We go, but ere we go from home, One whispers, 'Here thy boyhood sung The low love-language of the bird 72 In native hazels tassel-hung.' The other answers, 'Yea, but here These two have striven half the day, I turn to go: my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; 84 To one pure image of regret. THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Rode the six hundred. 'Forward, the Light Brigade!' Some one had blunder'd: Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Volley'd and thunder'd; Rode the six hundred. Flash'd all their sabres bare, Sabring the gunners there, All the world wonder'd: Shatter'd and sunder'd. Cannon to right of them, Volley'd and thunder'd; When can their glory fade? 8 COME INTO THE GARDEN. [From Maud, Part 1, XXII (1855)] Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, 12 To faint in his light, and to die. 16 20 24 28 All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr❜d To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon. I said to the lily, "There is but one With whom she has heart to be gay. She is weary of dance and play.' The last wheel echoes away. I said to the rose, "The brief night goes 82 'For ever and ever, mine.' 86 As the music clash'd in the hall; And long by the garden lake I stood, For I heard your rivulet fall From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; NORTHERN FARMER, NEW STYLE. [From The Holy Grail, and Other Poems (1869)] Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy? 4 Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braaïns. Woä - theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam: yon 's parson's 'ouseDosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse? Time to think on it then; for thou'll be twenty to weeäk. 8 Proputty, proputty woä then woälet ma 'ear mysén speäk. Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as beän a-talkin' o' thee; 12 Noä- thou'll marry for luvv an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass. Seeä'd her todaäy goä by Saäint's-daäy they was ringing the bells. She's a beauty thou thinks an' soä is scoors o' gells, Them as 'as munny an' all-wot's a beauty? - the flower as blaws. 16 But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws. Do'ant be stunt: taäke time: I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad. Warn't I craäzed fur the lasses mysén when I wur a lad? But I knaw'd a Quaäker feller as often 'as towd ma this: 20 'Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!' An' I went wheer munny war: an' thy muther coom to 'and, I niver giv it a thowt Maäybe she warn't a beauty: 24 But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt? Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weänt 'a nowt when 'e 's deäd, Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle her breäd: 4 Why? fur 'e's nobbut a curate, an' weänt niver git hissén clear, 28 An' 'e maäde the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shere. 'An thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots o' Varsity debt, Stook to his taaïl they did, an' 'e 'ant got shut on 'em yet. An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noän to lend 'im a shuvv, 82 Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe: fur, Sammy, 'e married fur luvv. Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass an' 'er munny too, fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor fur it: reason why. Ay an' thy muther says thou wants to marry the lass, Cooms of a gentleman burn: an' we boäth on us thinks tha an ass. 40 Woä then, wiltha? dang tha! the bees is as fell as owt. Breäk me a bit o' the esh for his 'eäd, lad, out o' the fence! Tis'n them as 'as munny as breäks into 'ouses an' steäls, Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a beän a laäzy lot, Look thou theer wheer Wrigglesby_beck cooms out by the 'ill! Thim 's my noätions, Sammy, wheerby I means to stick; that's what I 'ears 'im saäy canter an' canter awaäy. ROBERT BROWNING. OBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) was born at Camberwell, then a suburb of London, his father being a clerk in the Bank of England. He was taught at home by a tutor, and this teaching was afterwards supplemented by travelling in Russia (1834) and Italy (1838) and by arduous reading in the British Museum. Happy circumstances exempted him from the necessity of choosing a profession, and allowed him to devote his life wholly to poetry. In 1846 he married the celebrated poetess Elizabeth Barrett, and, for the sake of her health, went to live with her in Italy. They established themselves at Florence, where they spent 14 years of a thoroughly happy wedded life. After his wife's death (1861), Browning returned to England and settled in London for the rest of his life. In 1878 he revisited Italy, and, from that time, frequently passed some part of the year at Venice. There, at the Palazzo Rezzonico, which he had purchased for his son in 1887, he died after a brief illness in his seventy-eighth year. His body was conveyed to England, and buried in the Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey. Browning was only twenty when he wrote his first longer work, the autobiographical Pauline (1833), in which a young man reveals his mental attitudes to his beloved one. But this poem aroused so little interest, that he had to print his next works, Paracelsus, Sordello, and Bells and Pomegranates, at his own cost. It was not till 1855 that the volume of Men and Women made a decided mark. Browning possessed an extraordinary gift for subtle analysis of the human soul; and this mental analysis he used to effect by displaying before us characters passing through some crisis in life. His favourite form for such psychological studies was the dramatic monologue, couched in extremely, vivid language. Thus he traces the spiritual development of a famous German physician in Paracelsus (1835); and in Sordello (1840), the most obscure of his works, relates the history of a typical poetic soul. Pippa Passes (1841) contains a series of dramatic scenes, bound together by the figure of Pippa, the little silkweaver of Asolo. The Ring and the Book (1868-69), the most ambitious and perhaps the most successful of his works, is based on the story of a Roman murder case (as related in a quaint old quarto of 1698), which Browning sets before us as told from ten different points of view by the persons concerned, the despotic old Count Guido Franceschini, his young wife Pompilia, who was murdered by him, the good priest Caponsacchi, the Pope before whom the case was brought, and others. The short monodrama of James Lee's Wife (1864) reveals the story of an unhappy marriage; and Fifine at the Fair (1872), which some think his most characteristic work, is a casuistic monologue of a faithless husband attracted by a gipsy girl. The religious and speculative questions of the time are monodramatically treated, from an optimistic conservative point of view, in Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), Bishop Blougram's Apology (1855), Caliban upon Setebos (1864), La Saisiaz (1878), and the magnificent Rabbi ben Exra (1864), which best expounds Browning's own view of life. His interest in the sister arts came out in such fine music poems as A Toccata of Galuppi's (1855), Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha (the poetic description of a fugue, 1855), and Abt Vogler (1864), and in his exquisite portraits of the great Florentine painters Fra Lippo Lippi (1855) and Andrea del Sarto (1855). Greek subjects he handled in Balaustion's Adventure (1871) and Aristophanes' Apology (1875), each of which includes the translation of a tragedy of Euripides. But his favourite period was that of the Italian Renaissance, the spirit of which he knew wonderfully how to reproduce, as f. i. in The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church (1845). Though all Browning's poetry is dramatic in principle, he did not succeed very well in the drama proper, neither in a real acting play like Strafford (1837) nor in his minor dramas like A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843) or the short scene In a Balcony (1855). Among his lyric poetry a great many love-poems of unique beauty are remarkable for a marvellous intensity of feeling and a philosophic treatment of the passion of love, In a Gondola, The Lost Mistress, Love among the _Ruins, Evelyn Hope, The Last Ride Together, Two in the Campagna, One Word More, Now, and Summum Bonum. He is seldom humorous, but certainly succeeded in this line at least once, in his extremely popular version of the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842). His smaller poems were published under such peculiar titles as Bells and Pomegranates (8 pts. |