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Category: Robert Browning

March 26, 2013

XXXlll. Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXlll. Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear

Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear
The name I used to run at, when a child,
From innocent play, and leave the cow-slips piled,
To glance up in some face that proved me dear
With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear
Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled
Into the music of Heaven’s undefiled,
Call me no longer. Silence on the bier,
While I call God – call God! – So let thy mouth
Be heir to those who are now exanimate.
Gather the north flowers to complete the south,
And catch the early love up in the late.
Yes, call me by that name, – and I, in truth,
With the same heart, will answer and not wait.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________________

Elizabeth Barrett Browning introduces
immediacy here in the very first beat by
making her metre trochaic – dum, da –
instead of iambic – da, dum – we’re in
the midst of already the conversation,
where Browning, Robert, had called
Elizabeth by a nickname, probably,
I would think, his “Portuguese”, the
“Portuguese” of these very poems,
and she peremptorily corners us, him

then, despite her insecurities, she
commands, as I’d earlier, maybe
somewhat sardonically, implied,
but we all have, don’t we, our
idiosyncratic peculiarities

“call me by my pet-name”, she insists,
like those who loved me used to do
when I was young, and that I ran to
when they called so that I could
beside them “glance” at the reflection
in their eyes of my very indeterminate
for me validity

but whose “voices” now, sadly, have
become “the music of” a perfect
“Heaven”, which is to say, where those
who have been there retired, “drawn
and reconciled”, are “undefiled”

only “Silence on the bier”, no reply, no
sound at all, from even the divinity she
beckons

“So let thy mouth / Be heir”, she charges,
as she is wont to do when she isn’t fretting,
be their counterpart, your “north” their
“south” flowers, their “early” your “late[r]“
love

“and I, in truth, / With the same heart”, as
when I left so hurriedly my “cow-slips”
“will answer and not wait” to fly at your
call

and all in only fifteen lines, to my,
hopefully helpful, several, with each
of hers sporting rich and resonant
even rhyme, which probably went
nevertheless mostly at first glance
unnoticed, to my fewer maybe, and
more insidiously covert ones

wherein lies, of course, the artistry,
the buttons don’t intrude on the
fabric, the garment’s pristine
symmetry, the poem’s potent
flowering

always

Richard

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March 24, 2013

XXXll. The first time that the sun rose on thine oath – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXll. The first time that the sun rose on thine oath

The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man’s love! – more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
‘Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced, –
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and dote.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

“great souls” may transform those they touch,
to their great honour, and may stay to watch,
and nurture, in proud appreciation of that
transcendental transformation, look at our
children

but see here Elizabeth Barrett Browning
herself in this very poem, and also those
we’ve touched, been touched by, and
loved

if I’ve been connecting XlXth-Century
Elizabeth Barrett Browning with modern
torch songs, sublime often evocations
of consummate and unfettered love, it
is not without the influence of, indeed,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who opened
the floodgates to our cultural emotional
honesty, name any other otherwise

brave, brave Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
to whom we owe our unadulterated
present

here is Roberta Flack doing her own
sororal “first time”, an obvious heir
to Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s
tacit permission and poem

here is another, and updated version
of the featured classic, that, however
improbably, in every moment, shines,
blazons, becoming just as, goodness,
unforgettable, just watch

Richard

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March 21, 2013

XXXl. Thou comest! all is said without a word – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXl. Thou comest! all is said without a word

