Robert Browning on Love Page 6

  What matter to me if their star is a world?

  Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

  —My Star

  God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures

  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

  One to show a woman when he loves her.

  —One Word More

  What Youth deemed crystal,

  Age find out was dew

  —Jochanan Hakkadosh

  All I can say is—I saw it!

  The room was as bare as your hand.

  I locked in the swarth little lady,—I swear,

  From the head to the foot of her—well, quite as bare!

  “No Nautch shall cheat me,” said I, “taking my stand

  At this bolt which I draw!” And this bolt—I withdraw it,

  And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered

  With—who knows what verdure, o’erfruited, o’erflowered?

  Impossible! Only—I saw it!

  All I can sing is—I feel it!

  This life was as blank as that room;

  I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed?

  Walls, ceiling and floor,—not a chance for a weed!

  Wide opens the entrance: where’s cold, now, where’s gloom?

  No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it,

  Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,

  These fruits of your bearing—nay, birds of your winging!

  A fairy-tale! Only—I feel it!

  —Natural Magic

  I had a lover—shame avaunt!

  This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt,

  Was kissed all over till it burned,

  By lips the truest, love e’er turned

  —The Confessional

  And thus was she buried, inviolate

  Of body and soul, in the very space

  By the altar; keeping saintly state

  In Pornic church, for her pride of race,

  Pure life and piteous fate.

  And in after-time would your fresh tear fall,

  Though your mouth might twitch with a dubious smile,

  As they told you of gold, both robe and pall,

  How she prayed them leave it alone awhile,

  So it never was touched at all.

  Years flew; this legend grew at last

  The life of the lady; all she had done,

  All been, in the memories fading fast

  Of lover and friend, was summed in one

  Sentence survivors passed

  —Gold Hair

  To say, ‘What matters it at the end?

  I did no more while my heart was warm

  Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.’

  —The Statue and the Bust

  Take and keep my fifty poems finished;

  Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!

  —One Word More

  If since eve drew in, I say,

  I have sat and brought

  (So to speak) my thought

  To bear on the woman away,

  Till I felt my hair turn grey—

  Till I seemed to have and hold,

  In the vacancy

  ‘Twixt the wall and me

  —Mesmerism

  “Love conquers all things.” What love conquers them?

  I mean, and should have said, whose love is best

  Of all that love or that profess to love?

  True love.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Dear, had the world in its caprice

  Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,

  Have recognized your plighted troth,

  Am sponsor for you: live in peace!’’—

  How many precious months and years

  Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,

  Before we found it out at last,

  The world, and what it fears?

  How much of priceless life were spent

  With men that every virtue decks,

  And women models of their sex,

  Society’s true ornament,—

  Ere we dared wander, nights like this,

  Thro’ wind and rain, and watch the Seine,

  And feel the Boulevard break again

  To warmth and light and bliss?

  I know! the world proscribes not love;

  Allows my finger to caress

  Your lips’ contour and downiness,

  Provided it supply a glove.

  The world’s good word—the Institute!

  Guizot receives Montalembert!

  Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:

  Put forward your best foot!

  —Respectability

  Yet we called out—“Depart!

  Our gifts, once given, must here abide.

  Our work is done; we have no heart

  To mar our work,”—we cried.

  —Over the Sea Our Galleys Went

  That, they might spare; a certain wood

  Might miss the plant; their loss were small:

  But I—whene’er the leaf grows there,

  Its drop comes from my heart, that’s all.

  —May and Death

  To wit, she was meant for heaven, not earth;

  Had turned an angel before the time:

  Yet, since she was mortal, in such dearth

  Of frailty, all you could count a crime

  Was—she knew her gold hair’s worth.

  —Gold Hair

  Verse-making was least of my virtues:

  I viewed with despair

  Wealth that never yet was but might be—all that verse-making were

  If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare.

  So I said, “To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse”—

  And made verse.

  Love-making,—how simple a matter!

  No depths to explore,

  No heights in a life to ascend! No disheartening Before,

  No affrighting Hereafter,—love now will be love ever more.

  So I felt “To keep silence were folly:”—all language above,

  I made love.

  —Ferishtah’s Fancies

  Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!

  —Fra Lippo Lippi

  Love’s Letters

  To Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  I do not, nor will not think, dearest, of ever ‘making you happy’—I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness—yet in every such effort there is implied some distinction, some supererogatory grace, or why speak of it at all? You it is, are my happiness, and all that ever can be: YOU—dearest!

  But never, if you would not, what you will not do I know, never revert to that frightful wish. ‘Disappoint me?’ ‘I speak what I know and testify what I have seen’—you shall ‘mystery’ again and again—I do not dispute that, but do not you dispute, neither, that mysteries are. But it is simply because I do most justice to the mystical part of what I feel for you, because I consent to lay most stress on that fact of facts that I love you, beyond admiration, and respect, and esteem and affection even, and do not adduce any reason which stops short of accounting for that, whatever else it would account for, because I do this, in pure logical justice—you are able to turn and wonder (if you do … now) what causes it all! My love, only wait, only believe in me, and it cannot be but I shall, little by little, become known to you—after long years, perhaps, but still one day: I would say this now—but I will write more to-morrow. God bless my sweetest—ever, love, I am your

  R.B.

