1883

Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path—how soft to pace!
This May—what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine
With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
O enemy sly and serpentine,
Uncoil thee from the waking man!
Do I hold the Past
Thus firm and fast
Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?
This path so soft to pace shall lead
Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed!
Or narrow if needs the house must he,
Outside are the storms and strangers: we—
Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,
—I and she!

IV

DRAMATIC LYRICS

Browning's poetic career extended from 1833 to 1889, nearly sixty years of fairly continuous composition. We may make a threefold division: first, the thirteen years before his marriage in 1846; second, the fifteen years of married life, closing in 1861; third, the remaining twenty-eight years. During the first period he published twelve works; during the second, two; during the third, eighteen. The fact that so little was published during the years when his wife was alive may be accounted for by the fact that the condition of her health required his constant care, and that after the total failure of Men and Women (1855) to attract any popular attention, Browning for some time spent most of his energy in clay-modelling, giving up poetry altogether. Not long before the death of Mrs. Browning, he was busy writing Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, although he did not publish it until the right moment, which came in 1871. After the appearance of Dramatis Personae (1864), and The Ring and the Book (1868-9), Browning's fame spread like a prairie fire; and it was quite natural that his immense reputation was a sharp spur to composition. One is more ready to speak when one is sure of an audience. Capricious destiny, however, willed that the books which sold the fastest after publication, were, with few exceptions, the least interesting and valuable of all the poet's performances. Perhaps he did not take so much care now that his fame was assured; perhaps the fires in his own mind were dying; perhaps the loss of his wife robbed him of necessary inspiration, as it certainly robbed him of the best critic he ever had, and the only one to whom he paid any serious attention. When we remember that some of the Dramatic Romances, Luria, A Soul's Tragedy, Christmas-Eve, Men and Women, and some of the Dramatis Personae were read by her in manuscript, and that The Ring and the Book was written in the shadow of her influence, we begin to realise how much she helped him. Their love-letters during the months that preceded their marriage indicate the excellence of her judgment, her profound and sympathetic understanding of his genius and his willingness to listen to her advice. He did not intend to publish A Soul's Tragedy at all, though it is one of his most subtle and interesting dramas, and only did so at her request; part of the manuscript of Christmas-Eve is in her handwriting,

It is worth remembering too that in later years Browning hated to write poetry, and nothing but a sense of duty kept him during the long mornings at his desk. He felt the responsibility of genius without its inspiration.

Browning has given a little trouble to bibliographers by redistributing the poems originally published in the three works, Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), and Men and Women (1855). The Dramatic Lyrics at first contained sixteen pieces; the Dramatic Romances and Lyrics twenty-three; the Men and Women fifty-one. In the final arrangement the first of these included fifty; the second, called simply Dramatic Romances, twenty-five; whilst the last was reduced to thirteen. He also changed the titles of many of the poems, revised the text somewhat, classified two separate poems under one title, Claret and Tokay, and Here's to Nelson's Memory, under the heading Nationality in Drinks, and united the two sections of Saul in one poem. It is notable that he omitted not one, and indeed it is remarkable that with the exception of The Boy and the Angel, A Lover's Quarrel, Mesmerism, and Another Way of Love, every poem in the long list has the indubitable touch of genius; and even these four are not the worst of Browning's compositions.

It would have seemed to us perhaps more fitting if Browning had grouped the contents of all three works under the one heading Men and Women; for that would fairly represent the sole subject of his efforts. Perhaps he felt that the title was too general, and as a matter of fact, it would apply equally well to his complete poetical works. I think, however, that he especially loved the appellation Dramatic Lyrics, for he put over half of the poems finally under that category. The word "dramatic" obsessed Browning.

What is a dramatic lyric? When Tennyson published in 1842 his Ulysses, a Yankee farmer in America made in one sentence three remarks about it: a statement and two prophecies. He said that Ulysses belonged to a high class of poetry, destined to be the highest, and to be more cultivated in the next generation. Now Ulysses is both a dramatic lyric and a dramatic monologue, and Tennyson never wrote anything better than this poem. As it became increasingly evident that the nineteenth century was not going to have a great literary dramatic movement on the stage, while at the same time the interest in human nature had never been keener, the poets began to turn their attention to the interpretation of humanity by the representation of historical or imaginary individuals speaking: and their speech was to reveal the secrets of the human soul, in its tragedy and comedy, in its sublimity and baseness, in its nobility and folly. Later in life Tennyson cultivated sedulously the dramatic monologue; and Browning, the most original force in literature that the century produced, after abandoning his early attempts at success on the stage, devoted practically the entire strength of his genius to this form of poetry. Emerson was a wise man.

In reshuffling the short poems in the three works mentioned above, it is not always easy to see the logic of the distribution and it would be interesting if we could know the reasons that guided the poet in the classification of particular poems. Thus it is perfectly clear why Incident of the French Camp, Count Gismond, and In a Gondola were taken from the Dramatic Lyrics and placed among the Dramatic Romances; it is easy to see why The Lost Leader and Home-Thoughts, from Abroad were taken from the Romances and placed among the Lyrics; it is not quite so clear why Rudel and Artemis Prologizes were taken from the Lyrics and classed among Men and Women, when nearly all the poems originally published under the latter head were changed to Lyrics and Romances. In changing How They Brought the Good News from the Dramatic Romances, where it was originally published, to Dramatic Lyrics, Browning probably felt that the lyrical sound of the piece was more important than the story: but it really is a dramatic romance. Furthermore, My Last Duchess would seem to fall more properly under the heading Men and Women; Browning, however, took it from the Dramatic Lyrics and placed it among the Dramatic Romances. In most cases, however, the reason for the transfer of individual poems is clear; and a study of the classification is of positive assistance toward the understanding of the piece.

In the eight volumes published from 1841 to 1846, which Browning called Bells and Pomegranates, meaning simply Sound and Sense, Meat and Music, only two are collections of short poems and the other six contain exclusively plays—seven in all, two being printed together in the last volume. Browning intended the whole Bells and Pomegranates series to be devoted to the drama, as one may see by the original preface to Pippa Passes: but that drama and the next did not sell, and the publisher suggested that he include some short poems. This explains why the third volume is filled with lyrics; and in a note published with it, Browning half apologised for what might seem a departure from his original plan, saying these two might properly fall under the head of dramatic pieces; being, although lyrical in expression, "always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."

He means then by a dramatic lyric a poem that is short, that is musical, but that is absolutely not subjective—does not express or betray the writer's own ideas nor even his mood, as is done in Tennyson's ideal lyric, Crossing the Bar. A dramatic lyric is a composition lyrical in form, and dramatic in subject-matter; remembering all the time that by dramatic we do not necessarily mean anything exciting but simply something objective, something entirely apart from the poet's own feelings. On the stage this is accomplished by the creation of separate characters who in propria persona express views that may or may not be in harmony with the poet's own. Thus, Macbeth's speech, beginning

Out, out, brief candle!

is really a dramatic lyric; because it is lyrical in form, and it expresses views on the value of life which could hardly have been held by Shakespeare, though they seem eminently fitting from the lips of a man who had tried to gain the whole world by losing his soul, and had succeeded in losing both.

In view of Browning's love for this form of verse, it is interesting to remember that the first two independent short poems that he ever wrote and retained in his works are both genuine dramatic lyrics. These are Porphyria's Lover and Johannes Agricola, printed in the Monthly Repository in 1836, when Browning was twenty-four years old. Thus early did he show both aptitude for this form and excellence in it, for each of these pieces is a work of genius. They were meant to be studies in abnormal psychology, for they were printed together in the Dramatic Lyrics under the caption Madhouse Cells. Browning was very young then, and naturally thought a man who believed in predestination and a man who killed the woman he loved were both insane; but after a longer experience of life, and seeing how many strange creatures walk the streets, he ceased to call these two men, obsessed by religion and obsessed by love, mad. If Porphyria's lover is mad, there is method in his madness. Her superior social rank has stifled hitherto the instincts of the heart; she has never given her lover any favors; but to-night, at the dinner-dance, by one of those strange and inexplicable caprices that make Woman the very Genius of the Unexpected, she has a vision. In the midst of the lights and the laughter, she sees her lonely lover sitting dejectedly in his cold and cheerless cottage, thinking of her. She slips away from the gay company, trips through the pouring rain, and enters the dark room like an angel of light. After kindling a blazing fire in the grate, she kindles her lover's hope-dead heart; she draws him to her and places his head on her naked shoulder. Suddenly a thought comes to him; one can see the light of murder in his eyes. At this moment she is sublime, fit for Heaven: for the first time in her life, a noble impulse has triumphed over the debasing conventions of society; if he lets her go, she will surely fall from grace, and become a lost soul. He strangles her with her yellow hair, risking damnation for her salvation. So the quick and the dead sit together through the long night.