Name: Zarna Bhatti
Roll No: 5
Enrollment no.PG15101005
Email Id: zarnabhatti10@gmail.com
Paper: Victorian Age
Topic Name: Brief analysis of Robert Browning's Poem
Submitted: Department of English MKBU
∎
Introduction:
Robert
Browning was born at Cornwall
on May 7, 1812.
He was the son of a clerk in the bank of England. Browning is one of
the greatest love poets in English poetry. He is not concerned with
divine love or the love of God, love of country, love of family, but
with only kind of love-the love between man and women. He has
produced a host of poems dealing with love on the physical plain.
Browning’s poems of love give expression to all phases of physical
love
He
also wrote a series of lyrics, including the pied piper of Hamelin
and porphyria’s lover. His poems are known for their irony,
characterization, dark humor, social commentary, historical settings
and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
His
famous work are:
“Dramatic
Lyric”
“Dramatic
Romance and Lyric”
“Men
and women”
“Dramatic
Persone”
His
famous dramatic narrative like: “Pippa Passes”
Dramatic
lyric like: “The Last Ride Together”
“Rudelto
the Lady of Tripoli”.
Browning’s
love poetry is intensely realistic in character. A man loves a woman
not for her spiritual qualities, but for her physical charm and
passion. Browning’s heroes love their beloveds because they are
women with passion, having all the persuasive charm of winning
ladies. Realism is the central working force of Browning’s love
poetry. The imagery of his love poetry is that of suburban streets,
straws, garden-rakes, medicine bottles, pianos, and
fashionablefurcoats.
“Browning’s
love poetry is the finest in the world because it does not talk about
raptures and ideals and gates of heaven.
“Says.
K. Chesterton “but
about window panes and gloves and garden walls. It does not deal with
abstractions. It is the truest of all love poetry, because it does
not speak much about love. It awakens in every man the memories of
that immortal instant when common
and dead things had
meaning beyond the power of any millionaire to compute.”
Browning’s
love poetry is complex and comprehensive dealing with cases of
successful as well as unsuccessful love. Of the poems whose subject
is physical love, about two third represent the feelings of man, and
one third the feelings of woman. The love poems thus deal more with
man’s feelings than women.
Here,
we find some love poems of Robert Browning. Poem title is
My
Last Duchess
That’s
my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking
as if she were alive. I call
That
piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked
busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t
please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra
Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers
like you that pictured countenance,
The
depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But
to myself they turned (since none puts by
The
curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And
seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How
such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are
you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not
Her
husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of
joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra
Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over
my lady’s wrist too much,” or “paint
Must
never hope to reproduce the faint
Half
– flush that dies along her throat”: suchstuff
Was
courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For
calling up that spot of joy. She had
A
heart- how shall I say?-too soon made glad,
Too
easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She
looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir,
‘was all one! My favour at her breast,
The
dropping of the daylight in the West,
The
bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke
in the orchard for her, the white mule
She
rode with round the terrace-all and each
Would
draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or
blush, at least. She thanked men,-good! But thanked
Somehow-I
know not how-as if she ranked
My
gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With
anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This
sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In
speech-(which I have not)-to make your will
Quite
clear to such as one, and say, “Just this
Or
that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or
there exceed the mark”-and if she let
Herself
be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her
wits to tours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-E’en
then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never
to stoop. Oh sir smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er
I passed her; but who passed without
Much
the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then
all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As
if alive.Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The
company below, then. I repeat,
The
Count your master’s known munificence
Is
ample warrant that no just pretence
Of
mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though
his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At
starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together
down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming
a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which
Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
∎Analysis:
Here
we can say that, this poem is based on historical events involving
Alfonso, the Duck of Ferrara, who lived in 16thcentury.
Underneath
the title “My
Last Duchess” is
the name Ferrara, and the poem’s sole speaker is the Duke of
Ferrara, a character based in part on Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara (in
Italy) in the sixteenth century. Alfonso’s wife, a young girl, died
in 1561, and Alfonso used an agent to negotiate a second marriage to
the niece of the Count of Tyrol.
In
Robert Browning’s poem, the Duke of Ferrara speaks to an agent
representing the count. The duke begins by referring to “my last
duchess,” his first wife, as he draws open a curtain to display a
portrait of her which is hanging on the wall. She looks “alive,”
and the duke attributes this to the skill of the painter, Fra
Panadol. After saying that he alone opens the curtain, the duke
promptly begins a catalog of complaints about the way his wife had
acted.
The
jolly Mack-up on her cheek that can be seen in the portrait was a
result, the duke says, of her reaction to Fra Randolph’s
compliments about her beauty. The duke responsibility his late wife
for smiling back at Fra Pandolf, for being courteous to everyone she
encountered, for enjoying life too much. She failed to appreciate his
name, which can be traced back nine hundred years, and she failed to
see him as superior to others. The duke would not condescend to
correct her attitude. She should have known better, he says, and “I
choose/ Never to stoop.”
