Robert Browning, Incident of the French Camp, Stanzas 4 & 5

09 Tuesday Mar 2021

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Incident of the French Camp, Napoleon, poem, Poetry, Robert Browning

IV.

“Well,” cried he, “Emperor, by God’s grace
“We’ve got you Ratisbon!
“The Marshal’s in the market-place,
“And you’ll be there anon
“To see your flag-bird flap his vans
“Where I, to heart’s desire,
“Perched him!” The chief’s eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

In this stanza we hear from the boy, who, as we learned above, was shot threw. The boy is an extasy it seems. The tight lips of the third stanza were from his effort to make the announcement –not grim determination.

The Marshall is Lannes. The French have taken the city. The “flag-bird” is Napoleon’s eagle.

And here we come to the summit of the boy’s joy:

Where I, to heart’s desire,

Perched him!

It was the desire of the boy to perch the Emperor’s flag. The boy was no fighting for something abstract, like his country. He was fighting for someone concrete, the “chief.”

It is Napoleon’s plan that are his joy. So both the boy and Napoleon can join in the same hope.

V.

The chief’s eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle’s eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes;
“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
“I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beside
Smiling the boy fell dead.

Here the Emperor is made human for a moment. The description of the tear forming in Napoleon’s eyes makes for an interesting basis of sympathy.

His eyes at first flashed – with victory. Then the eye soften when it took in the boy.

The language of a mother eagle with her eaglet is appropriate – because Napoleon’s symbol was the eagle. It was the eagle flag which the boy posted in the town.

He finally notices that the boy is wounded. He blurts out, “You’re wounded!”

And here comes the surprise – at the end of the poem. This is the “incident”. It is why the story was so remarkable that the unnamed French soldier is telling this to you.

He has spoken of the precarious position of Napoleon. Of the boy’s announcement. Of the surprising sympathy of Napoleon.

But this surprise works almost as if a joke:

Napoleon says, You are wounded.

The boy says, Nope, I’m not wounded! I’m dead!

And then the boy falls smiling, down.

The only explanation for the boy’s action is given as

the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick,

The boy is not a soldier in this instant, he is a soldier. The boy has become something important in his own eyes – and since he has honored the Napoleon, that pride and accomplishment is objectively true.

The boy then dies, smiling before the “chief.”

Note the use of the S’s and B’s to structure the lines:

The chief’S eye flaShed; but presently
Softened itSelf, as SheatheS
A film the mother-eagle’s eye
When her Bruised eaglet Breathes;
“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the Soldier’S pride
Touched to the quick, he Said:
“I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beSide
Smiling the boy fell dead.

Also by ending the poem and the line on the word “dead,” Browning drives home the “punch-line” (if you will).

Robert Browning, Incident of the French Camp, Stanzas 2 & 3

06 Saturday Mar 2021

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Incident of the French Camp, poem, Poetry, Robert Browning

II.
Just as perhaps he mused “My plans
“That soar, to earth may fall,
“Let once my army-leader Lannes
“Waver at yonder wall,”—
Out ‘twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound.

The second stanza breaks up into two even sections of four lines each. The first four lines concern Napoleon’s apparent dialogue with himself. But this is where Browning’s subtly comes in:

“Just as perhaps he mused.”

The poem works with two different frames of reference. It is in fact a second person account in which you personally addressed by a French soldier a short way from the battle. The whole is being explained to you by him (I guess it is possible that Browning has in mind a female camp follower of some sort, but the closeness to the battle makes that unlikely; hence a male soldier – there were not female fighters in Napoleon’s ranks.

Now this soldier reporter speaks in a tone similar to a third person narrator and it would be easy to think this so. But pay attention: He does not know what is actually in the Emperor’s mind. So our narrator gives us a supposition. You are being invited to follow in his supposition. While told a story with an almost objectivity, you are being asked to see the event through the understanding of an unnamed soldier.

Here, just like the first stanza, we see Napoleon not as master of Europe, but rather as a man in a precarious place wholly dependent upon others. Napoleon may rise on this win or be crashed. And all depends upon Lannes, his Marshall. If Lannes fails, then Napoleon fails. If the army fails, the emperor fails.

The image from the first stanza of an worried sovereign on a little mound, comes back here as an echo. What sort of mound does the emperor stand upon? We will soon see that he stands upon the backs of the dead. His Kingdom is in the hands of Lannes.

The soldier who has just lived through this battle is asking you to understand the emperor in a particular manner. This is not a lecture on war, or class structure, or any similar thing. This is a invitation to view Napoleon’s battles from the eyes of those who fight and die or live.

