Foundation of Literature

Name : Septi Mardiana

NPM : 06211210665

Class : B / IV

Subject : Foundation of Literature

Author : Robert Browning

City Publish : London

Page : 6

Two in the Campagna

I wonder how you feel to-day

As I have felt since, hand in hand,

We sat down on the grass, to stray

In spirit better through the land,

This morn of Rome and May?

For me, I touched a thought, I know,

Has tantalized me many times,

(Like turns of thread the spiders throw

Mocking across our path) for rhymes

To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it! First it left

The yellow fennel, run to seed

There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,

Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed

Took up the floating weft,

Where one small orange cup amassed

Five beetles, -blind and green they grope

Among the honey meal: and last,

Everywhere on the grassy slope

O traced it. Hold it fast!

The Champaign with its endless fleece

Of feathery grasses everywhere!

Silence and passion, joy and peace,

An everlasting wash of air-

Rome's ghost since her decease.

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,

Such miracles performed in play,

Such primal naked forms of flowers,

Such letting nature have her way

While heaven looks from its towers!

How say you? Let us, O my dove,

Let us be unashamed of soul,

As earth lies bare to heaven above!

How is it under our control?

To love or not to love?

I would that you were all to me,

You that is just so much, no more.

Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!

Where does the fault lie? What the core

O' the wound, since wound must be?

I would I could adopt your will,

See with your eyes, and set my heart

Beating by yours, and drink my fill

At your soul's springs, - your part my part

In life, for good and ill.

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,

Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,

Catch your soul's warmth, - I pluck the rose

And love it more than tongue can speak-

Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far

Our of that minute? Must I go

Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,

Onward, whenever light winds blow,

Fixed by no friendly star?

Just when I seemed about to learn!

Where is the thread now? Off again!

The Old trick! Only I discern-

Infinite passion and the pain

Of finite hearts that yearn.

Summary     :

This represents one of Browning's more abstract poems. Returning to some of the themes developed in "Porphyria's Lover," albeit in a very different context, "Two in the Campagna" explores the fleeting nature of love and ideas. The speaker regrets that, just as he cannot ever perfectly capture an idea, he cannot achieve total communion with his lover, despite the helpful erotic suggestions of nature. Though our hearts be finite, we yearn infinitely; the resulting pain serves as a reminder of human limitations.

Porphyria's Lover

The rain set early in tonight,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up and all the cottage warm;

Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

And, last, she sat down by my side

And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me--she

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,

To set its struggling passion free

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

And give herself to me forever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

For love of her and all in vain:

So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshiped me: surprise

Made my heart swell and still it grew

While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I enlightened next the tress

About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

I propped her head up as before

Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

That all it scorned at once is fled,

And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

And all night long we have not stirred,

And yet God has not said a word!

Summary :

Porphyria's Lover, which first appeared in 1836, is one of the earliest and most shocking of Browning's dramatic monologues. The speaker lives in a cottage in the countryside. His lover, a blooming young woman named Porphyria, comes in out of a storm and proceeds to make a fire and bring cheer to the cottage. She embraces the speaker, offering him her bare shoulder. He tells us that he does not speak to her. Instead, he says, she begins to tell him how she has momentarily overcome societal strictures to be with him. He realizes that she "worship[s]" him at this instant. Realizing that she will eventually give in to society's pressures, and wanting to preserve the moment, he wraps her hair around her neck and strangles her. He then toys with her corpse, opening the eyes and propping the body up against his side. He sits with her body this way the entire night, the speaker remarking that God has not yet moved to punish him.

Home-Thoughts, From Abroad

Oh, to be in England,

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

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!

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!

Summary :

"Home-Thoughts, From Abroad" celebrates the everyday and the domestic, taking the form of a short lyric. The poet casts himself in the role of the homesick traveler, longing for every detail of his beloved home. At this point in his career, Browning had spent quite a bit of time in Italy, so perhaps the longing for England has a bit of biographical urgency attached to it. The poem describes a typical springtime scene in the English countryside, with birds singing and flowers blooming. Browning tries to make the ordinary magical, as he describes the thrush's ability to recreate his transcendental song over and over again.

Memorabilia

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,

And you are living after,

And the memory I started at--

My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own

And a certain use in the world no doubt,

Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone

'Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather

And there I put inside my breast

A moulted feather, an eagle-feather--

Well, I forget the rest.

Summary :

According to historical anecdote, this poem stems from an encounter Browning had with a person who had once met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Shelley died quite young, when Browning himself was only ten). Browning reacted with awe when the man described his meeting with the famed poet, and the man is said to have laughed at him for this reaction. This short lyric relates Browning's feelings about this encounter to his feelings at walking across a moor and finding an eagle's feather.