UNIT 38 ROBERT BROWNING: TWO

EARLY POEMS
Structure
38.0 Objectives
38.1 Introduction
38.2 'Porphyria's Love?'
. 38.2.1 An Analysis
38.3 'The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's C11urch
3 8.3.1 An Appreciation
38.4 Let's sum up
38.5 Answers to exercises
38.6 Further reading

38.0 OBJECTIVES 8

Aeer you have studied this unit you will be able to have an idea of and writc on
Browning s poaic art as evident from his early poetry, This would, however.
be with special reference to 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'The Bishop Orders his
Toinb at St. Praxed's Church'. Your study would enable you to comment on
selected passages from the two poems mentioned above.

38.1 INTRODUCTION .

Now that you are familiar with Robert Browning's life and early aspirations as
evident from the! passage you studied from Sorclello you can go on to appreciate
the development of Browning's art and craft as a poet. In this unit you arc ~ o i n g
to study two poems: 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St
Prased's Chruch' The former was published in Drnnintic Lj)rics ( 1 8 4 2 ) and the
latter in Dramatic Romances and ~ y r i c s(1845). You should.be able to sec the
developmeiltin Browiliilg's art even within a period of three years. Artistically.
the latter poem appears to be more sophisticated compared with thc former.
d

'Porphyria' was probably written is 1839 when Browning was on a brief visit to
St. Petersburg, Russia. It was, first published along with 'Johannes Agricola'
anonymously (signed "2") in The Monthly Reposrtory (January 1836). Thc
editor Mr. Fox also published a song from Pippa Passes and some verses later
iiltroduced in James Lee 's Wve. He was, as Mrs. Sutherland Orr points out. 'thc
generous and very earliest encourager of Mr, Browning's boyish attempts at
11oetry' .

Browning grouped the two poems, i.e. 'Porphyryia' and 'Johannes Agricola'.
I
under the general title 'Madhouse Cells' in Dramatic Lyrics (1842). He
lengthened the titles to 'Johannes ~ ~ r i c oinl dMeditation' and 'Porphyna's
Lover' in 1849. However, the two poems were &!inked in the collected pocms
of 1862and in later collections. The linking together of the two poems under
the title 'Madhouse Cells' offers a clue to our understanding of 'Porphyria's
Lover'. , Both,
-, Porphyria's Lover And Johannes Agricola (1'494-1566) the
 fo~ui~derof A~ltillomianheresy are extreme solipsists (one who pays too great
attention to oneself rather than to relation with othcrs) if not mad.

'Porphyria's Lover', is a soliloquy rather than a dramatic i ~ ~ o i ~ o l o g uIteis. a .

simple lyrical and narrative poem, rich in visual details. You can appreciate it
without the intervention of a teacher. So read it and THEN do the follo\ving
exercise based on the poem.

Self-check Exercise-I
In order to answer the following questions you may be required to read the
C poem once again.

I . Who are the characters in the poem?

2,. Record below the lines in which marks of exclamation occur,

3 . Scan the following lines and comment on the chief prosodic features:

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 ,

38.2.1 An Analysis

Brov,lning wrote 'Porphyria' in his early twenties. .It belongs to his exploratory
+ period in which he was trying to discover his poetic ideology, medium and style
through a number of long poems such as Pnuline (1833), PnraceLus (1835) and
Sordello (1 840) and plays such as Pippa Posses (1 841 ) and shorter dramatic x

lyrics such as 'Porphyria', 'Johannes Agricola', 'Cristina', 'Count Gismond',

'Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister' and 'In a Gondola'.

You must have noticed that Browning tells you the story of Porphyria's Lover
with utmost economy. So much so that we don't even know his name. He must
be an insignificant person, not just socially but also morally. He lives on the
margins of the society, a cottager to whose house Porphyria could come only in
a storm when there could not be a witness to her act of stealth. Her lover is not
alert and vigilant like herself, When she entcrs hcr room she notices that thc
fire has not been properly stoked which sllc does and cheers up the room
shutting both t l ~ estorm and the cold out. Having brought life to the cheerless
placc she proceeds to ring the bells of existence into her lover's self, She
removes. one by one, hcr clothes, in order to wakcn liim up from his torpor, Her
lovcr has refused to respond much less take the liiasculine lead in the lovt-act.
She gives him a call. He does not reply. Then she takes the lead once again,
puts his arm about her waist, bares her shoulder for him and wheil 11e is still
unresponsive 11e makes his cheek lie 011 it and covers his head with her golden
VictoricmPoetrjl locks. Having performed all tllcse acts of love herself s l 7 ~confesses 11~1.
lo\ I:for
him.

