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

33 First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare 60 Charles I in Scene of Impeachment 80 Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford 88 Charles I 114 Whitehall 120 Westminster Hall 157 The Tower, London 170 The Tower, Traitors' Gate 183 An English Manor House 222 An English Park 240 John Bunyan 274 An English Inn 288 Cardinal Wiseman 336 Sacred Heart 342 The Nativity 351 The Transfiguration 366 Handel 426 Avison's March 446

      1

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS

      To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:

      I

      "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!

      II

      "But you were living before that,

       And also you are living after;

       And the memory I started at—

       My starting moves your laughter!

      III

      "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:

      2

      IV

      "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."

      It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage in "Pauline."

      "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!

       Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring

       Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,

       Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,

       But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,

       Like mighty works which tell some spirit there

       Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,

       Till, its long task completed, it hath risen

       And left us, never to return, and all

       Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.

       The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,

       But thou art still for me as thou hast been

       When I have stood with thee as on a throne

       With all thy dim creations gathered round

       Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,

       And with them creatures of my own were mixed,

       Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.

       But thou art still for me who have adored

       Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name

      3 Which I believed a spell to me alone,

       Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!

       As one should worship long a sacred spring

       Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,

       And one small tree embowers droopingly—

       Joying to see some wandering insect won

       To live in its few rushes, or some locust

       To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird

       Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:

       And then should find it but the fountain-head,

       Long lost, of some great river washing towns

       And towers, and seeing old woods which will live

       But by its banks untrod of human foot,

       Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering

       In light as some thing lieth half of life

       Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;

       Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay