Prologue to Ferishtah’s Fancies. This is intended to describe the peculiar construction of the volume of poems. The poet tells his readers how ortolans are eaten in Italy: the birds are stuck on a skewer, some dozen or more, each having interposed between himself and his neighbour on the spit a bit of toast and a strong sage leaf; and the eater is intended to bite through crust, seasoning, and bird altogether, so the lusciousness is curbed and the full flavour of the delicacy is obtained. The poem, we are told, is dished up on the same principle. We have sense, sight and song here, and all is arranged to suit our digestion. We have the fancy or fable, then a dialogue, and a melodious lyric to conclude; so, in the twelve poems, we may see twelve ortolans, with their accompanying toast and sage leaf.
Notes.—Ortolans (Emberiza hortulana): the garden bunting, a native of Continental Europe and Western Asia. It is very much like the yellowhammer. They are netted, and fed in a darkened room with oats and other grain. They soon become very fat, and are then killed for the table; the birds are much prized by gourmands. Gressoney, a village in the valley of the Aosta. Val d’Aosta, valley of the Aosta, in northern Piedmont.
Prologue to Pacchiarotto. The poet is imprisoned on a long summer day with his feet on a grass plot and his eyes on a red brick wall. True, the wall is clothed with a luxuriant creeper through which the bricks laugh, and the robe of green pulsates with life, beautifying the barrier. He reflects that wall upon wall divide us from the subtle thing that is spirit: though cloistered here in the body-barrier, he will hope hard, and send his soul forth to the congenial spirit beyond the ring of neighbours which, like a fence of brick and stone, divides him from his love.
Prospice == “Look forward” (Dramatis Personæ, 1864) was written in the autumn following Mrs. Browning’s death. St. Paul speaks of those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”: the author of Prospice and the Epilogue to Asolando was not of this class. Few men have written as nobly as he on the awful “minute of night,” and its fight with the “Arch Fear.” Estimating it at its fullest import, as only a great imaginative mind can do, he is in face of “the black minute” and “the power of the night”—the Mr. Greatheart of the pilgrims to the dark river. Nothing grander has been written on the subject than the poems we have named. In the short poem Prospice is concentrated the strength of a great soul and the courage of one who is prepared for the worst, with eyes unbandaged. As an example of the poet’s power nothing can be finer. The dramatic intensity of the opening lines—the fog, the mist, the snow, and the blasts which indicate the journey’s end, “the post of the foe”—is unsurpassed even by Shakespeare himself. It is a defiance of death, a challenge to battle.
Protus. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) There is no historical foundation for the poem. In the declining years of the Roman Empire such rapid transitions of power were not uncommon. A baby Emperor Protus is described in some ancient work as absorbing the interest of the whole empire: queens ministered at his cradle. The world rose in war till he was presented at a balcony to pacify it. Greek sculptors and great artists strove to impress his graces on their work, his subjects learned to love the letters of his name; and on the same page of the history it was recorded how the same year a blacksmith’s bastard, by name John the Pannonian, arose and took the crown and wore it for six years, till his sons poisoned him. What became of the young Emperor Protus was then but mere hearsay: perhaps he was permitted to escape; he may have become a tutor at some foreign court, or, as others say, he may have died in Thrace a monk. “Take what I say,” wrote the annotator, “at its worth.”
Puccio. (Luria.) The officer in the Florentine army who was superseded by the Moorish leader Luria.
Queen, The. (In a Balcony.) The middle-aged woman who, though married, falls in love with Norbert, the lover of Constance. She prepares to divorce her husband and marry her officer. When, however, she discovers the truth about the young lovers, she is the prey of jealousy and offended dignity, and the drama closes with ominous prospects for the unfortunate couple.
Queen Worship. Under this title were originally published two poems: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; and ii., Cristina.
Quietism. See [Molinists].