If you carefully examine the test once again you will find that after n
description of the weather in the opening five lines, Browiling, rather the lover.
dcvotes the next fifteen lines describing Porphyria's acts - sensuous and >varm-
almost with vatsyayanian felicity. 111 its progressio~lthe narrative looked at
from the heroine's point of view, has a lyrical char111fro111the o p e ~ ~ ithrougl~
~lg
most of the twenty-first lines.

'The anti-lyrical movement begins after the caesura in thc twenty-first linr So
far, the reader who has not been very clear abo~ltthc role of the lover i c g ~ n tos
get a better look into his character - diabolical ? Not. Insane '7 Yes. 14 :n h o has
dcscribed 11is Porphyria's acts in all its telling details now procecds r anal! zc
hcr character as 'weak' and 'proud' and 'vain' - weak according to llrm.
becausc she could not dissever her ties wit11 the false pride of her class and
station in the society. She could come to his cottage that night partly becausc of
her unco~ltrollablepassion, infrequent as it was, and partly because shc got a
suitable cover for it by the 'wind and rain'. Howcver, this rarc bl~ssfill
condition, provided by his beloved, brought a sudden tl~ougl~t to Porphq.rin's
lovcr. He n7aspale owing to his unf~~lfilled dcsire for.possessing her.

Having described 11is olvn wan condition he now hurriedly describes thc steps
that: lcd to the strangling of Porphyria at the cnd of the second scction of thc
pocill (whicl~ends with line forty-one). The lover looked into the beloved's c! c
- 'happy and proud'. Her pride indicates her station in life; while llappincss
tells us about her condition by the side of her lovcr. This told her in no
u~ltltistakableterms that Porphyria loved, no 'worshipped' him. The lover.
fillding that he had got somethiilg which neither his station nor his charactcr
entitled him t o he 'swelled' in satisfaction and pride and perversel~.rather in n
fit of madness, began to plan what llc could do. Right at the pcak of his
expcriencc of bliss when she appeared to him to have been l ~ i sco~nplctelyand
perfectly, in all her being. in all her perfection and purity and goodiless hc
thought of strangling her to death with the 'String' of her golden hair.

The third secLion of the poem is even more eerie than the second. The narrator
now goes on t o justify thc act and display composure w l ~ i c no
l ~ one but thc inad
person can have. He asserts that Porphyria did not feel pain. Howcvcr, his
assertion in line forty-one is trivialized by thc colloquial 'quite surc' in the
succeeding line.

No pain felt she;

I am quite surc she felt no pain.

Likc an innocent child that opcns a bud into wl~iclla bee has entered wllh its
tiny fingers, the murderer opens her eyelids and she appears to be laughing
innocently. Next he uiltightens the tresses around her neck and fcels that her
blood has once again coursed through her veins and to her cheeks. Whilc hc did
not once caress or kiss her when she was alive, he now offers her coi-pse his
'burning ltiss' at yhich she even responds by blushing. However, thc 'only'
discordant note in the tune is struck by the hcad of the corpse, wllich 'droops'
upon his shoulder.

Otherwise, the de~ncntedlover believes that tlle 'smiling rosy little head'
(emphasis added) of his beloved is glad to have 'its utmost will'. However, it is
noticeable that hc is. lying. While until line fifty-one he uses the personal
prolloun 'her' for Porphyria in lines fiftyone hrough fiftyfour she is referrcd to
1
as 'it'. He is aware that a corpse is an inanim te thing and thus has no gendcr
 I-lowcver. 111s assertions regarding Porpl~yriain those very lines are lllcat~tt s Robcrt WI-owning:
mislead others; those ;who are ready to overhear him. Two E a ~ ~ Pocms
iy
The c l i ~ l ~of
a sthe pocnl is gradually built towards the close i.e, in its sl~nrply
ironic state~~lents of the poet:

Porphyria's love; she guessed not how

Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
,411d all night long we have not stirred.

