

  Thus, had Sordello dared that step alone,

  Apollo had been compassed: ‘t was a fit

  He wished should go to him, not he to it

  — As one content to merely be supposed

  Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he dozed

  Really at home — one who was chiefly glad

  To have achieved the few real deeds he had,

  Because that way assured they were not worth

  Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth —

  A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes

  Never itself, itself. Had he embraced

  Their cause then, men had plucked Hesperian fruit

  And, praising that, just thrown him in to boot

  All he was anxious to appear, but scarce

  Solicitous to be. A sorry farce

  Such life is, after all! Cannot I say

  He lived for some one better thing? this way. —

  Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill

  By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,

  Morning just up, higher and higher runs

  A child barefoot and rosy. See! the sun’s

  On the square castle’s inner-court’s low wall

  Like the chine of some extinct animal

  Half turned to earth and flowers; and through the haze

  (Save where some slender patches of grey maize

  Are to be overleaped) that boy has crossed

  The whole hill-side of dew and powder-frost

  Matting the balm and mountain camomile.

  Up and up goes he, singing all the while

  Some unintelligible words to beat

  The lark, God’s poet, swooning at his feet,

  So worsted is he at “the few fine locks

  “Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks

  “Sun-blanched the livelong summer,” — all that’s left

  Of the Goito lay! And thus bereft,

  Sleep and forget, Sordello! In effect

  He sleeps, the feverish poet — I suspect

  Not utterly companionless; but, friends,

  Wake up! The ghost’s gone, and the story ends

  I’d fain hope, sweetly; seeing, peri or ghoul,

  That spirits are conjectured fair or foul,

  Evil or good, judicious authors think,

  According as they vanish in a stink

  Or in a perfume. Friends, be frank! ye snuff

  Civet, I warrant. Really? Like enough!

  Merely the savour’s rareness; any nose

  May ravage with impunity a rose:

  Rifle a musk-pod and ‘t will ache like yours!

  I’d tell you that same pungency ensures

  An after-gust, but that were overbold.

  Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.

  BELLS AND POMEGRANATES NO. III: DRAMATIC LYRICS

  This famous collection of poems was first published in 1842 as the third volume in a series of self-published books entitled Bells and Pomegranates. The collection contains some of Browning’s most popular works, including The Pied Piper of Hamelin, My Last Duchess, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister and Porphyria’s Lover.

  Browning’s source for the well-known tale of the Pied Piper came from Nathaniel Wanley’s Wonders of the Little World (1687). It recounts how in 1284, while the town of Hamelin was suffering a rat infestation, a man dressed in pied clothing appeared, claiming to be a rat-catcher. He promised the mayor a solution for their problem with the rats and the mayor in turn promised to pay him for the removal of the rats. The man accepted, playing his pipe to lure the rats with a song into the Weser River, where all but one drowned. Despite his success, the mayor refused to pay the rat-catcher the full amount of money and the piper left the town angrily, vowing to return for his revenge. On Saint John and Paul’s day, while the inhabitants were in church, the stranger returned playing his pipe, this time attracting the children of Hamelin. One hundred and thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave and never seen again.

  My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue, composed in 28 rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. The poem is preceded by the word Ferrara, indicating that the speaker is most likely Alfonso II d’Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533–1598) who, at the age of 25, married Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici, 14-year-old daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Set during the late Italian Renaissance, the poem portrays the Duke of Ferrara giving a tour of the artworks in his home to the emissary of a prospective second wife. The Duke draws a curtain to reveal a painting of a woman, explaining that it is a portrait of his late wife and he invites his guest to study the painting carefully. As they look at the portrait of the late Duchess, the Duke describes her happy, cheerful and flirtatious nature, which ultimately led to her tragic end.

  Porphyria’s Lover was first published as Porphyria in the January 1836 issue of Monthly Repository and it is Browning’s first ever dramatic monologue, a genre of poetry he was to excel in during his literary career. It is also the first of his works to concern the theme of abnormal psychology, which he would explore in greater depth in later works. Although its initial publication passed nearly unnoticed and it received little critical attention in the nineteenth century, the poem is now one of the most anthologised poems of English literature.

  The poem recounts how a man strangles his lover Porphyria with her own hair, describing the immense feeling of ineffable happiness the murder gives him. Although he winds her hair around her throat three times in order to kill her, the lover never cries out. A possible inspiration of the poem is John Wilson’s Extracts from Gosschen’s Diary, a lurid account of a murder published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1818.

  Robert Browning by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1855

  CONTENTS

  Cavalier Tunes I. Marching Along.

  Cavalier Tunes II. Give a Rouse.

&
nbsp; Cavalier Tunes III. Boot and Saddle.

  My Last Duchess

  Count Gismond

  Incident of the French Camp

  Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

  In a Gondola

  Artemis Prologuizes

  Waring

  Warning II.

  Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli

  Cristina

  Johannes Agricola in Meditation I. — Madhouse Cell

  Johannes Agricola in Meditation II. — Madhouse Cell

  Porphyria’s Lover

  Through the Metidja to Abd-El-Kadr

  The Pied Piper of Hamelin

  The oldest depiction of the Pied Piper, copied from the glass window of Marktkirche in Goslar

  Lucrezia de’ Medici, believed to be the inspiration of ‘My Last Duchess’

  Cavalier Tunes I. Marching Along.

  I.

  KENTISH Sir Byng stood for his King,

  Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:

  And, pressing a troop unable to stoop

  And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,

  Marched them along, fifty score strong,

  Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

  II.

  God for King Charles! Pym and such carles

  To the Devil that prompts ‘em their treasonous parles!

  Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,

  Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup

  Till you’re (Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong,

  Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

  III.

  Hampden to hell, and his obsequies’ knell.

  Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!

  England, good cheer! Rupert is near!

  Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here

  (Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong,

  Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?

  IV.

  Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls

  To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!

  Hold by the right, you double your might;

  So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,

  (Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong,

  Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

  Cavalier Tunes II. Give a Rouse.

  I.

  KING CHARLES, and who’ll do him right now?

  King Charles, and who’s ripe for fight now?

  Give a rouse: here’s, in hell’s despite now,

  King Charles!

  II.

  Who gave me the goods that went since?

 

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