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Pomegranates from an English Garden / A selection from the poems of Robert Browning cover

Pomegranates from an English Garden / A selection from the poems of Robert Browning

Chapter 4: HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA.
By Robert Browning
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About This Book

A selection of poems by Robert Browning gathers lyrical and dramatic pieces that probe the inner life, moral choice, and imaginative response to love, loss, faith, and art. The poems alternate intimate domestic reveries, vivid narrative moments, and philosophical meditations, often voiced through distinctive dramatic speakers; they combine concise, sometimes rugged diction with dense allusion. Recurring concerns include the development of individual character, the presence of the divine in experience, encounters with mortality, and the duties of memory and courage. Varied meters and tonal shifts reward close reading and emphasize psychological intensity over neat resolution.

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

The former of these companion poems may have been written from Italy or the south of Spain, as would appear from the last line of it. Mr. E. C. Stedman, one of the severest of Browning’s appreciative critics, commenting (in his “Victorian Poets”) on the lines beginning “That’s the wise thrush,” says:—“Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I nevertheless think these three lines the finest ever written touching the song of a bird.”

In the latter poem, the course is from the southern point of Portugal through the Straits. “Here and here”—the reference is to the battles of Cape St. Vincent (1796) and Trafalgar (1805), and perhaps to the defence of Gibraltar (1782).