Robert Browning - The Last Ride Together & Memorabilia

 

B) Robert Browning

The Last Ride Together & Memorabilia

 

Robert Browning was a prolific Victorian-era poet and playwright. He is widely recognized as a master of dramatic monologue and psychological portraiture. Browning is perhaps best-known for a poem he didn’t value highly, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a children's poem that is quite different from his other work. He is also known for his long form blank poem The Ring and the Book, the story of a Roman murder trial in 12 books. Browning was married to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

 

Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812 in Camberwell, a suburb of London. He and a younger sister, Sarianna, were the children of Robert Browning and Sarah Anna Browning. Browning’s father supported the family by working as a bank clerk (foregoing a family fortune because he opposed slavery), and assembled a large library -- some 6,000 books -- which formed the foundation of the younger Browning’s somewhat unconventional education.Browning’s family was devoted to his being a poet, supporting him financially and publishing his early works. Robert Browning’s Paracelsus, published in 1835, received good reviews, but critics disliked Sordello, published in 1840, because they found its references to be obscure. In the 1830s, Browning tried to write plays for the theater, but did not succeed, and so moved on.Browning lived with his parents and sister until 1846, when he married the poet Elizabeth Barrett, an admirer of his writing. Barrett’s oppressive father disapproved of the marriage and disinherited her. The couple moved to Florence, Italy.

 

During his married years, Browning wrote very little. In 1849, the Brownings had a son, whom Robert Browning educated. The family lived on an inheritance from Elizabeth’s cousin, residing mostly in Florence. Elizabeth died in 1861, and Robert Browning and his son returned to England.Robert Browning only began to attain popular success when he was in his 50s. In the 1860s, he published Dramatis Personae, which had both a first and second edition. In 1868-69, he published the 12-volume The Ring and the Book, which some critics believe to be his greatest work, and which earned the poet popularity for the first time.One of Browning’s biggest successes was the children’s poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” Published in Dramatic Lyrics in 1842, the poem was not one that Browning deemed consequential; however it is one of his most famous.Robert Browning secured his place as a prominent poet with dramatic monologue, the form he mastered and for which he became known and influential. In dramatic monologue, a character speaks to a listener from his or her subjective point of view. In doing so, the character often reveals insights about him or herself, often more than intended. While Robert Browning’s work was disparaged by many of the early 20th century modernist poets, by mid-century critics asserted the importance of his work.

 

In his more advanced years, Browning became widely respected: the Victorian public appreciated the hopeful tone of his poems. In 1881, the Browning Society was founded to further study the poet’s work, and in 1887, Browning received an honorary D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law) from Balliol College at Oxford University. Browning continued publishing poetry, with his final work, Asolando, published on the day he died. Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889 in Venice, and is buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

 

The Last Ride Together

Introduction

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax. Browning’s early career began promisingly, but was not a success. The long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by Wordsworth and Dickens, but in 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as wilfuly obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. “The Last Ride Together” by Robert Browning is a monologue of a rejected lover exploring the end of a love affair. The title suggests the last ride that the lover has spent with his love. However, the poet wants to convey through the narrator that rather than feeling sad about the end, he should be happy for the love that he underwent and which remains in his memory.

 

 

 

TEXT

The Last Ride Together

I.

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.

II.

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 tonight?

III.

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.

IV.

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.

 

V.

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 labour, 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.

VI.

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 fleshly 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.

 

VII.

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 never have turned a rhyme?

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

VIII.

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 grey

With notes and nothing else to say,

Is this your sole praise from a friend,

``Greatly his opera's strains intend,

``Put in music we know how fashions end!''

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

 

IX.

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.

X.

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 for ever 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, for ever ride?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary

“The Last Ride Together” by Robert Browning is a monologue of a rejected lover exploring the end of a love affair. The title suggests the last ride that the lover has spent with his love. However, the poet wants to convey through the narrator that rather than feeling sad about the end, he should be happy for the love that he underwent and which remains in his memory.

