The Last Ride Together. — Section 45

1.

I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,

Since now at length my fate I know,

Since nothing all my love avails,

Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

Since this was written and needs must be—

My whole heart rises up to bless

Your name in pride and thankfulness!

Take back the hope you gave,—I claim

Only a memory of the same,

—And this beside, if you will not blame,

Your leave for one more last ride with me.

— St.1. Browning has no moping melancholy lovers. His lovers generally reflect his own manliness; and when their passion is unrequited, they acknowledge the absolute value of love to their own souls. As Mr. James Thomson, in his ‘Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning’, remarks (‘B. Soc. Papers’, Part II., p.246), “Browning’s passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle, and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited {George Meredith} has defined passion as ‘noble strength on fire’; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; ... Browning’s passion is of utter self-sacrifice, self-annihilation, self-vindicated by its irresistible intensity.

So we read it in ‘Time’s Revenges’, so in the scornful condemnation of the weak lovers in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, so in ‘In a Balcony’, and ‘Two in the Campagna’, with its

“‘Infinite passion and the pain

Of finite hearts that yearn.’

Is the love rejected, unreturned? No weak and mean upbraidings of the beloved, no futile complaints; a solemn resignation to immitigable Fate; intense gratitude for inspiring love to the unloving beloved. So in ‘A Serenade at the Villa’; so in ‘One Way of Love’, with its

“‘My whole life long I learned to love.

This hour my utmost art I prove

And speak my passion.—Heaven or Hell?

She will not give me Heaven?  ‘Tis well!

Lose who may—I still can say,

Those who win Heaven, blest are they!’

So in ‘The Last Ride Together’, with its

“‘I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,’” etc.

2.

My mistress bent that brow of hers;

Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs

When pity would be softening through,

Fixed me a breathing-while or two

With life or death in the balance:  right!

The blood replenished me again;

My last thought was at least not vain:

I and my mistress, side by side,

Shall be together, breathe and ride,

So, one day more am I deified.

Who knows but the world may end to-night?

3.

Hush! if you saw some western cloud

All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed

By many benedictions—sun’s

And moon’s and evening-star’s at once—

And so, you, looking and loving best,

Conscious grew, your passion drew

Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,

Down on you, near and yet more near,

Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—

Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear

Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

4.

Then we began to ride.  My soul

Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll

Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

Past hopes already lay behind.

What need to strive with a life awry?

Had I said that, had I done this,

So might I gain, so might I miss.

Might she have loved me? just as well

She might have hated, who can tell!

Where had I been now if the worst befell?

And here we are riding, she and I.

5.

Fail I alone, in words and deeds?

Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,

Saw other regions, cities new,

As the world rushed by on either side.

I thought,—All labor, yet no less

Bear up beneath their unsuccess.

Look at the end of work, contrast

The petty done, the undone vast,

This present of theirs with the hopeful past!

I hoped she would love me:  here we ride.

6.

What hand and brain went ever paired?

What heart alike conceived and dared?

What act proved all its thought had been?

What will but felt the fleshy screen?

We ride and I see her bosom heave.

There’s many a crown for who can reach.

Ten lines, a statesman’s life in each!

The flag stuck on a heap of bones,

A soldier’s doing! what atones?

They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.

My riding is better, by their leave.

7.

What does it all mean, poet?  Well,

Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell

What we felt only; you expressed

You hold things beautiful the best,

And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.

‘Tis something, nay ‘tis much:  but then,

Have you yourself what’s best for men?

Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—

Nearer one whit your own sublime

Than we who have never turned a rhyme?

Sing, riding’s a joy!  For me, I ride.

8.

And you, great sculptor—so, you gave

A score of years to Art, her slave,

And that’s your Venus, whence we turn

To yonder girl that fords the burn!

You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

What, man of music, you grown gray

With notes and nothing else to say,

Is this your sole praise from a friend,

“Greatly his opera’s strains intend,

But in music we know how fashions end!”

I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

9.

Who knows what’s fit for us?  Had fate

Proposed bliss here should sublimate

My being—had I signed the bond—

Still one must lead some life beyond,

Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

This foot once planted on the goal,

This glory-garland round my soul,

Could I descry such?  Try and test!

I sink back shuddering from the quest.

Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?

Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

10.

And yet—she has not spoke so long!

What if heaven be that, fair and strong

At life’s best, with our eyes upturned

Whither life’s flower is first discerned,

We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

What if we still ride on, we two,

With life forever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,

The instant made eternity,—

And heaven just prove that I and she

Ride, ride together, forever ride?

By the Fireside.

1.

How well I know what I mean to do

When the long dark autumn evenings come;

And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?

With the music of all thy voices, dumb

In life’s November too!

St. 1, v. 3.  is:  present used for the future, shall then be.

2.

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,

O’er a great wise book, as beseemeth age;

While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,

And I turn the page, and I turn the page,

Not verse now, only prose!

St. 2.  Not verse now, only prose:  he shall have reached

the “years which bring the philosophic mind”.

3.