The lover's lurid roinantic posturing at t11c close sharply

coiitrasts Polyphria's healthy stance in lines six to twcrlty
one. In fact the heroine's livclincss and vigour are set in
. sharp relicf by the insane joyousness of her low and
despicable lover. ?hc ambiguity of the situation is perhaps
best sumiiled'itp in the last line of the poem:

And yet God ht1.s not said a word !

Does it meail that Bro~vningholds hcrc as in thc famous lines in Pil~pc'Prrsscs:

Gbd's in his heaven -

All's right with the ~vorld!

I-lowever, in that case Pippa was witness to an idyllic scene. In his words:

The' year's at the spring

Ah%day's at thc morn;
Moriling's at seven;
, 'The hill- side's dew-pearled;
The lark's 011 the wing:
Land
The snail's on the thorn:
'1
Sllould we assuillc thal: Porphpia+slover also imagines himself bcing h a .
perfed situation. wit11 his beloycd by his side, for perpetuity.

Or, i he alio,bn antinomian. sombwhgt 'likc Johannes Agricola who believcd

T
that he was exempt from all cthical considerations as be was a Christian.
*
Agricijla even went beyond it. He claimed to have been made cven bcforc the
sun and the stars:

. . . . God said
This head this hand should rest upon
.Thus. ere he fashioned star or sun.
. And having thus crcatcd me,
Thus rooted me, he bade izze grow;
Guiltless forever, like a tree
Tbat buds and blooms, nor seeks to know
The law by whiclz it prospers so:

Agricola is a solipsist like Popbyria's lover and the consequence'is mania;

delusion, paranoia and possessioil by the deiusion of total power. In fact it is
possible that Porphyria's lover is a fantasist who has conjured up the whole
situation in his dream where be call see tlze process of lzis reduction.

Porphyria's lofer, just like the Duke of Ferrara in ' My Last Duchcss' is a
jealous lover. While the former kills his beloved the latter probably has her.
I 45
killed and pn.rsessss her painting, so that he alone can savour her beaut!,. Tllc
Duke in 'My Last Duchess' tells the Count's messenger:

Oh Sir, she smiled, 110 doubt.

Wllenever I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile'? This grew: I gave commands:
Then all sniilcs stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.

Both Porphyria's lover and the Duke are neurotics. They wish to possess their
beloveds in the most extreme sense and if murder is necessary for it they would
go to the extent of committing even t h ~ t'Prophyria's
. Lover' is a penetrating
study of type o f a neurosis.

Self-Check Exercise-I1

1. Porphyria's lover strangled her to death. Which other character in

Browning's poetry had his wife murdered Y

2. What's common between Porphyria's lover and Browning's Johanncs

Agricola ?

38.3 THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT ST,

PRAXED'S CHURCH

The poem was first published in Hood's Magazine (for March 1845) edited by
F . 0 , Ward as 'The Tomb at St. Praxed's'. Browiling appears to have felt
dissatisfied with the title so when it was publis.hed in Dramatic Rnmanccs trnd
Ljjrics (1 845) it became 'The Bishop orders his Toinb at Saint Praxed's
Church'. Browning does not tell us the Bishop's name, His archrival ill the
poem - Gandolf - is likewise fictitious. However, the poem could have been
inspired by the little church of Santa Prassede (built 822) which was restored
just before Browning visited it in 1844. Santa Prassede, the virgin saint after
whom it was named, was daughter of Pudens, a second century Roman senator.

The closest analogue to the Bishop in the monologue is the life of Cardinal
Ippolito d'Este the Younger, a materialistic, vain and extremely stingy person
The effigy of Cardinal Cetive (d. 1474) on top of his tomb is in front of one of
the entrances of 'Garden of Paradise', a splendid chapel full of mosaics, It could
also have inspired the poem. However, Browning does not describe either ally
person or the strucfures in detail.

