Victorian Verse - Echo - Christina Rossetti

The title of the poem gives a clue as to the ideas in the poem.  Echo was a nymph who lived on Mt Cithaeron, where Zeus was in the habit of consorting with other nymphs, being a serial womaniser.  His wife, Hera, became jealous and arrived to catch him in the act.  However, Echo distracted her by constantly talking.  When Juno realised the nymph's treachery, she condemned her to being unable to speak, except for the last few words of those spoken to her.  The "echo" in the poem is from a dead soul to one still living whom the poet craves would "Come back".  The poem conveys an anguished sense of loss, and Rossetti may also be drawing on the story of Echo after she is cursed by Hera.  Echo falls in love with a beautiful mortal, Narcissus, but is unable to tell him of her love.  She can only echo the ends of his words.  He rejects her, falling in love with his own reflection in a stream and being turned into the white flower of the same name.  The poet uses water imagery throughout.  Echoes, in reality, call back the words spoken by the listener and there is a strong identification of the lost love with the poet, as if they were two souls in one body – “My very life again”.

There is another strong influence at work in this poem.  Rossetti was familiar with the works of Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet of the late 13^th century.  In his masterpiece, "La Divina Commedia", the poet travels to the Underworld, led by the Roman poet, Virgil.  Whilst there, he meets his beloved, Beatrice, who leads him to the gates of Paradise.  Beatrice was a real woman whom Dante first knew as a child, but only met on an very few occasions, both he and she marrying others.  She died at the age of 24 – the age at which Rossetti wrote this poem.  

Rossetti was innovative in her use of varied metre to expand the emotional range of her verse, a feature which was met with some puzzlement by her contemporary critics, used to the regular rhythm and rhyme of mainstream Victorian verse. The poem is written in iambic pentametre, with the 4^th and 5^th lines between them creating a full line.  The initial iamb is inverted to form a trochee (Tum-ti rather than Ti-Tum) which, together with the anaphora on “Come”, gives the poem its pleading tone.  

Come to me in the silence of the night;

                Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

                As sunlight on a stream;

                Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

The poet pleads for the lover to return from the dead and speak to (her) in (her) dreams.  The gender of both speaker and lover is indeterminate – “rounded cheeks” is perhaps more suggestive of a woman or a very young man.  The poet uses an oxymoron to express the paradox of dreams – “speaking silence”.  Dreams are silent and yet the dreamer can clearly hear voices – again like an echo, which is not real in itself.  The image of “sunlight on a stream” suggests the sparkle of sunlight on water, emphasised by the alliteration.  This vibrant image shifts as the glitter turns to that of “tears”.  Whether they are the tears of the poet or the lovers is deliberately ambiguous, showing mutual sorrow at parting.  The longed-for visitor brings with it “memory, hope, love” which were promises when alive, but are now “finished”.  The rhyme scheme (ababcc) also plays on opposing themes:  “night/bright”, “dream/stream”.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,

                Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

                Where thirsting longing eyes

                Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

The poet wakes up as the dream fades.  The sense of desolation , being cheated by the dream, is expressed by the repeated “sweet” as it moves from “how sweet” (it is real) to “too sweet (it cannot be real) to the oxymoron “bitter sweet” (it is not real, and painful, but better than nothing).  The reuniting of the loved ones should have ended in heaven, with her dying.  In Paradise is where those parted by death meet and live together again.  The water imagery continues with “brimfull”, meaning a vessel full of water about to overflow, in contrast to the desolate place where they are apart and are parched, “thirsting” for one another.  The parted souls wait by the Gates of Paradise for them to open and allow their loved ones through into heaven, from which they never return.  There is no need for “echoes”. 

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

                My very life again tho’ cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

                Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

                Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

In spite of the pain of parting on awakening, the poet still longs for the loved one to come to (her) in (her) dreams, as only then is she able to relive the life that they enjoyed together, even though it is but a cold “echo” of that life.  In her dreams, the beloved and (she) can be together as one again, as they used to be in life.

The ideas are similar to those in “Remember me”, with the fusion of life and death, as if there is only a thin veil between the two and that in dreams and memory you can pass between the two, recapturing not just the emotional intensity of the relationship but the physical intimacy as well.

Victorian Verse - Love in a Life - Robert Browning

The poem was published in the volume “Men and Women” in 1855, which also contained the similarly named “Life in Love”.  This also has separation as its theme.  The volume was dedicated to Elizabeth and the poems were the first published works of Browning for five years. 