 

Stanza 1

“The Last Ride Together” by Robert Browning begins with a lover getting finally rejected by his lady-love after he waited for her for a long time. As the lover is sincere in his love, he does not have any ill-will for his lady-love. On the contrary, he tells his beloved that the uncertainty is no longer present as he knows that he would not get her love. The speaker says, his beloved’s love was the most meaningful thing in his life and after he has lost her love, his life has lost all its meaning and significance. Despite of the failure, neither the lover has any anger towards her beloved nor does he blame her for anything. He believes in the fate and the fact that his failure was ordained by God when he says, "Since this was written and needs must be", probably a reference to lines of fate on the palms. He has accepted that rejection and suffering was destined to him and therefore he has no one to put the blame on. In fact, he feels proud that he had the opportunity to love her and enjoy her company for a long time. He is grateful towards her for the beautiful and blissful moments they had together. For this he asks God to bless her. Though he has no hopes of ever getting her love back in his life, he requests her for two wishes. First, he should be allowed to cherish the memories of his love and the memories of the happiness during the courting period. Secondly, if she considers nothing indecent in this request, he wants to go on a last ride with her.

 

Stanza 2

The lady is in a dilemma, not able to decide whether she should accept the request or reject it. For a moment she bows down her head as if she was deeply thinking about it. Her eyes reflected pride as well as pity. Her virgin pride is in conflict with her pity for her lover. She hesitates for a moment and these brief moments seem like torture to the lover. It is a matter of life and death for him. If she accepts his request for having a last ride with him, it would mean life for him but if she refuses then it would mean death for him.

Finally, the lady accepts his request. The lover is extremely happy, it seemed like the circulation of blood in his body has been regenerated. When the lady stood confused, deciding whether or not to accept his request, the lover felt lifeless. Presently, his life and activity has been restored to normal by her favourable reply. The lover is at peace as he is going to enjoy bliss and his lover’s company for another day. He hopes for the world to end that very night so that his moment of bliss becomes eternal. In that way, he would be with her always and there would be no need of despair at being rejected by his lad-love.

Stanza 3

The third stanza is about the description of the heavenly bliss which the lover experiences when his beloved lies on his bosom. He compares his experience with nature’s joy and healing power. He feels like a man, who sees an evening cloud, swelling up like the sea-wave, illuminated and made beautiful by the light of the setting Sun, the Moon and the Stars. The man looks at the cloud, he is passionately drawn towards it and it seemed like the cloud was coming closer to him. In such a moment, he feels he has been transported to heaven and his body has lost its physicality. But he is afraid at the same time. He is afraid that his lover would leave him anytime and that this moment of bliss would end forever.

 

Stanza 4

The last ride begins. This blissful experience gives the lover soul a terrific experience. The poet compares the lover’s soul to that of a crumpled paper which has been kept like that for a long time. When exposed to wind, this paper opens up, the wrinkles get smoothened and it starts fluttering in the wind like a bird. In the same way, the lover’s soul has grown wrinkled due to the grief of his failure in love. But after encountering the last ride with his beloved, his soul experiences tremendous joy and feels rejuvenated.

The lover says that his hopes of getting her love are a matter of the past. He feels that regret for the past is of no use. The lover thinks that it is now of no use to act in a different manner or express his love in different words for getting her love. This could lead her to hate him instead of loving him. At least now she does not hate him but is indifferent to his love. At least, now he has the pleasure of having the last ride with her.

 

Stanza 5

The lover as he is riding by his beloved’s side thinks about the sorry state of humanity of the world. He consoles himself that he is not the single person to fail and suffer in life. Not all men succeed in their efforts. The landscape seems to him to have a different look. The fields and the cities through which they are passing seem to him more beautiful than before. He feels as if his own joy has illuminated the entire region on both sides.

The lover realizes that all human beings work hard to achieve their goals but only a few succeed. Like others, he too had failed but still he has his last wish fulfilled by riding with his beloved. The lover does not want to complain about his failures but enjoy the ride to the fullest in the company of his beloved.

