Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
Of soul, ye bards!
Quoth Bard the first:
“Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don
His helm and eke his habergeon ...”
Sir Olaf and his bard.—!
“That sin-scathed brow” (quoth Bard the second),
“That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned
My hero to some steep, beneath
Which precipice smiled tempting Death....”
You too without your host have reckoned!
“A beggar-child” (let’s hear this third!)
“Sat on a quay’s edge: like a bird
Sang to herself at careless play,
And fell into the stream. ‘Dismay!
Help, you the stander-by!’ None stirred.
“Bystanders reason, think of wives
And children ere they risk their lives.
Over the balustrade has bounced
A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
Plumb on his prize. ‘How well he dives!
“‘Up he comes with the child, see, tight
In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite
A depth of ten feet—twelve, I bet!
Good dog! What, off again? There’s yet
Another child to save? All right!
“‘How strange we saw no other fall!
It’s instinct in the animal.
Good dog! But he’s a long while under:
If he got drowned I should not wonder—
Strong current, that against the wall!
“‘Here he comes, holds in mouth this time
—What may the thing be? Well, that’s prime!
Now, did you ever? Reason reigns
In man alone, since all Tray’s pains
Have fished—the child’s doll from the slime!’
“And so, amid the laughter gay,
Trotted my hero off,—old Tray,—
Till somebody, prerogatived
With reason, reasoned: ‘Why he dived,
His brain would show us, I should say.
“‘John, go and catch—or, if needs be,
Purchase that animal for me!
By vivisection, at expense
Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence,
How brain secretes dog’s soul, we’ll see!’”
This short poem well illustrates Browning’s peculiar spirit and earnestness, and also the strong hold which his chosen dramatic form had upon him. It was written as a protest against vivisection. Browning represents the speaker as one seeking for an expression among the poets of the true heroic spirit. “Bard the first” opens with the traditions and spirit of knighthood, but the speaker interrupts him suddenly in the midst of his first sentence, implying by his tone of disgust that such views of heroism are out of date.
The second bard begins in the spirit of a later age,
“‘That sin-scathed brow ...
That eye wide ope, ...’”
and starts to portray a hero facing death on some precipice, but the speaker again interrupts. He is equally dissatisfied with this type of hero found in the pages of Byron or Bret Harte.
When the third begins—“A beggar child,”—the speaker indicates a sudden interest, “let’s hear this third!” The speech of the third bard must be given with greater interest and simplicity, and in accordance with the spirit of the age,—the change from the extravagant to the perfectly simple and true, from the giant in his mail, or the desperado, to just a little child and a dog.
Approval and tenderness should be shown by the modulations of the voice. Long, abrupt inflections express the excitement resulting from the discovery that the child has fallen into the stream, “Dismay! Help.” Then observe the sarcastic reference to human selfishness, and, in tender contrast to the action of the bystanders, old Tray is introduced, followed by the remarks of the on-lookers and their patronizing description of the dog’s conduct. Notice that the quotation is long, and that the point of view of the careless bystanders is preserved. The spirit of these bystanders is given in their own words until they laugh at old Tray’s pains and blind instinct in fishing up the child’s doll from the stream. Now follows the real spirit of bard the third, who portrays the sympathetic admiration for the dog.
“‘And so, amid the laughter gay,’”
requires a sudden change of key and tone-color to express the intensity of feeling and the general appreciation of the mystery of “a mere instinctive dog.”
The poem closes with an example of the cold, analytic spirit of the age, that hopes to settle the deepest problems merely by experiment.