Written during the couple's time in Italy, the setting is touchingly domestic, with references to their furniture and EBB’s dress.  The conceit is that the poet (Browning) is searching through their house, looking for his beloved (EBB) – but she seems to elude him. 

The poem is written in two stanzas with matching metric patterns – a tercet in dimetre, followed by a tercet in tetrameter, ending with a couplet in pentametre – a highly unusual pattern.  In stanza one, it reflects the stages of his search:  the short lines as he moves from place to place, hurriedly searching; the longer lines as  his gaze sweeps the room and he realises that she has been there but is now gone; finally, a reflection on the meaning of her presence on him and his life – that she enriches it immeasurably.

I 

Room after room, 

I hunt the house through 

We inhabit together. 

Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her 

Next time, herself! not the trouble behind her 

Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume! 

As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew: 

Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather. 

The opening places us in the room with Browning as he looks for Elizabeth.  The syntax is awkward, but, as is common with Browning, it is ordered so as to present events to us in a particular hierarchy – we focus on the room, then him hunting, then the where, which gives the search significance.  He is not concerned – his “heart” is sure that he will find her.  “Heart” is metonomy – using a part (of himself) as the whole and a familiar poetic usage to indicate the location of the emotion of love.  He believes she has just left the room, leaving signs of her presence behind.  “Trouble” is used here in the sense of “disturbance” as in “troubled waters”.  He can smell her perfume in the curtains and the couch.  He then eulogises Elizabeth as if she were some goddess who can animate objects – the flowery decoration of the “cornice” (a border where the walls of a room meet the ceiling) blossom as her dress touches it, and a mirror gleams with the reflection of a feather in her hair (feathers in the hair were a popular Victorian adornment).

II 

Yet the day wears,

And door succeeds door;

I try the fresh fortune

The poet is conscious that it is getting late and he still hasn’t found her.  The short lines of the opening tercet reflect his growing urgency and concern as he continues his hunt, as does the repeated “door after door”. 

Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.

Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.

Spend my whole day in the quest, who cares?

The lines of the following tercet lengthen as he extends his search.  He decides to be methodical and search from the outer reaches of the house into the centre.  But she still eludes him, seeming to be just leaving the room as he enters.  His determination is unwavering; he will take as long it needs to find her, but…

But 'tis twilight, you see, with such suites to explore,

Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

The final couplet explains his growing concern.  It is getting dark and getting towards night.  The house is large – it has many rooms (suites) and cupboards (closets) and potential hiding places (alcoves are recesses which are formed between walls or where windows curve around).  His increasing urgency is evident in the parallelism of “such suites…”, “such closets…”, “such alcoves…”,  and the use of progressively stronger verbs, from the more general “explore” through the more specific “search” to “importune”, which means to beg or harass, looking for an answer.

We are left wondering whether he does find her, and, as a result, the uneasy feeling that this poem is about more than simply losing track of your wife in a large house.  The idea of searching for a loved one through empty rooms is often an image for death, which is reinforced by the poet’s concern at the onset of darkness and night.  It should also be remembered that EBB was in poor health throughout their married life.  She had three miscarriages before giving birth to their only son, Pen, in 1849, so her health must have been a constant source of worry.  She and Robert were never apart from the day of their elopement to the day of her death, so her absence, or fear of it, must have haunted Robert.  Although the warm Italian climate probably extended her life, EBB died in 1861, in Robert’s arms, aged 55.  Browning immediately returned to England with his son. 

Victorian Verse - Meeting at Night - Robert Browning

Another of Browning’s lyrical poems, published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) and written during his courtship of EBB.  The poem imagines a lover travelling towards a secret meeting with his beloved, and, given the clandestine nature of Browning’s and EBB’s relationship, the poem is autobiographical in its evocation of the emotions of the lovers, if not the geography of their meetings – which took place in London and not in a farmhouse near the sea.  

The sea is often a metaphor for transformation or new beginnings.  This journey may reflect the significant upset to both their lives as a result of their meeting as well as the promise of a new life together.  Also, Browning spent some years before they met travelling in Europe, and so would have returned home to England by boat.  The description of the landscape suggests pleasure in being “home” as well as eagerness to be reunited with the beloved, echoing the sentiments of “Home-Thoughts…”.

The poem is written in loose iambic tetrametres, a common metre for lyrics as it retains the sing-song rhythm and line-length of earlier songs, as well as propelling the movement forward.  Browning varies the metric feet, as in his other poems, to create particular effects – emphasising certain words.  The rhyme scheme – abccba –is chiastic.  It reverses at the midpoint of the sestet and each stanza is enclosed (sometimes called “envelope structure”) by the first and last rhyme. 

I 

The grey sea and the long black land; 

And the yellow half-moon large and low; 

And the startled little waves that leap 

In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 

As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 

The poem opens with a description of the approaching land (although the entrance of the lover is delayed until the penultimate line of the stanza) that is highly visual in its imagery and the colour palette – grey, black, yellow – similar to that of paintings called “Nocturnes” or “Night Music”.  An example by James McNeill Whistler, a Victorian painter, can be found here.  The open sea and shore are depicted also through the placing of strong beats on “grey sea”, “long … land” and the repeated “l” which draw out the line.  This is echoed in the succeeding line with “long and low”.

The speed of the lines picks up as the boat heads to land, with the use of a more regular iambic beat and with the cc rhyme scheme.  The moon lights up the sea so that the wavelets created by the boat are tipped with golden fire.  “Ringlets” were also a fashionable way for Victorian women to curl their hair; taken with the “startled” and “from their sleep”, this is a foreshadowing of the lovers’ meeting.  Also, EBB had long hair, described as “a shower of dark curls” by a friend, Mary Russell Mitford, in 1830.  There is also a distinctly erotic image in the “pushing prow” and “slushy sand”, highlighted by the alliteration and the use of the word “quench”.  To “quench” in blacksmithing means to plunge a bar of molten iron into cold water to temper (harden) it. 

The arrival of the boat is represented by the rhyming “sand” with the “land” in the first line; it has reached its destination.

II 

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 

Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 

And blue spurt of a lighted match, 

And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, 

Than the two hearts beating each to each! 

This sensuous imagery continues with the “warm sea-scented beach”.  The rhythm retains its more regular iambic beat as the lover hurries across the fields towards his objective.  The eagerness is conveyed by the abrupt transition from the appearance of the farm (in the distance, as he says “to cross” – he has not yet crossed the three fields) to the tap on the window pane, as if the lover has simply flown across the intervening distance.  His arrival is heralded by the striking of a match in the darkness; a tiny detailed action in contrast to the scale of the sea and landscape until now, as the separation of the lovers gives way to intimacy.  Again, the placing of the rhyme “scratch“ and “match” conveys consummation.  His lover speaks to him quietly, happy, but also mindful of the need for secrecy.  But the beating of their two hearts, as they hold each other, is louder than her voice – that is something which they cannot constrain.  This time the final rhyme is a contrast between their separation by the “beach” and their coming together “each to each”, where their hearts beat as one.

Victorian Verse - Home-Thoughts, from Abroad - Robert Browning

This is Browning’s most famous lyric poem.  In classical times, a lyric poem was originally a poem set to music played on a lyre, a form of small harp, but came to be applied to any (short) poem which has as its theme love, or explores and expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet.  It is essentially non-narrative; there is no story being told.  The poem shows Browning’s debt to the Romantics – the poetic movement that immediately preceded the Victorians, of whom the main exponents were Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.  The central theme of their poetry is the transcendent power of Nature and the value and authenticity of human emotions and feelings in the face of an increasingly rational and scientific approach to the world.  They are spiritual, but not religious.  The detailed references to the observed world and the emotional response to nature are hallmarks of the Romantic approach.

Browning’s poem was published in 1845 in “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics”, number VII in a series of pamphlets containing plays and poems under the collective title “Bells and Pomegranates” – a reference to the Bible in which Aaron (Moses’s brother) is described as having a robe hemmed with ornaments of this shape.  Browning explained his choice of this reference as: “the hem of the robe of the high priest” to indicate “the mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought.” 

Browning travelled to Italy for the first time in the late 1830s and again in the early 1840s.  In spite of the message of the poem, Browning was very fond of Italy and he and Elizabeth made their home there after their marriage, although they returned to England for family visits.  The poem evokes the sights and sounds of the English countryside and is infused with nostalgia.  Note how the irregular metric pattern is used to match the poet’s emotions.  Note also the characteristic use of enjambment and caesura. 

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there, 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 

In England—now! 

The poem opens with an exclamation, as if the emotion of longing has spilled out of him spontaneously.  The word “there” is odd – in fact, it is often misquoted as “here”.  After all, it is April in Italy as well.  So, a contrast is made immediately – April in Italy is of quite a different quality, almost not like April at all.  He is, of course, comparing the more temperate climate of England with the Mediterranean climate of Italy, to the latter’s disadvantage.  In England, spring comes stealthily (“unaware”), the leaves appearing as if overnight on the elm-trees and the surrounding bushes and the chaffinch (a small, pink-breasted songbird) has begun singing. 

