Part 18 (1/2)
I would we were boys as of old In the field, by the fold: His outrage, G.o.d's patience, man's scorn Were so easily borne!
I stand here now, he lies in his place; Cover the face.
Again, there are few studies in literature of contempt, hatred and revenge more sustained and subtle than Browning's poem ent.i.tled _A Forgiveness_; and the t.i.tle marks how, though the justice of revenge was accomplished on the woman, yet that pity, even love for her, accompanied and followed the revenge. Our natural revolt against the cold-blooded work of hatred is modified, when we see the man's heart and the woman's soul, into pity for their fate. The man tells his story to a monk in the confessional, who has been the lover of his wife. He is a statesman absorbed in his work, yet he feels that his wife makes his home a heaven, and he carries her presence with him all the day. His wife takes the first lover she meets, and, discovered, tells her husband that she hates him. ”Kill me now,” she cries. But he despises her too much to hate her; she is not worth killing. Three years they live together in that fas.h.i.+on, till one evening she tells him the truth. ”I was jealous of your work. I took my revenge by taking a lover, but I loved you, you only, all the time, and lost you--
I thought you gave Your heart and soul away from me to slave At statecraft. Since my right in you seemed lost, I stung myself to teach you, to your cost, What you rejected could be prized beyond Life, heaven, by the first fool I threw a fond Look on, a fatal word to.
”Ah, is that true, you loved and still love? Then contempt perishes, and hate takes its place. Write your confession, and die by my hand.
Vengeance is foreign to contempt, you have risen to the level at which hate can act. I pardon you, for as I slay hate departs--and now, sir,”
and he turns to the monk--
She sleeps, as erst Beloved, in this your church: ay, yours!
and drives the poisoned dagger through the grate of the confessional into the heart of her lover.
This is Browning's closest study of hate, contempt, and revenge. But bitter and close as it is, what is left with us is pity for humanity, pity for the woman, pity for the lover, pity for the husband.
Again, in the case of Sebald and Ottima in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, pity also rules. Love pa.s.sing into l.u.s.t has led to hate, and these two have slaked their hate and murdered Luca, Ottima's husband. They lean out of the window of the shrub-house as the morning breaks. For the moment their false love is supreme. Their crime only creeps like a snake, half asleep, about the bottom of their hearts; they recall their early pa.s.sion and try to brazen it forth in the face of their murder, which now rises, dreadful and more dreadful, into threatening life in their soul. They reanimate their hate of Luca to lower their remorse, but at every instant his blood stains their speech. At last, while Ottima loves on, Sebald's dark horror turns to hatred of her he loved, till she lures him back into desire of her again. The momentary l.u.s.t cannot last, but Browning shoots it into prominence that the outburst of horror and repentance may be the greater.
I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive me--be once more My great queen?
At that moment Pippa pa.s.ses by, singing:
The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; G.o.d's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!
Something in it smites Sebald's heart like a hammer of G.o.d. He repents, but in the cowardice of repentance curses her. That baseness I do not think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phrases which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual pa.s.sion of repentance. But his fury with her pa.s.ses away into the pa.s.sion of despair--
My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go--whirls from a black fiery sea!
lines which must have been suggested to Browning by verses, briefer and more intense, in Webster's
_d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_. Even Ottima, lifted by her love, which purifies itself in wis.h.i.+ng to die for her lover, repents.
Not me,--to him, O G.o.d, be merciful!
Thus into this cauldron of sin Browning steals the pity of G.o.d. We know they will be saved, so as by fire.
Then there is the poem on the story of _Cristina and Monaldeschi_; a subject too odious, I think, to be treated lyrically. It is a tale of love turned to hatred, and for good cause, and of the pitiless vengeance which followed. Browning has not succeeded in it; and it may be so because he could get no pity into it. The Queen had none. Monaldeschi deserved none--a coward, a fool, and a traitor! Nevertheless, more might have been made of it by Browning. The poem is obscure and wandering, and the effort he makes to grip the subject reveals nothing but the weakness of the grip. It ought not to have been published.
And now I turn to pa.s.sions more delightful, that this chapter may close in light and not in darkness--pa.s.sions of the imagination, of the romantic regions of the soul. There is, first, the longing for the mystic world, the world beneath appearance, with or without reference to eternity. Secondly, bound up with that, there is the longing for the unknown, for following the gleam which seems to lead us onward, but we know not where. Then, there is the desire, the deeper for its constant suppression, for escape from the prison of a worldly society, from its conventions and maxims of morality, its barriers of custom and rule, into liberty and unchartered life. Lastly, there is that longing to discover and enjoy the lands of adventure and romance which underlies and wells upwards through so much of modern life, and which has never ceased to send its waters up to refresh the world. These are romantic pa.s.sions. On the whole, Browning does not often touch them in their earthly activities. His highest romance was beyond this world. It claimed eternity, and death was the entrance into its enchanted realm.
When he did bring romantic feeling into human life, it was for the most part in the hunger and thirst, which, as in _Abt Vogler_, urged men beyond the visible into the invisible. But now and again he touched the Romantic of Earth. _Childe Roland_, _The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_, and some others, are alive with the romantic spirit.
But before I write of these, there are a few lyrical poems, written in the freshness of his youth, which are steeped in the light of the story-telling world; and might be made by one who, in the morning of imagination, sat on the dewy hills of the childish world. They are full of unusual melody, and are simple and wise enough to be sung by girls knitting in the suns.h.i.+ne while their lovers bend above them. One of these, a beautiful thing, with that touch of dark fate at its close which is so common in folk-stories, is hidden away in _Paracelsus_.
”Over the sea,” it begins:
Over the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave, A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat, and suppled with flame, To bear the playful billows' game.
It is made in a happy melody, and the curious mingling in the tale, as it continues, of the rudest s.h.i.+ps, as described above, with purple hangings, cedar tents, and n.o.ble statues,