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,

“There he is at it, deep in Greek:

Now then, or never, out we slip

To cut from the hazels by the creek

A mainmast for our ship!”

4.

I shall be at it indeed, my friends!

Greek puts already on either side

Such a branch-work forth as soon extends

To a vista opening far and wide,

And I pass out where it ends.

St. 4.  Greek puts already such a branch-work forth as will soon extend

to a vista opening far and wide, and he will pass out where it ends

and retrace the paths he has trod through life’s pleasant wood.

5.

The outside frame, like your hazel-trees—

But the inside-archway widens fast,

And a rarer sort succeeds to these,

And we slope to Italy at last

And youth, by green degrees.

6.

I follow wherever I am led,

Knowing so well the leader’s hand:

Oh woman-country, wooed not wed,

Loved all the more by earth’s male-lands,

Laid to their hearts instead!

St. 5, 6.  He will pass first through his childhood, in England,

represented by the hazels, and on, by green degrees, to youth and Italy,

where, knowing so well the leader’s hand, and assured as to whither

she will conduct him, he will follow wherever he is led.

7.

Look at the ruined chapel again

Half-way up in the Alpine gorge!

Is that a tower, I point you plain,

Or is it a mill, or an iron forge

Breaks solitude in vain?

St. 7.  Look:  to be construed with “follow”.

8.

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;

The woods are round us, heaped and dim;

From slab to slab how it slips and springs,

The thread of water single and slim,

Through the ravage some torrent brings!

9.

Does it feed the little lake below?

That speck of white just on its marge

Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge

When Alp meets heaven in snow!

10.

On our other side is the straight-up rock;

And a path is kept ‘twixt the gorge and it

By bowlder-stones, where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit

Their teeth to the polished block.

11.

Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,

And thorny balls, each three in one,

The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!

For the drop of the woodland fruit’s begun,

These early November hours,

12.

That crimson the creeper’s leaf across

Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,

O’er a shield else gold from rim to boss,

And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped

Elf-needled mat of moss,

13.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged

Last evening—nay, in to-day’s first dew

Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,

Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew

Of toad-stools peep indulged.

14.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge

That takes the turn to a range beyond,

Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge,

Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond

Danced over by the midge.

15.

The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,

Blackish-gray and mostly wet;

Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike.

See here again, how the lichens fret

And the roots of the ivy strike!

16.

Poor little place, where its one priest comes

On a festa-day, if he comes at all,

To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,

Gathered within that precinct small

By the dozen ways one roams—

17.

To drop from the charcoal-burners’ huts,

Or climb from the hemp-dressers’ low shed,

Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,

Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread

Their gear on the rock’s bare juts.

18.

It has some pretension too, this front,

With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise

Set over the porch, Art’s early wont:

‘Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,

But has borne the weather’s brunt—

19.

Not from the fault of the builder, though,

For a pent-house properly projects

Where three carved beams make a certain show,

Dating—good thought of our architect’s—

‘Five, six, nine, he lets you know.

20.

And all day long a bird sings there,

And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;

The place is silent and aware;

It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,

But that is its own affair.

St. 20.  aware:  self-conscious.

“. . .in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.”

—Hood’s ‘Sonnet on Silence’.

21.

My perfect wife, my Leonor,

O heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too,

Whom else could I dare look backward for,

With whom beside should I dare pursue

The path gray heads abhor?

— St. 21. He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, “What did I say?—that a small bird sings”. The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are, with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; “gray heads” must be understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor —gray heads who went along through their flowery youth as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love’s true season, the happiness of their lives beyond youth’s limit, “life’s safe hem”, which to cross without such insurance, is often fatal. And these, when they reach old age, shun retracing the path which led to the gulf wherein their youth dropped.

22.

For it leads to a crag’s sheer edge with them;

Youth, flowery all the way, there stops—

Not they; age threatens and they contemn,

Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,

One inch from our life’s safe hem!

23.

With me, youth led. . . I will speak now,

No longer watch you as you sit

Reading by firelight, that great brow

And the spirit-small hand propping it,

Mutely, my heart knows how—

St. 23.  With me:  the speaker continues,

youth led:—we are told whither, in St. 25, v. 4, “to an age

so blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead”.

I will speak now:  up to this point his reflections have been silent,

his wife, the while, reading, mutely, by fire-light,

his heart knows how, that is, with her heart secretly responsive

to his own.  The mutual responsiveness of their hearts is expressed

in St. 24.

24.

When, if I think but deep enough,

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;

And you, too, find without rebuff

Response your soul seeks many a time,

Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.

25.

My own, confirm me!  If I tread

This path back, is it not in pride

To think how little I dreamed it led

To an age so blest that, by its side,

Youth seems the waste instead?

26.

My own, see where the years conduct!

At first, ‘twas something our two souls

Should mix as mists do; each is sucked

In each now:  on, the new stream rolls,

Whatever rocks obstruct.

27.

Think, when our one soul understands

The great Word which makes all things new,

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

How will the change strike me and you

In the house not made with hands?