George Gordon, Lord Byron - Robert Browning

 

The influence of Lord Byron in Robert Browning (A fusion of Neoclassical and Romantic ideals and attitudes)

 

Remind me not, remind me not  (Lord Byron)

 

1          Remind me not, remind me not,

            Of those beloved, those vanish'd hours,

            When all my soul was given to thee;

            Hours that may never be forgot,

            Till Time unnerves our vital powers,

6          And thou and I shall cease to be.

 

7          Can I forget---canst thou forget,

            When playing with thy golden hair,

            How quick thy fluttering heart did move?

            Oh! by my soul, I see thee yet,

            With eyes so languid, breast so fair,

12        And lips, though silent, breathing love.

 

13        When thus reclining on my breast,

            Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet,

            As half reproach'd yet rais'd desire,

And still we near and nearer prest,

And still our glowing lips would meet,

18        As if in kisses to expire.

 

19        And then those pensive eyes would close,

And bid their lids each other seek,

Veiling the azure orbs below;

While their long lashes' darken'd gloss

Seem'd stealing o'er thy brilliant cheek,

24        Like raven's plumage smooth'd on snow.

 

25        I dreamt last night our love return'd,

And, sooth to say, that very dream

Was sweeter in its phantasy,

Than if for other hearts I burn'd,

For eyes that ne'er like thine could beam

30        In Rapture's wild reality.

 

31        Then tell me not, remind me not,

Of hours which, though for ever gone,

Can still a pleasing dream restore,

Till Thou and I shall be forgot,

And senseless, as the mouldering stone

36        Which tells that we shall be no more.

 

http://www.classicauthors.net/Byron/PoemsOfGeorgeGordonLordByron/PoemsOfGeorgeGordonLordByron50.html

 

Last ride together  (Robert Browning)

 

I.

1          I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so,

Since now at length my fate I know,

Since nothing all my love avails,

Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

Since this was written and needs must be---

My whole heart rises up to bless

Your name in pride and thankfulness!

Take back the hope you gave,---I claim

---Only a memory of the same,

---And this beside, if you will not blame,

11        Your leave for one more last ride with me.

 

II.

12        My mistress bent that brow of hers;

Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs

When pity would be softening through,

Fixed me, a breathing-while or two,

With life or death in the balance: right!

The blood replenished me again;

My last thought was at least not vain:

I and my mistress, side by side

Shall be together, breathe and ride,

So, one day more am I deified.

22        Who knows but the world may end tonight

 

III.

23        Hush! if you saw some western cloud

All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed

By many benedictions---sun's

And moon's and evening-star's at once---

And so, you, looking and loving best,

Conscious grew, your passion drew

Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,

Down on you, near and yet more near,

Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!---

Thus leant she and lingered---joy and fear!

33        Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

 

IV

34        Then we began to ride. My soul

Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll

Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

Past hopes already lay behind.

What need to strive with a life awry?

Had I said that, had I done this,

So might I gain, so might I miss.

Might she have loved me? just as well

She might have hated, who can tell!

Where had I been now if the worst befell?

44        And here we are riding, she and I.

 

V.

45        Fail I alone, in words and deeds?

Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,

Saw other regions, cities new,

As the world rushed by on either side.

I thought,---All labour, yet no less

Bear up beneath their unsuccess.

Look at the end of work, contrast

The petty done, the undone vast,

This present of theirs with the hopeful past!

55        I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

 

VI.

56        What hand and brain went ever paired?

What heart alike conceived and dared?

What act proved all its thought had been?

What will but felt the fleshly screen?

We ride and I see her bosom heave.

There's many a crown for who can reach,

Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!

The flag stuck on a heap of bones,

A soldier's doing! what atones?

They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.

66        My riding is better, by their leave.

 

VII.

67        What does it all mean, poet? Well,

Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell

What we felt only; you expressed

You hold things beautiful the best,

And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.

'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,

Have you yourself what's best for men?

Are you---poor, sick, old ere your time---

Nearer one whit your own sublime

Than we who never have turned a rhyme?

77        Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

 

VIII.

78        And you, great sculptor---so, you gave

A score of years to Art, her slave,

And that's your Venus, whence we turn

To yonder girl that fords the burn!

