The Duke (with the statue's face in the square) 40 Turned in the midst of his multitude At the bright approach of the bridal pair.

Face to face the lovers stood A single minute and no more, While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued—

Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor— For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred, As the courtly custom was of yore.

In a minute can lovers exchange a word? If a word did pass, which I do not think, 50 Only one out of the thousand heard.

That was the bridegroom. At day's brink He and his bride were alone at last In a bedchamber by a taper's blink.

Calmly he said that her lot was cast, That the door she had passed was shut on her Till the final catafalk repassed.

The world meanwhile, its noise and stir, Through a certain window facing the East, She could watch like a convent's chronicler. 60

Since passing the door might lead to a feast And a feast might lead to so much beside, He, of many evils, chose the least.

"Freely I choose too," said the bride— "Your window and its world suffice," Replied the tongue, while the heart replied—

"If I spend the night with that devil twice, May his window serve as my loop of hell Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

"I fly to the Duke who loves me well, 70 Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow! Ere I count another ave-bell,

"'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow, And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim, And I save my soul—but not to-morrow"—

(She checked herself and her eye grew dim) "My father tarries to bless my state: I must keep it one day more for him.

"Is one day more so long to wait? Moreover the Duke rides past, I know; 80 We shall see each other, sure as fate."

She turned on her side and slept. Just so! So we resolve on a thing and sleep: So did the lady, ages ago.

That night the Duke said, "Dear or cheap As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove To body or soul, I will drain it deep."

And on the morrow, bold with love, He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call, As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove) 90

And smiled, "'Twas a very funeral, Your lady will think, this feast of ours, A shame to efface, whate'er befall!

"What if we break from the Arno bowers, And try if Petraja, cool and green, Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?"

The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen On his steady brow and quiet mouth, Said, "Too much favour for me so mean!

"But, alas! my lady leaves the South; 100 Each wind that comes from the Apennine Is a menace to her tender youth:

"Nor a way exists, the wise opine, If she quits her palace twice this year, To avert the flower of life's decline."

Quoth the Duke, "A sage and a kindly fear. Moreover Petraja is cold this spring: Be our feast to-night as usual here!"

And then to himself—"Which night shall bring Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool— 110 Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

"Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool— For to-night the Envoy arrives from France Whose heart I unlock with thyself my tool.

"I need thee still and might miss perchance. To-day is not wholly lost, beside, With its hope of my lady's countenance:

"For I ride—what should I do but ride? And passing her palace, if I list, May glance at its window-well betide!" 120

So said, so done: nor the lady missed One ray that broke from the ardent brow, Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

Be sure that each renewed the vow, No morrow's sun should arise and set And leave them then as it left them now.

But next day passed, and next day yet, With still fresh cause to wait one day more Ere each leaped over the parapet.

And still, as love's brief morning wore, 130 With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh, They found love not as it seemed before.

They thought it would work infallibly, But not in despite of heaven and earth: The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth By store of fruits that supplant the rose: The world and its ways have a certain worth:

And to press a point while these oppose Were simple policy; better wait: 140 We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate Who daily may ride and pass and look Where his lady watches behind the grate!

And she—she watched the square like a book Holding one picture and only one, Which daily to find she undertook:

When the picture was reached the book was done, And she turned from the picture at night to scheme Of tearing it out for herself next sun. 150

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

Which hovered as dreams do, still above: But who can take a dream for a truth? Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

One day as the lady saw her youth Depart, and the silver thread that streaked Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, 160 And wondered who the woman was, Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

Fronting her silent in the glass— "Summon here," she suddenly said, "Before the rest of my old self pass,

"Him, the Carver, a hand to aid, Who fashions the clay no love will change And fixes a beauty never to fade.

"Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange Arrest the remains of young and fair, 170 And rivet them while the seasons range.

"Make me a face on the window there, Waiting as ever, mute the while, My love to pass below in the square!

"And let me think that it may beguile Dreary days which the dead must spend Down in their darkness under the aisle,

"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.' 180

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm, The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, And the blood that blues the inside arm—

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, The earthly gift to an end divine? A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine, With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, Was set where now is the empty shrine—

(And, leaning out of a bright blue space, 190 As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky, The passionate pale lady's face—

Eyeing ever, with earnest eye And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, Some one who ever is passing by)

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch In Florence, "Youth—my dream escapes! Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes— "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man 200 Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

"John of Douay shall effect my plan, Set me on horseback here aloft, Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

"In the very square I have crossed so oft: That men may admire, when future suns Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze— Admire and say, 'When he was alive How he would take his pleasure once!' 210

"And it shall go hard but I contrive To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb At idleness which aspires to strive."

