Brownings Heroines | Page 9

thy choices or one of thy chances,

--My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,?Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!"
I have omitted two lines from this eight-lined stanza, and omitted them because they illustrate all too forcibly Browning's chief fault as a lyric--and, in this case, as a dramatic--poet. Both of them are frankly parenthetic; both parentheses are superfluous; neither has any incidental beauty to redeem it; and, above all, we may be sure that Pippa did not think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the certitude we feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt it. . . . In the same way, the opening rhapsody on dawn which precedes her invocation to the holiday is out of character--impossible to regard its lavish and gorgeous images as those (however sub-conscious) of an unlettered girl.
But all carping is forgotten when we reach
"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing"--
a poet's phrase, it is true, yet in no way incongruous with what we can imagine Pippa to have thought, if not, certainly, in such lovely diction to have been able to express. Thenceforward, until the episodical lines on the Martagon lily, the child and her creator are one. There comes the darling menace to the holiday--
". . . But thou must treat me not?As prosperous ones are treated . . .?For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest?Me, who am only Pippa--old year's sorrow,?Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:?Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow?Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.?All other men and women that this earth?Belongs to, who all days alike possess,?Make general plenty cure particular dearth,[26:1]?Get more joy one way, if another less:?Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven?What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven--?Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!"
Having made her threat and her invocation, she falls to thinking of those "other men and women," and tells her Day about them, like the child she is. They, she declares, are "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones." Each is, in the event, to be vitally influenced by her song, as she "passes" at Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night; but this she knows not at the time, nor ever knows.
The first Happy One is "that superb great haughty Ottima," wife of the old magnate, Luca, who owns the silk-mills. The New Year's morning may be wet--
". . . Can rain disturb?Her Sebald's homage? all the while thy rain?Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane,?He will but press the closer, breathe more warm?Against her cheek: how should she mind the storm?"
Here we learn what later we are very fully to be shown--that Ottima's "happiness" is not in her husband.
The second Happy One is Phene, the bride that very day of Jules, the young French sculptor. They are to come home at noon, and though noon, like morning, should be wet--
". . . what care bride and groom?Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their marriage day;

Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be?Sunbeams and pleasant weather, spite of thee."
The third Happy One--or Happy Ones, for these two Pippa cannot separate--are Luigi, the young aristocrat-patriot, and his mother. Evening is their time, for it is in the dusk that they "commune inside our turret"--
"The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,?She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,?For true content . . ."
Aye--though the evening should be obscured with mist, _they_ will not grieve--
". . . The cheerful town, warm, close,?And safe, the sooner that thou art morose?Receives them . . ."
That is all the difference bad weather can make to such a pair.
The Fourth Happy One is Monsignor, "that holy and beloved priest," who is expected this night from Rome,
"To visit Asolo, his brother's home,?And say here masses proper to release?A soul from pain--what storm dares hurt his peace??Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward?Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard."
And now the great Day knows all that the Four Happy Ones possess, besides its own "blue solemn hours serenely flowing"--for not rain at morning can hurt Ottima with her Sebald, nor at noon the bridal pair, nor in the evening Luigi and his mother, nor at night "that holy and beloved" Bishop . . .
"But Pippa--just one such mischance would spoil?Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil?At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil."
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All at once she realises