Browning, Robert, 1812-1889; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?"
After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to returning to Florence,
the doctors having laid such stress on the climatic suitability of Pisa
for Mrs. Browning. But she felt so sure of herself in her new strength
that it was decided to adventure upon at least one winter in the queen-city.
They were fortunate in obtaining a residence in the old palace
called Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against the church of San Felice,
and here, with a few brief intervals, they lived till death separated them.
On the little terrace outside there was more noble verse
fashioned in the artist's creative silence than we can ever be aware of:
but what a sacred place it must ever be for the lover of poetry!
There, one ominous sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the story
of a bygone Roman crime, foreshadowed "The Ring and the Book",
and there, in the many years he dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote
some of his finer shorter poems. There, also, "Aurora Leigh" was born,
and many a lyric fresh with the dew of genius. Who has not looked
at the old sunworn house and failed to think of that night
when each square window of San Felice was aglow with festival lights,
and when the summer lightnings fell silently in broad flame
from cloud to cloud: or has failed to hear, down the narrow street,
a little child go singing, 'neath Casa Guidi windows by the church,
`O bella liberta, O bella!'
Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem
the two poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study,
or that pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often
his best inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together,
or walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent
than silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne.
There is nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning's reply,
and yet there are not a few of her poems we would miss rather than
these chance words -- delicate outlines left for the reader to fill in:
"We were reading your letter, together, on our little terrace --
walking up and down reading it -- I mean the letter to Robert --
and then, at the end, suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones,
just between the balustrades, and already fluttering in a breath of wind
and about to fly away over San Felice's church, we caught a glimpse
of the feather of a note to E. B. B. How near we were to the loss of it,
to be sure!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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