While portraying the Bishop, a s K.I.D. Meslen pointed out, Browning may have
remembered Thomas Macaulay's (1800-'59) review of Leopold Ranke's ( I 795-
1886) Ecclesinstical and Politico1 Historj) o f the Popes o f Rome. ~iz~ring thc
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centzrries (translated into English from the o r ~ g i ~ ~ins l l
German by Sarah Austin) in the Edinburgh Review (October 1840). Macnulay
deplored a pope such as Leo X (153 1-'2 1) who along nit11 the latiiiity of thc
Augustan age had also acquired its atheistical and disrespectf~~l spirit. He spoke
of the Iilcarnatioil of God in his Son Jesus Christ and tlie Christian ceremony of
Eucharist (based on Cl~rist'slast supper on earth) or Mass in the saille vein as
Cotta and Velleius.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) the famous Victorian writer, scholar and sage was full Robert Browning:
of appreciation for 'The Bishop orders his Tomb'. His observations offer a Two Eitrly Pocms
valuable insight into the poem:

I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there

is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit - its
worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of
art, of luxury, and of good Latin.
. -.
Ruskin went on to add:

It is nearly all that I said of thc central Renaissance in thirty pages of the
,Stones of Venice put into as many lines, talked'of the oracle of Delphi,
or of the voice of Faunus in the wilderness.

Talking about the Popes

Macaulay deplored:

Their years glided by in a soft dream of sensual and intellectual

voluptuousness. Choice cookery, dclicious wines, lovely women,
hounds, falcons, horses, newly-discovered manuscripts of the classics.. .
These things were the delight and even the sensuous business of their
lives. (Edinburgh Review, 72, Page 242)

Browning's poem reflects the mindset like that of Macaulay. When you read the
poem you will find the influence of Macaulay's review published less than five
years ago in the Edinburgh Review on it.

With this background knowledge you should read the poem (printed in this
block) first and then do thc following exercise.

Self-check Exercise-III
a. What kind of a person is the Bishop? Give at least three examples in support
of your opinion.

b. Who was Gandolf ? What is the Bishop's attitude towards him?

c. Scan the followihg lines and comment briefly on the chief prosodic
features :

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!

Draw round my bed: is -Anselm keeping back? 17

 Nephews - sons mine... ah god, 1Know not! Well -

She, men would have t o be your mother once,

Old Gandolf envied me, so fair h e was!

I
38.3.1 A Discussion

The Bishop, who asks, rather orders his sons to make him a tomb in St. Praxed's
Cl~urchis a sixteenth cmtury Roman clergyman. It is significant that Browning
avoids telling us about the specific date just as he omits the Bishop's name.
'However, he tells us a lot about the Bishop's character, half-unconscious as he
is in the last momeilts of a strifefi~l'life.And yet, the Bishop in his state of
delirium unveils his true life before his own sons, who probably know most,
though not every detail of it already.

True to the person and character of a bishop, the poem begins with a well-
known Biblical quotation from the Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says The Teacher

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1 :2)

. However, the next sentence is in the imperative which effectively. ~falso

ironically, expresses the Bishop's proud demeanour. ~ ~ ~ a r e Atlselm
n t l ~ ,is tllc
name of one o f his sons. Perhaps he is his favourite and he wants him to bc
close to him. He addresses his sons first as his nephews as he always did in
public and then making use of the familiar rhetorical device of epnno~/ho,r.is,
changes over t o 'sons'. Browning uses a dash between 'Nephews' and 'sons'
and suggests a break in speech thus making use of the rhetorical device of
aposiopesis. Then there are three dots. The latter break is meant to iildicatc the
momentary introspection when he, sort of, confesses falsely before his God. Hc
pleads ignorance before Him: 'I know not !' In tune with his confession he
remembers his 'wife' and almost in a tone of complaint utters:

She, men would have to be your mother once,

The next line (i.e. the fifth) informs us that another colleague of his - Gandolf -
was eompetlng with him to win her hand, nay clandestine love (because thc
clerics have t o take a vow of chastity). And yet the Bishop appears to show no
warmth of feeling for his late beloved. She was a prize object, which the Bishop
won against a colleague just as the latter won the southern corner for 111s
resting-place against him. Ironically, jealousy did not forsake these clergyl~len
even in matters of intense life (i,e. love) and death. They truly represent the
48
inordinate lust and acquisitive propensities of the Renaissance.
 The Bishop's lustfulness finds expression not just in his affair with a woinan Robert Browning: 1
who begat him many sons but more so in his words to them. He tells them that Two Early Poems i I
I
he had prayed to St. Praxed to grant them besides horses and Greek inalluscripts
'mistresses with great smootl~marbly lin~bs'.He appears to be such a
coilfirmed epicurean that he does not see the irony of such a prayer. Not only
that, he does not sI=ethe oddness of huddling

... . One pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off.

along with Moscs with his tablets; Jesus, inaking his Sermon on the,Mount and
Saint Praxed with the nimbus round his head. It is interesting to point out that
such an odd assemblage does exist on some of the friezes bn the tombs in Rome,
~vhichBrowiring must have remembered vividly.