The octet is in trimetres for the first three lines, but as the emotion grows and he warms to his subject, the lines lengthen to tetrametres.  He ends it with another exclamation, using a dimetre, as if his emotions have overwhelmed him and he cannot go on.  The rhyme scheme is regular – ababccdd – which again matches the growing excitement as the rhymes become more closely packed.

However, one thought leads to another, as May follows April, the subject of the next octet:

And after April, when May follows, 

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! 

The references here are to two birds – the whitethroat and swallow - which migrate to England in the spring to breed – another symbol of how England’s seasons change.  The two lines form an incomplete sentence, as if his memories are tumbling from him uncontrolled. 

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge— 

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture! 

The poet asks us to “Listen!” to the sound of a thrush in his garden (“my blossomed “).  The scene is described in detail, as if recalling an actual event:  the thrush is sitting at the end of a spray of the pear-tree, which is growing in a hedge (perhaps the boundary of his garden) and leaning over into the neighbouring field, where it drops its “Blossoms and dewdrops” onto the clover crop below.  Browning uses the subordination of this long sentence, between “Hark!” and “That’s the wise thrush;” to lead us through the image of the blossoming pear-tree in the hedge, up and out over the field to where the thrush perches on the out-flung branch.  Browning’s observation is accurate – the song thrush (turdus philomelus) prefers to sing perched at the end of a branch.  Its song is characterised by the repetition of notes and phrases.  The thrush is “wise” because it repeats itself to make sure it doesn’t forget its song - and so that we do not presume that it cannot reproduce the first, glorious outpouring of its melody.

The lines are now in the longer iambic pentametres as his vision of England expands.  The rhyme scheme subtly alters, but remains regular, the rhyming couplets now used for emphasis:  aabcbcdd.

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 

The buttercups, the little children's dower 

—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 

The recollections continue in the final quatrain, with its rhyming couplets, with the image of a late “hoar” frost, or possibly the whiteness of the dew is being likened to hoar-frost, covering the fields.  However, by midday it will have warmed up and burnt off the dew, or frost, and the buttercups will open.  The bright yellow buttercups are described as a gift or dowry to children – from the sun, possibly, as they reflect its yellow light.  A favourite game of children used to be to test if you “liked butter” by holding a buttercup under the chin to see if it reflected yellow.  It usually does, as the inside of a buttercup petal is shiny and light reflective.  The buttercup is compared with the exotic “melon flower”, which is also yellow and much larger than a buttercup.  The melon is a member of the same botanical family as cucumbers and squash but they do not grow naturally in England as it is too cold. 

There is some xenophobia here perhaps.  The Colonial British (although Italy was never a colony) prided themselves on their restraint and order; they saw themselves as “civilising” the peoples they came into contact with.  Browning dismisses the “gaudy” melon flower for being too exotic, too extravagant and showy, preferring the unassuming native wildflower of England.  However, Browning was well-travelled and cosmopolitan, and, at this time, had little reason to love the “British Public”; the reaction to his poetry, and in particular the long poem “Sordello” published in 1840, was generally negative and was criticised for its obscurity.  This criticism effectively hampered his career for years - after 1844 he published very little until late in life, and many of the poems now recognised as being his greatest (apart from the epic “The Ring and the Book” (1869) pre-date his marriage and emigration to Italy. 

Lines from this poem have been referenced by many poets, showing its enduring, and endearing, influence over time.  It ranked number 42 in the Nation’s 100 Favourite Poems poll carried out by the BBC (“My Last Duchess” was at 69); there is a song by the same name by Clifford T Ward published in the 1970s; a poem by the novelist John Buchan; Carol Anne Duffy, the poet Laureate, named her autobiographical collection of love poems “Rapture” and quotes the poem in her dedication; Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” references it; Rupert Brooke, poet of the First World War, echoes its sentiments in “The Soldier”.

Victorian Verse - My Last Duchess - Robert Browning

This is the greatest poem in the whole selection, and possibly (probably) one of the greatest poems ever written.  It is certainly the greatest dramatic monologue - the one against which all other poems in this form are judged.   Browning is the master of this form, although not the only practitioner. Tennyson also wrote dramatic monologues which are among his best poems - Ulysees and Tithonus. Maud, which is discussed elsewhere in the blog, is also a dramatic monologue.  A dramatic monologue is a poem where the poet takes on a persona - a character who is not himself - and speaks in his voice.  However, that is not to say that the poet is entirely absent.  The poet may refer to emotions, events or ideas which he has himself experienced, or be using the persona to debate topical questions of the day.  The Victorian poets used the form to debate the position of women in society, sexual relationships and gender identity, the nature of work and finding purpose in life, religious doubt and societal ills, in their search to make sense of their lives in a world that was rapidly changing.  The dramatic monologue allowed them the freedom to explore radical ideas without the fear of public censure.  They were not always successful in the last - commentators of the day sometimes saw through the pretence and criticised them as scandalous.

