'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so—mildly sweet.'
'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so—mildly sweet.'
'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so—mildly sweet.'
'I throw aside the learned sheet;
I cannot choose but gaze, she looks so—mildly sweet.'
Out on the foolish phrase, but there's hard rhyming without it.
Ever yours faithfully,
Robert Browning.
E.B.B. to R.B.
50 Wimpole Street: Feb. 27, 1845.
Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new 'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets. To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow—it feels as cold underfoot—and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. That is my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the new style! A little later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries, spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age, Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a poet—does he not?—by analysing humanity back into its elements, to the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is—strictly speaking—the office of the poet, is it not?—and he discharges it fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into a song.'