Howsoever ludicrous the Bishop inay appear to us, Browning did not find him
absurd. The Renaissance Bishop was a inan of the world i r the best sense of the
term. He is a lover of the classics, which finds expression in his love of good
attick Latin. ITe wants his sons to write his cpitaph in the langttage of Cicero:

.. . Carve my epitaph aright,

Cl~oiccLatin, picked phrase, ~ ~ 1 1 3every
. ' ~ word,
No gaudy wars: like Gandolf3s second line -
TuIly, illy master ? Ulpian serves his need ! (11. 76-79)

Domitius Ulpianlls (d .228), a Roinan jurist had a style that reflected the
decadence, the fall from the urbanity and polish of the classical Roman style of
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 RC). As the night advances the Bisl~opdiscloses
that he had deliberately had Gandolf's epitaph writlen in thc Ulpian language :

Aha, ELUCESBAT quoth our friend?

Nu Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! (11. 99-100)

Cicero would have written elucsbnt (i.e. he was illustrious) and not as the
Bishop had it inscribed on Gandolf's tomb - Elucesbat.

Bcsides his appreciation for good Latin, it is also in his close familiarity with
the classical culture that wwe discover the positive aspect of the Bishop's
personality that Browning must have appreciated. This is best expressed in the
telling exen7plum of the lynx tied to a tripod:

... Ye would heighten my impoverish.ed frieze,

Piecc out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a visor and a terin,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
'Do I live, am I dead?' (a. 106-113)
The Bishop had a clear idea of what he wanted for his grave. Earlier on he had
suggested: 'Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so ! (1. 58). It was not the
6 1.i: utterance of a stupefied Bishop. When he comes back to the matter of his frieke;
he completes the picture in his mind. He wants the vase to be full o f luscious
grapes. The image of grapes suggests Dionysius, the god of wine, as does the
lynx. He wants visors or masks of thk helmet and a bust on a pedestal (term) to
be part of the illustration on the frieze, Brisk movement is suggested by the
struggle of the lynx, which lets the tripod fall to which it has been tied as it
Virtori(rrt Poetry lounges towards the Bishop to comfort him. While it does so the thyrsus. thc
ornamented staff carried in processioils by the worshippers of Dionysus (or thc
Roman Bacchus), falls on the ground. A bacchanal, as you know. is a nols!
feast at which a lot of drinking and disorderly behaviour, even sex. takes placc
We thus find that without having either Dioilysius or Bacchus on the fricze hc
has everything that suggests them: the grapes, the thyrsus and the lyns. The
exemplum is highly suggestive of the character of the worldly. Rcnaissancc
Bishop. His thoughts are symbolized best by Dionvsius the god of wine and
love and the idea of festivity represented by the quick moveillellt of the
empathetic lynx which makes the Bishop ask himself 'Do I live. am I dead ' j '
Brownings's words remind us of Keats' in 'Ode to a Nightingale'

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:- Do I wake or sleep'?

However, while Keats was inspired by the nightingale's song it is the dcad
Bishop's statue lying on the entablature that is expected by the dying Bishop to
ask this question a s he imagines all the props around him - unreal tl~oug-11rcnl
somewhat like Yeats' 'form' made by some Grccian goldsinith 'of hami11ercd
gold and gold enamelling':

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake:

Or set upon a golden bough to sing ,
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past or passing or to come

However, Browning's image of the Bishop's statue delighting in his funcrar!

artifacts is an art of greater poetic tozu de.force than either Keats' or Yeats'.

