The all-stupendous tale,—that Birth,
That Life, that Death! (E. D., ll. 233-234.)
Thus in Easter Day is to be found no trace of that “easy tolerance” in matters spiritual which suggests itself—only, however, to be finally rejected—to the soliloquist of Christmas Eve as the result of his night’s experiences. But a comparison of the two poems will be more satisfactorily made after a brief separate consideration of each in this and Lecture V. Lecture VI will be mainly occupied with a discussion of criticisms relating to both, as well as to the question of vital importance touching Browning’s own position—How far must the conclusions of either or both be regarded as dramatic in character?
From a merely artistic point of view Christmas Eve presents its own peculiar interest. Having once read it, in whatever degree our minds may have become impressed by its theological or dogmatic arguments, externals have been so forcibly presented, that Zion Chapel and the common outside “at the edge of which the Chapel stands,” always thereafter bear for us a curious kind of familiarity similar to that which attaches itself to remembered haunts of our childish days. The first three Sections of the Poem contain what may certainly be classed amongst the most grimly realistic descriptions in English literature. It may, indeed, be objected that these opening stanzas are perilously realistic in character where poetry is concerned, fitted rather for the pages of Dickens or of Gissing than for their present position.
The fat weary woman,
Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones.
Then “the many-tattered little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother,” “the sickly babe with its spotted face,” and the
Tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,
With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief. (ll. 48-82.)
In short, read the second Section in its entirety. Such description is certainly not “poetic.” But Browning knew well what he was doing. Influenced doubtless by his love of striking effects, we cannot but feel that he makes the unpleasing characteristics of the congregation assembled within the walls of Zion Chapel the more repellant, that the transition from the mundane to the divine may strike the reader with greater force. From the flock sniffing
Its dew of Hermon
With such content in every snuffle.
the soliloquist of the poem calls us to follow him as he “flings out of the little chapel”; and with Section IV we have passed into the boundless waste of the common, where is
A lull in the rain, a lull
In the wind too; the moon ... risen
[Which] would have shone out pure and full,
But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
Block on block built up in the West. (ll. 185-189.)