Part 4 (1/2)

Say not the birds flew! they forebore their right-- Swam, revelling onward in the roll of things.

Say not the beasts' mirth bounded! that was flight--

How could the creatures leap, no lift of wings?

Such earth's community of purpose, such The ease of earth's fulfilled imaginings,--

So did the near and far appear to touch I' the moment's transport,--that an interchange Of function, far with near, seemed scarce too much;

And had the rooted plant aspired to range With the snake's licence, while the insect yearned To glow fixed as the flower, it were not strange--

No more than if the fluttery tree-top turned To actual music, sang itself aloft; Or if the wind, impa.s.sioned chantress, earned

The right to soar embodied in some soft Fine form all fit for cloud companions.h.i.+p, And, blissful, once touch beauty chased so oft.

Thamuris, marching, let no fancy slip Born of the fiery transport; lyre and song Were his, to smite with hand and launch from lip--

The next thing to touch on is his drawing of landscape, not now of separate pieces of Nature, but of the whole view of a land seen under a certain aspect of the heavens. All the poets ought to be able to do this well, and I drew attention to the brief, condensed, yet fan-opening fas.h.i.+on in which Tennyson has done it. Sometimes the poets describe what they see before them, or have seen; drawing directly from Nature.

Sometimes they invent a wide or varied landscape as a background for a human subject, and arrange and tone it for that purpose. Sh.e.l.ley did this with great stateliness and subtlety. Browning does not do it, except, perhaps, in _Christmas-Eve_, when he prepares the night for the appearance of Christ. Nevertheless, even in _Christmas-Eve_, the description of the lunar rainbow is of a thing he has seen, of a not-invented thing, and it is as clear, vivid and natural as it can be; only it is heightened and thrilled through by the expectancy and the thrill in Browning's soul which the reader feels and which the poet, through his emotion, makes the reader comprehend. But there is no suggestion that any of this feeling exists in Nature. The rainbow has no consciousness of the vision to come or of the pa.s.sion in the poet (as it would have had in Wordsworth), and therefore is painted with an accuracy undimmed by any transference to Nature of the soul of the poet.

I quote the piece; it is a n.o.ble specimen of his landscape work:

But lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition.

The black cloud barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady.

'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face.

It rose, distinctly at the base With its severe proper colours chorded Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white,-- Above which intervened the night.

But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circ.u.mflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flus.h.i.+er and flightier,-- Rapture dying along its verge.

Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the key-stone of that arc?

This is only a piece of sky, though I have called it landscape work. But then the sky is frequently treated alone by Browning; and is always present in power over his landscapes--it, and the winds in it. This is natural enough for one who lived so much in Italy, where the scenery of the sky is more superb than that of the earth--so various, n.o.ble and surprising that when Nature plays there, as a poet, her tragedy and comedy, one scarcely takes the trouble of considering the earth.

However, we find an abundance of true landscapes in Browning. They are, with a few exceptions, Italian; and they have that grandeur and breadth, that intensity given by blazing colour, that peculiar tint either of labyrinthine or of tragic sentiment which belong to Italy. I select a few of them:

The morn when first it thunders in March The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say; As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide Washed by the morning water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain side River and bridge and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal ball.

Here is the Roman Campagna and its very sentiment:

The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery gra.s.ses everywhere!

Silence and pa.s.sion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air-- Rome's ghost since her decease.

And this might be in the same place:

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward through the twilight--

This is a crimson sunset over dark and distant woods in autumn:

That autumn eve was stilled: A last remains of sunset dimly burned O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned By the wind back upon its bearer's hand In one long flare of crimson; as a brand The woods beneath lay black. A single eye From all Verona cared for the soft sky.

And if we desire a sunrise, there is the triumphant beginning of _Pippa Pa.s.ses_--a glorious outburst of light, colour and splendour, impa.s.sioned and rus.h.i.+ng, the very upsoaring of Apollo's head behind his furious steeds. It begins with one word, like a single stroke on the gong of Nature: it continues till the whole of the overarching vault, and the world below, in vast disclosure, is flooded with an ocean of gold.

Day!