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”.
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