Music Poems. The great poems dealing with music are “Abt Vogler,” “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” and “Charles Avison.” Other poems which are musical in a lesser degree are “Saul,” “A Grammarian’s Funeral,” “The Serenade,” “Up at a Villa,” “The Heretic’s Tragedy.” “Balaustion’s Adventure” and “Fifine” also have incidental music references.
My Last Duchess—Ferrara. (Published first in Bells and Pomegranates, III., under Dramatic Lyrics, with the title “Italy,” in 1842; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) A stern, severe, Italian nobleman, with a nine-hundred-years’ name, is showing his picture gallery, to the envy of a Count whose daughter he is about to marry. He is standing before the portrait of his last duchess, for he is a widower, and is telling his companion that “the depth and passion of her earnest glance” was not reserved for her husband alone, but the slightest courtesy or attention was sufficient to call up “that spot of joy” into her face. “Her heart,” said the duke, “was too soon made glad, too easily impressed.” She smiled on her husband (she was his property, and that was right); she smiled on others (on every one, in fact), and that was an infringement of the rights of property which this dealer in human souls could not brook, so he “gave commands,”—“then all smiles stopped together.” The concentrated tragedy of this line is a good example of the poet’s power of compressing a whole life story in two or three words. The heartless duke instantly dismisses the memory of his duchess and her fount of human love sealed up “by command.” “We’ll go together down, sir,”—and as they descend he draws his guest’s attention to a fine bronze group, and discusses the question of the dowry he is to receive with the woman who is to succeed his last duchess.
Note.—Fra Pandolf and Claus of Innsbruck are imaginary artists. Without very careful attention several delicate points in this poem will be lost. When the duke said “Fra Pandolf” by design, he desired to impress on the envoy, and his master the Count, the sort of behaviour he expected from the woman he was about to marry. He intimated that he would tolerate no rivals for his next wife’s smiles. When he begs his guest to “Notice Neptune——taming a sea horse,” he further intimated how he had tamed and killed his last duchess. All this was to convey to the envoy, and through him to the lady, that he demanded in his new wife the concentration of her whole being on himself, and the utmost devotion to his will.
My Star. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) To one observer a beautiful star may appear in iridiscent colours unobserved by others; just as, by looking at a prism from a certain angle, we catch a play of rainbow tints which they might miss by adopting a different point of view. Where strangers see a world, the singer obtains access to a soul which opens to him all its glory, as the prism reveals the constituent colours which combine to make the cold white ray of light. The poem has been considered to be a tribute to Mrs. Browning.
My Wife Gertrude. See [Boot and Saddle].
Naddo (Sordello) was a troubadour, and the Philistine friend and counsellor of Sordello. He told Sordello not to try to introduce his own ideas to the world: poetry should be founded in common-sense and deal with the common ideas of mankind. The poet should, above all things, try to please his audience. People like calm and repose. He must not attempt to rise to an intellectual level his readers have not reached. Sordello, he said, should be satisfied with being a poet, and not aim at being a leader of men as well. Mr. Browning is in all this defending himself and satirising the popular view of the poet’s province.
Names, The. A poem written for the “Show-Book” of the Shakespearean Show at the Albert Hall, May 1884, held on behalf of the Hospital for Women in the Fulham Road, London:—
“Shakespeare!—to such name’s sounding, what succeeds
Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,—
Act follows word, the speaker knows full well,
Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads
With his soul only: if from lips it fell,
Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven, and hell,
Would own, ‘Thou didst create us!’ Nought impedes
We voice the other name, man’s most of might,
Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love
Mutely await their working, leave to sight
All of the issue as—below—above—
Shakespeare’s creation rises: one remove,
Though dread—this finite from that infinite.”
Robert Browning, March 12th, 1884.