————————————————

So! While these wait the trump of doom, How do their spirits pass, I wonder, Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder What a gift life was, ages ago, Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Only they see not God, I know, 220 Nor all that chivalry of his, The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss— Since, the end of life being manifest, He had burned his way thro' the world to this.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself 230 And prove its worth at a moment's view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham: As well the counter as coin, I submit, When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit, Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 240

If you choose to play!—is my principle. Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. You of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you? De te, fabula! 250

NOTES: "The Statue and the Bust" creates the characters and the situation, and dramatically represents a story which is based on a Florentine tradition that Duke Ferdinand I placed his equestrian statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata so that he might gaze forever towards the old Riccardi Palace, where a lady he loved was imprisoned by her jealous husband. The bride and her ducal lover are seen exchanging their first looks, through which they perceive the genuineness of their love; and the temporizing of each is presented, through which, for the sake of petty conveniences, they submit to be thwarted by the wary husband, and to have the end they count supreme delayed until love and youth have gone, and the best left them is the artificial gaze interchanged by a bronze statue in the square and a clay face at the window. The closing stanzas point the moral against the palsy of the will, whose strenuous exercise is life's main gift.

I. There's a palace in Florence: refers to the old Riccardi Palace, now the Palazzo Antinori, in the square of the Annunziata, where the statue still stands.

22. encolure: neck and shoulder of a horse

33. The pile which the mighty shadow makes: refers to another palace in the Via Larga where the duke (not the lady) lived, and which is to-day known as the Riccardi Palace. Cooke's "Browning Guide Book" and Berdoe's "Browning Cyclopaedia" both confuse the two, attributing error to Browning in spite of his letter about it. This confusion was cleared up by Harriet Ford (Poet-lore, Dec. 1891, vol. iii. p. 648, "Browning right about the Riccardi Palace'').

36. Because of a crime, etc.: refers to the destroying of the liberties of the Florentine republic by Cosimo dei Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo, who lived in the then Medici (now Riccardi) Palace, whose darkening of the street with its bulk symbolizes the crime which took the light from Florence.

57. catafalk: the stage or scaffolding for a coffin whilst in the church

94. Arno bowers: the palace by the Arno, the river flowing through Florence.

95. Petraja: a Florentine suburb.

169. Robbia's craft: the Robbia family were skilled in shaping the bisque known as Della Robbia ware which was long one of the Florentine manufactures, and traces of which, when Browning wrote, still adorned the outer cornice of the palace.

202. John of Douay [Giovanni of Bologna], sculptor (1524-1608). The statue is one of his finest works.

250. De te, fabula! Concerning thee, this fable!



PORPHYRIA'S LOVER

The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form 10 Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, 20 Murmuring how she loved me—she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain. 30

Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, 40 And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore 50 Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word! 60

NOTES: "Porphyria's Lover" relates how, by strangling Porphyria with her own yellow hair, the lover seized and preserved the moment of perfect love when, pure and good, Porphyria left the world she could not forego for his sake, and came to him, for once conquered by her love. A latent misgiving as to his action is intimated in the closing line of the poem. Remarking upon the fact that Browning removed the original title, "Madhouse Cells," which headed this poem, and "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," Mrs. Orr says: "Such a crime might be committed in a momentary aberration, or even intense excitement of feeling. It is characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which is its sign of madness. The distinction, however, is subtle; and we can easily guess why this and its companion poem did not retain their title. A madness which is fit for dramatic treatment is not sufficiently removed from sanity."



"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME."

(See Edgar's song in "LEAR.")

I

My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II

What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, 10 And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III

If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope 20 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V

As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith, "And the blow fallen no grieving can amend"); 30

VI

While some discuss if near the other graves Be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among "The Band"—to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed 40 Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

VIII

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 50 Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. I might go on; nought else remained to do.

X

So, on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers-as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. 60

XI

No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

XII

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk 70 All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

XIII

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

XIV

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, 80 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90

XVI

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

XVII

Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good-=but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands 100 Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII

Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX

A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. 110 No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX

So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 120

XXI

Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! —It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

XXII

Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

XXIII

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140 Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood— Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150

XXVI

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII

And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further! At the thought A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, 160 Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains—with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when— 170 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts—you're inside the den!

XXX

Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! 180

XXXI

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII

Not see? because of night perhaps?—why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,— "Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!"

XXXIII

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,— How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met To view the last of me, a living frame 200 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

NOTES: "Childe Roland" symbolizes the conquest of despair by fealty to the ideal. Browning emphatically disclaimed any precise allegorical intention in this poem. He acknowledged only an ideal purport in which the significance of the whole, as suggesting a vision of life and the saving power of constancy, had its due place. Certain picturesque materials which had made their impressions on the poet's mind contributed towards the building up of this realistic fantasy: a tower he saw in the Carrara Mountains; a painting which caught his eye later in Paris; the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—welded together with the remembrance of the line cited from King Lear, iii. 4, 187, which last, it should be remembered, has a background of ballads and legend cycles of which a man like Browning was not unaware. For allegorical schemes of the Poem see Nettleship's "Essays and Thoughts," and The Critic, Apr. 24, 1886; for an antidote to these, The Critic, May 8, 1886; an orthodox view, Poet-lore, Nov. 1890: for interpretations touching on the ballad sources, London Browning Society Papers, part iii. p. 21, and Poet-lore, Aug.-Sept. 1892.

THE END