CROSSING THE BAR SUNSET and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. I X ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) F there is a poet whose mission it is to sus tain, comfort, and inspire to noble action and God-like feeling, it is Robert Browning. His words often seem possessed with a perverse kinkiness, and it may be that the greater part of what he wrote is too hard reading for the ordinary mortal. But there is a small body of poems that are simple, noble, warm and glowing, heroic, and satisfying. Browning was not a man of creed, but the religion in his poems will prove enough for most men to live by and die by. He understood human passions, he was a splendid lover, and tenderly sympathetic with women. In him we seem to find women with all their faults, but somehow at their best, more passionate and more lovable than those of any other poet. He had known the bitterness of disappointment, most of all disappointment in the loved one, and likewise the splendor of action; and his faith in ultimate success, and in the victory of man over nature, is so bluff and hearty that few in his presence would have the courage to doubt. He knows the worst; therefore he can prove the better. Says John Addington Symonds, "His genius is robust with vigorous blood, and his tone has 66 the cheeriness of intellectual health. . . . His poetry is a tonic; it braces and invigorates." Mr. Browning has interpreted every one of our emotions, from divine love to human friendship," says Andrew Lang, "from the despair of the soul to the depths of personal hatred." "He never seems to be telling us what he thinks and feels," says Richard Grant White, "but he puts before us some man, male or female, whose individuality soon becomes as clear and as absolute as our own. The poet does not appear; indeed so wholly is he merged in the creature of his own will that, as we hear that creature speak, his creator is, for the time, completely forgotten." Yet somehow we feel Browning in every line he wrote. 66 It is easy to give a superficial summary of Browning, but not so easy to reveal the satisfying depths of his poetry. On the surface it is rugged and involved; but underneath we find almost limitless thought. Browning had plenty to say on whatever subject he took up," says Saintsbury, "and had a fresh, original, vigorous manner of saying it." But the things he says in which we are most deeply interested are his soundings of the depths of love — human love and divine love. "Life is never life to him except in those hours when it rises to a complete outpouring of itself. To live is to experience intensely." We are reminded of Byron; but while Byron was seeking intensity of life in a romantic and adventurous mode of living, Browning apparently found complete satisfaction for his passions in an orderly and respected life, in the narrow limits to which most of us are doomed. But while we speak of being "doomed" to the commonplace, he brought out of it greater wonders, and found in it a more intense and lasting satisfaction than the world of romantic excitement ever furnished, or ever could furnish. Perhaps the element which saves Browning's philosophy is his humor. Says John Addington Symonds, "As a humorist in poetry, Browning takes rank with our greatest. His humor, like most of his qualities, is peculiar to himself; though no doubt Carlyle has something of it. It is of remarkably wide capacity, and ranges from the effervescence of pure fun and freak to that salt and briny laughter whose taste is bitterer than tears." THERE'S a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest; And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith 's the surest: And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wildgrape cluster, Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted And this woman says, "My days were sunless, and my nights were moonless, Parch'd the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless, If you loved me not!" And I who- (ah, for words of flame!) adore her, Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me! LOVE AMONG THE RUINS I WHERE the quiet-colour'd end of evening smiles, On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country's very capital, its prince Held his court in, gather'd councils, wielding far Now, II the country does not even boast a tree, As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on nor be press'd, III And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads |