The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning. Edward Berdoe
she is with me, – years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not.”
Another Way of Love. See One Way of Love, this poem being its sequel.
Any Wife to Any Husband. A dying wife finds the bitterest thing in death to be the certainty that her husband’s love for her, which, would life but last, she could retain, will fade and wither when she is no longer present to tend it:
“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence.”
The great pure love of a wife is a reign of love. Woman’s love is more durable and purer than man’s, and few men are entirely worthy of being the objects of that which they can so imperfectly understand. Mr. Nettleship, commenting on this poem, very truly says, “The real love of the man is never born until the love of the woman supplements it.” The wife of the poem feels that there would be no difficulty in her case about being faithful to the memory of her husband; but she foresees that his love will not long survive the loss of her personal presence. This will be to depreciate the value of his life to him; his love will come back to her again at last, back to the heart’s place kept for him, but with a stain upon it. The old love will be re-coined, re-issued from the mint, and given to others to spend, alas! with some alloy as well as with a new image and superscription. She foresees that he will dissipate his soul in the love of other woman, he will excuse himself by the assurance that the light loves will make no impression on the deep-set memory of the woman who is immortally his bride; he will have a Titian’s Venus to desecrate his wall rather than leave it bare and cold, – but the flesh-loves will not impair the soul-love.
Apollo and the Fates. (See Prologue to Parleyings.) Apollo (the Sun God), having offended Jupiter by slaying the Cyclopes, who forged his thunderbolts by which he had killed Æsculapius for bringing dead men to life, had been banished from heaven. He became servant to Admetus, king of Thessaly, in whose employment he remained nine years as one of his shepherds. He was treated with great kindness by his master, and they became true lovers of each other. When Apollo, restored to the favour of heaven, had left the service of Admetus and resumed his god-like offices, he heard that his old master and friend was sick unto death, and he determined to save his life. Accordingly he descended on Mount Parnassus, and penetrated to the abode of the Fates, in the dark regions below the roots of the mountains, and there he found the three who preside over the destinies of mankind – Clotho with her distaff, Lachesis with her spindle, and Atropos with a pair of scissors about to cut the thread of Admetus’ life – and begins to plead for the life of his friend Admetus, whom Atropos has just doomed to death. The Fates bid Apollo go back to earth and wake it from dreams. Apollo demands a truce to their doleful amusement, and requests them to extend the years of Admetus to threescore and ten. The Fates ask him if he thinks it would add to his friend’s joy to have his life lengthened, seeing that life is only illusion? Infancy is but ignorance and mischief, youth becomes foolishness, and age churlishness. Apollo should ask for life for one whom he hates, not for the friend he loves. The Sun’s beams produce such semblance of good as exists by simply gilding the evil. Apollo objects that if it were happier to die, men’s greeting would not be “Long life!” but “Death to you!” Man loves his life, and he ought to know best. The Fates say this is all the glamour shed by Apollo’s rays. Apollo concedes that man desponds when debarred of illusion: “suppose he has in himself some compensative law?” and the God then produces a bowl of wine, man’s invention, of which he invites them to taste. The Fates, after some objection, drink and get tipsy and merry, Atropos even declaring she could live at a pinch! Apollo delivers them a lecture; he tells them Bacchus invented the wine; as he was the youngest of the gods, he had to discover some new gift whereby to claim the homage of man. He tampered with nothing already arranged, yet would introduce change without shock. As the sunbeams and Apollo had transformed the Fates’ cavern without displacing a splinter, so has the gift of Bacchus turned the adverse things of life to a kindlier aspect; man accepts the good with the bad, and acquiesces in his fate; this is the work of Zeus. He demands of the Fates if, after all, Life be so devoid of good? “Quashed be our quarrel!” they exclaim, and they dance till an explosion from the earth’s centre brings them to their senses once more, and the pact is dissolved. They learn that the powers above them are not to be cajoled into interfering with the laws of life and the inevitable decrees of which the Fates are but the ministers. At last they agree to lengthen the life of Admetus if any mortal can be found to forgo the fulfilment of his own life on his account. Apollo protests that the king’s subjects will strive with one another for the glory of dying that their king may survive. First in all Pheræ will his father offer himself as his son’s substitute. “Bah!” says Clotho. “Then his mother,” suggests Apollo; “or, spurning the exchange, the king may choose to die.” With the jeers of the three the scene closes. Mr. Browning’s lovely poem Balaustion’s Adventure should be read next after this, as the Prologue to the Parleyings has little or no relation to the rest of the volume.
Notes. —Parnassus, a mountain of Greece, sacred to the Muses and Apollo and Bacchus. Dire ones, the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Admetus, the husband of Alcestis, whose wife died to save his life. The Fates, the Destinies, the goddesses supposed to preside over human life: Clotho, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, who determines the length of the thread; Atropos, who cuts it off. Woe-purfled, embroidered with woe. Weal-prankt, decked out with prosperity. Moirai, the Parcæ, the Fates. Zeus, Jupiter, the Supreme Being. Eld, old age. Sweet Trine, the Three, the Trinity of Fates. Bacchus, the Wine-God. Semele’s Son: Semele was the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia; when Zeus appeared to her in his Divine splendour she was consumed by the flames and gave birth to Bacchus, whom Zeus saved from the fire and hid in his thigh. Bacchus, when made a god, raised her to heaven under the name of Thyone. Swound, a swoon. Cummers, gossips, female acquaintances. Collyrium, eye-wash. Pheræ, a town in Thessaly, where King Pheres reigned, who was the father of Admetus.
Apparent Failure. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) Mr. Ruskin has laboured hard to save St. Mark’s, Venice, from the destroying hand of the restorer. Mr. Browning wrote this poem to save from complete destruction a much less important, though a celebrated building, the Paris Morgue, the deadhouse wherein are exposed the bodies of persons found dead, that they may be claimed by their friends. The Doric little Morgue is close to Notre Dame, on the banks of the Seine, and is one of the sights of Paris – repulsive as it is – which everybody makes a point of seeing. The poet entered the building and saw behind the great screen of glass three bodies exposed for identification on the copper couch fronting him. They were three men who had killed themselves, and the poet mentally questions them why they abhorred their lives so much. You “poor boy” wanted to be an emperor, forsooth; you “old one” were a red socialist, and this next one fell a prey to misdirected love. The three deadly sins of Pride, Covetousness, and Lust had each its victim. And before them stands the poet of optimism, not staggered in his doctrine even by this sad sight. Not for a moment does his faith fail that “what God blessed once can never prove accurst.” His optimism in this poem is at high-water mark; where some weak-kneed believers in humanity would have found a breaking link in the chain, Mr. Browning sees but “apparent failure,” and declines to believe the doom of these poor wrecks of souls to be final.
Apparitions. (Introduction to The Two Poets of Croisic, 1878.) This exquisite poem is a tribute to the charm exercised by a human face, from which looks out God’s own smile, gladdening a cold and scowling prospect as a burst of May soon dispels the lingering chills of winter.
Appearances. (Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876.) Metaphysicians would explain this poem by an essay on the association of ideas; strong as imagination is, it can never exceed experience which has come to us through sight. Feelings are associated with one another according as they have been operant in more or less frequent succession. Reasoning may associate ideas, but for force and permanence our actual sight, and contact are the wonder-workers in this department