Page 342 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 29: Robert Browning: My Last Duchess and the Last Ride Together

What, man of music, you grown grey Notes
With notes and nothing else to say,
Is this your sole praise from a friend,
“Greatly his opera’s strains intend,
“Put in music we know how fashions end!”
I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

IX

Who knows what’s fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being—had I signed the bond—
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test!
I sink back shuddering from the quest.
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

X

And yet—she has not spoke so long!
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life’s best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life’s flower is first discerned,
We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,—
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

29.2.2 Summary
Robert Browning is difficult to a certain extent, demanding a degree of intellectual exertion on the
part of the reader. His poetry is also characterized by a certain deliberate roughness reminiscent of
the metaphysical poets. His poems are greatly concerned with human character and reflect an
attraction towards the bizarre, the unusual and the eccentric. His poems are also dramatic and are
concerned with Renaissance themes. The most important qualities pervading Browning’s works
are his robust optimism and spiritual courage. The narrator told his lover the fact of the matter that

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