Browning delighted in exploring the minds of socio- and psychopaths - Porphyria's Lover is a murderer, the woman in The Laboratory is planning to poison at least three of her rivals in love  - as well as Renaissance artists, as in Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto. 

Poetry is an oral art form.  It is the poet's voice - heard through the rhythm, the rhyme, syntax and punctuation, as well as the auditory poetic techniques - which lifts the words off the page and makes sense of them. To understand a dramatic monologue, you have to HEAR the voice.  With the dramatic monologue, and Browning's in particular, you have to be sensitive to what the persona is NOT saying, as much as to what he IS saying.  We hear Browning's views on his subject, and his subject matter, in the gaps.  The technique which he uses most to create the cadence of the voice of the persona and reveals what he is actually like, as opposed to the version of himself that he gives the listener, is enjambment  - running the sense of a line onto the next (giving emphasis to the first words of the succeeding line) and caesura - breaking or stopping in the middle of the line.

The frequent use of these techniques not only reveals to us the true story behind the persona's version of it, but allows the poem to flow, uninterrupted, for 55 lines, whilst maintaining a regular rhyme scheme of rhyming couplets (aabbccdd....), which is a technical feat in itself.  Added to that, it is written in iambic pentametre.  And yet, read with sensitive attention to the the flow of the sense in relation to the lines, both the regularity of the rhyme and the rhythm go all but unnoticed.  And where they are noticeable, there is a very good reason for them to be so.  I strongly advise you to listen to a recording of this work and you could do worse than listen to this dramatised reading by Julian Glover, which is not very good quality, but captures the subtleties, as does this one by the late actor James Mason.  Just ignore the painting which accompanies the last - it is Victorian, not Renaissance, which is when Browning's poem is set.

Browning's poem is based on the true story of the marriage between Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara and Lucrezia de 'Medici in the 16th century. The background can be found in Wiki here.  There is a wealth of material on the web about this poem, as it is one of the most anthologised and studied.

My Last Duchess

Ferrara

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

First, note the pun in the title.  Does “Last” here mean final, as in “the last one I will ever have?” or “The last one in a continuing line”?  The answer is given in the poem, but forms part of the intrigue of the opening.  The title is repeated in the first line, but immediately given a sinister overtone:  “looking as if she were alive.”  This could be a reference to it being a life-like painting – or is it a reference to something else?  The pride the Duke takes in the painting is evident – “a wonder” - so maybe he is simply reflecting on the skill of Fra Pandolf, the painter.  Notice how the pattern of enjambment and caesura is set up, making the regular rhyme-scheme all but unnoticeable.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read 

Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 

The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 

But to myself they turned (since none puts by 

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 

How such a glance came there; so, not the first 

Are you to turn and ask thus.

It now becomes evident that the Duke is not talking to the reader, but to an unseen listener, although the effect is to put us, the reader, in that second person’s place.  And it also becomes clear that this is not the first time that the Duke has shown the picture to a visitor, and their reaction to the painting has been similar – amazement at the “depth and passion of its earnest glance” – and they all ask the same question – “how such a glance came there?”  The Duke’s response is in some ways equivocal.  He names the painter “by design”, as if to explain the artistry of the painting, and yet seems to take their question to refer to the Duchess’s expression in real life.  He also shows his pride of ownership (of JUST the painting?) in the assertion that nobody shows the painting to visitors, except him.  It is his secret.

                                                                Sir, ’twas not 

Her husband’s presence only, called that spot 

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps 

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps 

Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint 

Half-flush that dies along her throat.”

