FullReads

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you–yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder,
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! 190
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you–
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song–and in my brain I sing it, 200
Drew one angel–borne, see, on my bosom!

NOTES:

One Word More was appended to Browning’s volume Men and Women (1855), by way of dedication of the book to his wife. It is characteristic of its author in its reality of feeling, in its seeking an unusual point of view, in its parenthetic and allusive style, and its occasional high felicity of expression. Those who feel overpowered by Browning’s vigor and profundity of thought, might stop here to note the exquisite inconsistency between the examples cited and the thing thus illustrated. The painter turning poet, the poet turning painter, the moon turning her unseen face to a mortal lover; these are compared to Browning the poet,–writing another poem. The only difference in his art is that the poet here speaks for himself in the first person, and not, as usual, dramatically in the third person. The idea of the poem may be found, stripped of digression and fanciful comparisons, in the eighth, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth stanzas. Something of the same idea appears in My Star.

5. =Rafael,= etc. More commonly spelled Raphael. Born in Italy in 1483, died in 1520; generally regarded as the greatest of painters. The Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, is considered his greatest work. See lines 21-24.

Only four of his sonnets exist. A translation of these is given in Cooke’s Guide Book to Browning. There is no authentic record of such a “century of sonnets” having ever existed.

10. Tradition is dim and uncertain as to the identity of this love of Raphael’s.

27. =Guido Reni= (1576-1642). A celebrated Italian painter. Berdoe says that the volume owned by Guido Reni was a collection of a hundred drawings by Raphael.

32-33. =Dante= (1265-1321). The greatest of Italian poets. His Divina Commedia, consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, is his most famous work. His romantic passion for Beatrice (pronounced B[=a]-[.a]-tr[=e]-che) is referred to in his Divina Commedia, and is recounted in his Vita Nuova.

37-43. In allusion to the fact that Dante freely consigned his enemies, political and personal, living or dead, to appropriate places in his Inferno and Purgatorio.

45-48. This interruption of his work is described in the thirty-fifth section of the Vita Nuova. The hostile nature of the visit seems to be of Browning’s invention.–COOKE.

57. =Bice=. Beatrice.

74 ff. In allusion to Moses smiting the rock and bringing forth water. See Exodus, chapter xvii.

95. =Egypt’s flesh-pots=. See Exodus, chapter xvi.

97. =Sinai’s cloven brilliance=. See Exodus, chapter six. 16-25.

101. =Jethro’s daughter=, Zipporah. See Exodus, chapters ii and xviii.

136. =Cleon=. See the poem of that name. =Norbert=. See In a Balcony.

138. =Lippo=. See Fra Lippo Lippi.

150. =Samminiato=. San Miniato, a church in Florence.

160. =Mythos=. In reference to the myths of Endymion, the mortal with whom the goddess Diana (the moon) fell in love. See a classical dictionary, and Keats’s poem Endymion.

163. =Zoroaster=. The founder of the Persian religion. Reference is here made to his observations of the heavenly bodies while meditating on religious things.

164. =Galileo= (1564-1642). The great Italian physicist and astronomer.

165. =Keats=. See note on line 160.

174. =Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu=. See Exodus, chapter xxiv.

186. Compare the idea in My Star.