You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

What, man of music, you grown grey

With notes and nothing else to say,

Is this your sole praise from a friend,

``Greatly his opera's strains intend,

``Put in music we know how fashions end!''

88        I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

 

IX.

89        Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate

Proposed bliss here should sublimate

My being---had I signed the bond---

Still one must lead some life beyond,

Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

This foot once planted on the goal,

This glory-garland round my soul,

Could I descry such? Try and test!

I sink back shuddering from the quest.

Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?

99        Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

 

X.

100      And yet---she has not spoke so long!

What if heaven be that, fair and strong

At life's best, with our eyes upturned

Whither life's flower is first discerned,

We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

What if we still ride on, we two

With life for ever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,

The instant made eternity,---

And heaven just prove that I and she

110      Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

 

http://www.bartleby.com/42/665.html

 

COMMENT

 

To make my comparative analysis of the Romantic Period and the Victorian Era I choose the poets; Lord Byron and Robert Browning and their respective poems Remind Me Not, Remind Me Not and The Last Ride Together. After analysing their poems I   will introduce the poet and I will compare their poetic works and their poetic style.

 

The first poem is Remind Me Not, Remind Me Not. It is a Lord Byron poem published in his complete work Hours of Idleness, A Series of Poems, Original and Translated (complete title) (1807). (From: 1 Poems Of George Gordon, Lord Byron by Lord Byron: Remind Me Not, Remind Me Not). The poem is about the memories as we can see in its title and in the entire poem. It is a love poem in which someone loves someone but they do not love each other. So, the protagonist is remembering when they were together and when they love each other. In the first stanza of the poem someone is telling someone not to remind him/her. He or she is referring a love story of the past (Line 3: “...When all my soul was given to thee;...”). He/she still loves him/her and also he/she is saying that he/she never forgets him/her until he/she dead. (Lines 4,5 and 6: “...When all my soul was given to thee; Hours that may never be forgot, Till Time unnerves our vital powers,...”) The next stanza, he or she is asking if he/she can forget when they were together like in the following stanzas (3^rd and 4^th). The fifth stanza, he/she is talking about a dream that he/she dreamt last night. He/she dreamt that they were together as in the past, their love return. (Line 25:  “...I dreamt last night our love return'd,...”) Finally, in the last stanza, he/she is reproaching him/her that after all he/she not to tell him/her and he/she not to remember him/her. (Lines 31 and 32: “...Then tell me not, remind me not, Of hours which, though for ever gone,...”)

 

The poem is written in first person so I can deduce that the poem might be an autobiographical poem and Byron was referring to one of his love stories.

 

About to the structure of the poem, it is composed by six sextets. The verses have an assonance rhyme. It is repeated the vowel sounds. (As for instance in the second stanza: lines 8 and 11 “hair” and “fair”, line 9 and 12 “move” and “love”)  The first verse of each stanza rhymes with the fourth, the second rhymes with the fifth and the third rhymes with the sixth. The vocabulary that Lord Byron is using is easy to understand isolated more or less and some words are obsolete for us nowadays and others belongs to the literary camp such as, in the line 3 “thee” and “canst” in the line 7. Regarding the literary devices, the way in which these words interact is a bit difficult to understand. The poem is plenty of figures of speech and tropes some of them are line 3 “...When all my soul was given to thee;...”, line 6 “...And thou and I shall cease to be...”. These  are examples of metaphors and, in the lines 14 and 15 “...Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet, As half reproach'd yet rais'd desire,...”, line 34 and 35 “... Till Thou and I shall be forgot, And senseless, as the mouldering stone...”. And in this instance these are cases of comparisons.

 

The following poem is The Last Ride Together. A Robert Browning’s poem. It was published in his complete work Men and Women in 1855 (From: 2 Men and Women (poetry collection) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). This poem is a love poem. It is about one man that wants a last ride with the woman that he loves. He asks her for it. (Line 11: “...Your leave for one more last ride with me...”)  It seems that he is dying (line 2: “...Since now at length my fate I know,...” and line 5: “...Since this was written and needs must be---...”) and also something has happened between them since he says that his love is useless, he says that he knows his fate, he says that he has failed in everything... (Lines 3 and 4: “...Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,...”)  he claims only a memory (line 9: “...---Only a memory of the same,...”). She accepts his proposal (line 16: “...With life or death in the balance: right!...). During their ride, he is thinking and he is asking himself why he had to fight since he had failed in everything (line 38: “...What need to strive with a life awry?...”), if he had done that thing or this thing, if he had said that thing or this thing (line 39: “...Had I said that, had I done this,...”), if she had loved him in the same way (line 41: “...Might she have loved me? just as well...”) , etc. Furthermore, he compares the art (poets, music, sculptors) and its results with the love (stanzas 7^th and 8^th of the poem). And, it seems that he prefers the love because he feels that it is the heaven (stanza 10^th).

