"Wednesday Night.
Dear Moxon,
I’ll be bound, now, people are always 'snubbing' me,
like friend Harness t’other day, just
because they fancy I have nobody to take my part—whereas, look here,—what has
come to me this very morning! But I keep such
matters to myself and so nobody is the wiser .. or rather the nobodies are
not the wiser!
In earnest,—very kind & gracious this of Landor, is
it not? And I am, I hope, properly proud of it—and so, knowing your own friendly
sympathy, I have got a copy made for you for which you shall thank me—(you who
love Chaucer, and can appreciate the felicity of the epithet 'hale' as
applied to him)—when I see you in a day or two. Forster’s notice .. is not that
most generous, too? Mr Harness, forsooth! If he goes and does the 'quizzing
article' he hints at, I’ll be hanged if I don’t rhyme him to death like an Irish
Rat!
Ever yours faithfully,
R Browning."
Do you think Browning was quite gleeful to receive the sonnet from Landor? He is wonderfully playful here, I'll be bound. We will see the last line of this poem referred to many times in the letters twixt Miss Barrett and Browning because Browning took to teasing Miss Barrett as being his Siren.
Here is the text:
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.
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