For another example of Browning’s short poems take “A Woman’s Last Word.”
Suppose one tries to read this as if it were an ordinary lyric. One is sure to be greatly confused as to its meaning. What is it all about? The words are simple enough, and while the ordinary man recognizes this, he is all the more perplexed. Perceiving certain merits, he exclaims, “If a man can write such beautiful individual lines, why does he not make his whole story clear and simple?”
If, however, one will meditate over the whole, take hints here and there and put them together, a distinct picture is slowly formed in the mind. A wife, whose husband demands that she explain to him something in her past life, is speaking. She has perhaps loved some one before him, and his curiosity or jealousy is aroused. The poem really constitutes her appeal to his higher nature and her insistence upon the sacredness of their present relation, which she fears words may profane. She does not even fully understand the past herself. To explain would be false to him, hence with love and tenderness she pleads for delay. Yet she promises to speak his “speech,” but “to-morrow, not to-night.” Perhaps she hopes that his mood will change; possibly she feels that he is not now in the right attitude of mind to understand or sympathize with her experiences.
A WOMAN’S LAST WORD
Let’s contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
—Only sleep!
What so wild as words are?
I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!
See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek.
What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent’s tooth is,
Shun the tree—
Where the apple reddens,
Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought—
Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.
That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight:
—Must a little weep, Love,
(Foolish me!)
And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.
In this poem a most delicate relation between two human beings is interpreted. Short though it is, it yet goes deeper into motives, concentrates attention more energetically upon one point of view, and is possibly more impressive than if the theme had been unfolded in a play or novel. It turns the listener or reader within himself, and he feels in his own breast the response to her words.
All great art discharges its function by evoking imagination and feeling, but it is not always the intellectual meaning which first appears.
However far apart these two poems may be in spirit or subject, there are certain characteristics common to them; they are both monologues.
The monologue, as Browning has exemplified it, is one end of a conversation. A definite speaker is conceived in a definite, dramatic situation. Usually we find also a well-defined listener, though his character is understood entirely from the impression he produces upon the speaker. We feel that this listener has said something and that his presence and character influence the speaker’s thought, words, and manner. The conversation does not consist of abstract remarks, but takes place in a definite situation as a part of human life.
We must realize the situation, the speaker, the hearer, before the meaning can become clear; and it is the failure to do this which has caused many to find Browning obscure.