Part 8 (1/2)

Lovely, again, are the lines in which she speaks of the first ”thrill of dawn's suffusion through her dark,” the ”light of the unborn face sent long before:” or those unique lines of the starved soul's Spring (ll

1512-27): or those, of the birth of her little one--

”A whole long fortnight; in a life likeand much

All women are not mothers of a boy

I never realised God's birth before-- How he grew likest God in being born

This ti a little on my breast like hers”

When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triu shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by And I rise----”

who does not realise that to life's end he shall not forget that plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that ineffable dying smile, those wistful eyes with so”books” are more tiresome andsections--the first of the two, indeed, is intolerably wearisoe after the sweet air and sunlit summits of ”Caponsacchi” and ”Pompilia”

In the next ”book” Innocent XII is revealed All this section has a lofty serenity, unsurpassed in its kind It must be read from first to last for its full effect, but I h-water mark of modern blank-verse:--

”For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of fate

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible: There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved”

Finally co, terrible last ”book” where the ht to bay and knows that all is lost Who can forget its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly, in his supre cry--

”Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God,

Poue rounds off the tale But is this Epilogue necessary? Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted?

It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to arrive at a definite conviction No individual or collective estimate of to-day can be accepted as final Those who coain, will see ”The Ring and the Book” free of all the ment Meanwhile, each can only speak for hiarded as an artistic whole, the nificent failure in our literature It enshrines poetry which no other than our greatest could have written; it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended Surely the poeed by the balance of its success and failure? It is in no presu-loved and often-read, this superb poeue, the Plea of Guido, ”Caponsacchi,” ”Pompilia,” ”The Pope,” and Guido's last Defence I cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read in the years to come Thus circureat work of art void of the dross, the mere _debris_ which the true artist discards But as it is, in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging i's genius?

”The Inn Album,” a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the uty of the tidal ebb and flow 's life-work--the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of ”Pauline,” and, with ”long withdrawing roar,” ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultiard it as the gathering of a neave--nay, again rather, as the deep sound of ocean which the outward surge has reached

But for myself I do not accept ”The Inn Albu of the tide I see slow poise of ”The Ring and the Book” Where then is the full splendour and rush of the tide, where its cul reach and power?

I should say in ”Men and Women”; and by ”Men and Women” I mean not merely the poems comprised in the collection so entitled, but all in the ”Dramatic Romances,” ”Lyrics,” and the ”Dramatis Personae,” all the short pieces of a certain intensity of note and quality of power, to be found in the later volumes, from ”Pacchiarotto” to ”Asolando”

And this because, in the words of the poet hi of Shelley, I prefer to look for the highest attain it, to hold by it Yet I a's lofty achieve h, that around its imperfect proportions, ”the e themselves as inferior illustrations”

How am I to convey concisely that which it would take a volume to do adequately--an idea of the richest efflorescence of Browning's genius in these unfading blooree to include in ”Men and Women”? How better--certainly it would be impossible to be more succinct--than by the enuined volume, to be called, say ”Transcripts froidly, arranged chronologically

It would begin with that edy is burned in upon the brain in fifty-six lines, ”My Last duchess” Then would follow ”In a Gondola,” that haunting lyrical drama _in petto_, where the lover is stabbed to death as his heart is beating against that of his htfully stirring pieces, the ”Cavalier-Tunes,”

”Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr,” and ”The Pied Piper of Haht of the duchess”; ”The Tomb at St

Praxed's,” the poem which educed Ruskin's enthusiastic praise for its es; ”Pictor Ignotus,”

and ”The Lost Leader” But as there is not space for individual detail, and as many of the more important are spoken of elsewhere in this voluranted So, following those first hts frohts froedy”; ”Earth's I”; ”Saul”; ”Karshi+sh”; ”A Death in the Desert”; ”Rabbi Ben Ezra”; ”A Gra_, ”Nay but you”; ”A Lover's Quarrel”; ”Evelyn Hope”; ”A Woman's Last Word”; ”Fra Lippo Lippi”; ”By the Fireside”; ”Any Wife to Any Husband”; ”A Serenade at the Villa”; ”My Star”; ”A Pretty Woht Woether”; ”A Toccata of Galuppi's”; ”Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha”; ”Abt Vogler”; ”Memorabilia”; ”Andrea Del Sarto”; ”Before”; ”After”; ”In Three Days”; ”In a Year”; ”Old Pictures in Florence”; ”De Gustibus”; ”Woel”; ”Cleon”; ”Two in the Cana”; ”One Way of Love”; ”Another Way of Love”; ”Misconceptions”; ”May and Death”; ”James Lee's Wife”; ”Dis Aliter Visum”; ”Too Late”; ”Confessions”; ”Prospice”; ”Youth and Art”; ”A Face”; ”A Likeness”; ”Apparent Failure”

Epilogue to Part I--”O Lyric Voice,” etc, fro and the Book” Part II--”Herve Riel”; ”Aic”; ”Magical Nature”; ”Bifurcation”; ”Nuiveness”; Epilogue to Pacchiarotto voluue to ”Two Poets of Croisic”; ”Epilogue”; ”Pheidippides”; ”Halbert and Hob”; ”Ivan Ivanovitch”; ”Echetlos”; ”Muleykeh”; ”Pan and Luna”; ”Touch hiue to ”Jocoseria”; ”Cristina and Monaldeschi”; ”Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli”; ”Ixion”; ”Never the Ti_, ”Round us the wild creatures ”; _Song_, ”Wish no word unspoken ”; _Song_, ”You groped your way”; _Song_:, ”Man I a”; ”Not with my Soul Love”; ”Ask not one least word of praise”; ”Why from the world”; ”The Round of Day” (Pts 9, 10, 11, 12 of Gerard de Lairesse); Prologue to ”Asolando”; ”Rosny”; ”Now”; ”Poetics”; ”Summum Bonum”; ”A Pearl”; ”Speculative”; ”Inapprehensiveness”; ”The Lady and the Painter;”

”Beatrice Signorini”; ”Iue to ”Asolando” (in all, 122)