The Catholic clergymen are required to take the vow of chastity, obedience and
poverty. However, the Bishop is a symbol of avarice. He has choice stallions
and has secretly built lavish villas with baths. He wants to have his to~gb111ndc
of jasper 'pure green as a pistachio-nut' basalt, agate and red marble:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. (11. 29-30)

He divulges that he had stolen a precious lapis lazuli from a church and then
probably burnt it to hide his theft. Re buried the blue stone in the vineyard. He
gives detailed description of its place of hiding and method of recovery. Tllc
Bishop wants this blue stone to be placed between his knees so that Gandolf
may burst, of envy and disappointment.

As he is unmindful of his vows and acts contrary to them so is his conduct in

discord with even the norms of good behaviour for laymen. He is seen trying to
bribe his sons. He has promised to pray to St. Praxed on their behalf. He
reminds them of his patrimony of the villas at Frascati, in the fashionable resort
town in the Alban Hills, some fifteen miles south of Rome:

Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, .

That brave Frascati villawith its bath, (11. 45-46)

And if they do not obey his 'orders' he even threatens to tell the Pope about hiss
villas in which case they would revert to him and not to them:

~ l s Iegive the Pope

My Villas! (11. 102-3)

The Bishop has the cunning and guile of a worldly person.

1

(he poem is a brilliant account of the changing moods of the Bishop. He Robert Browning:
appears at the outset to be downcast and depressed to feel that he is dying. So Two Early Poems
much so that in line 13 he asks himself ' Do 1 live, am I dead?' Even while alive
he feels dead, as the inner precincts of the church is too quiet for the man of
activity that the Bishop was. However, he soon overcomes this lllood and
begins to recall his strife with Gandolf and the thought that the richness of his
tomb would. for all tinies to come, raise his status above Gandolf, his rival,
cheers up his spirits. In his exhilaration he goes on to give all tl!e details of his
sarcophagus and tomb.

He discloses the way he got the big piece of lapis lazuli, and compares its size
with a Jew's head and its colour with the blue vein on Mary's breast.
Significantly, Mary is no less sacred for the Catholics than Jesus Christ
Himself, and John the Baptist was the first great R o n ~ a Catholic
t~ martyr and the
representation of his severed head in the European pictorial art is a conlmon
place. However, to the Bishop he is no more than a piece of stone to be poised
between his knees. In the great Jesuit church in Rome, the altar of St. Ignatius
(1491-1556), the leader of the Counter Reforination is adorned with a group of
the Trinity. The Father there holds a globe in his hand, which is said to be the
largest piece oflapis lazuli in existence. The Bishop in the poem seems to
recall it and his nonchalant manner seems to suggest that that might be a matter
of emulation, nbt piety, for him.

Howcver, as the poem draws to a close the candles of his sons 'dwindle' and thc
memory of their 'tall pale mother wit11 her talking eyes' rekindles in the
Bishop's mind. Itstrikes a discordant toile in the flow of the Bishop's great
ideas about his tomb. He discovers that they w o ~ ~not
l d heed his requests. much
less care for his cominands, .

... Will ye ever eat my heal??

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
The!, glitter like your mother's for my soul, ' (11.' 103-5)

/ From this low of his disposition he does nlon~entarilyrisc to a high but then
again relapses into despondence:
.

There leave me there1

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death- (11.1'13-15)

He does not hope now that his toinb would be built of anything other than mere
sandstone ('Gritstone, a-crumble ! ').
' 1

'In a parody of Dante's tripartite scheme' wrote John Woolford, 'the Bishop
distiilguishes grades of 'afterlife' on the basis of grades of'stone.' (p.116) If
Gandolrs 'paltry onion stone' represents the purgatory his imagined basalt and
agate and.lnpis lazuli would bequeath upoil him an eternal paradisal existence
which he could not enjoy even in, life. However, as it is, the sandstone
sarcophagus with its ' clammy squares, which sweat/As if the corpse they keep
weqe oozing through - 'would offer him the slimy afterlife, a state of r'otting a s
not even in Hell, The Bishop's rich imagination a i d fulsome, if not true
Christian, life finds expression in the multitude of details assembled
paratactically in the poem. The Bishop remains his true self till the end.
Nevertheless he is recpn~iledto his fate and tells his children:

Well go! I bless jre. (1. 119)

