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

And drew itself up close beside,

       Its great sail on the instant furled,

       And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,

       (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)

       'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?

       Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?

       A pilot for you to Triest?

       Without one, look you ne'er so big,

       They'll never let you up the bay!

       We natives should know best.'

       I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'

       Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves

       Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

      III

      "In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;

       And one, half-hidden by his side

       Under the furled sail, soon I spied,

       With great grass hat and kerchief black,

       Who looked up with his kingly throat,

       Said somewhat, while the other shook

       His hair back from his eyes to look

       Their longest at us; then the boat,

       I know not how, turned sharply round,

       Laying her whole side on the sea

       As a leaping fish does; from the lee

      28 Into the weather, cut somehow

       Her sparkling path beneath our bow,

       And so went off, as with a bound,

       Into the rosy and golden half

       O' the sky, to overtake the sun

       And reach the shore, like the sea-calf

       Its singing cave; yet I caught one

       Glance ere away the boat quite passed,

       And neither time nor toil could mar

       Those features: so I saw the last

       Of Waring!"—You? Oh, never star

       Was lost here but it rose afar!

       Look East, where whole new thousands are!

       In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

      "May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of grief for the death of a friend.

MAY AND DEATH

       Table of Contents

      I

      I wish that when you died last May,

       Charles, there had died along with you

       Three parts of spring's delightful things;

       Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.

      II

      A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!

       There must be many a pair of friends

       Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm

       Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

      29

      III

      So, for their sake, be May still May!

       Let their new time, as mine of old,

       Do all it did for me: I bid

       Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

      IV

      Only, one little sight, one plant,

       Woods have in May, that starts up green

       Save a sole streak which, so to speak,

       Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between—

      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