 

About to the structure of the poem, it is composed by ten stanzas of eleven verses each one. It has a consonance rhyme, repetition of two or more consonants using different vowels. ( As for example in the lines 3 and 4 : “avails” and “fails” and lines 17 and 18 “again” and “vain”). The poem follows this rhyme scheme aabbcddeec. The vocabulary that Robert Browning is using is quite difficult to understand because in contradistinction to Lord Byron, Robert uses a language more formal. Regarding the literary devices, the way in which these words interact is difficult to understand. The poem is plenty of figures of speech and tropes the most important to mention are “...What need to strive with a life awry?...” in the line 38 and in the line 41 “...Might she have loved me?...”, these are cases of rhetorical questions. “...My soul/ Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll/ Freshening and fluttering in the wind...” lines 34 to 36, this is an example of metaphor. Also we can appreciate a personification in the line 14 “...When pity would be softening through,...”. In lines 8 and 9 “...Take back the hope you gave,---I claim /---Only a memory of the same,...” and in lines 23 to 26 “...Hush! if you saw some western cloud/ All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed/ By many benedictions---sun's/ And moon's and evening-star's at once---...”. These are examples of enjambments, continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause.

 

This poem is a dramatic monologues, that is to say, is a type of poem, developed during the Victorian period, in which a character in fiction or in history delivers a speech explaining his or her feelings, actions, or motives. The monologue is usually directed toward a silent audience, with the speaker's words influenced by a critical situation. (From: 3 Dramatic monologue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It is collected, as I mention before, in his complete work Men and Women. It is composed of fifty dramatic monologues (with a fifty-first poem in his own voice and addressed to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, dedicating the volume to her). (From: 4 Literary Encyclopedia: Men and Women) Browning’s fame today rests mainly on his dramatic monologues. (From: 5 Robert Browning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

 

Lord Byron was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Byron became famous throughout Europe as the embodiment of romanticism. He is amongst the most famous of the English 'Romantic' poets. Lord Byron wrote prolifically, he wrote satires and theatre plays apart from his poems and narrative poems. Lord Byron, actually, becomes known because of the publication of the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. Don Juan, Byron's masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, has roots deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians as somewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world at all levels – social, political, literary and ideological. Nevertheless, Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of incest and sodomy. Byron’s poetry covers a wide range. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and in The Vision of Judgment (1822) he wrote 18th-century satire. He also created the “Byronic hero,” who appears consummately in the Faustian tragedy Manfred (1817)—a mysterious, lonely, defiant figure whose past hides some great crime. The Byronic hero pervades much of Byron's work. The Byronic hero presents an idealised but flawed character whose attributes include: having great talent, exhibiting great passion, having a distaste for society and social institutions, expressing a lack of respect for rank and privilege, thwarted in love by social constraint or death, rebelling, suffering exile, hiding an unsavoury past, arrogance, overconfidence or lack of foresight and ultimately, acting in a self-destructive manner. Cain (1821) raised a storm of abuse for its sceptical attitude toward religion. The verse tale Beppo is in the ottava rima (eight-line stanzas in iambic pentameter) that Byron later used for his acknowledged masterpiece Don Juan (1819–24), an epic-satire combining Byron’s art as a storyteller, his lyricism, his cynicism, and his detestation of convention. (From: 6 George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and  7 Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07 ). This melancholy that we have in his poem  is a characteristic of him that many of his poems share it. For example, in the poem And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair (1812), where he is talking about youth and how quickly time goes and people die. We can see it clearly when he says at the beginning of the poem: “And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Too soon return’d to Earth! Though Earth receiv’d them in her bed, And o’er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment on that grave to look”. And this tone continues during the rest of the poem. Also in his poems, especially the poems that were published in the same book that the one that I choose; we meet with that spirit of disillusionment which informs much of Byron’s later work. As we can see in his poem, When two parted,        “ [...] In secret we met-- In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears” (From: 8 http://aulavirtual.uv.es/dotlrn/classes/c006/14217/c08c006a14217gA/file-storage/download/04Blake&Byronism.htm?file%5fid=25735045 ).