The use of enjambment between “twas not” and “her husband” is illustrative of Browning’s use of the technique.  Together with the iambic metre, the syntax and the comma, it forces the reader to put emphasis on “husband” and “only”, which then becomes the focus of his explanation – that he was not the sole focus of the Duchess’s attention.  He then goes on to give examples of the events that caused the “spot/Of joy”: comments from Fra Pandolf while she was sitting for her portrait.  How are we meant to take these comments?  As sexual innuendo or innocent chit-chat?  Fra Pandolf presumably shows more of her wrist in the painting, as it has been covered by her cloak, as small wrists were a sign of beauty.  He then declares himself inadequate to the task of reproducing the Duchess’s blush – the “faint/Half-flush” – caused by his comment.  Browning, on the other hand, is more than capable.  He uses enjambment between “faint/Half-flush” placing the spondee “Half-flush” at the beginning of the line, giving both words equal weight.  He then follows with three iambs - “that dies”, “a-long”, “her throat” – two strong beats giving way to a gradual weakening as the flush fades and our attention is drawn to where.  Abruptly, as if we too have been guilty of staring, the Duke continues, with another spondee:

                                                                Such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy.

His dismissive “such stuff”, conveyed by the spondee, shows his displeasure with his Duchess’s reaction to the painter’s flattery, even though he acknowledges she thought of it as “courtesy” – politeness or gallantry. 

                                                                                She had

A heart—how shall I say? — too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one!

The Duke’s complaint against his Duchess now becomes more explicit.  There are subtle clues as to how we are supposed to take his censure, first in the placing of the “A heart”.  Having a heart is positive – but the Duke’s posing of the rhetorical question and the qualifier “too soon” sounds the wrong note – how can you be made glad too easily?  His re-iteration changes the meaning slightly, but towards the negative – “too easily impressed”.  We learn that she looked favourably on everything and everyone – “’twas all one!”  She did not discriminate.  So what are we to think about the Duchess at this point?  Too easily flattered?  Embarrassed when she is paid a compliment?  Easily pleased?  Liking everybody?  The Duke gives us some more examples of things that gave her pleasure – and which seem to annoy him:

                                My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least.

A “favour” is a love-token, flowers or a ribbon, given by a man to his beloved. This is what the Duke feels the Duchess should value above all.  Browning’s uses a greater lyricism, in contrast to the colloquial rhythms of the preceding lines, to suggest how we are to interpret the Duchess’s response to the Duke’s list.  He uses alliteration on “dropping” and “daylight” to describe her love of the sunset.  He contrasts the Duke’s dismissive “some officious fool” with the image of the (innocent) gift of a “bough of cherries”, placing the “Broke” at the start of the line, to imitate the action of the breaking branch, and creating a dactyl (one heavy, two light beats) to place a further emphasis on “orchard”.  He places emphasis on “white mule” - white the symbol of purity, a donkey echoing Christ’s journey into Jerusalem.  She rides it “round the terrace” – suggesting she is confined, or perhaps that the Duchess is little more than a child.  The images are of the natural world, in contrast to the Duke’s artificial, artful one and the lyricism (and rhyme) is in contrast to the Duke’s clipped dismissiveness – and increasing self-justification.

                                She thanked men—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift.

Browning’s lyricism gives way to the self-justifying, true “voice” of the Duke and we hear what is really bothering him – that she was as pleased by the simple things in life  – sunset, cherries, her white mule, pleasantries – as much as she was pleased by what he gave her – status, a title and a “nine-hundred-years-old name.”  Browning places the emphasis on “My gift”, again using enjambement and a spondee at the start of the line.  The true extent of his self-absorption and egoism are made clear as he begins to lose control, his sense of outrage growing:

                                                                Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—which I have not—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—

E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop.

The language becomes increasingly threatening: “your will/Quite clear”, “disgusts”, “exceed the mark”, “lessoned” and the iambic pentametre rhythm more insistent.  The climax comes with the repetition of “stooping” and “stoop”, with the breaking of the regular iambic lines with the spondee on “I choose” and the dactyl on “Never to stoop” following the enjambment.  The full extent of the Duke’s anger – and what he does to allay it - becomes clear, as he reveals himself to the listener. 

                                Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive.

The regular iambic line gives way to a series of broken lines as the Duke reveals what he has done, conversationally.  Browning uses two spondees together to give sinister emphasis to the Duke’s admittance of murder “Then all smiles stopped”. The meaning of his introductory words, “as if alive”, repeated here and placed chillingly at the beginning of the line, are now clear.  He has had her murdered on his orders. 

Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then.

The reaction of the listener is to leap to his feet and head for the stairs – notice the abrupt transition to the listener and the placing of the “then” at the end of the sentence, as if the Duke has, for once, and only momentarily, lost the initiative.  The Duke continues talking, seemingly unaware of the reaction his revelation has had on his audience.

                                                                I repeat,

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object.  