Thou comest! all is said without a word.
I sit beneath thy looks, as children do
In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through
Their happy eyelids from an unaverred
Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred
In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue
The sin most, but the occasion – that we two
Should for a moment stand unministered
By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close,
Thou dovelike help! and, when my fears would rise,
With thy broad heart serenely interpose:
Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies
These thoughts which tremble when bereft of those,
Like callow birds left desert to the skies.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

it is a natural instinct nearly to read such
a poem in iambic pentameter, until you get
to the end of the verse, pause, and then do
the same thing with the next line, applying
a rhythm to each phrase, much like toneless
singing, after all, one surmises, it’s a poem,
words without the tune, it has a beat

but the beat in Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s
poems, though staunch, is steeped in the
less evidently accented constructions of
prose, looser and less regimented, for
realism

like Beethoven, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
is breaking out of the Classical mode and
introducing the overflowing elements of
the Romantic personality, personal
expression dominating form the better
to reflect a new cultural reality

it’s interesting to note that Beethoven as
well found the key to representing that
new revolutionary spirit through the
manipulation of beat, both achieving
thereby the very pinnacle of consummate
artistry, icons of their, however great their
own personally chronologically distant,
age

but read the poem as though it were an
everyday sentence, the poetry will be clear,
beautiful, even wondrous, the rhythms not
immediately apparent though always
present and profoundly sure

both music and poetry would attempt
to sound like real life, to speak more
intimately and therefore truthfully,
while others will attempt to make
poetry out of mere prose, watch me,
we live in different times

about the poem, compare “you are
the wind beneath my wings“, for a
not dissimilar sentiment, watch
Patti Labelle make powerhouse
poetry out of mere prose

Richard

psst: more about wings

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March 20, 2013

XXX. I see thine image through my tears to-night – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXX. I see thine image through my tears to-night

I see thine image through my tears to-night,
And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How
Refer the cause? – Belovèd, is it thou
Or I, who makes me sad? The acolyte
Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite
May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow
On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow,
Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight,
As he, in his swooning ears, the choir’s amen.
Belovèd, dost thou love? or did I see all
The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when
Too vehement light dilated my ideal,
For my soul’s eyes? Will that light come again,
As now these tears come – falling hot and real?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

it’s been a season since we left Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, flushed by her ardent
metaphorical, surely, exertions, in the
throes of “breath[ing] within thy shadow
a new air“, but now it seems she has
returned to her crushing insecurity, her
winter must’ve been especially barren

you’ll note the distortions in the metre,
akin to musical atonalities

as a poet, Elizabeth, who was evidently
well versed, as it were, in the Classics,
would’ve tinkered away at the form much
the same way a composer would’ve
at the conventions of music, radically
but convincingly if they were good, the
trick was in the balance achieved between
eccentricity and entertainment, artistic
wizardry and Truth, would it work, jarring
incongruities had to rouse if not delight,
as often incongruities can, do, and
should

Elizabeth is talking like Schoenberg
here, a couple of generations at least
later, notorious for dismantling harmony
in music with his rejection of the tonic
scale, allowing the neighbours to say
about his atonal music, my children
could do it, with patience and time of
course, for his works could often be
epic

her distorted cadences mirror also here,
however, her harried state, and are
mimetically instructive, in other words,
you can feel her distress in the erratic
pulse, or beat

she compares herself to an acolyte, an
attendant at mass, made often to look
like an angel – a boy, incidentally, always,
though that, by now, might’ve changed, I
haven’t kept up with ecclesiastical politics
– who has fainted, “fall[en] flat”, the musical
allusion, you’ll note here, unmistakable

in her consequent netherworld she
wonders if “the love you take is equal to
the love you make“, is her golden ideal
merely all in her head, or, in himself,
alive before her and apparent, its
actual incarnation

haven’t we all been there

and we’ve all, o, Elizabeth, moved on

though, I’ll grant, nobody has still said
what she had to say better

Richard

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November 23, 2012

XXlX. I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXlX. I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud

I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see
Except the straggling green which hides the wood.
Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood
I will not have my thoughts instead of thee
Who art dearer, better! rather, instantly
Renew thy presence. As a strong tree should,
Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,
And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee
Drop heavily down, – burst, shattered, everywhere!
Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee
And breathe within thy shadow a new air,
I do not think of thee – I am too near thee

