The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
touch of fear. Love me and wish me well!
RICHMOND,
October 22, 1832.
Je crains biers que mon pauvre ami ne soit pas toujours parfaitement compris dans ce qui reste à lire de cet étrange fragment — mais it est moins propre que tout autre à éclaircir ce qui de sa nature ne peut jamais être que songe et confusion. D’ailleurs je ne sais trop si en cherchant à mieux co-ordonner certaines parties l’on ne courrait pas le risque de nuire au seul mérite auquel une production si singulière peut prétendre — celui de donner une idée assez précise du genre qu’elle n’a fait que ébaucher. — Ce début sans prétention, ce remuement des passions qui va d’abord en accroissant et puis s’appaise par degrés, ces élans de l’âme, ce retour soudain sur soi-même. — Et par dessus tout, la tournure d’esprit toute particulière de mon ami rendent les changemens presque impossibles. Les raisons qu’il fait valoir ailleurs, et d’autres encore plus puissantes, ont fait trouver grâce à mes yeux pour cet écrit qu’autrement je lui eusse conseillé de jeter au feu. — Je n’en crois pas moins au grand principe de toute composition — à ce principe de Shakespeare, de Raffaelle, de Beethoven, d’où il suit que la concentration des idées est dûe bien plus à leur conception, qu’a leur mise en execution … j’ai tout lieu de craindre que la première de ces qualités ne soit encore étrangère à mon ami — et je doute fort qu’un redoublement de travail lui fasse acquérir la seconde. Le mieux serait de brûler ceci; mais que faire?
Je crois que dans ce qui suit il fait allusion à un certain examen qu’il fit autrefois de l’âme ou plutôt de son âme, pour découvrir la suite des objets auxquels il lui serait possible d’atteindre, et dont chacun une fois obtenu devait former une espèce de plateau d’ou l’on pouvait aperçevoir d’autres buts, d’autres projets, d’autres jouissances qui, à leur tour, devaient être surmontés. Il en résultait que l’oubli et le sommeil devaient tout terminer. Cette idée que je ne saisis pas parfaitement lui est peutêtre aussi intelligible qu’à moi.
PAULINE.
Sordello
DEDICATION
TO J. MILSAND, OF DIJON.
Dear Friend, — Let the next poem be introduced by your name, therefore remembered along with one of the deepest of my affections, and so repay all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since; for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many might — instead of what the few must, — like: but after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so — you, with many known and unknown to me, think so — others may one day think so; and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours, R. B.
London, June 9, 1863.
SORDELLO BOOK THE FIRST.
Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told:
His story? Who believes me shall behold
The man, pursue his fortunes to the end,
Like me: for as the friendless-people’s friend
Spied from his hill-top once, despite the din
And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin
Named o’ the Naked Arm, I single out
Sordello, compassed murkily about
With ravage of six long sad hundred years.
Only believe me. Ye believe?
Appears
Verona… Never, — I should warn you first, —
Of my own choice had this, if not the worst
Yet not the best expedient, served to tell
A story I could body forth so well
By making speak, myself kept out of view,
The very man as he was wont to do,
And leaving you to say the rest for him.
Since, though I might be proud to see the dim
Abysmal past divide its hateful surge,
Letting of all men this one man emerge
Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past,
I should delight in watching first to last
His progress as you watch it, not a whit
More in the secret than yourselves who sit
Fresh-chapleted to listen. But it seems
Your setters-forth of unexampled themes,
Makers of quite new men, producing them,
Would best chalk broadly on each vesture’s hem
The wearer’s quality; or take their stand,
Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand,
Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends,
Summoned together from the world’s four ends,
Dropped down from heaven or cast up from hell,
To hear the story I propose to tell.
Confess now, poets know the dragnet’s trick,
Catching the dead, if fate denies the quick,
And shaming her; ‘t is not for fate to choose
Silence or song because she can refuse
Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to ache
Less oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake:
I have experienced something of her spite;
But there ‘s a realm wherein she has no right
And I have many lovers. Say; but few
Friends fate accords me? Here they are: now view
The host I muster! Many a lighted face
Foul