 

            Robert Browning was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. (From: 9 Robert Browning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)  His real masters, besides his father and his father’s library in general, were the poets, and especially Byron and Shelley. His loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school, and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, seems to point to a more constant study of our national literature. Byron was his chief master in those early poetic days. He never ceased to honour him as the one poet who combined a constructive imagination with the more technical qualities of his art; and the result of this period of aesthetic training was a volume of short poems produced, we are told, when he was only twelve, in which the Byronic influence was predominant. The young gave his work the title of `Incondita', which conveyed a certain idea of deprecation. No publisher, however, could be found; and we can easily believe that he soon afterwards destroyed the little manuscript, in some mingled reaction of disappointment and disgust. But his mother, meanwhile, had shown it to an acquaintance of hers, Miss Flower, who herself admired its contents so much as to make a copy of them for the inspection of her friend, the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr. W. J. Fox. The copy was transmitted to Mr. Browning after Mr. Fox's death by his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox; and this, if no other, was in existence in 1871, when, at his urgent request, that lady also returned to him a fragment of verse contained in a letter from Miss Sarah Flower. (From: 10 Life and Letters of Robert Browning - Chapter 3 and 11 §2. The influence upon him of Byron and Shelley. III. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Vol. 13. The Victorian Age, Part One. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907–21)

 

Once the intuitional psychology at the heart of Browning's thinking is fully understood, all the major thematic concerns in his poetry become meaningful as deriving therefrom. Among Victorian poets he is the great champion of individualism. If self-realization is the purpose of life, then it follows that any agency which thwarts that process is inimical to the best interests of human nature. And since formalized systems of thought operating through social institutions have always tended to repress freedom of belief and action, Browning’s most characteristic poems have to do with the conflict-between the individual and his environment. There is a wisdom of the mind and a wisdom of the heart; and the two are always at odds, since the one teaches compliance with the ways of the world while the other inculcates non-conformity. Thus, where his political and religious convictions or his beliefs about love and art are concerned, each man must make a choice between intellectual subservience to customary values and emancipation from all such restrictions. In insisting on the integrity of the individual soul, Browning allies himself on one side with the Romantic poets, and on the other with the Pre-Raphaelites. He differs from both, however, in his concept of the artist's responsibilities. Whereas Byron delivered frontal assaults on contemporary manners and morals and Rossetti inclined to ignore his milieu, Browning adopted an oblique approach to his age. By dramatizing individual case histories, he stepped before his readers in such a variety of poetic guises that it was impossible to identify him with any single role. Furthermore, since he made his attacks piecemeal through anatomising characters each of whom embodied but a single aspect of contemporary thought, he could be sure of enlisting on his side all those who did not share this particular foible, and so of forestalling unified opposition. It is only when the widely diversified types in Browning's catalogue are grouped according to family resemblance that one begins to comprehend the scope and consistency of the poet's opposition to existing values, and hence the extent of his alienation from Victorian society. Browning's most forcible condemnations of rationalism, however, come in those poems which deal with the problems of religious belief. In Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, published in the same year as In Memoriam, the poet had worked out the grounds of his own highly individualistic faith. It sprang from a purely intuitive conviction of the necessity for a loving God. Saul and Rabbi Ben Ezra give full expression to this religious optimism; but the modern reader may well take greater interest in those works which dramatize alternative positions and show the poet dealing with the sceptical tendencies in contemporary thought. Among the best things to be found in Men and Women and Dramatis Personae is a series of monologues surveying the principal intellectual traditions which have militated against the Christian revelation. Browning's intuitionism announces itself most ardently when he writes about love, this being a subject which he handles with greater candour and penetration than any other poet of the early and mid-Victorian periods. It is not hard to understand why he should have thought the experience of love so important. Through the emotions which it releases man reaches heights of intensity, both physical and spiritual, such as are achievable in no other way. Romantic love, however, is little subject to discipline; and the Victorians in their regard for social stability endeavoured to safeguard themselves against its disruptive power behind an elaborate system of conventions. A double standard of conduct was in force for the sexes, and the family stood as the central support of the entire social fabric. To the authority of these ideals Tennyson's poetry bears constant testimony. Browning, on the other hand, challenges the sexual morality of the Victorians at nearly every point. His interest is in the fulfilment of passion, rather than in the preservation of domestic proprieties. In no way are his convictions less conformable to accepted theories than in his refusal to recognize any basis for social inequality between men and women. His adoration of Elizabeth Barrett no doubt explains a good deal in this connection; but while Browning yielded to no other Victorian in his idealization of womanhood, his thinking had very little in common with the contemporary concept of the womanly woman. Only Meredith's heroines challenge Browning's in the qualities of fortitude, loyalty, idealism, intelligence, and insight. The Euripides of The Last Adventure of Balaustion is speaking for his creator when he says: "Mere puppets once, I now make womankind,/ For thinking, saying, doing, match the male." Browning, like Meredith, finds that the woman is usually right. With a few exceptions, his love lyrics fall into two classes. In the first the speaker is a man who has been rejected and who humbly accepts responsibility for failure, attributing it to some inadequacy in his own nature. In the second it is the woman who has been cast off. She too is humble; but we are made [100/101] to feel that she suffers not because of any innate unworthiness, but rather because of some flaw in her lover. The central problem in Browning's love poetry is invariably one of communication between the sexes. The intangible influences which encourage or destroy intimacy between men and women elicit all his skill in psychological analysis; for love exists in and through human intuitions. Reference has already been made to the poet's belief that destined lovers recognize each other on first sight. But these moments of full and perfect communion are precarious; and, save for the most exceptional cases, the initial harmony does not survive social pressures or the importunities of individual temperament. Ideal love is for Browning the consummation of an intuitive process by which the lovers transcend the barriers of their separate individualities and achieve spiritual union. Whenever this happens, there results the most exquisite and productive form of communication possible between human beings. Browning's conviction that the passionate intensity of romantic love is incompatible with conventionalised social morality leads him to glorify the one at the expense of the other. That perennial theme, the world well lost for love, is so appealing that Victorian readers in their sentimentality were apparently willing to overlook its frequent anti-social corollary in Browning's poetry, where the decision to give all for love more often than not involves some course of action at variance with established codes of conduct. (From: 12 Victorian Web, Authority and The Rebellious Heart (Chapter 3))