 Gregg Hecimovich in his paper entitled 'Just the tiling for tlle time'.
Contestualizing Religion in Browning's "The Bishop orders his ?'omb at St.
Prased's Church" (Victorian Poetry vol. 36, No. 3, Fall 1998) has con~jincingly
read the poem as Browning's coiltrib~tionto the Oxford Movement. Ho\\:cvcI..
notivithstanding his worldly picturc of the contemporary Bislroi~.in tune with
the Protestalrt temper, Browning was no Cs1:lrulic bnitcr. In fact. though - a ,
staunch non-conformist his whole lifc' slccordi~lgto Hecimot~ich.'Bro\\ni~ig
found in the history of the Catholic Church alrd its sacraments malters o f
spir~ttlalm o i ~ ~ e n tTo
' . concludc, 'Tlle Bishoy Orders His T o m b . . . ' is orlc of
Browning's great early Poen~sthat .tvould sustain many rcadings and !.et
succeed. izi offering-a rich, complex, and ever fresh poctic delight.

38.4 LET'S Sulk1 UP

I11 this w i t you studied two early poems of Robert Urot~ning.You sc,a~lncdtwo
passages from the poems in ordcr to i.~nderstandtheir rhythin. Thesc were nncnnt
to give ,you a feel.for the early .evolution in the art of the PO". These a11al;~:scs
sl~ouldbe llelpful to you..in wiiting your third assignment on this course w l ~ i c l ~
could b e 011just oiie work of art; j.e, a poem.

38.5 ANSWERS
-- TO EXERCISES --- -----

Self-Check Exercise-l
1. Porphpria and her, lover \vl~o~strangles
lrer to death.
' 2 . Ttvlce: in lines 55 and'60
3. Tllc passage is in regular iarn~bictetrameter.

i I/
'I listened with I~eartfit to break
I
Self-check Exercise-I1
1%: Probably the Duke of Perrara in 'My Last Duclress' had his u ifc
murdered.
2. They are both so1ipsis.t~of the eitrerne kind.

Self-check Exercise-111

a. The Bisl~op,contrary to his accepted vocation, is a worldly pcrsoil ,who.#

values wealth, sensual pleasures and does not lresitatc even to stcal and
lie.

b. Gandolf was a fellow priest of the Bishop. The latter is jealous of tlie
former even when he is dead thougl~in life he had won'tlre love of a
wolnalr whom Gandolf wished to make his owtl. ,
 / v / p . / /.I $:r''j'
c. Vanity aitll the prcacl er v- ~ i t y! Rabcl-t Browning:
Two Ei~rlyPoems

The domiilailt meter of the above pastage is iambic pentameter. However, the
first is a,tetrameter line with tlze first h o t being an amphimacer which is
succceded by an anapa.est. The first foot of the third line is a trochaic inversion
and ill the fourth line Browiliilg substitutes a spondee in the first foot for an
iambus. The lines do not rhyme. The passage is a good esaillple of tlze vitality
of ia.illbic peiltailleter poetry.

38.6 FURTHER READING

In casc you arc interested in rending more pocnls of this period you may reail
'My Last Duchess', 'Count Gisn~ond','Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister', ' In a
Ciondola' publishcd in Ilrantntic Lyics and ' Pictor Ignatus' and ' The
Laboratory' 111 Dmnzalic 12oi7zc117ccsand Lyrics. Thesc would bc availablc in
ail? good anthology such as Norton's or thc (Ix-fbr~l Book of' V~ctonanI'octly.
7'/22c Works c!f'l?ohcrt Browning ed. I: G. Keilyon (New Yorlc: Barilcs & Nobles
1966) may be vcr). useful \jut difficult to lay your hands on. Browning: Poetry
und Prose sclccted by Sinlon Nowell-Smith (London: Rupcrt-Davis, 1950) is an
casily availablc selection of Browlliilg 's poems. Robert Browning: TI7e Poc~ns
in 2 volumes cdiecd by .To1111 Pettigrew (London, New Haven: Yale Uni-vcrsity
Prcss, 1981 ) is an authoritative collection of B r o \ w ~ i ~ ~poems.
g's

Allloilg thc critical works, I havc referred to in 3 8.3.1 above is John Wool ford's.
Hrattlning tlic Rsvi.~ionary(New York: St. Martin's Prcss, 1988) and you may
coilsult it if it's readily available.