The Duke reverts to an earlier topic of conversation, as if the revelation just made can go unremarked. The reason for the listener’s visit is made clear – he has come to broker a new marriage between his master, the Count, and the Duke.  The “last Duchess” is, indeed, the latest in a chain.  The Duke is asserting that he is sure his demand for a dowry for the girl (the bridal gift from a father to the future son-in-law) will be sufficiently generous although, he insists, the girl herself is what he wants – but the word “object” belies this.  Browning is punning on “object” as in “objective” and “object” as “thing”.   She is just a trophy to him.

                                                                Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

The envoy appears to make a further move to get away but is stayed by the Duke, shown by the syntax that places “Together” at the beginning of the line, – “Nay, we’ll go/Together down.”  As they leave, the Duke points out another “object” (or “objet d’art” as Browning is punning) – a statue of Neptune, God of the Sea, taming a seahorse.  This image is deliberately ambiguous.  As God of the Sea, Neptune rode huge horses with the tails of fish, as depicted in classical art here.  But to us, a seahorse is a tiny fish, conjuring up the image of a powerful man dominating a much weaker creature – just as the Duke has dominated, and ultimately killed, his Duchess.  To the Duke, she was a possession to reflect his power and status, as much as the painting by a famous artist or a bronze by a famous sculptor.  

Victorian Verse - Died - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I have searched and searched to try and find the subject of this poem - including looking in The Times archives.  There are a few discussions online about it - but no conclusions.  All we have is the date of death - "On Sunday, 3rd of August" - and, as it was published posthumously, (Last Poems, 1862), no date of composition.  However, the dates can be narrowed down, as the poem is clearly addressed to her husband, Robert, as they seem to be having an argument about the merits of the dead person.  This means there are only three possible dates - 1845 (before they were married, but during their courtship), 1851 and 1856, as these are the only years in which 3rd August fell on a Sunday, whilst they were together. (This comes courtesy of an - unresolved - online discussion).  The person in question need not have been particularly famous - notices of death were, and are, commonly put in The Times personal columns.  For many years, they were on the front page.  Obituaries, as opposed to death notices, were usually written about more notable personalities. 

The poem is written in five line stanzas of iambic tetramtre with a regular abbaa rhyme scheme.  On first reading, this can seem rather trite and the tone of the whole somewhat flippant.  However, the bantering tone of the first two stanzas soon gives way to a more serious reflection on the nature of fame, reputation and death and a scornful rejection of man’s presumption in thinking that what we say about one another on earth can possibly matter in the face of death and God’s judgement.  The whole feels like one side of a conversation between two people who know each other well, are used to debate, and have something serious to say about a shared experience.

The death seems to be unexpected - or, at least, the two seem to be in the middle of an on-going debate on the worthiness of the person's life, when they hear of his death through an obituary in the “The Times” newspaper. 

I

What shall we add now? He is dead.

And I who praise and you who blame,

With wash of words across his name,

Find suddenly declared instead—

"On Sunday, third of August, dead”.

The poem opens in the same direct, rhetorical style as the others in the selection and here she addresses her husband.  Her opinion of the dead person is more positive than her husband’s.  Their debate is described in a metaphor – “wash of words” – which suggests not only that there have been a lot of them, but also that they have not had much effect, as in to “wash over”.  The bold notice of his death, which sounds as if it is lifted directly from the newspaper, designed to pull them (and us) up short (“which stops”), as if to underline the futility of their debate in the face of death.

II

Which stops the whole we talked to-day.

I quickened to a plausive glance 
At his large general tolerance 
By common people's narrow way, 
Stopped short in praising. Dead, they say. 

EBB seems to be recapping the point of her discussion.  She recalls becoming animated (“quickened”) and praising the dead person for his liberality (tolerance), in contrast with the majority – the “common people’s narrow way”.  This could be political or social liberality, as EBB was an activist on many fronts.  She wrote extensively about the plight of the poor in London, children in particular, even while she was living in Italy.  Her two most famous poems on this are “A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London” (1854), published in a fund-raising pamphlet together with a poem by Robert Browning, “The Twins”, and “The Cry of the Children” (1842).  However, her praises are “stopped short” by the death announcement.

III

And you, who had just put in a sort 
Of cold deduction--"rather, large 
Through weakness of the continent marge, 
Than greatness of the thing contained”-- 
Broke off. Dead!--there, you stood restrained. 

EBB now recaps for Robert what he had been saying, which was less fulsome in its praise of the man – in fact, rather “cold”.  She quotes Robert’s words, where he used a metaphor of a large object appearing bigger in a confined space.  “continent marge” means the extent of the surrounding land and “thing contained” means what is inside the space.  The liberality of the subject was only notable because of this contrast with the general population – made bigger than it really was by comparison.  But Robert, too, breaks off from his argument when the news is received and is silenced.

