Robert Browning: How to Know Him | Page 5

woman he loved, to give
her something entirely apart from his gifts to the world. He wished that
he could do something other than poetry for his wife, and in the next
life he believed that it would be possible. But here God had given him
only one gift--verse: he must therefore present her with a specimen of
the only art he could command; but it should be utterly unlike all his
other poems, for they were dramatic; here just once, and for one
woman only, he would step out from behind the scenes, and address her
directly in his own person.
Of course Browning could have modelled a statue, or written a piece of
music for Elizabeth, for in both of these arts he had attained moderate
proficiency: but he wished not only to make a gift just for her, but to
give it to her in public, with the whole world regarding; therefore it
must be of his best.
He calls her his _moon_ of poets. He reminds her how a few days ago,
they had seen the crescent moon in Florence, how they had seen it
nightly waxing until it lamped the facade of San Miniato, while the
nightingales, in ecstasy among the cypress trees, gave full-throated
applause. Then they had travelled together to London, and now saw the
same dispirited moon, saving up her silver parsimoniously, sink in
gibbous meanness behind the chimney-tops.

The notable thing about the moon is that whereas the earth, during one
revolution about the sun, turns on its own axis three hundred and
sixty-five times, the shy moon takes exactly the same length of time to
turn around as she takes to circle once around the earth. For this reason,
earth's inhabitants have never seen but one side of the moon, and never
will. Elizabeth Browning is _his_ moon, because she shows the other
side to him alone. The radiant splendor of her poetry fills the whole
earth with light; but to her husband she shows the other side, the loving,
domestic woman, the unspeakably precious and intimate associate of
his daily life. The world thinks it knows her; but it has seen only one
side; it knows nothing of the marvellous depth and purity of her real
nature.
ONE WORD MORE
TO E.B.B. 1855
I
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems
finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the
heart lies, let the brain lie also.
II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain
volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to
draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view--but one, the volume.

Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and
love it all her life-time?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die,
and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael's
glory,
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving--
Cheek, the world
was wont to hail a painter's,
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a
poet's?
III

You and I would rather read that volume,
(Taken to his beating
bosom by it)
Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we
not? than wonder at Madonnas--
Her, San Sisto names, and Her,
Foligno,
Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
Her, that's left with
lilies in the Louvre--
Seen by us and all the world in circle.
IV
You and I will never read that volume.
Guido Reni, like his own eye's
apple
Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it
Guido Reni
dying, all Bologna
Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the
treasure!"
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
V
Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
Whom to please? You whisper
"Beatrice."
While he mused and traced it and retraced it,

(Peradventure with a pen corroded
Still by drops of that hot ink he
dipped for,
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
Back he
held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for
parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the
wretch go festering through Florence)--
Dante, who loved well
because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante
standing, studying his angel,--
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

Says he--"Certain people of importance"
(Such he gave his daily
dreadful line to)
"Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
Says
the poet-"Then I stopped my painting."
VI
You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of
Dante,
Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.
VII

You and I will never see that picture.
While he mused on love and
Beatrice,
While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
In they broke,
those "people of importance":
We and Bice bear the loss for ever.
VIII
What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
This: no artist lives and
loves, that longs not
Once, and only once, and for one only,
(Ah,
the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and
sufficient--
Using nature that's an art