lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRYoff to murder Metternich or the Kaiser in Vienna. Idwell on this, not to depreciate the delightful poetryof the little drama, but because I wish, starting fromPippa Passes, to indicate what seem to me the recurrentfeatures of Browning's strange, exotic, bizarre, oftenpowerful lyrics. Many of them have not only adramatic but a picturesque setting, and a great partof the sensuous charm of the songs comes from theinterwoven descriptions of that setting—the hotItalian night in A Serenade at the Villa:Earth turned in her sleep with pain,Sultrily suspired for proof:In at heaven and out againLightning ! where it broke the roof,Bloodlike, some few drops of rain ;the scenery of the coast of France in James Lee's Wife:Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,This autumn morn ! How he sets his bonesTo bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feetFor the ripple to run over in its mirth ;Listening the while, where on the heap of stonesThe white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet;the solitary house in A Lover's Quarrel:Dearest! three months ago !Where we lived blocked-up with snow,—When the wind would edgeIn and in his wedge,In, as far as the point could go,—Not to our ingle, though,Where we loved each the other so !or again the Italian glen and the chapel in By theFireside:74