And all I remember is--friends flocking round
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
The monologue of the dying Bishop is as great a masterpiece as
_My Last Duchess_; it has not a superfluous word, and in only a
few lines gives us the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. Ruskin
said that Browning is "unerring in every sentence he writes about
the Middle Ages, always vital, right, and profound." He added,
"I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which
there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit."
Yet Browning had never seen Rome until a few months before this poem
was published. It is an example, not of careful study, but of the
inexplicable divination of genius. Browning permits a delirious old
Bishop to talk a few lines, and a whole period of history is written.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221