Browning's England: A Study in English Influences in Browning. Helen Archibald Clarke

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      V

      That, they might spare; a certain wood

       Might miss the plant; their loss were small:

       But I—whene'er the leaf grows there,

       Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.

      The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst in connection with English Nature he sings out in his longing for an English spring in the incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts, from Abroad."

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

       Table of Contents

      I

      Oh, to be in England

       Now that April's there,

       And whoever wakes in England

       Sees, some morning, unaware,

      30 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

       Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

       While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

       In England—now!

      II

      And after April, when May follows,

       And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

       Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

       Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

       Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—

       That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over

       Lest you should think he never could recapture

       The first fine careless rapture!

       And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

       All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

       The buttercups, the little children's dower

       —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

      After this it seems hardly possible that Browning, himself speaks in "De Gustibus," yet long and happy living away from England doubtless dimmed his sense of the beauty of English landscape. "De Gustibus" was published ten years later than "Home-Thoughts from Abroad," when Italy and he had indeed become "lovers old." A deeper reason than mere delight in its scenery is also reflected in the poem; the sympathy shared with Mrs. Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.

      31

"DE GUSTIBUS——"

       Table of Contents

      I

      Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,

       (If our loves remain)

       In an English lane,

       By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.

       Hark, those two in the hazel coppice—

       A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,

       Making love, say—

       The happier they!

       Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,

       And let them pass, as they will too soon,

       With the bean-flower's boon,

       And the blackbird's tune,

       And May, and June!

      II

      What I love best in all the world

       Is a castle, precipice-encurled,

       In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.

       Or look for me, old fellow of mine,

       (If I get my head from out the mouth

       O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,

       And come again to the land of lands)—

       In a sea-side house to the farther South,

       Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,

       And one sharp tree—'tis a cypress—stands,

       By the many hundred years red-rusted,

       Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,

       My sentinel to guard the sands

       To the water's edge. For, what expands

       Before the house, but the great opaque

      32 Blue breadth of sea without a break?

       While, in the house, for ever crumbles

       Some fragment of the frescoed walls,

       From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.

       A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles

       Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,

       And says there's news to-day—the king

       Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,

       Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:

       —She hopes they have not caught the felons.

       Italy, my Italy!

       Queen Mary's saying serves for me—

       (When fortune's malice

       Lost her—Calais)—

       Open my heart and you will see

       Graved inside of it, "Italy."

       Such lovers old are I and she:

       So it always was, so shall ever be!

      Two or three English artists called forth appreciation in verse from Browning. There is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb," after a group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance and Arthur—the deaf and dumb children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.

DEAF AND DUMB

       СКАЧАТЬ