An Introduction to the Study of Browning

and Pomegranates (Poetical Works, 1889,

Sordello, became, from the period of the Dramatic Lyrics onward, the staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only Liszt. The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two lyrical poems, here included, Johannes Agricola and Porphyria's Lover (originally named Madhouse Cells), which were published in a magazine as early as 1836, or about the time of the publication of Paracelsus. These extraordinary little poems reveal not only an imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almost finished art: a power of conceiving subtle mental complexities with clearness and of expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfect lyric language. Each poem renders a single mood, and renders it completely. But it is still only a mood: My Last Duchess is a life. This poem (it was at first one o

AST D

RRA

t Duchess pain

f she were a

nder, now: Frà

a day, and the

you sit and loo

by design, f

you that pictur

passion of its

hey turned (sin

have drawn f

hey would ask m

ce came there;

n and ask thus

resence only, c

he Duchess' c

anced to say '

s wrist too m

ope to repro

dies along her t

she thought, a

p that spot o

all I say?-too

pressed; she

and her looks w

one! My favou

of the daylig

cherries some

rchard for her

round the terr

her alike the

. She thanked men,

w not how-as

nine-hundred-

s gift. Who'd

trifling? Eve

h I have not)-t

such an one, an

disgusts me;

ed the mark,'

ssoned so, no

rs, forsooth, a

d be some stoop

Oh, sir, she s

ed her; but who

ile? This grew;

stopped together

l 't please you

below, the

r master's kn

rant that no

dowry will b

r daughter's s

is my object.

sir. Notice N

-horse, thou

nnsbruck cast in

h Cloister, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour of hate. The snarling monk of the divish cloister pours out on poor, innocent, unsuspecting "Brother Lawrence" a wealth of really choice and masterly vituperation, not to be matched out of Shakespeare. The poem is a clever study of that mood of active disgust which most of us have felt toward some possibly inoffensive enough person, whose every word, look or action jars on the nerves. It flashes, too, a brilliant comic light on the natural tendencies of asceticism. S

f the remarkable studies of the Middle Ages contained in Morris's first and best book of poems, The Defence of Guenevere, published sixteen years later. The medi?val tem

strode Gismon

s saved.

ore, but, at

e sure that

Satan; who

mistrust

Gauthier, i

lie, then str

k-handed blo

verdict there

looked. The

d truth stood

Artemis Prologuizes is Browning's only experiment in the classic style. The fragment was meant to form part of a longer work, which was to take up the legend of Hippolytus at the point where Euripides dropped it. The project was no doubt abandoned for the same wise reason

e of the Three. There is a brooding sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future rather than of present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure to them. The sudden tragic ending, anticipated yet unexpected, rounds the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I kno

0] "a thing of joy for ever," as it has been well said, "to all with the child's heart, young and old." This poem, probably the most popular of Browning's

TNO

1

mances and Lyrics, and Men and Women, were in 1863 broken up and the poems re-distributed. I shall take the volumes as they originally appeared; a reference to

1

d Domett. Edited by F.G. Keny

1

his other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at the end of the fourth line, running it into

2

in many quarters, was North Wanley's Wonders of