Moreover, it is never precisely vicious concerning Napoleon. There is a constant strain of the precarious nature of the leader’s position. His glory is as contingent as the life of everyone else. The poem is neither jingoistic, nor is it anti-war. Instead, by the use of this narrator, Browning causes of to empathize, to feel the world through the eyes of this other people.

This brings us to the second half of the stanza: A messenger in full haste rushes up to the “mound.” He has been riding his horse with abandon. And so just as Napoleon is concerning himself with whether the day will be won, tidings come.

III.

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse’s mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

An English poet of this time cannot be assumed to have ignorance of Shakespeare. And so the dim echo of Macbeth in this scene is likely haunting the background. The King is upon the scene of the battle anxious for information as to how the battle has gone.

DUNCAN

What bloody man is that? He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.

MALCOLM

This is the sergeant
Who like a good and hardy soldier fought
‘Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.

Sergeant

Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald–
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him–from the western isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show’d like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak:
For brave Macbeth–well he deserves that name–
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

The sergeant is played in Browning’s poem by the boy. Macbeth cuts a man’s chest in two. The boy himself as been cut in two. Both Kings, Duncan and Napoleon, have their kingdom’s and lives in the hands of other men whose death keeps them alive (although not in Browning’s mind, there is something vampire like where the King’s life is maintained by the loss of other’s blood).

The reference to a “boy” in the battle is poignant. As Napoleon’s wars increased, he continued to obtain younger soldiers to replenish the men who had died.

What is not suspected: The boy’s bloody condition. In the movement of the words, there is a hint that the messenger being a boy might have been the surprise.

The boy’s face and chest are odds with one-another. The boy holds his lips so tightly together that “scarce any blood came through”. This is suggestive but not entirely clear: Does he me that no blood was in his lips and thus his lips were white? Or is there a wound somewhere which is being hidden, is he bleeding from his mouth.

Whatever the precise reference, by looking at his bloodless lips you do not suspect the ravaged chest.

Robert Browning, Incident of the French Camp, First Stanza

05 Friday Mar 2021

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Incident of the French Camp, Napoleon, poem, Poetry, Ratisbon, Robert Browning

The poem forms a short story. On August 23, 1809, the French Army under the leadership of then-Emperor Napoleon engaged in a battle at the walled city of Ratisbon. A breach in the walls led to three advances into the city, all of which were defeated. On a third advance, the Marshall Lannes (a general office, just below Napoleon himself) made way to lead a fourth advance through the breach. Lannes is reported to have said to troops, understandably reluctant to charge through a breach which had seen three defeats in short order, “I will let you see that I was a grenadier before I was a marshal and still am one.” Lannes’ men held him back, and the troops rallied for a fourth, successful assault. During the battle, Napoleon suffered a rare, minor injury to his foot.

The poem describes the scene of a young soldier returning to make a report of a successful taking of the city. The young man having given the news falls down dead.

The first stanza sets the scene:

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,

On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

The first words of this poem are critical to understand the whole. If you miss those words, you miss what is taking place. If we drop those words, the poet would be writing from the objective, third person narrator; the one who truly knows what is going on with every character. We the reader, are watching the whole scene from a distance.

But the first words subtly shift the meaning in two important ways. First, our perspective on the event does not come from a third person objective narrator, but it comes from an eyewitness. Second, we are not at home with a book of poetry in our hand sipping tea and admiring Browning’s skill.

If we are going to follow Browning, we must be present at the scene of the conquest of Ratisbon. First, we are speaking with a witness to the event:

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:

The narrator is a mere of the French army. You are not, the use of “you” and “we” create two distinct groups. This is why you were not present at the events.

Second, you are not far from the scene of the battle, but you were not directly affected, the narrator has to remind you of the battle. If you home had been burnt, he probably would not be talking with you.

Third, you are near the battle,

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,

This then leads to a question: Why is the soldier telling you the story? Is he proud, amused, incredulous, angry?

Whatever the case, you only truly understand this poem if you see it as a conversation with a French soldier lately at the battle. You are brought into this piece of gossip.

The narrator then begins to set the scene. It centers upon Napoleon (as everything in Napoleon’s world did).

On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

The narrator here begins to let us into how he sees the event: Napoleon stands “on a little mound.” Here is the Emperor, the terror Europe, the most powerful man in the world, standing on a “little mound.” The prosaic point that Napoleon stood on an elevation to get a sight of the whole has been described in charged terms: “little mound” That is biting.

Napoleon is also not present at the battle: he is standing while the soldiers are fighting and dying (as we will learn)

Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;

Although not a direct allusion, this reminds me of a scene from the Bible:

2 Samuel 11:1 (ESV)

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

The great general is apart from his troops. But at least Napoleon is at the scene of the battle.

Notice also that you are drawn back into the scene. You know what Napoleon looks like. You are being made a confidant.

