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Tag: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

May 12, 2012

lV. Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

lV. Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor…

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there’s a voice within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

___________________

you get called out to all the best parties, she says,
where all the guests hang on to your every word,
whose “pregnant lips” of course spew only poetry

yet this is where you come to roost – note how
“latch” suggests a humble cottage here – “The
bats and owlets builders in the roof!” don’t help
of course either

nor are you aware, she continues, of the “golden
fulness”, the bristling imagination, with which you
array my world so effortlessly, me, but a strident
“cricket” to your melodious “mandolin” – wonderful

I don’t even want to think about it, she insists,
“Hush”

in other words, I say “potato”, and “thou must”,
existentially, it appears, say “potahto”, and that’ll be
the end of that

but of course I’m right, I hear her subliminally saying,
it’s “potato”, but fate, cruel, cruel fate, has decreed
my abject and irrevocable subservience, to which I
must and will forthwith cede, “alone”, she decries
ever so forlornly, utterly, even ontologically, which
is to say, in her very essence, “aloof”

it is interesting to consider that of the two Brownings
the most famous must remain Elizabeth if only for
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”, which
every lover has declared to his love ever since, every
inamorata to hers

who will undoubtedly continue also to do so forever

Robert will be remembered of the two however as
finally, I think, the more significant poet

Richard

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May 9, 2012

lll. Unlike are we, O princely Heart! – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

lll. Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—
And Death must dig the level where these agree.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

___________________

this was the Nineteenth Century of course with high drama
and overt sentimentality running amok, look at any of Dickens’
heartwrenching urchins and orphans, for instance, that’s
Romanticism

the Twentieth Century determinedly picked it up, especially
after the First World War, opera became Broadway, get over it
the clarion call, life’s short, enjoy it

here’s George and Ira Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing
Off“ a much more Twentieth Century resolution

granted Elizabeth is not on the verge of leaving her husband,
who will remain, despite her protestations, ever true and devoted,
and she knows it, but albeit both their “ministering two angels
look surprise / On one another, as they strike athwart / Their
wings in passing”, both couples seem ready enough to
move on

and only Death will dissolve their differences, “dig the level
where these agree”, East is East and West is West, she says,
and Yin will never be Yang, Death alone will level the playing
field of our terminally divergent destinies

thanks for that, Elizabeth

Richard

psst:”Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”

Things have come to a pretty pass,
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that.
Goodness knows what the end will be,
Oh, I don’t know where I’m at…
It looks as if we two will never be one,
Something must be done.

You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther,
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther,
Let’s call the whole thing off!
You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto,
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let’s call the whole thing off!
But oh! If we call the whole thing off,
Then we must part.
And oh! If we ever part,
Then that might break my heart!
So, if you like pajamas and I like pajahmas,
I’ll wear pajamas and give up pajahmas.
For we know we need each other,
So we better call the calling off off.
Let’s call the whole thing off!

You say laughter and I say lawfter,
You say after and I say awfter,
Laughter, lawfter, after, awfter,
Let’s call the whole thing off!
You like vanilla and I like vanella,
You, sa’s’parilla and I sa’s’parella,
Vanilla, vanella, Choc’late, strawb’ry!
Let’s call the whole thing off!
But oh! If we call the whole thing off,
Then we must part.
And oh! If we ever part,
Then that might break my heart!
So, if you go for oysters and I go for ersters
I’ll order oysters and cancel the ersters.
For we know we need each other,
So we better call the calling off off!
Let’s call the whole thing off!

George and Ira Gershwin

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May 7, 2012

ll. But only three in all God’s universe – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

ll. But only three in all God’s universe

But only three in all God’s universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. ‘Nay’ is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________

it took me a week to sort out the obscurities in this
poem, God, she says, put me through so much physical
stress that I, so challenged, could have let myself not
know you – “laid the curse/ So darkly on my eyelids,
as to amerce/My sight from seeing thee” – that
would’ve been existentially, – “had I died” – more
absolute and stark and egregiously black than what
I’ve learned through our conjunction of the bliss and
eternity of such a love, invincible, propelled inexorably
– by the intensity of our shared devotion, despite even
“worldly jars”, worldly distempers, “seas”, “tempests”,
[m]ountain-bars” – that much “faster for the stars”

these obscurities are what steered me away from
poetry when I was younger until a more direct and
less ambiguous parlance emerged

but Elizabeth Barrett Browning has always remained
despite some literary difficulties poignant enough
for me and indeed emotionally reverberant that
she has steadfastly endured, she is too honest
and raw and of course articulate to not be warmly
remembered

Richard

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April 28, 2012

l. I thought once how Theocritus had sung – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese”

1. I thought once how Theocritus had sung

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, —
‘Guess now who holds thee?’ — ‘Death,’ I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang, — ‘Not Death, but Love.’

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

____________________

despite trying to deflect attention from her own love
and muse, her husband, by calling her collection of
poems “Sonnets from the Portuguese“, as though these
were translations from existing texts, no such template
exists, so that the truth, the now legendary truth, has
always been known

there is no higher Romanticism than these poems

Richard

psst: Elizabeth was six years older than her husband,
she was already 39, when they met, this adds
context to the poem, she had also been always
very sickly, deathly frail

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April 28, 2012

“I love your verses” – Robert Browning‏

I am overwhelmed, a letter from Robert Browning to
Elizabeth Barrett Browning congratulating her on her
poetry, and essentially declaring his, ultimately
legendary, love, they hadn’t even met yet, no wonder
I love Robert Browning

later she would write her “Sonnets from the Portuguese“,
he would become, well, of course, him

“January 10th, 1845
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,–and this is no off-hand
complimentary letter that I shall write,–whatever else, no prompt matter-of-
course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the
thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to
remember how I have been turning again in my mind what I should be able to
tell you of their effect upon me–for in the first flush of delight I thought I would
this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment, when I do really enjoy, and thoroughly justify my admiration–perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should, try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of herafter!–but nothing comes of it all–so into me has it gone, and part of me has it become, this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew… oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat and prized highly and put in a book with a proper account at bottom, and shut up and put away… and the book called a ‘Flora’, besides! After all, I need not give up the thought of doing that, too, in time; because even now, talking with whoever is worthy, I can give reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought–but in this addressing myself to you, your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogher. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart– and I love you too: do you know I was once seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning “would you like to see Miss Barrett?”–then he went to announce me,–then he returned… you were too unwell — and now it is years ago–and I feel as at some untorward passage in my travels–as if I had been close, so close, to some world’s-wonder in chapel on crypt,… only a screen to push and I might have entered — but there was some slight… so it now seems… slight and just-sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be!

Well, these Poems were to be–and this true thankful joy and pride with which I feel myself. Yours ever faithfully Robert Browning”

recently I saw a show, an opera cabaret they called it,
“Sonnets from the Portuguese“ had been set to music, for
soprano, mezzo, tenor, and baritone, two men, two women,
music by a local composer, lyrics of course by Ms Barrett
Browning

except for the first piece, the prologue, the letter above

can you even dig it, for me cerebral nirvana

what the opera cabaret lacked in polish it made up for in
evident devotion, nor did the music disappoint, an esoteric
idea had been brought to heartfelt life enough to entertain
and indeed to inspire

I’m now reading the poems

Richard

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