IV

 As if we had talked in following one

Up some long gallery. "Would you choose

An air like that? The gait is loose—

Or noble.' Sudden in the sun

An oubliette winks. Where is he? Gone.

EBB then uses a (rather odd) simile to elaborate on the effect of the sudden news.  She imagines herself and Robert walking behind a person in a long, narrow room and commenting on the way they walk.  But the discussion is made shockingly irrelevant because, suddenly, there is a “wink” in the light and some hole in space appears into which the man disappears – “Gone”.  An “oubliette”, literally meaning “forgotten”, is a kind of dungeon which can only be accessed through a hole in the ceiling – effectively condemning the poor prisoner to indefinite incarceration.

V

 Dead. Man's "I was' by God's "I am'—

All hero-worship comes to that.

EBB now moves on, still addressing Robert, to a more general reflection on the irrelevance of man’s account of himself and others in their lives (“I was”) compared to the absolute judgement of God, the final arbiter (“I am”).  The “I am” is a reference to “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the last” from the Book of Revelations in the New Testament.  Alpha (Α) is the first and Omega (Ω) the last letter in the Greek alphabet, from which the English versions of the Book were translated.

High heart, high thought, high fame, as flat

As a gravestone. Bring your Jacet jam—

The epitaph's an epigram. 

EBB shows the futility of their previous argument in the face of death with the scornful use of the repeated “high”, which is brought, literally, down to earth, by the use of the enjambment across the line from “flat” to the simile “As a gravestone”.  She then plays on the words “He is dead” or “He lies here” (“iacet iam” in Latin) declaring that these words are not just words written on his grave as a matter of fact (epitaph), but also a summary of all that can be said about him (epigram).  An epigram is a short, usually witty, saying to sum someone up, so she is being ironic here.  Oscar Wilde famously wrote epigrams, as in “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

VI 
Dead. There's an answer to arrest 
All carping. Dust's his natural place? 
He'll let the flies buzz round his face 
And, though you slander, not protest? 
--From such an one, exact the Best? 

This stanza continues in the same mocking tone, with its rhetorical questions.  She reiterates that the fact of Death is sufficient to stop anybody bad-mouthing the dead man (carping).  The rhetorical questions that follow emphasise how little judgements made on him will matter to the dead man.  If you slander him, by saying that he is so low or base as to be in the metaphorical “Dust”, what does he care, and why should he protest as, being dead, he is not even bothered by having flies buzz around him?  What can you expect to get from someone in his situation?

VII
Opinions gold or brass are null. 
We chuck our flattery or abuse, 
Called Caesar's due, as Charon's dues, 
I' the teeth of some dead sage or fool, 
To mend the grinning of a skull. 

It doesn’t matter what we think about people. We throw around (chuck, although sounding modern, was used to mean throw from the 16^th century) our good or bad opinions about both wise (sage) or stupid (fool) people, as if they deserve it.  “Caesar’s dues” is a reference again to the Bible, where Jesus replies to a question about Jews paying taxes to the Romans – “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; render unto God the things that are God’s.”  We are, in fact, merely throwing them at the dead as if we could stave off inevitable death ourselves.  Charon’s dues are the coins paid to Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of the dead across the River Styx to Hades in Greek mythology.  The “grinning skull” is a “memento mori,” or reminder of death, which originated in Roman times.  You can read about it and see representations of them in paintings, which were very common throughout the medieval and early modern eras, here

The poem ends with a piece of advice to Robert, and more generally, the reader:

VIII

 Be abstinent in praise and blame. 

The man's still mortal, who stands first, 
And mortal only, if last and worst. 
Then slowly lift so frail a fame, 
Or softly drop so poor a shame.

Resist the temptation to judge people – everyone is mortal, whether they are the very best or absolute worst.  Instead, help people to become the best they can be (slowly lift) and don’t be over-harsh (softly drop) on those who fail to live up to your high standards, as both good and bad qualities will not last beyond death.

This is a difficult poem to comprehend.  There is considerable economy with words, with ideas compressed into small spaces, forced by the confines of the rhythm and rhyming schemes.  The tone is both scornful and mocking, although there is a softening of the tone in the final two lines, through the use of the alliterative “lift so frail a fame” , the antithesis in “slowly lift” and “softly drop” and the merging of the conceptual  -“fame”/”shame” – into the physical, as if it is a body that we should be handling carefully.