  ***

  I will not try and write much to-night, dearest, for my head gives a little warning—and I have so much to think of!—spite of my penholder being kept back from me after all! Now, ought I to have asked for it? Or did I not seem grateful enough at the promise? This last would be a characteristic reason, seeing that I reproached myself with feeling too grateful f
or the ‘special symbol’—the ‘essential meaning’ of which was already in my soul. Well then, I will—I do pray for it—next time; and I will keep it for that one yesterday and all its memories—and it shall bear witness against me, if, on the Siren’s isle, I grow forgetful of Wimpole Street. And when is ‘next time’ to be—Wednesday or Thursday? When I look back on the strangely steady widening of my horizon—how no least interruption has occurred to visits or letters—oh, care you, sweet—care for us both!

  That remark of your sister’s delights me—you remember?—that the anger would not be so formidable. I have exactly the fear of encountering that, which the sense of having to deal with a ghost would induce: there’s no striking at it with one’s partizan. Well, God is above all! It is not my fault if it so happens that by returning my love you make me exquisitely blessed; I believe—more than hope, I am sure I should do all I ever now can do, if you were never to know it—that is, my love for you was in the first instance its own reward—if one must use such phrases—and if it were possible for that … not anger, which is of no good, but that opposition—that adverse will—to show that your good would be attained by the—

  But it would need to be shown to me. You have said thus to me—in the very last letter, indeed. But with me, or any man, the instincts of happiness develop themselves too unmistakably where there is anything like a freedom of will. The man whose heart is set on being rich or influential after the worldly fashion, may be found far enough from the attainment of either riches or influence—but he will be in the presumed way to them—pumping at the pump, if he is really anxious for water, even though the pump be dry—but not sitting still by the dusty roadside.

  I believe—first of all, you—but when that is done, and I am allowed to call your heart mine,—I cannot think you would be happy if parted from me—and that belief, coming to add to my own feeling in that case. So, this will be—I trust in God.

  In life, in death, I am your own, my own! My head has got well already! It is so slight a thing, that I make such an ado about! Do not reply to these bodings—they are gone—they seem absurd! All steps secured but the last, and that last the easiest! Yes—far easiest! For first you had to be created, only that; and then, in my time; and then, not in Timbuctoo but Wimpole Street, and then … the strange hedge round the sleeping Palace keeping the world off—and then … all was to begin, all the difficulty only begin:—and now … see where is reached! And I kiss you, and bless you, my dearest, in earnest of the end!

  R. B.

  ***

  I am altogether your own, dearest—the words were only words and the playful feelings were play—while the fact has always been so irresistibly obvious as to make them break on and off it, fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a great solid rock. Now you call the rock, a rock, but you must have known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do what they could. It is a rock; and may be quite barren of good to you,—not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real rock, that is all.

  It is always I who ‘torment’ you—instead of taking the present and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own, dearest beloved, that is as different in kind as in degree from any other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us—oh, be well, my Ba!

  R.B.

  ***

  Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I did return home earlier by two or three good hours than the night before—and to find no letter,—none of yours! That was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest came, a silence, over the thoughts of you—and now again, comes this last note! Oh, my love—why—what is it you think to do, or become ‘afterward,’ that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should ‘fear’ as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line, change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart? What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to ‘risk’ everything for,—is that one belief that you will not alter, will just remain as you are—meaning by ‘you,’ the love in you, the qualities I have known (for you will stop me, if I do not stop myself) what I have evidence of in every letter, in every word, every look. Keeping these, if it be God’s will that the body passes,—what is that? Write no new letters, speak no new words, look no new looks,—only tell me, years hence that the present is alive, that what was once, still is—and I am, must needs be, blessed as ever! You speak of my feeling as if it were a pure speculation—as if because I see somewhat in you I make a calculation that there must be more to see somewhere or other—where bdellium is found, the onyx-stone may be looked for in the mystic land of the four rivers! And perhaps … ah, poor human nature!—perhaps I do think at times on what may be to find! But what is that to you? I offer for the bdellium—the other may be found or not found … what I see glitter on the ground, that will suffice to make me rich as—rich as—

  So bless you my own Ba! I would not wait for paper, and you must forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and praise. Are you so well? So adventurous? Thank you from my heart of hearts. And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from Procter just this minute putting off his dinner on account of the death of his wife’s sister’s husband abroad). Observe this sheet I take as I find—I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech repented of—what English, what sense, what a soul’s tragedy! but then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest Ba possesses her own—

  R.B.

  ***

  How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent? Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard—the speaker had tried words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not reflect that he did not even try—so with me now, that loving you, Ba, with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me, rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you ‘made you humble’—just as if to hinder me from saying that earnest truth!—entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.

  I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You know by this that it is no shadowy image of you and not you, which having attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the original idea, in you, the dearest real you I am blessed with—you know what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for my part, know now, while fresh from seeing you, certainly know, whatever I may have said a short time since, that you will go on to the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,—over such a blind abyss—I refuse to think, to fancy, towards what it would be to loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand—the giving is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first—but ever as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back to you.

  I shall hear from you to-morrow—then, I will go out early and get done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me, and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance—yet a
lways with the consolation of feeling that you will know all, interpret all and forgive it and put it right—can such things be cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life must be better … with the closeness to help, and the ‘finding out the way’ for which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to your mind, I am lost at once—but the one quality of affection for you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of component graces; that I will dare start supply—the entire love you could dream of is here. You think you see some of the other adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but with that I do not concern myself—you shall admire the true heroes—but me you shall love for the love’s sake. Let me kiss you, you, my dearest, dearest—God bless you ever—

  R.B.