All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter 

As one at first believes? 

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter 

About your cottage eaves! 

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, 

I noticed that, today; 

One day more bursts them open fully 

– You know the red turns grey. 

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest? 

May I take your hand in mine? 

Mere friends are we, – well, friends the merest 

Keep much that I resign: 

For each glance of the eye so bright and black, 

Though I keep with heart’s endeavor, – 

Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, 

Though it stay in my soul for ever! – 

Yet I will but say what mere friends say, 

Or only a thought stronger; 

I will hold your hand but as long as all may, 

Or so very little longer! 

Summary: The poem itself is remarkably simple at one level. The poet is saying goodbye to a romantic relationship, not to the woman. As he parts from her home, their romance is over. Come the morning, they will be “friends.”  

What makes the poem striking is the manner in which Browning sketches this awkward, ambivalent moment. He works out the intricacy of the thoughts and emotions of the man who has lost the woman; revealing the shift in their relationship.

It is by turns delicate, melancholy, wicked, hopeful. This short piece is an absolute gem.

First Stanza 

All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter 

As one at first believes? 

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter 

About your cottage eaves! 

Summary: There are three elements to this stanza: (1) the interjection; (2) the question; and (3) the seemingly irrelevant turn to the sparrows. He is saying a goodbye of sorts, and then he turns to the birds.

Notes:

All’s over: 

The poem is in the voice of the poet to the mistress. We pick up the story in the middle. Something has just happened, but what did happen is unknown to the reader. We’ve walked onto the intimate of moments between two people. The only thing we know is that is definitively over.

By not telling us more than the end has come, Browning puts our focus wholly upon the moment. There is no possible negotiation; our attention thus solely upon the now of their relationship.

The rhythm accentuates the meaning. The poem begins with two consecutive accented syllables. 

Then: does truth sound bitter 

As one at first believes? 

Just as the poem abruptly begins with the end, we see in these lines the subtle turn which is taking place. At first, the truth was bitter. But here is negotiating with the truth and his relationship to it. By saying the bitterness was “at first believe[d]”, he implies that perhaps his original bitterness could be otherwise. He is negotiating with his situation. 

This is not quite hopefulness for the relationship: he is not asking her to reconsider whatever has just taken place. But he is finding something here which will be new. Somehow the bitterness can be displaced.

This sets the agenda for the poem. The initial interjection closes the door on what has just happened. This pausing to think of bitterness opens the door to the movement through the remainder of the poem.

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter 

About your cottage eaves! 

One misses the connection of these lines if the poem is considered as a straight logical argument. The sparrows from nothing directly to do with the proceeding events. But when we think of this as it would play out emotionally, we have a clue.

You are standing at the door of the woman whom you have loved, and now you must say goodbye to all that hope and desire and expectation. You were on the verge of being crushed and then there in the evening an idea begins to form. You have just been saved from bitterness. And in this moment of incipient joy or hope you notice the birds. The tiny sparrow twitter about her “cottage eaves” (which is much more becoming than “roofline”).

Finally, I can’t help but hearing Wordsworth’s Strange Fits of Passion in the background. I can’t prove it up, but somehow I think it’s lurking here.

Second Stanza

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, 

I noticed that, today; 

One day more bursts them open fully 

– You know the red turns grey. 

He then continues with this lingering observation of her home. Yes, here are the sparrows. I hadn’t noticed them just a moment ago, and look her are the flowers on the vine. 

He is telling her notice that flowers are about to burst open: it will happen tomorrow. By the way, he has a resolution for tomorrow himself. 

The last line is vicious. It is easy to miss the point here and think that Browning is raising the commonplace observation that nothing is permanent. That would be boring. 

Think more carefully: You have just been rejected, on some unknown basis. You were on the verge of being crushed (bitterness) and then you had a change in thoughts. You are not going to be destroyed. You note the lovely sparrows. You note the flowers ready to burst open.

And then he says to her: You know all those flowers will die. He doesn’t say it directly. The vague way he raises the point makes it sound as if he is merely thinking out loud. 

But he tells his “lost mistress,” you know those flowers will die. Yes, that is a retrospective evaluation of his relationship: but the dying flowers are in the future. The death is not what he has just suffered, but what she will soon face. Her flowers have reached their zenith.

Third Stanza

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest? 

May I take your hand in mine? 

Mere friends are we, – well, friends the merest 

Keep much that I resign: 

Here begins the negotiation. He has gone from rejection in the first words to having some control over the circumstance. He has already suffered whatever loss he will suffer; her flowers have yet to face.

The “dearest” at the end of the first line is loaded. Is it plaintive? Ironic?

The complication then comes in the lines: (1) may I take your hand; (2) we will be “mere” friends.  These lines are negotiating the nature of their new relationship. 

Mere friends are we, – well, friends the merest 

The rhythm throws the accent on the first syllable. There are two pauses in one line. The chiasm: mere-friends-friends-mere drives the point home in an overkill:

MERE FRIENDS are we ….. well …. FRIENDS the MERest

The last line then introduces his “offer”

Stanza Four

Keep much that I resign: 

For each glance of the eye so bright and black, 

Though I keep with heart’s endeavor, – 

Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, 

Though it stay in my soul for ever! – 

This stanza reminds of John Donne’s poem “The Message” which begins:

Send home my long stray’d eyes to me, 

Which O too long have dwelt on thee, 

Yet since there they have learn’d such ill, 

Such forc’d fashions, 

And false passions, 

That they be 

Made by thee 

Fit for no good sight, keep them still.

But the possible allusion to Donne is ironic. Donne is sending everything back, but Browning returns nothing though it is resigned to her. Note the use of the word “though” in the second and fourth lines of the stanza:

For each glance of the eye so bright and black, 

Though I keep with heart’s endeavor, – 

Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, 

Though it stay in my soul for ever! – 

He offers back to her each glance she shared with him, and the sound of her voice. And yet, even if he returns it to her, it still remains in his heart and soul. She has already been communicated to him and this cannot be undone. 

So we have come to the place where she cannot obtain she apparently sought: a place where this had never taken place. She has already bestowed something upon him which she cannot retrieve. 

This trope of the lover turning over some secret token which cannot be retrieved and which has become a liability lurks in the background of these lines. 

This matter of love and loss has become significantly more dangerous. 

Which leads us to the conclusion

Fifth Stanza

Yet I will but say what mere friends say, 

Or only a thought stronger; 

I will hold your hand but as long as all may, 

Or so very little longer! 

He returns to the negotiated space of “mere friends” but now discloses what has happened. She has left the tokens with him, and since those tokens cannot be retrieved, even their position of “mere friends” is different.

He only raises the matters of speaking to her and holding her hand. But these matters were already raised above. He said things which mere friends would say, about sparrows and flowers – and yet what he has said is a “thought stronger.” There was more in his mentioning sparrows and flowers than would if someone else had spoken. 

When he touches her hand, it will be for no longer than anyone else. But she will know that something has happened here that has not happened among her other “mere friends.”