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

each other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the conversation of a stranger to that of his old associate."

      This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys, Domett sailed for New Zealand where he lived for thirty years, and held during that time many important official posts. Upon his return to England, Browning and he met again, and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published the year after, he wrote the often quoted line so aptly appreciative of Browning's genius—"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."

      The poem belongs to the vers de société order, albeit the lightness is of a somewhat ponderous variety. It, however, has much interest as a character sketch from the life, and is said by those who had the opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.

      20

WARING

       Table of Contents

      I

      I

      What's become of Waring

       Since he gave us all the slip,

       Chose land-travel or seafaring,

       Boots and chest or staff and scrip,

       Rather than pace up and down

       Any longer London town?

      II

      Who'd have guessed it from his lip

       Or his brow's accustomed bearing,

       On the night he thus took ship

       Or started landward?—little caring

       For us, it seems, who supped together

       (Friends of his too, I remember)

       And walked home thro' the merry weather,

       The snowiest in all December.

       I left his arm that night myself

       For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet

       Who wrote the book there, on the shelf—

       How, forsooth, was I to know it

       If Waring meant to glide away

       Like a ghost at break of day?

       Never looked he half so gay!

      III

      He was prouder than the devil:

       How he must have cursed our revel!

       Ay and many other meetings,

      21 Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,

       As up and down he paced this London,

       With no work done, but great works undone,

       Where scarce twenty knew his name.

       Why not, then, have earlier spoken,

       Written, bustled? Who's to blame

       If your silence kept unbroken?

       "True, but there were sundry jottings,

       Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,

       Certain first steps were achieved

       Already which"—(is that your meaning?)

       "Had well borne out whoe'er believed

       In more to come!" But who goes gleaning

       Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved

       Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening

       Pride alone, puts forth such claims

       O'er the day's distinguished names.

      IV

      Meantime, how much I loved him,

       I find out now I've lost him.

       I who cared not if I moved him,

       Who could so carelessly accost him,

       Henceforth never shall get free

       Of his ghostly company,

       His eyes that just a little wink

       As deep I go into the merit

       Of this and that distinguished spirit—

       His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,

       As long I dwell on some stupendous

       And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)

       Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous

       Demoniaco-seraphic

       Penman's latest piece of graphic.

      22 Nay, my very wrist grows warm

       With his dragging weight of arm.

       E'en so, swimmingly appears,

       Through one's after-supper musings,

       Some lost lady of old years

       With her beauteous vain endeavor

       And goodness unrepaid as ever;

       The face, accustomed to refusings,

       We, puppies that we were. … Oh never

       Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled

       Being aught like false, forsooth, to?

       Telling aught but honest truth to?

       What a sin, had we centupled

       Its possessor's grace and sweetness!

       No! she heard in its completeness

       Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,

       And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!

       Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt

       From damning us thro' such a sally;

       And so she glides, as down a valley,

       Taking up with her contempt,

       Past our reach; and in, the flowers

       Shut her unregarded hours.

      Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth

      V

      Oh, could I have him back once more,

       This Waring, but one half-day more!

       Back, with the quiet face of yore,

       So hungry for acknowledgment

       Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.

       Feed, should not he, to heart's content?

       I'd say, "to only have conceived,

       Planned your great works, apart from progress,

       Surpasses little works achieved!"

      23 I'd lie so, I should be believed.

       I'd make such havoc of the claims

       Of the day's distinguished names

       To feast him with, as feasts an ogress

       Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!

       Or as one feasts a creature rarely

       Captured here, unreconciled

       To capture; and completely gives

       Its pettish humors license, barely

       Requiring that it lives.