To Robert Browning
There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, tho’ the praiser sit alone
And see the prais’d far off him, far above.
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world’s,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
One of the Victorian poets usually, and mistakenly, categorised as “minor”, Walter Savage Landor was a rare early supporter of the unquestionably major writer, Robert Browning. A comparison of birth dates shows the age difference between the poets to have been considerable: Landor (1775-1864), Browning (1812-1889). Landor’s sonnet gains something in human stature from being an unstinted response by a senior poet to one much younger. The admiration, it should be said, was mutual. A long friendship evolved, and Landor, who spent a number of years in Italy, would receive support from the Browning family during his chaotic later life.
First published in the Morning Chronicle in 1845, To Robert Browning is an unrhymed sonnet – very unusual for the mid-19th century. Solidly crafted in iambic pentameter, it plays syntax against line with the fluency of a classically trained poet and dramatist: I think few readers would be distracted by the want of a rhyme-scheme chiming through the soundscape. But it’s not predictably smooth: Landor clearly and memorably states his regard for Browning’s energy and variety (lines seven to 10) and takes on some of the formal challenge. The sonnet moves quickly and broadly in its thought, with a delayed “turn” in line 10 introducing what is almost a fresh start.
Landor begins with a characteristic flourish of aphorism. The lively generalisation in the paired couplets unites the two poets across their contrasting situations. Browning had published Sordello (1840) and might have felt like the singer none could hear as he confronted its reception. And Landor himself is, of course, the “praiser” looking up and seeing the younger poet “far above” – and not feeling at all disgruntled. The emphasis is on the “delight” of the unheard singer and the inferior admirer: no frustration or envy sours Landor’s genial sight.
This is not to suggest there’s no element of playfulness, but it enters by the back doors of spelling, resulting in a faintly mock-archaic tone. On the spelling of Shakespeare, Landor’s choice was not an unusual one at the time of writing but other choices seem rather deliberately mannered: “walkt” for instance, and “highths”. This flicker of irony allows Landor to smile in an elder-brotherly way at a notion of poetry which Browning himself might have more scornfully smiled at. Landor sees it as a form of high style – a kind of antiquing that lifts the tribute he’s composing, although he smiles.
Dispatching Browning from the local English roads to “warmer climes”, Landor sees a gain in “brighter plumage, stronger wing” – a triumphant vision, since the wing is strong enough to bear the weight of the bright plumage. Browning had already visited Italy to research Sordello, and he would live there from the beginning of his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett in 1846. Landor seems to view the younger poet’s travels in terms of further future possibility.
Could he have known about the marriage plans already? If he had, his reference to the waiting Siren might possibly be a mischievous reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning-to-be. If she is going to match Robert “song for song” might she be competition as well as inspiration? I think the vision, whether it indeed includes Browning’s future wife or refers to a merely mythological Siren, is more generous than that. With just a ghost of a rhyme (“on” / “song”) to underline the jest, the sonnet closes in a further vision of the “delight in singing”, a delight that this time is to be shared.
