lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRYtouches, the quaint turn of fancy, the verse that carryit off. Count Gismond might have been written byMrs Hemans, as far as story and sentiment are concerned,in the style of Casabianca, or by Mrs Browningin the manner of Lady Geraldine's Courtships butneither could have rivalled Browning's art, his abruptopening, the strange, picturesque, fanciful, and dramatictouches:And come out on the morning-troopOf merry friends who kissed my cheek,And called me queen, and made me stoopUnder the canopy—(a streakThat pierced it, of the outside sun,Powdered with gold its gloom's soft dun),or, at the close:Over my head his arm he flungAgainst the world ; and scarce I feltHis sword (that dripped by me and swung)A little shifted in its belt:For he began to say the whileHow South our home lay many a mile.There is hardly one of his love-lyrics that one cannotimagine being developed in another way, for the sentimentis generally quite simple when one catches it;but instead of gaining thereby, the poem would havelost what has kept it alive—Browning's subtle art,dramatic, fanciful, sensuous. He is as great a virtuoso,an artist delighting in experiments, as Tennyson, butwith a different end in view. Tennyson is intent upona single intense mood of feeling and its decorativeand richly musical elaboration:mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,Deep-chested music.76