Browning’s “In a Year” has seemingly the same foot and the same length of line as “A Woman’s Last Word,” but how different its effect! “In a Year” is made up of bursts of passion from an overburdened heart. It seems more subjective or more of a soliloquy.
There is not the same direct appeal to another, but no print can give the difference between the emotional movement of the two poems. In both, the trochaic foot and the very short line indicate abrupt outpouring of feeling.
Compare these two poems carefully. What is the significance of the form given them by Browning, the metre, the length of line, and the stanzas? Why are the stanzas of “In a Year” longer than those of “A Woman’s Last Word”? What is the effect of the difference in rhyme of these two poems? Does one detect any difference in the metric movement?
IN A YEAR
Never any more,
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive:
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun:
I as little understand
Love’s decay.
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sung,
—Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up his cheek the color sprung,
Then he heard.
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed but air I breathed,
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
Touched the sweet:
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
“Speak, I love thee best!”
He exclaimed:
“Let thy love my own foretell!”
I confessed:
“Clasp my heart on thine
Now unblamed,
Since upon thy soul as well
Hangeth mine!”
Was it wrong to own,
Being truth?
Why should all the giving prove
His alone?
I had wealth and ease,
Beauty, youth:
Since my lover gave me love,
I gave these.
That was all I meant,
—To be just,
And the passion I had raised,
To content.
Since he chose to change
Gold for dust,
If I gave him what he praised
Was it strange?
Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
—Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till all gone,
He should smile “She never seemed
Mine before.
“What, she felt the while,
Must I think?
Love’s so different with us men!”
He should smile:
“Dying for my sake—
White and pink!
Can’t we touch these bubbles then
But they break?”
Dear, the pang is brief,
Do thy part,
Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
Grows belief!
Well, this cold clay clod
Was man’s heart:
Crumble it, and what comes next?
Is it God?
Why is “Hervé Riel” in trochaic movement? It is heroic; why not then iambic? The poem opens in a mood of anxiety, a state of suspense, a fear of the certain loss of the fleet. When hope revives and Hervé Riel is introduced in the words,
“For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these,”
we have a line of mixed anapestic and iambic feet, expressive of resolution, courage, and confidence; so with the first and second lines of the sixth stanza expressing indignation at the pilots; also in much of his speech to the admirals.
If the poet had led us sympathetically to identify ourselves with Hervé Riel’s resolution and endeavor, the metre would have been anapestic or iambic, but he gives the feeling of admiration for Hervé Riel and we are made to contemplate how easily he performed his great deed, and hence the prevailing trochaic movement is one of the charms of the poem.
Criticism of this poem, such as I have heard, reveals a lack of appreciation of the dramatic spirit of metre. The trochaic delicately expresses the emotional feeling, admiration, and tenderness for the forgotten hero, as well as the anxiety and realization of danger in the first parts of the poem. The change to the iambic in the central part of the poem only proves the real character of the trochaic feet, and, in fact, accentuates their spirit. The trochee seems in general to indicate an outpouring of emotion or sudden burst of feeling too strong for control. Many of the most tender and prayerful hymns have this foot. It expresses also, at times, a sense of uneasiness or restlessness.