 

Stanza 6

The lover as he rides with his beloved continues to think about the world. He says that brain and hand cannot go together hand in hand. Conception and execution can never be paired together. Man is not able to make pace with his actions to match with his ambitions. He plans a lot but achieves a little. The lover feels that he has at least achieved a little success by being able to ride with his beloved. He compares himself with a statesman and a soldier. A statesman works hard all his life but all his efforts are merely published in a book or as an obituary in newspapers. Similarly a soldier dies fighting for his country and is buried in the Westminster Abbey, which is his only reward after death. Sometimes an epitaph is raised in his memory but that is all.

 

Stanza 7

The lover then compares his lot with that of a poet. He believes that a poet’s reward is too small compared with his skills. He composed sweet lyrics, thoughts of emotions of others, views that men should achieve beautiful things in life. But the reward he gets in return is very little and he dies in poverty in the prime of his life. Ordinary men cannot compose such poems. Compared to the poet, the lover considers himself luckier as he has at least achieved the consolation of riding with his lover for the last time.

 

Stanza 8

In this stanza, the lover considers himself superior than the sculptor and the musician. A sculptor devotes long years to art and creates a beautiful statue of Venus, the Greek goddess of youth and beauty. Through his art, he expresses his ideas of beauty and grace. But the reward for his hard work is all too less. People admire his work, praise it but the moment they see a real girl, they turn away from it. The real girl may have ordinary beauty but still when the people see her, they turn away from the statue. This shows that life is greater than art. Therefore, the speaker says that in this case he is more successful than a sculptor because he can ride with his beloved and the sculptor cannot have this happiness.

 

The lover then talks about a musician. He considers the musician as unsuccessful as the sculptor. A musician devotes his best years to composing sweet music. But the only praise he receives is by his friends and his music is used in operas which proved to be popular. But at the same time, tunes which once popular are soon forgotten. The lover considers himself happier and more successful than the musician. He has the pleasure of enjoying the last ride with her beloved. The musician can never enjoy this happiness.

 

Stanza 9

In the ninth stanza, the lover states his point that none succeeds in this world, despite the best efforts, the lover goes on to say that it is not easy to know what is good for man. Since the lover is Browning’s mouthpiece, he expresses the view of the poet: success in this life means failure in the life to come.

 

If the lover is destined to enjoy the supreme bliss in this world by getting the desired love of his beloved, he would have nothing left to hope for in the near future. He feels that he has reached his destination in this world and has achieved the garland of victory by winning the love of his beloved. He may have failed in his love but it means success in the other world. Now, when he will die he will think of reuniting with his lover after death. If a man gets perfect happiness in this world, heaven would not be attracted towards him. The lover believes that he would have the highest bliss in heaven where he will meet his beloved.

 

Stanza 10

During the ride, the lover was lost in his own thoughts while his beloved did not speak a single word. But it did not make any difference to him as her company is a heavenly bliss for him. Man has always looked upwards and imagined that heaven lies somewhere in the sky. This heaven is symbolical of the best that man can imagine. Similarly, the lady is his heaven and he enjoys the same happiness which others hope to enjoy in heaven.

 

The lover thinks that it would be a heaven on earth for him if he continues to ride with his beloved forever. He wishes that the moment should become everlasting so that they could continue to ride together forever and ever. That would indeed be heavenly bliss for him.

 

 

Form

“The Last Ride Together” by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue. In a dramatic monologue, a single person not the poet; speaks out a speech that makes up the whole of the poem. The first-person speaker in the poem is the mouthpiece of the poet, Robert Browning but not the poet himself. This is evident from the phrases like I said, I know, my whole heart I claim, my mistress, my last thought, I miss, I alone, I hoped, I gave my youth and I sign’d.

Structure. The poem comprises of ten stanzas, each consisting of eleven lines each. The poem follows the rhyming pattern aabbcddeeec.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memorabilia

Introduction

This poem, printed in 1855, was inspired by a meeting Browning once had with a man who had known P.B. Shelley, one of Browning's great influences as a young man. Shelley was a seminal Romantic poet associated with the idea that moments can lead a man to great transcendence and truth. Though he was one of Browning's early inspirations, Browning would later move into much murkier territory in his poetry, emphasizing psychological complexity and systems of thought.

