Browning's Heroines

; but in him, who was so free from sentimentality, it is more inspiring than in any other, except perhaps George Meredith. Meredith too is without sentimentality; but he has more of hardness, shall

is to say, of the same phenomenon. Thus each absorption explains and aids the other, and we begin to perceive the reason for his triumphs in expression of our subtlest inward life. Man was, for him, the proper study of mankind; of all great poets, he was the most "social," and that in the genial, not the satiric,

recognition; there are no withdrawals "from all fear" into the woman's arms, and no looking up, "as I might kill her and be loved the more," into the man's eyes. For love is to make us greater, not smaller, than ourselves. It can indeed do all for us, and will do all, but we must for our part be doing someth

much we gain wh

orehand more infallible for the greatest of decisions. He understood: understood love, marriage, and (hardest of all perhaps!) conduct-what it may do, and not do, for happiness. That is to say, he understood how far c

lace in love for it. And even Elvire's demurs (in Fifine), even the departure from her husband, are not the words, the deed, of jealousy, but of insight into Juan's better self. He will never be

or the bypath; so long as it is truly recognised, bravely answered, all

e buzzing

t I come

world as a v

rend sir

" What he viewed in the world then, he now sees again-the "suburb lane" of their rende

somewhere nea

hed for me

now, Sir, i

ind's out

aces out the details. . . . She left the attic, "

from stai

he rose-wreath

Sir-used

d mad and

how it w

further and no other "confession"-if he calls this o

der of the landscape before him. Here, in this flat pastoral plain, lies buried all that remains of "a city great and gay," the country's very capital, where a powerful prince once

and perfection

er

he

ude of men brea

g a

cked their hearts

k the

and that shame

t and

ng and his minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured

ith eager eyes

s me

ence the chariot

the

d, where she looks

I c

side at the splendid city, w

s, bridges, aqu

the

he will speak not

her

give her eyes

my

e we extinguish

on

d they built their gods a brazen pillar high as the sky, yet sti

od that freezes,

's re

uries of folly

the

hs and their glor

is

life calls us, even from our love. The day is long and we must work in it; but we can meet when the day is done. In the light o

of warm sea-s

o cross till a

ane, the quick

urt of a li

loud, through i

earts beating

ight. . . . But we m

pe of a sudde

oked over the

was a path of

a world of men

her lyrics, but the poems of marriage are not in our survey. In nearly all his other love-poetry, it is the "trouble of love," in one form or another, which occupies him-the lovers who meet to part; those

the world i

roclaim 'I k

sed your pli

or you: live

ecious mont

passed, that

found it o

, and wha

priceless li

at every vi

models of

s true o

wander, nig

d rain, and w

e Boulevard

and light

om to live their lives as they choose-rightly or wrongly, but at any rate it is not "the world" that sways them. They have learnt how much that good word is worth! What is happening, this very hour, in that environment-here, for instance, in the Institute, which they are just passing? "Guizot receives Montalembert

think. The world still counted for them-as it counts for all who remember so vehemently to denounce it. Moreover, married, they could, were their courage

Boulevard

and light

the Real Unfearing, become a craze! Yes-we must refuse to be dazzled by rheto

sence, which Browning has so marvellously uttered in Mesmerism. Here, in these breathless stanzas,[208:1] so almost literally mesmeric that, as we read them (or rather draw them in at our own breathless lips!), we believe in the actual coming of our l

emed to ha

he v

the wal

ir-plait's

t in its m

old, then

om head

ing an

and ye

sp of my s

ave, there

body a

pletes m

women a

tch of my

t "breaks into very flame," he feels that he must draw her from "the house called h

oors into

o th

wild wo

ng to lef

thway, blin

nd still

crowdin

o joy

ld blind

arkness and

ll be, when she does come, altered even from what she was at his first seeming to "have and hold her"-for the lips glow, the cheek burns, the hair, from its plait, bre

'-the doo

stairs!

r-and

d at call

s without

*

do that with her! Would she not almost be rea

inks of the woman he loves, and she comes to him; but here it is her own will that drives through wi

set early

wind was

elm-tops dow

worst to v

with heart

d in Porph

he dying fire blaze up. When all the place was warm, she rose and put off her dripping

she sat do

e. When no v

arm about

smooth white

yellow hai

, made my che

'er all her

how she lo

all her hear

struggling

and vainer t

rself to me

in a world all sundered from t

thought of

her, and a

ome through w

rt, stupefied as it were by his grief-unresponsive to the joy of her presence, unbelieving in it possibly, since already so often he had dreamed that this might be, and it h

looked up

proud; at

orshipped m

t swell, and

ebated wh

she was mine

pure and g

do, and a

yellow str

her little t

ngled he

s laughed back at him "without a stain." He loosed the tress about her neck, and the colour fla

ng rosy li

has its u

scorned at o

love, am ga

love: she gu

one wish wou

we sit to

long we have

has not sa

*

night of wind and rain?-that night which is real, whatever else is not . . . I ask, we all ask; but does it greatly matter? Enough that we can grasp the deeper meaning-the sanity in the madness. As Porphyria, with her lover's head on her breast, sat in the little cottage on that stormy night, the world at last rejected, the love at last accepted, she was at her highest

we sit tog

has not sa

tion in such lyrics as I have just now shown. . . . Always the tear assigned to woman! It may be "true"; I think it is not at least so true, but true in some degree it must be, since all legend will thus have it. What then shall a woman say? That the time has come to alter this? That woman cries "for nothin

TNO

Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight wa

ary poem "fifteen stanzas succeed one another without