“The face of all the world is changed, I think…” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning Wednesday, May 30 2012

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“
 
        Vll. The face of all the world is changed, I think…
 
                        The face of all the world is changed, I think,
                        Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
                        Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
                        Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
                        Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
                        Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
                        Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
                        God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
                        And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
                        The names of country, heaven, are changed away
                        For where thou art or shall be, there or here;
                        And this . . . this lute and song . . . loved yesterday,
                        (The singing angels know) are only dear
                        Because thy name moves right in what they say.

 

                                                     Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

 

 

 

there are only two statements here,“The face of all the world

is changed“ and “The cup of dole/ God gave for baptism, I am

fain to drink“, in either case et cetera

 

the metre is iambic pentameter, the beat is of course

Shakespeare’s, famous for his own immortal sonnets, and

probably an inspiration for Barrett Browning, who uses as

well his archaic, even in the nineteenth century then, “thou”,

“thee”, “thine” 

 

think about it 

 

 

the metre is concealed by the flow of the sentence, which

can only be effectively blurred by inordinate, dare I say,

blinding, passion, which Elizabeth has of course in spades,

declaring utimately with these historic sonnets the inner

workings of love for the very ages

 

 

but to our consternation, and utmost admiration, this flow

of unfettered sentiment rhymes, and even technically 

deserves to be considered a poem, an even masterpiece 

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

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“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand…” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning Friday, May 25 2012

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“
 
     Vl. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand… 

                   Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
                   Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
                   Alone upon the threshold of my door
                   Of individual life, I shall command
                   The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
                   Serenely in the sunshine as before,
                   Without the sense of that which I forebore—
                   Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
                   Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
                   With pulses that beat double. What I do
                   And what I dream include thee, as the wine
                   Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
                   God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
                   And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
 

 

                                       Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

 

 

 

are you ready for Miss Thing, you have left an indelible

impression upon my soul, she says, inscribed in my very

anatomy, which even the Great Discerner will descry at

the very Day of Reckoning 

 

though today’s girls would take offence at such overt

subservience, I think Elizabeth‘s abnegation speaks

to the ineradicable longing for surrender, physical,

emotional, spiritual, latent ever in all of us, men as

well as women   

 

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

 

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“I lift my heavy heart up solemnly… ” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saturday, May 19 2012

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“   

            

          V. I lift my heavy heart up solemnly…

 

                     I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
                    As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
                    And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
                    The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
                    What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
                    And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
                    Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn
                    Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
                     It might be well perhaps. But if instead
                    Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
                    The grey dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head,
                    O my Belovèd, will not shield thee so,
                    That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
                    The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

 

 

                                            Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

 

 

 

Elizabeth has realized that Robert might stay, but,

she says, should you, this is all I have to offer, “ashes

at thy feet… a great heap of grief”, where, however,

“wild sparkles dimly burn/ Through the ashen greyness”

 

she is not, she insists, not alive, she  is even “scorch[ing]“,

she confirms, beneath the apparent drudge, enough to set

Robert on dire fire should he not “tread them out”, they 

would consume even him, “those laurels on thine head,/

O my Belovèd, will not shield thee” otherwise

 

be off, she warns, “Stand farther off then! go.”, an admonition

she must herself also heed, she surely intuits, should she be

called upon to indeed catch incendiary flame

 

“But if instead/ Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow/

The grey dust up…”

 

 

there is an evolution here in the procees of love which

will surely bear investigation as the sonnets unfold, an

emotional unfurling, I would think, of the stages of

recognized and appreciated devotion, Robert, as it

turned out, stuck around, a love story brought to

inspirational fruition for the very ages 

 

 

Richard 

 

 

 

 

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“Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor…” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏ Saturday, May 12 2012

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“ 

 

        lV. Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor… 

 

                    Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,

                     Most gracious singer of high poems! where
                    The dancers will break footing, from the care
                     Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
                     And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor
                     For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
                    To let thy music drop here unaware
                     In folds of golden fulness at my door?
                     Look up and see the casement broken in,
                     The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
                     My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
                     Hush, call no echo up in further proof
                     Of desolation! there’s a voice within
                     That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.

 

 

                                           Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

 

 

 

you get called out to all the best parties, she says,

where all the guests hang on to your every word,

whose “pregnant lips” of course spew only poetry 

 

yet this is where you come to roost - note how

“latch” suggests a humble cottage here – “The

bats and owlets builders in the roof!“ don’t help

of course either 

 

nor are you aware, she continues, of the “golden

fulness”, the bristling imagination, with which you 

array my world so effortlessly, me, but a strident

“cricket” to your melodious “mandolin” - wonderful

 

I don’t even want to think about it, she insists, “Hush”

 

in other words, I say “potato”, and “thou must”,

existentially, it appears, say “potahto”, and that’ll be

the end of that  

 

but of course I’m right, I hear her subliminally saying, 

it’s “potato”, but  fate, cruel, cruel fate, has decreed

my abject and irrevocable subservience, to which I 

must and will forthright cede, “alone”, she decries

ever so forlornly, utterly, even ontologically, which

is to say, in her very essence, “aloof” 

 

 

it is interesting to consider that of the two Brownings

the most famous must remain Elizabeth if only for

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”, which

every lover has declared to his love ever since, every

inamorata to hers 

 

who will undoubtedly continue also to do so forever

 

Robert will be remembered of the two however as

finally, I think, the more significant poet   

 

 

Richard 

 

 

 

 

 

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On Being Eighty Saturday, May 21 2011

if being eighty is a condition for writing so beautiful a poem,

how can that age be anything but precious, being eighty

must be a blessing only someone not eighty then can know,

never a “shadow”, never ever a “cobweb” 

 

a friend responded to my own poem with something of hers,

to which I could not but cede before its greater, its more

poignant, its more probing, its more pressing, beauty 

 

 

with applause

 

Richard  

 

                  _____________________

 

 

On Being Eighty

 

There’s been a subtle change, a feeling of absence,

I am an echo in the empty space 

Where once I stood among the crowd.

I am a shadow of the past

That haunts the edges of the world

I am the shadow that haunts my children

I am the shadow that clings like cobweb 

Entangling them with guilt. 

 

 

                                   a friend

 

 

 

          _______________________

 

 

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love and hope Friday, May 13 2011

a poem by me  
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          richibi 

                           __________________
 

love and hope

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             why do we ever only hear of people falling hopelessly in love
and never hopefully
 
why do we fall in love instead of rising to it 
 
why don’t we have verbs of elevation,
like lift, fly, transcend
 
when love is often like very wings 
 
shouldn’t adverbs be more encouraging,
shouldn’t they inspire rather than drop like lead,
shouldn’t they water love like the garden of infinite possibilities 
one in love imagines and irrepressibly invents  
rather than succumb to fear of despair, and the dark side 
 
I’ve wondered
 
since without love there can after all be no heaven
 
and yet we fall   
 
 
                                                   richibi   

                      

                       

              ______________________________

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