The
final characterization the duke gives of his former duchess reveals
his obsessive possessiveness and jealousy. He acknowledges that she
smiled when she saw him, but complains that she gave much the same
smile to anyone else she saw. His next statement reveals that he
caused her to be killed: “I gave commands; then all smiles stopped
together.” He does not elaborate further. There is her portrait, he
says, looking as if alive. The duke tells the agent that they will
next go downstairs to meet others. As the duke and the count’s
agent start down the stairs, the duke points out a bronze statue of
Neptune taming a seahorse and notes that it was made especially for
him by Claus of Innsbruck. Although this appears to be a change in
subject, it summarizes the duke’s clear message to the agent. In
addition to the wealth she must bring, the second wife, like the
seahorse, must be “tamed” to her role as his duchess. The clear
implication is that if she does not meet his requirements, she may
well end up like the last duchess, “alive” only in a portrait.
“Porphyria’s
Lover”
The
rain set early in tonight,
The
sullen wind was soon awake,
It
tore the elm-tops down for spite,
and
did its worst to vex the lake:
I
listened with heart fit to break.
When
glided in Porphyria; straight
She
shut the cold out and the storm,
And
kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze
up, and all the cottage warm;
Which
done, she rose, and form her form
Withdrew
the dripping cloak and shawl,
And
laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her
hat and let the damp hair fall,
And,
last, she sat down by my side
And
called me. When no voice replied,
She
put my arm about her waist,
And
made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And
all her yellow hair displaced,
And,
stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And
spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring
how she loved me-she
Too
weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,
To
set its struggling passion free
From
pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And
give herself to me forever.
But
passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor
could tonight’s gay feast restrain
A
sudden thought of one so pale
For
love of her, and all in vain:
So,
she was come through wind and rain.
Be
sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy
and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria’s
worshiped me: surprise
Made
my heart swell, and still it grew
While
I debated what to do.
That
moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly
pure and good: I found
A
thing to do, and all her hair
In
one logy yellow string I wound
Three
times her little throat around,
And
strangled her. No pain felt she;
I
am quite sure she felt no pain.
As
a shut bud that holds a bee,
I
warily oped her lids: again
Laughed
the blue eyes without a stain.
And
I untightened next the tress
About
her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed
bright beneath my burning kiss:
I
propped her head up as before
Only,
this time my shoulder bore
Her
head, which droops upon it still:
The
smiling rosy little head,
So
glad it has its utmost will,
That
all it scorned at once is fled,
And
I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria’s
love: she guessed not how
Her
darling one wish would be heard.
And
thus we sit together now,
And
all night long we have not stirred,
And
yet God has not said a word!
∎Analysis:
“Porphyria’s
Lover” is a poem by Robert Browning which was first published as
“Porphyria” in the 1836. “Porphyria’s Lover” is browning
first ever short dramatic monologue, and also the first of his poems
to examine abnormal psychology. “Porphyria’s Lover” then talks
of the corpse’s blue eyes, golden hair, and describes the felling
of perfect happiness the murder gives him. It is impossible to know
the true nature of his relationship to porphyria. The persona may
also be waiting in vain for some sign of god’s approval.
“Porphyria’s
Love (1836), is one of the earliest and most shocking of Browning’s
dramatic monologues.
Here,
in this poem land of symbols. In this poem of the
meter of
“porphyria’s Lover” is regular iambic tetrameter.
The poem
takes place in a house near a lake probably out in the country
somewhere.
Browning’s
dramatic monologue. The speaker lives in a cottage in the
countryside. In this poem rhyming ABAB. This poem is a dramatic
monologue a fictional speech as the music of a speaker who is
separate from the poet.
∎ My
Star
All
that I know
Of
a certain star
Is,
it can throw
(Like
the angled spar)
Now
a dart of red,
Now
a dart of blue;
Till
my friends have said
They
would fain see, too,
My
star that datles the red and
the
blue!
Then
it stops like a bird; like a
Flower,
hangs furled:
They
must solace themselves
with
the Saturn above it.
What
matte to me if their star is
A
world?
Mine
has opened its soul to me;
therefore
I love it.
It
means that life is not good all the time, we may encounter bad
experiences that teaches us lessons to ponder and to reflect with.
Here
we can say that, the speaker tells of “a certain star” of which
he knows nothing except that “it can throw” beautiful red and
blue darts of light. Because of his enthusiasm, his friends ask to
see it.
But
when they look, it stops. The friends instead fix their attention on
Saturn, which sits “above” the star.
Men
and women
∎ Analysis:
A
short and simple poem published as part of Men
and Women in
1855, “My Star” is impressive in its concise inspection of love’s
singularity. It puts forth the idea that love is an intensely
subjective experience that is appreciated differently by each person.
It is more than likely that Men
and Women, Browning’s
first collection in years after marrying Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
is meant to comment on their relationship. To whatever extent that
might have inspired it, the poem is undoubtedly a love poem, the
message of which suggests that the beauty any person might hold for
another is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and that to love is
to lose interest in how the beloved is viewed objectively.
In
fact, the single use of the word “love” in the very last line is
one of several factors that suggest the poem’s primary theme is not
love, but the nature of subjectivity. The first stanza detention the
speaker’s excitement in its short lines, whereas the second stanza,
with its longer, more traditionally structured lines, affects a type
of objectivity. From the objective standpoint, the star is nothing
special, especially next to the planet. The poem suggests more than
just that love is in the eye of the beholder, but by extension, that
everything perceivable is equally subject to untranslatable personal
experience.
∎
Conclusion:
We
can say that, Robert Browning dedicate much attention not only to
creating a strong sense of character, but also to developing a high
level of historical specificity and general detail. Browning is one
of the greatest love poets in English poetry. He wrote so many things
in his poem. His poems are known for their irony, historical settings
and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
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