lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

TENNYSON,BROWNING, & SOME OTHERSBrowning is more dramatic and fanciful, liking thesuggestion of a story, a psychological moment, eagerto give to his style the actualities of colloquial speecheven while he too decorates, and eager also to suggesthow the mind works under the influence of feeling.This is where Browning's poems resemble Donne's—this rapid flow of thought; and they were both foundobscure—"Donne himself for not being understoodwould perish'' was the comment of Ben Jonson, whothought Donne "the first poet in the world in somethings"—and partly but not entirely they were obscurefor the same reason. They were, neither ofthem, averse to being a little enigmatic, to playingwith learning familiar to themselves but which theymust have known would not be familiar to theirreaders. Donne wrote a whole poem to show that hecould be more obscure than Lord Herbert of Cherbury.Poets write to please themselves, and there is no goodscolding them as though they were writers of advertisements;enigmatical poets have sometimes outlivedtheir more popular rivals. In his later poemsespecially—Pacchiarotto, Jocoseria (confining myself tothe lyrics)—Browning was, I think, at times quite intentionallyenigmatic partly out of mischief, but alsoto hide as well as utter his feelings. His mind wasmoving restlessly over memories of his wife, perhapshis feeling for other women, and the problems of Godand death and immortality, and he was not too anxiousto be understood even by the Browning Society. Butin his earlier, more dramatic lyrics there is a lessdeliberate source of difficulty, the rapidity and oftenfanciful character of his thought, with the further factthat Browning is probably the first poet of the subconsciousor the threshold of thr conscious and the11