With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,

And finally Napoleon is a distress, two forces are opposed in him and he struggles to balance all:

With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

This scene sets up the tentative nature of Napoleon’s position. The emperor on a little mound is reduced to a mere observer. This brings us to the next stanza

Robert Browning, The Lost Mistress

21 Sunday Feb 2021

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Literature, poem, Poetry, Robert Browing, The Lost Mistress

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.”

Never Dreamed

29 Monday Dec 2014

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Epilogue, poem, Poetry, Robert Browning

EPILOGUE

By Robert Browning

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
—Being—who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
“Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed,—fight on, fare ever
There as here!”

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED’S CHURCH ROME,

25 Thursday Sep 2014

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poem, Poetry, Robert Browning, The Bishop Orders His Tomb

15-

(Robert Browning, 1845)

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews–sons mine . . . ah God, I know not!
Well– She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What’s done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie 10
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night,
I ask “Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
–Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner
South He graced his carrion with.
God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20
One sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk;
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And ‘neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30
–Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my church
–What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of ,
Big as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast . . .
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father’s globe on both his hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50
Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black–
‘T was ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
And Moses with the tables . . . but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me–all of jasper, then!
‘T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
My bath must needs be left behind, alas! 70
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world–
And have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
–That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line–
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s-work: 90
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,
–Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas!
Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,
They glitter like your mother’s for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask “Do I live, am I dead?”
There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death–ye wish it–God, ye wish it! Stone– Gritstone, a-crumble!

Incident of the French Camp (Robert Browning)

20 Saturday Sep 2014

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Incident of the French Camp, poem, Poet, Poetry, Robert Browning

“You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

Just as perhaps he mused “My plans
That soar, to earth may fall,
°11Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall”—
Out ‘twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound,

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse’s mane, a boy:
hardly could suspect°—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed.
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

“Well,” cried he, “Emperor, by God’s grace
We’ve got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal’s in the market-place,
And you’ll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart’s desire,
Perched him!” The chief’s eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

The chief’s eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle’s eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes.
“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
“I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beside,
Smiling, the boy fell dead.”

Agamemnon.1

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Greek, Literature, Robert Browning

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Agamemnon, Greek Poetry, Greek Translation, Poetry, Robert Browning

Robert Browning’s Translation:

WARDER.
[1] The gods I ask deliverance from these labours,
[2] Watch of a year’s length whereby, slumbering through it
[3] On the Atreidai’s roofs on elbow,—dog-like—
[4] I know of nightly star-groups the assemblage,
[5] And those that bring to men winter and summer
[6] Bright dynasts, as they pride them in the aether
[7]—Stars, when they wither, and the uprisings of them.

Greek text and notes:

Φύλαξ
A gaurd

θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδʼ ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων
φρουρᾶς ἐτείας μῆκος, ἣν κοιμώμενος
στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν ἄγκαθεν, κυνὸς δίκην,
ἄστρων κάτοιδα νυκτέρων ὁμήγυριν,
[5] καὶ τοὺς φέροντας χεῖμα καὶ θέρος βροτοῖς
λαμπροὺς δυνάστας, ἐμπρέποντας αἰθέρι
[ἀστέρας, ὅταν φθίνωσιν, ἀντολάς τε τῶν].

θεοὺς: accusative plural, gods. He asks the gods.
αἰτῶ: I ask, petition
τῶνδʼ Genitive plural article, matches ponon.
ἀπαλλαξείω, Desiderat. of ἀπαλλάσσομαι, to wish to be delivered from or get rid o
πόνων of the labors, hard work
φρουρᾶς genitive singular: a prison, guarding
ἐτείας yearly, year by year
μῆκος length
ἣν: accusative singular feminine: the year
κοιμώμενος: present middle participle: sleeping/slumbering
στέγαις Ἀτρειδῶν: the roof of Atreidos
ἄγκαθεν: with bent arm/resting on the arm
κυνὸς: dog
δίκην: custom, usage; not judgment or justice in this place.
ἄστρων: of stars
κάτοιδα: I know
νυκτέρων: of the nights/nightly
ὁμήγυριν: accusative singular: an assembly
καὶ τοὺς φέροντας: and those bearing/carrying. The participle is articular, hence a substantive
χεῖμα καὶ θέρος: winter and summer (storm and heat)
βροτοῖς: to mortals — as opposed to gods.
λαμπροὺς δυνάστας: bright/shining (accusative plural) powers/dynasties
ἐμπρέποντας: adjectival participle: conspicuous
αἰθέρι: in (the) aether
ἀστέρας: stars
ὅταν φθίνωσιν: when they corrupt/wane/perish
ἀντολάς τε τῶν: and the risings of them.