|
Youthful Musings from Robert Browning
Like many artisits, Robert Browning was highly critical of his youthful work. As an adult, he painstakingly sought out and destroyed it, retrieving copies of poems, and even letters, from his 12th and 13th years. He even enlisted his friend R.H. Horne to visit the Flower sisters (friends of his youth) to retrieve letters that contained copies of nearly all his early verses. He called that collection Incondita, and was so “mad to publish it” at age 14 that his parents attempted to find a publisher.
But one letter, written by Sarah Flower (who later wrote the hymn Nearer, My God to Thee) escaped destruction. In it we find excerpts from young Robert’s 83-line The First-Born of Egypt, based on the Exodus story of the death of the first-born in that country because of Pharaoh’s refusal to release the Israelites from bondage. The second was The Dance of Death, 103 lines in five sections written mainly in rhyming couplets, and influenced by Coleridge’s Fire, Famine, and Slaughter (Shelley was not yet the influence he became in the following few years).
Here an excerpt from First-Born of Egypt:
I marked one old man with his only son
Lifeless within his arms – his withered hand
Wandering o’er the features of his child
Bidding him wake from that long dreary sleep,
And lead his old blind father from the crowd
To the green meadows …
And from The Dance of Death:
‘Tis for me, ‘tis for me;
Mine the prize of Death must be;
My spirit is o’er the young and gay
As on snowy wreaths in the bright noonday
They wear a melting and vermeille flush
E’en while I bid their pulses hush.
These poems are the only indication we have as to the way Browning was writing before Pauline, his first published poem at age 21. They suggest that his reading up to now was mainly in the work of Coleridge, Byron, and Southey. As in most of his later work, we see that these are not autobiographical or personal in any way.
… and From Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Prometheus Bound (age 14)
Ay! In act now, in word no more,
Earth is rocking in space.
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round,
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free,
And blow each upon each with a passion of sound,
And ether goes mingling in storm with the sea.
It’s interesting to note the difference in educational standards between the early 19th century and the early 21st. Both Elizabeth and Robert were reading in Latin and Greek before they were 15, and had studied the great Greek and Roman writers, as well as Shakespeare, Milton, and John Donne. By the time they were 21, they had learned enough Hebrew to read and translate Bible passages. They then added French, German, and later, Italian. They both were prolific readers; RB’s father’s library had 6,000 books, and the younger Browning read constantly. Elizabeth refused to learn just the things expected of girls (sewing, pianoforte, and other such “womanly” things) and insisted that her father allow her to study with her brothers and their private tutors – the beginnings of her lifelong efforts to help women achieve greater equality.
|
