"My heart! they loose my heart, those simple words;
Its darkness passes which naught else could touch."
The Mayne, or Main, is the most important of the right-hand tributaries of the Rhine. Wurzburg, where Festus and Paracelsus had been as students, is on its banks. Its University was especially noted for its medical department. Mr. Stopford Brooke (The Poetry of Robert Browning, p. 99) says of this lovely lyric: "I have driven through that gracious country of low hill and dale and wide water-meadows, where under flowered banks only a foot high the slow river winds in gentleness; and this poem is steeped in the sentiment of the scenery. But, as before, Browning quickly slides away from the beauty of inanimate nature into a record of the animals that haunt the streams. He could not get on long with mountains and rivers alone. He must people them with breathing, feeling things; anything for life!"
[CAVALIER TUNES]
These three, stirring songs represent the gay, reckless loyalty of the Cavaliers to the cause of King Charles I and their contempt for his Puritan opposers. The Puritans wore closely cropped hair; hence the Parliament which came together in 1640 and was controlled by the opponents of the King, is dubbed "crop-headed." John Pym and John Hampden were leaders in the struggle against the tyranny of the King. Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Sir Henry Vane were also adherents of Oliver Cromwell. Rupert, Prince of the Palatinate, was a nephew of Charles I and was a noted cavalry leader on the royal side during the Civil War. The followers of the King unfurled the royal standard at Nottingham in August, 1642; Kentish Sir Byng raised a troop and hurried on to join the main royal army. In September occurred the battle of Edgehill. The "Noll" (l. 16 of "Give a Rouse") is Oliver Cromwell. The third song was entitled originally "My Wife Gertrude." It was she who held the castle of Brancepeth against the Roundheads.
[THE LOST LEADER]
This poem indignantly records a poet's defection from the cause of progress and liberty. Who this poet might be was for some time a matter of conjecture. Wordsworth, Southey, and Charles Kingsley, all of whom had gone from radicalism in their youth to conservatism in their old age, were severally proposed as the original of Browning's portrait. The poem was published in 1845, two years after Wordsworth was made poet laureate. Early in 1845 Wordsworth was presented at court, a proceeding which aroused comment—sometimes amused, sometimes indignant—from those who recalled the poet's early scorn of rank and titles. Browning and Miss Barrett exchanged several gay letters on this subject in May, 1845. In commenting on a letter from Miss Martineau describing Wordsworth in his home in 1846, Browning wrote, "Did not Shelley say long ago, 'He had no more imagination than a pint-pot'—though in those days he used to walk about France and Flanders like a man. Now, he is 'most comfortable in his worldly affairs' and just this comes of it! He lives the best twenty years of his life after the way of his own heart—and when one presses in to see the result of his rare experiment—what the one alchemist whom fortune has allowed to get all his coveted materials and set to work at last with fire and melting pot—what he produces after all the talk of him and the like of him; why, you get pulvis et cinis—a man at the mercy of the tongs and shovel." In later life, however, Browning spoke of Wordsworth in a different tone. In a letter to Mr. Grosart, written Feb. 24, 1875, he said, "I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered, I can't remember how many times. There is no sort of objection to one more assurance, or rather confession, on my part, that I did in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model; one from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and turned to account. Had I intended more—above all such a boldness as portraying the entire man—I should not have talked about 'handfuls of silver and bits of ribbon.' These never influenced the change of politics in the great poet—whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied as it was by a regular face-about of his special party, was, to my private apprehension, and even mature consideration, an event to deplore. But, just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognize figures which have struck out a fancy, on occasion, that though truly enough thus derived, yet would be preposterous as a copy; so, though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it considered as the 'very effigies' of such a moral and intellectual superiority." For an interesting parallelism in theme, see Whittier's "Ichabod."
20. Whom. The reference is to the lower classes, whom the Liberals were endeavoring to rouse to aspiration and action. The Conservatives opposed such [beginnings] of independence.
29. Best fight on well. It is the deserting leader who is exhorted to fight well. Though it is pain to have him desert their party, they have gloried in his power and it would be an even greater pain to see him weak. They wish him to fight well even though their cause is thereby menaced.