Robert Browning on Love Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Brennan

  Art credits:

  Shutterstock/tukkki, page viii

  Shutterstock/Olga Korneeva, page 16

  Shutterstock/Ajuga, page 40

  Shutterstock/DeMih, page 62

  Shutterstock/Labetskiy Alexandr, page 96

  Shutterstock/Nataliia Litovchenko, page 114

  Shutterstock/mamita, page 136

  Shutterstock/Baleika Tamara, page 156

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Jane Sheppard

  Cover photo by Shutterstock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-239-9

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-886-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Love’s Desire

  Love’s Hope

  Love’s Promise

  Ecstasy of Love

  Love’s Despair

  Love’s Regret

  Memory of Love

  Love’s Letters

  You will only expect a few words, what will those be?

  When the heart is full it may run over, but the real fullness stays within.

  Words can never tell you, however, form them, transform them anyway, how perfectly dear you are to me, perfectly dear to my heart and soul.

  I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence, you have been entirely perfect to me, I would not change one word, one look.

  My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it, for which I trust to God who procured it for me, and doubtless can preserve it.

  You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another.

  I am all gratitude, and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.

  —Letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the occasion of their marriage

  Love’s Desire

  That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,

  And the blue eye

  Dear and dewy,

  And that infantine fresh air of hers!

  —A Pretty Woman

  She would succeed in her absurd attempt,

  And fascinate by sinning, show herself

  —Pippa Passes

  “At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,

  Kiss my cheek, wish me well!’’ Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.

  —Saul

  She should never have looked at me

  If she meant I should not love her!

  —Cristina

  A soft and easy life these ladies lead:

  Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed.

  Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,

  Keep that foot its lady primness,

  Let those ankles never swerve

  From their exquisite reserve,

  Yet have to trip along the streets like me,

  All but naked to the knee!

  —In Three Days

  Give her but a least excuse to love me!

  —Pippa Passes

  Each enjoys

  Its night so well, you cannot break

  The sport up, so, indeed must make

  More stay with me, for others’ sake.

  —In a Gondola

  ‘You have black eyes, Love—you are, sure enough,

  My peerless bride—

  —Pippa Passes

  Through one’s after-supper musings,

  Some lost lady of old years

  With her beauteous vain endeavour

  And goodness unrepaid as ever;

  The face, accustomed to refusings

  —Waring

  Escape me?

  Never–

  Beloved!

  While I am I, and you are you,

  So long as the world contains us both,

  Me the loving and you the loth,

  While the one eludes, must the other pursue.

  —Life in a Love

  If you say, “you love him”—straight, “he’ll not be gulled!”

  —Pippa Passes

  You’ll love me yet!—and I can tarry

  Your love’s protracted growing:

  June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,

  From seeds of April’s sowing.

  I plant a heartful now: some seed

  At least is sure to strike,

  And yield–what you’ll not pluck indeed,

  Not love, but, may be, like.

  You’ll look at least on love’s remains,

  A grave’s one violet:

  Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.

  What’s death? You’ll love me yet!

  —Pippa Passes

  Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?

  —Abt Vogler

  Thou art my single day

  —In Three Days

  Where I find her not, beauties vanish;

  Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

  Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

  June’s twice June since she breathed it with me?

  Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

  Treasure my lady’s lightest footfall!

  —Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces—

  Roses, you are not so fair after all!

  —Garden Fancies

  Could thought of mine improve you?

  —In a Gondola

  Doubt you whether

  This she felt as, looking at me,

  Mine and her souls rushed together?

  —Cristina

  And I ventured to remind her,

  I suppose with a voice of less steadiness

  Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,

  —Something to the effect that I was in readiness

  Whenever God should please she needed me

  —The Flight of the Duchess

  Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look

  Across the waters to this twilight nook

  —Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli

  And “love”

  Is a short word that says so very much!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

  The depth and passion of its earnest glance

  —My Last Duchess

  Heap Cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

  Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,

  Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes

  From out her hair: such balsam falls

  —Heap Cassia, Sandal-Buds and Stripes

  Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold

  —Andrea del Sarto

  “Is it true,”

  Thou’lt ask, “some eyes are beautiful and new?

  “Some hair,—how can one choose but grasp such wealt
h?

  “And if a man would press his lips to lips

  “Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips

  “The dew-drop out of, must it be by stealth?

  —Any Wife to Any Husband

  Is it not in my nature to adore…?

  —Pauline

  God bless in turn

  That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn

  With love for all men! I, to-night at least,

  Would be that holy and beloved priest.

  —Pippa Passes

  The heroic in passion, or in action,—

  Or, lowered for sense’s satisfaction,

  To the mere outside of human creatures,

  Mere perfect form and faultless features.

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  You creature with the eyes!

  If I could look forever up to them,

  As now you let me—I believe all sin,

  All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,

  Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth

  Whence all that’s low comes, and there touch and stay

  —Never to overtake the rest of me,

  All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,

  Drawn by those eyes!

  —Pippa Passes

  The year’s at the spring,

  And day’s at the morn;

  Morning’s at seven;

  The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

  The lark’s on the wing,

  The snail’s on the thorn;

  God’s in his Heaven—

  All’s right with the world!

  —Pippa Passes

  Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—

  On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,

  O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?

  —A Toccata of Galuppi’s

  So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:

  Be its beauty

  Its sole duty!