 

 Through the comparison of these couple of poets, we can see the main characteristics of Romanticism and Victorianism.  Romantic Characteristics are   a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the interest of romantics in the medieval period; the development of nationalistic pride; they were focused on the individual self, on the poet’s personal reaction to life. and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt against rationalism. (From: 13 romanticism. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07) Whereas, Victorianism differs from Romanticism is their sense of social responsibility (As with all the literature of the Victorian era). (From:14  Victorian and Victorianism). Furthermore, we also can see that Victorianism is a kind of fusion of neoclassical and romantic ideas and attitudes. (From: 15 Victorianism as a Fusion of Neoclassical and Romantic Ideas and Attitudes).

 

 Bibliography:

- 1) Poems Of George Gordon, Lord Byron By Lord Byron, 15/01/2008, http://www.classicauthors.net/Byron/PoemsOfGeorgeGordonLordByron/PoemsOfGeorgeGordonLordByron50.html

- 2) Men and Women (poetry collection) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 15/01/2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_and_Women_(poetry_collection)

-      3)                      Dramatic monologue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 15/01/2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_monologue

-      4)                      Literary Encyclopedia: Men and Women, 15/01/2008, http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3635

-      5)                                Robert Browning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 15/01/2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning

- 6)  George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 15/01/2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gordon_Byron,_6th_Baron_Byron

-   7)         Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07 ), 15/01/08, http://www.bartleby.com/65/by/Byron-Ge.html

- 8) http://aulavirtual.uv.es/dotlrn/classes/c006/14217/c08c006a14217gA/file-storage/download/04Blake&Byronism.htm?file%5fid=25735045, 15/01/2008

-     9)                                 Robert Browning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 15/01/2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning

- 10) Life and Letters of Robert Browning - Chapter 3, 15/01/2008, http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/LifeandLettersofRobertBrowning/chap3.html