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

“set thy trunk all bare” indeed, Elizabeth is
letting more than just her hair down here, she
is “twin[ing] and bud[ding] / About thee”, she
is, ahem, “hid[ing] the wood” of her “strong
tree”, her “palm-tree”, her abandon is letting
her “wild vines” engulf him, “I do not think of
thee – I am too near thee”, she exults, she is
“breath[ing] within thy shadow a new air”

this is of course communion of the very
highest order, transubstantiation,
metamorphosis, and she is here its
highest priestess

all, note, in ever rhyming, ever thumping,
iambic pentameter, enough to make you
blush

Richard

1 Comment
November 14, 2012

XXVlll. My letters! all dead paper, mute and white – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXVlll. My letters! all dead paper, mute and white

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night,
This said, — he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! — this, . . . the paper’s light. . .
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine — and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

after a meticulous search of my archive, I
finally found the last place I’d been wrong,
if you remember well I’d written the date so
it could be found at any moment, just like
this one, March 28, 2012, check it out

if I’ve chosen to preface my comment on
Barrett Browning‘s 28th sonnet “from
the Portuguese“ with a personal
exculpation it’s because here I so easily
could be incorrect, Elizabeth is to my mind
here too abstruse, obtuse, too cute, I think,
for her own convoluted words

who is doing what to whom in this flurry
of what was “said”, we wonder

she is speaking to the paper – “dead”,
“mute and white”, note – which says what
had been said by her then improbable lover,
that he wished to see her, “to have me in his
sight “, that he loves her, “Dear, I love thee”,
that he’s hers, “I am thine”, but what is this
insuperable “thy words have ill availed / If,
what this said, I dared repeat at last”

an analysis that will not cede the secrets
of a text after a certain moment by a
reasonably informed and probing
analyst is no longer a shortcoming of the
analyst but of the poem, I submit, and
such, I feel, is here the case, though that
position is entirely assailable, I might be
merely, in this instance, stupid, but I
doubt it

the Metaphysical Poets were good at that,
establishing confounding parallels, Donne,
Herbert, Marvell, revered poets Elizabeth
surely would have aspired to mimic

“Love”, I’ll propose, in line 14, is a
composite of Love itself – Amor, a Platonic,
anthropomorphized conception – and
Robert Browning, who had become by this
time her spouse, to whom these recollections
are indirectly directed – remember she’s still
speaking to the paper – who utters this Delphic,
which is to say, inscrutable, pronouncement

then again it could be herself, Elizabeth,
hypothesizing, for she hasn’t italicized this
statement as she has earlier the others

therefore she could be – instead of he, they,
invoking her – invoking them, though “And
this” in the second last line suggests that
he, Robert Browning, is speaking again,
and yet the “L” is capitalized this time
where it hadn’t been for Robert anywhere
before

help

I will venture, for the sake of conclusion,
that she means that had these been the
last expressions of his devotion, or he,
does she mean, of hers, these letters
would indeed be also dead

but I could be entirely wrong

November 14, 2012

Richard

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November 5, 2012

XXVll. My own Belovèd, who hast lifted me – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXVll. My own Belovèd, who hast lifted me

My own Belovèd, who hast lifted me
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,
Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
Who camest to me when the world was gone,
And I who looked for only God, found thee!
I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life,–so I, with bosom-swell,
Make witness, here, between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________

the Asphodel Meadows were a mythological
nether field where souls wandered aimless
after death, bereft of their earthly memories,
washed away by the river Lethe they’d had
to cross to enter the Underworld, can you
dig it

very few have returned from There, notably
Eurydice, who, profoundly grieved by
Orpheus, her swain, is granted leave to
come back by the god of the Underworld,
Hades, as a grace for Orpheus’ uncanny,
uneartlhy, musical ability, though with one
dire condition, that he, Orpheus, Lot-like,
not look back, but that’s an entire other story

love however is what has resurrected her here,
according to Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
afforded her another, transformed, life, she
states

for transcendental apparently love, not only
ineluctable death, according to her earlier
staunch expectations, had proved able to
stir her from her earlier in-, or “asphodel”,
as she calls it, existence

as love does

Richard

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October 12, 2012

XXVl. I lived with visions for my company – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXVl. I lived with visions for my company