  —A Pretty Woman

  Witchcraft’s a fault in him,

  For you’re bewitched.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  ‘Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek

  —Saul

  How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,

  Break my heart at your feet to please you?

  Oh, to possess and be possessed!

  Hearts that beat ‘neath each pallid breast!

  Once but of love, the poesy, the passion,

  Drink but once and die!—In vain, the same fashion

  —Women and Roses

  —Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

  Bade her scribes abhor the trick

  Of poetry and rhetoric,

  And exult with hearts set free,

  In blessed imbecility

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  Love’s Hope

  What spell or what charm…?

  —Saul

  A novel grace and a beauty strange.

  —Women and Roses

  Your love can claim no right

  O’er her save pure love’s claim

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?

  —Pippa Passes

  Then,—if my heart’s strength serve,

  And through all and each

  Of the veils I reach

  To her soul and never swerve,

  Knitting an iron nerve—

  Command her soul to advance

  And inform the shape

  Which has made escape

  And before my countenance

  Answers me glance for glance—

  —Mesmerism

  On the face alone he expends his devotion

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  There’s a woman like a dew-drop, she’s so purer than the purest;

  And her noble heart’s the noblest, yes, and her sure faith’s the surest:

  And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre

  Hid i’ the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-grape cluster,

  Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck’s rose-misted marble:

  Then her voice’s music … call it the well’s bubbling, the bird’s warble!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  If one could have that little head of hers

  Painted upon a background of pure gold

  —A Face

  I had devised a certain tale

  Which, when ‘twas told her, could not fail

  Persuade a peasant of its truth;

  —The Italian In England

  “Speak, I love thee best!’’

  He exclaimed:

  “Let thy love my own foretell!’’

  I confessed:

  “Clasp my heart on thine

  “Now unblamed,

  “Since upon thy soul as well

  “Hangeth mine!”

  —In a Year

  When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,

  Either hand

  On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace

  Of my face,

  Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech

  Each on each.

  —Love Among the Ruins

  I believe

  If once I threw my arms about your neck

  And sunk my head upon your breast, that I

  Should weep again.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  As I ride, as I ride,

  Could I loose what Fate has tied,

  Ere I pried, she should hide

  (As I ride, as I ride)

  All that’s meant me—satisfied

  When the Prophet and the Bride

  Stop veins I’d have subside

  As I ride, as I ride!

  —Through the Metidja to Abd-El-Kadr

  Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him.

  This same unseen friend, before I knew:

  Dream there was none like him, none above him,—

  Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

  —Fears and Scruples

  I wonder do you feel to-day

  As I have felt since, hand in hand,

  We sat down on the grass, to stray

  In spirit better through the land,

  This morn of Rome and May?

  For me, I touched a thought, I know,

  Has tantalized me many times,

  (Like turns of thread the spiders throw

  Mocking across our path) for rhymes

  To catch at and let go.

  Help me to hold it! First it left

  The yellowing fennel, run to seed

  There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,

  Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed

  Took up the floating weft,

  Where one small orange cup amassed

  Five beetles,—blind and green they grope

  Among the honey-meal: and last,

  Everywhere on the grassy slope

  I traced it. Hold it fast!

  The champaign with its endless fleece

  Of feathery grasses everywhere!

  Silence and passion, joy and peace,

  An everlasting wash of air—

  Rome’s ghost since her decease.

  Such life here, through such lengths of hours,

  Such miracles performed in play,

  Such primal naked forms of flowers,

  Such letting nature have her way

  While heaven looks from its towers!

  How say you? Let us, O my dove,

  Let us be unashamed of soul,

  As earth lies bare to heaven above!

  How is it under our control

  To love or not to love?

  I would that you were all to me,

  You that are just so much, no more.

  Nor yours nor mine—nor slave nor free!

/>   Where does the fault lie? What the core

  O’ the wound, since wound must be?

  I would I could adopt your will,

  See with your eyes, and set my heart

  Beating by yours, and drink my fill

  At your soul’s springs,—your part my part

  In life, for good and ill.

  No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

  Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

  Catch your soul’s warmth,—I pluck the rose

  And love it more than tongue can speak—

  Then the good minute goes.

  Already how am I so far

  Out of that minute? Must I go

  Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,

  Onward, whenever light winds blow,

  Fixed by no friendly star?

  Just when I seemed about to learn!

  Where is the thread now? Off again!

  The old trick! Only I discern—

  Infinite passion, and the pain

  Of finite hearts that yearn.

  —Two in the Campagna

  Yet so we look ere we will love; not I

  —Pippa Passes

  Truth is within ourselves.

  —Paracelsus

  Too bold, too confident she’ll still face down

  The spitefullest of talkers in our town.

  —In Three Days

  And you—O, how feel you? Feel you for me?

  —Pippa Passes

  Grow old along with me!

  The best is yet to be,

  The last of life, for which the first was made:

  Our times are in His hand

  Who saith ‘A whole I planned,

  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’

  —Rabbi Ben Ezra

  Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?

  Do I live in a house you would like to see?

  Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?

  “Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?”

  —House

  I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,

  Since now at length my fate I know,

  Since nothing all my love avails,

  Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

  Since this was written and needs must be—

  My whole heart rises up to bless

  Your name in pride and thankfulness!

  Take back the hope you gave,—I claim