 

This poem, one of the few in which it is easy to consider the speaker to be Browning himself, is about the debt we owe to what came before us. The simplicity of the verse – two four-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter – calls to mind the poetry of Shelley or Wordsworth, a fitting choice since it was written in remembrance of these Romantic influences.

 

 

Text

Memorabilia

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!

 

But you were living before that,

And you are living after,

And the memory I started at—

My starting moves your laughter!

 

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own

And a certain use in the world no doubt,

Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone

’Mid the blank miles round about:

 

For there I picked up on the heather

And there I put inside my breast

A moulted feather, an eagle-feather—

Well, I forget the rest.

 

 

Summary

According to historical anecdote, this poem stems from an encounter Browning had with a person who had once met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Shelley died quite young, when Browning himself was only ten). Browning reacted with awe when the man described his meeting with the famed poet, and the man is said to have laughed at him for this reaction. This short lyric relates Browning’s feelings about this encounter to his feelings at walking across a moor and finding an eagle’s feather.

 

This poem, one of the few in which it is easy to consider the speaker to be Browning himself, is about the debt we owe to what came before us. The simplicity of the verse – two four-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter – calls to mind the poetry of Shelley or Wordsworth, a fitting choice since it was written in remembrance of these Romantic influences.

 

In the first two stanzas, the speaker is childishly excited even with this second-degree contact with Shelley. But when the man to whom he gushes laughs at him, the speaker notes "But you were living before that,/And you are living after," acknowledging that his one incident (his meeting with Shelley) is but a moment among a multitude of moments in life.

 

In general, Browning's work is interested with delving into the multitude of life’s moments, seeking out their complexity and contradictions. However, the final two stanzas see the speaker ignoring the evocative landscape of the moor in exchange for one feather left by an eagle, a great and stately bird. Much as the Romantic poets might have been inspired to a full reflection by one small natural detail, so is Browning acknowledging in this poem that he retains the seeds of that influence. One moment can contain within it a lifetime of inspiration.

 

The poem can be read as a short reflection on how we hang on to small moments because they contain in them such profundity, a very Romantic idea. But in relation to Browning's career, the poem is a bit deeper: he is reflecting how even though he evolved past these Romantic tendencies and explored his myriad interests in his poetry, there is still a part of him that is awed by one "eagle-feather" amongst a landscape, or by a story of a simple meeting that had happened decades before. In other words, that childish Romantic part of Browning still exists, as do presumably many other parts.

 

Commentary

The title of this poem suggests a kind of memory that is linked with physical objects. Browning’s encounter with the man who has met Shelley takes its importance from the fact that this man was once physically with Shelley and is now physically with Browning. This second-degree encounter with the great poet, now dead, corresponds metaphorically to the second-degree encounter with the eagle, now flown away having left only a feather; but the encounters also correspond physically, in that the physical object of the feather triggers the thought of the human encounter. This suggests a much more mundane and direct concept of natural reality and memory than that postulated by the Romantics (to whom Shelley belonged). Neither the encounter with the feather (nature) nor the memory of Shelley result in rapture or epiphany in Browning’s poem (as they do in Romantic lyrics); rather, they imply a sense of loss and distance, of separation.

 

Indeed, not only does memory fail to lead to rapture, it has very little evocative power at all: Browning does not remember the rest of his walk on the moor beyond the finding of the feather. Moreover, Browning places little faith here in the life of the mind, the ability of analysis: he finds himself unable to elaborate more on the relationship between the feather and the man who met Shelley. Yet somehow this world of mundane physical objects and faint mental suggestions can provide as much material for poetry as the wild spiritual inspirations of Shelley’s “West Wind” or Wordsworth’s daffodils.

 

Form

 “Memorabilia” consists of four four-line stanzas, written in iambic tetrameter. The stanzas rhyme ABAB. The form appears frequently in William Wordsworth’s lyrics, and this poem does have an almost Wordsworthian outlook: it is contemplative and spiritual, and parallels the natural world to the human one.