I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world’s dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come–to be,
Belovèd, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants
Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

compare Joyce Kilmer‘s

“Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”

from Kilmer‘s “Trees“, where Elizabeth Barrett Browning
in her poem has of course a much more Romantic view
of things nearly a century earlier, and where the source
of her telling light is rather the much more human
Robert Browning

a fair match, I first wondered, Browning or a tree

then thought, what do I now mean, a good one
and two respective centuries later, by God, the
genesis of all this inscrutable incontrovertible
horn of bounteous and wondrous plenty

I am of course still wondering, despite even the
Sisyphean exponentiality of those wonders

in the end I believe a tree is no less the equal
of a Robert Browning, as proof of the divine

about the divine itself however I’ll reserve
judgment, though my own personal experience
of miracles has made me believe in at least the
ineffably miraculous, the immanence ever of a
mystical, multidimensional order – “There are
more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, /
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” –
maybe therefore of the divine

but this could easily be just ultimately empty
semantics

so presently I cede

interesting that the question was even popping
up however, finally, after centuries of obligatory
Christian, and obfuscating, dogma, a personal
quest, rather than adherence by ecclesiastical
ordinance, for a proof of God

Richard

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October 5, 2012

XXV. A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXV. A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne

A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God’s own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

__________________

despite a rigorous rhyme scheme and a mostly
strict iambic pentameter here, which is to say
each verse is given five, or penta, metres, or
beats, where iambic means that the accent is
on the second syllable of each of those five
individual metres, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da times
five, should your Greek be understandably
amiss, Elizabeth still manages to skew the
pace of the piece again in this instance,
turning her poetry, as always, into a more
direct and purposeful prose

just try to follow the sentence metrically as
in a more traditional poem, or song, you’ll
block her headlong and unfettered propulsion

alteration of the beat is not much different
from what composers were doing then with
music, the early eighteen-hundreds, not much
different indeed at all, and which they did for
the very same particular reason, greater
authenticity, the truth part of the iconic
imperatives of beauty and truth

incidentally, where Elizabeth was trying to
invigorate poetry by giving it the apparent
immediacy of prose you might’ve noted
that in my own flurry of literary tidbits,
however ever so humble, I’ve been quite
consciously peppering prose rather with
the elements of poetry, for better or for
worse, but in my mind to reflect a less,
dare I say, prosaic, more inherently
enchanting, vision of the world

Richard

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September 22, 2012

XXlV. Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

notice: the following, I suspect, is for poetry lovers
only, others will likely want to roll their eyes
at my idiosyncratic choices and preoccupations
and delete what I perceive nevertheless and
mean always to be priceless gifts

such is my eccentricity

Richard

psst: one person’s gift however could be another’s
burden, admittedly, meat be their even poison

_________________

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXlV. Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife

Let the world’s sharpness like a clasping knife
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
After the click of the shutting. Life to life –
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,
And feel as safe as guarded by a charm
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer;
Growing straight, out of man’s reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

it had been pointed out in my poetry class at
university, where our supposed greater maturity
would allow us now to peruse somewhat more
prurient texts, that the compass in John Donne‘s
“Valediction“ was, well, prurient, however, to my
mind, at the very least then, eccentric

much like Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s “clasping
knife” in her XXlVth sonnet here

all that to our much more jaded XXlst-Century
amusement, we are never ever now so circuitous,
coy, nor were any of us even back in my
mid-XXth-Century teens, D.H. Lawrence had
already irreversibly made courtship graphic,
for better, as in any contract, or for worse

and the beat goes on

Richard

psst:

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

John Donne

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