ROBERT BROWNING CHAPTER I "CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY" First published poem after Browning's_marriage in 1846Written from his home in Italy-Presentment of two Visions of Christ-Mystic Guide and Mystic Judge of mankind-Appearance out of Vision of great natural beauty remembered by the speaker-Great double moonrainbow-Visions arise after debate-Organised method of Christian worship-Freedom to worship alone-Examination of three methods of celebrating Christ's birthPrimitive chapel-St. Peter's, Rome-German lecturehall-The Judgment Contemporary record of Browning's attitude to orthodox Christianity-Mr. William Sharp Mrs. Sutherland Orr-Letters of BrowningAssertion of Robert Buchanan examined. ALTHOUGH not published till 1851, the poem of "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" was probably the work under his hand-the poem referred to in Browning's first letter to Miss Barrett in 1845 as having taken shape. Contrasting her method of work with his, he writes: "You speak out, you-I only make men and women speak-give you truth broken up into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me, but I am going to try.. It seems bleak melancholy work, this talking to the wind, for I have begun-yet I don't think I shall let you hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.' This spiritual ideal of Christ—the mystic living Christ, the risen Christ, the spiritual romance of Christ—is of the essence of "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"-that romance of the soul feeling about vaguely for a mystic communion with its own environment, coming suddenly upon the spiritual reality of Christ in the apparent void. In this poem and many others of the middle period of Browning's life the Christian mystic in the poet clothed itself. Upon that philosophy of the practical mystic the poet rose to his highest in "Saul," "The Epistle of Karshish the Arab Physician," "A Death in the Desert, "Fears and Scruples," "Cristina "; in the two great landmarks of Browning philosophy-" Abt Vogler" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra "; and the intellectualist's delight"A Grammarian's Funeral." In the two poems bracketed together as "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," there are pictures of the human mind called upon to face the question of organised Christian means "to make men believe," and the mystical reality of this conception of Christ is questioned by one who would know whether, perhaps, it was only an idea "built up and peopled" in his brain. In the first poem, "Christmas Eve," a man is presented sheltering in the porch of a little chapel, having been caught in a storm. As he waits, he watches the poor worshippers of Zion Chapel, Love Lane, which is at the edge of a common, pass in. He notes their poverty, their physical infirmities, their distrust of him among them; but, unabashed, he decides to see for himself this mode taken by these people of making men believe. He soon has enough of it with all its crudities of worship and the unloveliness of the worshippers. He muses outside on what these people firmly believe to be the "call of them"; he wonders at it, and decides it must be because they are built that way; it must be inherent tendency to believe, just as he has inherent tendency to make music, because the musical capacity was implanted in him; so perhaps it is only the fact, ""Tis the taught already that profits by teaching." He questions this mode of worship; he remembers how in youth he found God in the skies, saw power and equal evidence That his love, there too, was the nobler dower; Were diviner than a loveless God." He debates this question of the Power and the Love of God is it reality? He soliloquises upon the machinery of the brain given to man to compass perceptions with; he decides as to himself: "To let men keep their ways Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine— He is filled with joy at his freedom from the forms and narrow shrines of organised worship : "Oh, let men keep their ways When suddenly the sky filled: "North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, With its seven proper colours chorded, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier, Rapture dying along its verge. Ah, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc? |