1889

The Poet's age is sad: for why?
In youth, the natural world could show
No common object but his eye
At once involved with alien glow—
His own soul's iris-bow.

"And now a flower is just a flower:
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man—
Simply themselves, uncinct by dower
Of dyes which, when life's day began,
Round each in glory ran."

Friend, did you need an optic glass,
Which were your choice? A lens to drape
In ruby, emerald, chrysopras,
Each object—or reveal its shape
Clear outlined, past escape,

The naked very thing?—so clear
That, when you had the chance to gaze,
You found its inmost self appear
Through outer seeming-truth ablaze,
Not falsehood's fancy-haze?

How many a year, my Asolo,
Since—one step just from sea to land—
I found you, loved yet feared you so—
For natural objects seemed to stand
Palpably fire-clothed! No—

No mastery of mine o'er these!
Terror with beauty, like the Bush
Burning but unconsumed. Bend knees,
Drop eyes to earthward! Language? Tush!
Silence 'tis awe decrees.

And now? The lambent flame is—where?
Lost from the naked world: earth, sky,
Hill, vale, tree, flower,—Italia's rare
O'er-running beauty crowds the eye—
But flame? The Bush is bare.

Hill, vale, tree, flower—they stand distinct,
Nature to know and name. What then?
A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked
Fancy from fact: see, all's in ken:
Has once my eyelid winked?

No, for the purged ear apprehends
Earth's import, not the eye late dazed:
The Voice said "Call my works thy friends!
At Nature dost thou shrink amazed?
God is it who transcends."

It is an interesting and dramatic parallel in literary history that Tennyson and Browning should each have published the last poem that appeared in his life-time in the same month of the same year, and that each farewell to the world should be so exactly characteristic of the poetic genius and spiritual temperament of the writer. In December, 1889, came from the press Demeter and Other Poems, closing with Crossing the Bar—came also Asolando, closing with the Epilogue. Tennyson's lyric is exquisite in its tints of sunset, a serene close to a long and calmly beautiful day. It is the perfect tone of dignified departure, with the admonition to refrain from weeping, with the quiet assurance that all is well. Browning's Epilogue is full of excitement and strenuous rage: there is no hint of acquiescence; it is a wild charge with drum and trumpet on the hidden foe. Firm in the faith, full of plans for the future, he looks not on the darkening night, but on to-morrow's sunrise.

He tells us not to pity him. He is angry at the thought that people on the streets of London, when they hear of his death will say, "Poor Browning! He's gone! How he loved life!" Rather he wishes that just as in this life when a friend met him in the city with a face lighted up by the pleasure of the sudden encounter, with a shout of hearty welcome—so now, when your thoughts perhaps turn to me, let it not be with sorrow or pity, but with eager recognition. I shall be striving there as I strove here: greet me with a cheer!