Читать книгу Browning's England: A Study in English Influences in Browning - Helen Archibald Clarke - Страница 51

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A GROUP BY WOOLNER.

Only the prism's obstruction shows aright

The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light

Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;

So may a glory from defect arise:

33 Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak

Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,

Only by Dumbness adequately speak

As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.

An English Lane

There is also the beautiful description in "Balaustion's Adventure" of the Alkestis by Sir Frederick Leighton.

The flagrant anachronism of making a Greek girl at the time of the Fall of Athens describe an English picture cannot but be forgiven, since the artistic effect gained is so fine. The poet quite convinces the reader that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have been a Kaunian painter, if he was not, and that Balaustion or no one was qualified to appreciate his picture at its full worth.

"I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong

As Herakles, though rosy with a robe

Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:

And he has made a picture of it all.

There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,

She longed to look her last upon, beside

The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us

To come trip over its white waste of waves,

And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.

Behind the body, I suppose there bends

Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;

And women-wailers, in a corner crouch

—Four, beautiful as you four—yes, indeed!—

Close, each to other, agonizing all,

34 As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,

To two contending opposite. There strains

The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,

—Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like

The envenomed substance that exudes some dew

Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood

Will fester up and run to ruin straight,

Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome

The poisonous impalpability

That simulates a form beneath the flow

Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece

Worthy to set up in our Poikilé!

"And all came—glory of the golden verse,

And passion of the picture, and that fine

Frank outgush of the human gratitude

Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse—

Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps

Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,

—It all came of this play that gained no prize!

Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"

Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton inspired the poet in the exquisite lines on Eurydice.