JAVIER DÍAZ SORIA – GRUPO A

POESÍA INGLESA DE LOS SIGLOS XIX Y XX

 
 
Robert Browning (1812 -1889)
 
 
 
TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA; Men and Women, 1855
 
 
1 I wonder how you feel to-day
2 As I have felt since, hand in hand,
3 We sat down on the grass, to stray
4 In spirit better through the land,
5 This morn of Rome and May?
 
6 For me, I touched a thought, I know,
7 Has tantalized me many times,
8 (Like turns of thread the spiders throw
9 Mocking across our path) for rhymes
10 To catch at and let go.
 
11 Help me to hold it! First it left
12 The yellow fennel, run to seed
13 There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,
14 Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed
15 Took up the floating weft,
 
16 Where one small orange cup amassed
17 Five beetles,—blind and green they grope
18 Among the honey meal: and last,
19 Everywhere on the grassy slope
20 O traced it. Hold it fast!
 
21 The champaign with its endless fleece
22 Of feathery grasses everywhere!
23 Silence and passion, joy and peace,
24 An everlasting wash of air—
25 Rome’s ghost since her decease.
 
26 Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
27 Such miracles performed in play,
28 Such primal naked forms of flowers,
29 Such letting nature have her way
30 While heaven looks from its towers!
 
31 How say you? Let us, O my dove,
32 Let us be unashamed of soul,
33 As earth lies bare to heaven above!
34 How is it under our control
35 To love or not to love?
 
36 I would that you were all to me,
37 You that are just so much, no more.
38 Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
39 Where does the fault lie? What the core
40 O’ the wound, since wound must be?
 
41 I would I could adopt your will,
42 See with your eyes, and set my heart
43 Beating by yours, and drink my fill
44 At your soul’s springs,— your part my part
45 In life, for good and ill.
 
46 No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
47 Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
48 Catch your soul’s warmth,— I pluck the rose
49 And love it more than tongue can speak—
50 Then the good minute goes.
 
51 Already how am I so far
52 Our of that minute? Must I go
53 Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
54 Onward, whenever light winds blow,
55 Fixed by no friendly star?
 
56 Just when I seemed about to learn!
57 Where is the thread now? Off again!
58 The Old trick! Only I discern—
59 Infinite passion, and the pain
60 Of finite hearts that yearn.
 
TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA; Men and Women, 1855
 
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Browning_R/Two.htm

I am going to analyse and set in time one of the most famous works by Robert Browning, called Two in the Campagna. I am going to start with a short explanation of the life of the author at the time the poem was published, and then the poem will be analysed and chronologically set in context.

 
Robert Browning was born in 1812 in London. Most of Browning’s education was build up at home. When he was fourteen, he was able to speak French, Italian, Latin and Greek. He was so well read that he didn’t realise how abstract his poems were to understand. He met Elisabeth Barrett in 1845 and the next year they got married and eloped to Florence, where Browning wrote his best works, including Men and Women (published on 1855), where we can read this Two in the Campagna. In 1881 the Browning Society was created, and finally he died in 1889 because of bronchitis. [Glenn Everet, Robert Browning – Biography. The Victorian Web, January 2006. (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbbio.html)]
 
Nowadays Tennyson and himself are considered the most representative poets of the Victorian age. According to the Norton Anthology, Robert Browning belongs to the Mid and Late Victorian period.
 

This poem is divided into twelve stanzas with five lines each one. The rhyme is ababa. The fifth line of each stanza is shorter than the previous lines, and what I think it means is the feeling of shortening of the life that the author wants to show the reader. The lines are enjambed. Life passes quickly and isn’t long enough to love the person who is at our side. The campagna was a big countryside in Rome, and in the nineteenth-century literature the Campagna symbolized an alternative space, “where rules of society did not apply and anything could happen”, [SparkNotes summary (anonymous). Robert Browning’s Poetry. January 2006. (http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/browning/section11.rhtml)]. Who speaks in the poem is the poet himself, and the addressee is his wife, so the reader is excluded from the action.

The poem also symbolises the limitations of human persons to love, as we can read in the two final verses: “Infinite passion, and the pain; Of finite hearts that yearn”. Another example of these limitations is in lines 36 and 37, where the poem says: “I would that you were all to me; You that are just so much, no more.”

This poem was written and published in 1855, in the book Men and Women, and at this time Robert Browning was living in Florence with his wife, Elisabeth Barrett Browning. They were living in Italy since 1846. They lived there until the death of Elisabeth in 1861. In this work two great poems by this author are also included: Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto.

To sum up, we can say that this poem shows Browning’s opinion of the ideal love, but at the same time the love that cannot be totally conquered because of society bounds, as well as we can read one of the poems dedicated to his wife during the most happy days lived by the author in Italy.

 
 
 
Sources:
 
-Web Book Publications; http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Browning_R/Two.htm

-Spark Notes Guide Study; http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/browning/section11.rhtml

-Glenn Everett, Victorian Web; http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/rbbio.html

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